There is a dark side to gambling as there is in any activity that involves money.
This has historically been the case in roulette, where players on both sides of the table have used unscrupulous roulette tricks to make the lion’s share of their money. Luckily, modern gambling (both in live and online casinos) is strictly regulated to prevent this from happening.
In short, as long as you are playing in a reputable environment, you are being offered a fair game of roulette. For historical context, however, here’s a look at some of the roulette cheats employed by both players and the house to cheat at roulette in the past.
Roulette Cheats – Past posting
The first, the most difficult technique used by players, was called past-posting.
Requiring incredible reflexes and sleight of hand, past-posting allowed a quick player to place a bet after the ball had already landed. Since the dealer has to look away from the table to see which number the ball is about to land on, a past-poster takes advantage of this momentary distraction by sneaking a bet on the winning number and being paid for it as if it were a legitimate wager.
Roulette Cheats – Biased Roulette Wheel
In years past many tried to capitalize on the fact that the spin of a wheel might not be truly random. There is debate as to whether or not this was actually cheating as some would consider that if the casino has a wheel which is faulty, then that is the fault of the casino.
Today all licensed casinos regardless if they are the brick and mortar type or online use 3rd party audit firms to make sure that all roulette wheels are calibrated properly and don’t have any bias towards any particular number.
How To Cheat At Roulette – Famous Roulette Cheaters
One famous example of an attempt at a roulette cheat was recorded in 1873 in Monte Carlo.
Joseph Jagger, an engineer from England considered that the spin might not be truly random after working on spindles at a mill. He and six acquaintances traveled to Monaco and put this theory to the test. The team clandestinely recorded the results of spins at a number of wheels and found one of the wheels did indeed show a clear bias, with nine of the numbers being hit on a much more regular basis than the others.
Jagger and the team would take two million francs from the casino, which amounts to around $5 million in today’s terms.
Charles Wells was both a gambler and a con man.
In 1891 he traveled to the very same casino where Joseph Jagger had seen so much success. He entered the casino with just $4,000 and walked out with a million francs just eleven hours later. He returned later that year and won another million francs over three days. Wells would claim that it was just a lucky streak, however, there are many who surmise that Wells used the same methods as used by Jagger.
Wells would later go to prison for fraud, having scammed investors with a fuel saving device for steam ships – and would claim that the yacht he traveled to Monaco on (with his mistress) was bought so he could test the device!
Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo would make his name over a century later after Charles Wells.
He also would use much the same methods as his predecessors, only with the aid of technology. He started in Spain and would record the results of thousands of spins of many wheels. He would then feed these results into a computer for analysis to see if there were any statistical anomalies. He did indeed find that some wheels weren’t truly random and the house edge enjoyed by the casino was now his.
He moved from casino to casino in Spain and would eventually not to be able to play in his home country anymore as he was banned. He made the move to Las Vegas and continued his winning ways. Eventually, he became too well known at casinos across the globe and his venture came to an end. Thou, he had over $1.5 million in the bank to show for it!
Roulette Tricks At Modern Casinos
As times change and technology evolves, the more determined cheaters have created everything from tiny computers that fit in their shoes to sophisticated laser scanners that read the spin rate and velocity of the wheel to accurately predict which range of numbers the ball will land in.
Live Dealer Roulette Tricks
You can’t feel too badly for the house, though. Even with the house edge casinos enjoy, more suspect casinos have used methods in the past to win even more from the players. Most of these methods revolved around manipulating the wheel to either make the more likely to fall into certain pockets or to introduce a protrusion on the track to prevent the ball from falling into a certain pocket.
Thankfully, all of these techniques are now obsolete as long as the casino you are playing at falls under the jurisdiction of a reputable gaming commission.
Important:Always check the reputation of the casino where you will play roulette. A quick search on the Internet can help you to discover any past problems and avoid losing your money
Cheating In Online Roulette
We are often asked by novice players “how to cheat online roulette?” or if “Is cheating at roulette even possible”. These are fun questions to ask but all casinos, live and online, plus online roulette software developers pride themselves in taking all necessary precautions to make sure that none of these ever happen as it would tarnish their reputations and turn off gamblers from playing roulette.
