Is it really possible to predict (or influence) the fall of a roulette ball?
 

Interesting piece on the news last night on Radio 4.

3 Russian people were arrested after winning £1,000,000 in a London casino on the roulette wheel. Apparantly, management called the police in after becoming suspicious at their sustained run of good luck. It turns out they had in their possession a mobile phone with a laser scanner device built into it.

Is it really possible to influence where the ball is going to land? Sounds like the stuff of James Bond-esque fantasy to me. The police have admitted that if the device was used in a predictive manner (how the fcuk would that work?) then an offence probably hasn't been commited.

Meantime, the casino is holding onto the money.........

Cheers
Kav

greedy beggers, why not go in and win 50k then go in a different casino and win 100k and do rounds at more places, probably have a better chance of getting away with it. no idea who u could predict that though

Well...they won £1.3mio so that should answer your question...you can't do that on dumb luck in one sitting without betting a humoungous amount...the lazer would've accurately measured velocity of ball and wheel, knowing mass and starting points it's pretty easy to imagine a computer could work out the likely landing spot with a relatively great accuracy..of course it couldn't be faultless as you will get the odd weird bounce...but who knows, perhaps the croupier was bent and the lazer/mobile thing is just smoke to divert attention.
Rgds
C

Details here

It also wouldn't have to be radically accurate. If the scanner could even eliminate a 'zone' of the wheel the ball would not land it would be enough to tilt the odds well into your favour.

What always gets me when I hear about these things is that the casino always seems to think it's their *right* to win against the punter. They don't seem to accept that sometimes things will go against them big-style.

Whole thing stinks of sour grapes to me.

The roulette wheel has those things in the wall of the bowl that makes it jump around. By the time the phone had any idea of where it was gonna land they'd have called 'no more bets' long before.

The house never loses like. There was a thing on sky the other day about it. Some bloke who worked in the "idustry" helped his mate win on one of them KEENO games. They knew he was cheating becuase noboday had ever won the jackpot ever.....

Greed, greed. Like that coughing chap on Millionaire with the witch clone wife. If he'd pulled out at say £250k he would probably have got away with it. As said above if the Ritz guys had just taken the odd £10k per night they might still be playing...... Interesting to see if they are actually charged in the end. DL

Yeah that was pretty thick! Its like they say, you can shear a sheep many times but you can only skin it once!