casinos, the odds tilt further in the house's favor because the wheel contains one extra space. In experiments on a roulette wheel in a laboratory, the method produced predicted earnings of almost 20 percent instead of the expected loss of about 2.7 percent for a European-style wheel. The simpler method the pair tested involves careful observation and recording of the initial conditions by an individual or team of players.
'In some cases you can beat them quite significantly.' 'Knowing the initial conditions allows you to beat the odds,' said Michael Small, a statistician at the University of Western Australia in Perth, who carried out the study with Chi Kong Tse of Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The key, the modelers found, is knowing the precise location of the ball and the relative speeds of the ball and wheel when the croupier - the casino worker in charge of the game - sets the wheel in motion and releases the ball.
