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The concept of wheel bias has existed for just about as long as the game of roulette itself, which makes it more than 200 years old. As with all forms of gambling, or indeed any activity where there is money to be made, those involved are always looking for an edge, some form of advantage that can help them win. As with many such ideas and concepts, using wheel bias to gain an advantage over the house (casino) is something of a grey area in terms of its legality and ethics.<\/p>\n
As with many such methods of beating the casino, whilst it is technically entirely legal, any player found to be exploiting it is almost assured to get politely ejected from the casino at best. And at worst they can expect to be ejected in a fashion most impolite and then barred from that casino and other partner or neighbouring establishments.<\/p>\n
Anyway, before we start evoking scenes from Hollywood\u2019s gangster-rich portrayal of casinos, let us explain what wheel bias is. We\u2019ll look at how and why it might come about, if it really exists in any meaningful way and whether or not it is applicable to online roulette, be that of the Random Number Generator (RNG) type or in a website\u2019s live casino suite.<\/p>\n
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Most casino games are described as games of chance as opposed to games of skill, and the key difference between the two in simple terms is that the former rely solely, or at least primarily, on luck, whilst the latter can be influenced by the skill, ability or actions of the player. Roulette is very much a game of chance and like other such games it uses what is sometimes called a randomising device in order to determine the outcome.<\/p>\n
The randomising device is what makes the game one of chance \u2013 luck, rather than skill \u2013 and is designed to deliver random, unpredictable results. The device used can be dice, a pack of cards or, in the case of roulette, the spinning wheel and ball. But if the wheel doesn\u2019t serve its purpose and doesn\u2019t deliver random results the casino may have a very large problem, whilst the savvy punter may be able to cash in.<\/p>\n
When a wheel is no longer functioning correctly as a randomising device, by which we mean the numbers the ball is settling in are not sufficiently random, then wheel bias is said to exist. Perhaps we can understand this more clearly if we think about dice for now, rather than a roulette wheel.<\/p>\n
It is possible to obtain weighted dice that are not perfectly balanced and so, rather than each number from one to six having an equal chance of hitting, they favour one particular number, usually the six. The degree of weighting varies, from novelty items that will always<\/em> land on a six and are obviously weighted to more subtle ones where a six is much more likely than the other numbers but not fixed.<\/p>\n Wheel bias is essentially the roulette equivalent of weighted dice. So whilst each number should have the same chance of coming up, one in 37 in the case of European\/French roulette and one in 38 for US double zero roulette, on a biased wheel a certain number (or sometimes section) of the wheel will hit more often. Equally other numbers or areas of the wheel will land less frequently than would be expected were the wheel entirely fair and random.<\/p>\n We should point out that whilst weighted dice are deliberately biased, there is no suggestion that wheel bias is created intentionally. Certainly it is not something you need to worry about in terms of the casino intentionally using non-random wheels. This is because any deviance away from wholly unpredictable results can only favour the punter and so casinos do everything in their power to ensure that wheels function correctly.<\/p>\n For now, let us return to the issue of what causes wheel bias on an actual \u201creal world\u201d roulette wheel. Wheels can become insufficiently random for a range of reasons but in truth wheel bias is less common than it used to be due to improved manufacturing processes and testing. Modern wheels are actually impressive feats of precision engineering and the vast, vast majority of the time they are uniform and made to perfection so as to ensure bias never happens.<\/p>\n What\u2019s more, biased wheels are more likely than ever to be spotted by casinos due to the data analysis undertaken by casinos. None the less, from time to time wear and tear (be it tiny almost imperceptible chips, the build-up of dirt, dust or grease or the loosening of some part of the wheel), or alternatively very minor manufacturing defects, will cause a wheel to deliver the ball to one number or section more often than to others.<\/p>\n The most common causes of bias are:<\/p>\n There are other factors that may cause bias, such as sunlight, atmospheric conditions, some unseen defect causing an uneven slowing of the wheel and so on. However, knowing wheel bias exists and what might cause it is one thing, but can it actually be spotted and exploited?<\/p>\n Many seek to identify a bias using pure statistical analysis of the numbers but you need to consider a huge number of spins for such a method to be valid. You can watch a wheel and see number 33 come up four times in a row, or a certain sector 15 times in a row but this is not, almost certainly, due to bias, but it is simply natural variance.<\/p>\n In order to be sure that a wheel is biased you would want to analyse many hundreds of spins and ideally several thousand. That takes levels of patience and commitment few possess, even if they have the ability to do so. And of course you also have to be sure that it is exactly the same wheel, rotor and base, in the exact same position of the casino.<\/p>\nWhy Does Wheel Bias Happen?<\/h2>\n
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First of all, wheel bias can only occur when a real, physical wheel, ball and croupier are being used. It is not relevant to \u201cnormal\u201d online casino roulette, where the graphics you see are simply computer generated. In this version of roulette, the randomising device is not a genuine roulette wheel but a random number generator (RNG). We will look at this in more detail, as well as the relevancy of wheel bias to online roulette, later in the article.<\/p>\n\n
How To Spot Wheel Bias<\/h3>\n
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The truth is that these days spotting wheel bias is almost impossible. Most bias is caused by very tiny imperfections and the bias created is correspondingly small. You are not going to see a wheel, for example, that spins a given number every spin, or every other spin. You aren\u2019t even going to see it hit every 20 spins, almost twice as often as would be expected, because even then such a relatively obvious bias would be quickly picked up by the casinos.<\/p>\n
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One potential element of bias we have not yet discussed is the croupier. Although a roulette wheel is designed to be as random as it can and introduce as much chaos theory into proceedings as possible, the croupier is a constant. How they spin the wheel and introduce the ball is down to them and so many have wondered whether or not it is possible for the croupier to control where the ball comes to rest.<\/p>\n![\"Online](\"https:\/\/www.ukgamblingsites.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/on.jpg\")
Disgruntled customers who have lost, especially if they have seen what they perceive to be an \u201cimpossible\u201d sequence of numbers but is actually just natural variance, often claim that online roulette is fixed. However, we are highly confident that all the great sites we work with are 100% legitimate.<\/p>\n