Wheel Of Fortune

I was at Planet Hollywood in Vegas observing this game and noticed that one of the busty female croups had a pretty consistent spin. When she would spin with her right hand, it was fairly consistently three revolutions, and with the left it was 2.5.

Now I realize the Joker bet is one of the worst overall bets in gambling, (house edge of 24%) but if only betting on the Jokers, and if you can fairly consistently "guess" which half of the board the spin will land on, doesn't this push the Joker odds greatly in your favor?

unfamiliar with this game exactly,

#1 why do you have to pick the worst bet?

#2 why wouldnt the casino realize the wheel doesnt revolve much, and have factored that, or done something to better randomize.

You're talking about what is usually called a Big Six wheel, and absolutely, you can have a huge player advantage if you can clock the wheel betting on the Joker.

It has been discussed here before; I'll try to find it later.

Quote: uofmken

I was at Planet Hollywood in Vegas observing this game and noticed that one of the busty female croups had a pretty consistent spin. When she would spin with her right hand, it was fairly consistently three revolutions, and with the left it was 2.5.

Now I realize the Joker bet is one of the worst overall bets in gambling, (house edge of 24%) but if only betting on the Jokers, and if you can fairly consistently "guess" which half of the board the spin will land on, doesn't this push the Joker odds greatly in your favor?

This is exactly what the Wizard has described in his Gambling 102 book on page 12-13.
"If a dealer could be found with a consistent force-per-spin, it would be possible to gain an advantage."

He shows no math but a table of results that by predicting better than 60-65% (Vegas vs. AC) on what half the wheel hits betting the 40 to 1 payoff one could gain between 2.2% up to 36.3% edge.

would be interested in seeing the math on this one.
Still would have a very large variance.

The Wizard's approach is a bit different from Edward Thorpe's Wheel of Fortune method in the book Mathematics of Gambling Section Two.

The Wizard does end the paragraph with "Hence, this is not a strategy that most will be able to implement with success."

Quote: odiousgambit

unfamiliar with this game exactly,

#1 why do you have to pick the worst bet?

It's the only one that's not distributed equally around the wheel. If you know which half of the wheel will appear (27 spots) then getting paid 40-to-1 on one of them is in your favor. All of the other bets are not meaningfully biased from a position standpoint -- you'd need to predict more accurately than "half-wheel" in order to profit from them.

Quote: MathExtremist

It's the only one that's not distributed equally around the wheel. If you know which half of the wheel will appear (27 spots) then getting paid 40-to-1 on one of them is in your favor. All of the other bets are not meaningfully biased from a position standpoint -- you'd need to predict more accurately than "half-wheel" in order to profit from them.

But if you can clock the croupier (is this the correct name for the person working the wheel?) to 2.5 or 3.0 revolutions, can money still be made on the $20, or even the $5, (assuming that is directly opposite or where the wheel currently rests? I imagine with 2.5 or 3.0 consistency, you can narrow the outcomes to perhaps four or five possibilities.

James Grosjean does a good analysis of the big 6 wheel in Beyond Counting.

Quote: Ayecarumba

But if you can clock the croupier (is this the correct name for the person working the wheel?) to 2.5 or 3.0 revolutions, can money still be made on the $20, or even the $5, (assuming that is directly opposite or where the wheel currently rests? I imagine with 2.5 or 3.0 consistency, you can narrow the outcomes to perhaps four or five possibilities.

You're not clocking the spin exactly.

A deviation of just 2 or 3 positions would eliminate the advantage on most bets.

Assuming you can predict it to a range of about 5 positions, the joker/logo would have a huge advantage, as would the $20. The $10 would be only a slight advantage.

If you're only predicting it to 1/2 the wheel, then only the joker or logo would have any advantage.

Here is the Wizards table from his Gambling 102 book.
Only betting the 40 to 1
Big Six Prediction Accuracy/Edge

Accuracy	LV	AC
50.00%	-24.07%	-14.81%
55.00%	-16.48%	-6.30%
60.00%	-8.89%	2.22%
65.00%	-1.30%	10.74%
70.00%	6.30%	19.36%
75.00%	13.89%	27.78%
80.00%	21.48%	36.30%

Anyone care to review how he created this table?
I can only agree on a few values, so I must not be doing the math correctly.