SIC-BO (seriously long story so be warned...)
January 18th, 2011 at 11:15:48 PM
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I've told a few people about what happened to me back in 2000 and I actually wrote this short story for a friend of mine. Believe it or not I've edited a few things out that are of a rather personal nature but it's pretty long just the same. I've made a short version and if you don't want to bother reading whole thing you'll get the idea.
When I hear people talk about +EV play I just laugh... I doubt anyone will ever have this kind of advantage again. I actually had almost a 50% ADVANTAGE.
I apologize about the slow start and the rather elementary explanation about gambling and odds in general... my friend had never been in a casino before and I wanted her to understand things in as much detail as possible... plus, as you may have noticed, I tend to ramble on...
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SHORT VERSION (Recommended)
Back in 1999 I discovered a flaw in a table game called Sic-Bo. The game was different from the dice version of Sic-Bo you might see today. It involved rolling 3 balls down a track into a wheel (with numbers 1-6 six times) and wagering on the outcome of the roll. Someone in casino management had moved the numbers around on this wheel in order to prevent what they perceived to be possible AP but in doing so they created a flaw in the basic game itself that I exploited. I began by winning small amounts and after a while I realized no one had noticed what I was doing or that no one cared. Either way, I ended up making about $120,000 in just under 2 months. One day I came in to play and the game was gone. No one admitted to knowing where it had gone or even knowing who had moved it. I took the money, had a blast for a couple of months (traveling, buying a car, etc...) and bankrolled what is now a very fun and profitable life as a poker player.
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LONG VERSION (Only for those with as much time on their hands as I)
As you might know, I’ve done my share of gambling. I’ve played pretty much every casino game there is and I enjoy the action. It’s always intrigued me that people have created places where anyone can walk in the door, put some money on a table, be dealt a few cards or watch a wheel spin around in circles and then be given a whole bunch more money… and walk out the door. As far as I’m concerned that’s a pretty cool place. Of course the reason these places exist is that for every person who actually walks out the door with more money than when they walked in, there are dozens more who leave some behind. Did you know that if a blackjack player simply plays what’s called “basic strategy”, the house has less than a 2% advantage? The casino will even hand you a card if you ask that shows the best way to play your hands. Roulette has a house advantage of 5.26%, craps averages around 3% or so and most other games are under 5%. It doesn’t sound like a lot, does it? Well, it’s not really but even with this small advantage, casinos around the world make millions of dollars off of suckers… many millions a day in fact in some of the larger casinos. So, call me a sucker because I assure you I’ve donated my share.
There was a game in one of my local casinos called Sic-Bo and I had played it many times. It was a simple game to play and kind of fun. Imagine a wheel, much like a roulette wheel but instead of being divided into 38 sections like a roulette wheel with numbers 1-36 plus the “0” and “00”, this wheel had only 36 sections and the numbers 1-6 six times in succession. Leading to the wheel was a long track about 6 inches wide and 12 feet long. The object of the game was to roll 3 small wooden balls down this track and as they landed in the wheel, the sum of the three numbered slots into which they would fall would be the winning number for that roll. For example, if the balls landed in a 2 slot, a 4 slot and a 5 slot, the sum total of the three balls would be 11 and therefore the winning number would be 11. There was a layout, also similar to roulette layout and there you could place bets on all sorts of different numbers and combinations. The basic bets would be on the numbers, from 4 to 17. The lowest possible number that could be rolled (without rolling a triple) would be a 4 as this meant that 2 balls had landed in a 1 slot and the third had landed in a 2 slot for a total of 4. The highest of course (without rolling a triple) would be 17, with 2 balls landing in a 6 slot and the third into a 5 slot. You could place a bet on any number from 4 through 17 and if your number was rolled you would win. The payouts were based on the odds of that number being rolled with the numbers 4 and 17 giving the biggest payouts (as these numbers were the least likely to be rolled) 5 and 16 the next highest, followed by 6 and 15 and so on. The easiest numbers to roll would be 10 and 11 as there were many more combinations that would add up to these numbers. The 10 and 11 spots paid 6 to 1 on your bet so a bet of $5 on the number 10 would pay $30 if a 10 was rolled. The number 15 paid 21 to 1 as it was less likely that number would be rolled. To roll a 4 or 17 was very unlikely and these numbers paid 70 to 1. There were other betting options as well including betting high or low (11 through 18 vs. 3 through 10), odd or even. These were “even money” bets and paid 1 to 1. You could also bet on the true long shots and these were the triples. If I placed a bet on a triple 3 for example, I was betting that all three balls would land in a 3 slot for a total of 9. Seeing as there are only 6 slots for any number, this really was a long shot as it would be very unlikely that this would happen for any triple. Because it was such a long shot, the payout was very high, at 300 to 1. A $5 bet on triple 4 would pay $1,500 if a triple 4 was rolled. As I said, it was a simple game but pretty fun and always exciting when a long shot came in. If a triple was rolled and no one had bet on it the dealers would always, “tut-tut” and shake their heads and tell everyone at the table how they should have been on it and how much money they would have made. The dealers liked the game as well because it was very easy to deal and when a long shot came in and they made a big payout, they’d usually get a decent sized tip.
I had played Sic-Bo many times in a number of different casinos and as with all other players I’d lost money in the long run. Sure, there had been times when I had walked in and placed a bet on a long shot and perhaps won and made some money but in all the times I’d played there was no question that I’d lost money. The reason for this goes back to the house edge I’ve told you about. Although the triples pay 300 to 1, the actual odds of a triple being rolled are 360 to 1 and so the house had almost a 16% edge on the player for this bet. That’s a huge advantage and like all bets in the casino, in the long run it always catches up to the player and makes money for the house.
I recalled having been in a small casino downtown that had a Sic-Bo game that usually had heavy action. This meant that there were a lot of players betting a lot of money and from time to time the casino would have a bad day. Of course, over time the casino would always make money but once in a while, if enough players bet enough money on one of the long shots and this number came in, the casino might actually pay out more on that one roll than they’d make from the game during the entire day. Let’s say that there are 6 people who all bet $10 on a triple 3 and a triple 3 is rolled. This means the casino would have to pay $3,000 (300 to 1 for a $10 bet) to each one of them for that one roll which would be an $18,000 payout. For a small casino, that’s a pretty big hit and could easily be more than they’d make on the game for an entire day. These things happen though, in every casino every day. Someone gets lucky and wins a big pot and the casino just has to suck it up and know that over time they’ll make up the loss and show a good profit.
Here’s where this story shows how greed can be a dangerous thing. This small, local casino realized that they did have a lot of heavy action on this game and that they could incur a big loss with one roll of the balls. Someone decided to do something about it and in doing so, created the most amazing opportunity for me to make money. Remember how I said that the balls are rolled down the track and into the wheel? Well, what I didn’t tell you is that one reason players liked this game is that it is the players themselves who roll the balls and not the dealer. It’s a great inducement for the players to play because they feel they have some level of control over the outcome. After all, if they are rolling the balls then they will be directly responsible for where those balls land, right? Well, yes and no. Keep in mind that although the player would roll the balls, the balls would have to be released from the hand a good 10 feet or more from the wheel. Not only that, as the balls are rolling down the track toward the wheel, the wheel itself is turning and just like a roulette wheel there are little bumps along the side of the wheel so that as the balls fall in they tend to bounce this way and that way and even the motion of the turning wheel would jostle them to the point where it would be almost impossible to actually have much if any power over where they would eventually land. But the players who played regularly did realize one important fact about the relationship between the rolling balls and the wheel – they understood that because the numbers on the wheel were in 6 groups of 6, numbered one through six, and that the numbers were evenly spaced, in order to roll a triple, the balls would also have to be evenly spaced as they fell into the wheel. In other words it would be impossible to roll a triple of any number if even only two balls landed side by side as these two balls would then be in slots that were consecutively numbered; a 2 beside a 3, a 5 beside a 6 and so on. It would be impossible to roll a triple if the balls landed close together or with very little separation. This is very important as once this was realized, the players would make every effort to evenly space the balls as they released them so that they might be evenly spaced as they fell into the wheel. Of course, the reason the players did this was to (in theory) make it more likely for a triple to be rolled and of course the reason they wanted this to happen was because the triples were the long shots and had by far the highest payouts. 300 to 1 is a huge payout regardless of how much you’re betting and these players would always bet the table limit on this bet which was $10. Just imagine if you could play this game and on every attempt bet on a 300 to 1 shot. Even if you only bet $1 per roll, if you could make this happen once in less than 300 rolls you’d make money in the long run. The players knew this and did their best to increase the possibility that this would happen.
The fact is that although each of the regular players had their own funny method of releasing the balls in an attempt to have them be evenly spaced as they fell into the wheel, the physics of the game including gravity, inertia and centrifugal forces made it impossible to achieve anything more than a random roll; no better than if someone wearing a blindfold had picked up the 3 balls and wildly thrown them down the track. I saw so many different methods of releasing the balls (most included having them separated at the top of the track) and people who played this game regularly did everything they could to increase their chances of winning the big one. What they never did realize though was that no matter what they did, it really made no difference in the long run. The funny thing though is this – I realized that what these players did made no difference in the long run but not only did the players not realize this, the casino itself did not realize this. In fear of losing its edge, someone in the casino decided that something had to be done to counteract the player’s strategy. What is amazing about this is that even casinos (well, casino managers anyway) don’t understand odds and random chance and are as foolish as the players themselves.
One day when I went into this casino, I noticed that someone had taken all of the numbers on the Sic-Bo wheel and rearranged them. I understood immediately the reason that this had been done. Someone figured out that the players were spacing the balls evenly at the top of the track in order to (hopefully) have them land in the wheel at even intervals. This same someone realized that if a player could achieve this then the possibility of a triple coming up would be increased and therefore the likelihood of having to pay out a big win to the players would also be increased. This obviously made someone very nervous and so this someone decided that to render this strategy useless they would rearrange the numbers on the wheel in a completely random order so that the player would have no possibility of “stacking” their roll to the disadvantage of the casino. I looked at the wheel and saw that the numbers were still in 6 groups of 6, but rather than in numerical order, they were “randomly” shuffled. I chuckled to myself and wondered at how someone who runs a casino can have such little understanding of odds, randomness and the house edge.
Back in late 1999 I became very ill and ended up spending a lot of time confined to my bed. One day I was thinking about gambling (as I often do) and I asked myself why I can’t come up with a way to beat the house (casino) at its own games. I know that all of the games have a built in advantage or “edge” and this is why the casino always makes money; you can’t beat the edge. It all comes down to simple (or in some cases rather complex) math but in the end it is indisputable… the casino will always win. The casino wins because it has created games and specific rules for these games that will always give it the edge over the player. As long as these games are played by these rules, there’s no way around the numbers and the player will always lose in the long run. There is however a man, a mathematics professor from MIT named Edward O. Thorpe who beat a casino game and even wrote a book about it and how he did it. The book is called “Beat the Dealer” and explains how by understanding the game of blackjack and the rules by which the game is played, a shrewd player with patience, discipline and a good memory can actually turn the house advantage upside down and put the odds in the favour of the player. How this is done can be found in the pages of his book and to some degree by watching the movie “21”. The strategy can be used (and I’m sure still is being used) today although perhaps to a much lesser degree due to the fact that casinos are now very aware of this “flaw” in the game and thus have changed the rules of the game and game play enough to eliminate this from happening again. The notion that someone has actually beaten a casino at its own game has always made me wonder if this could be done again and so over the years I’ve often put my mind to the task of finding another “flaw”.
Spending hours and days and months alone may turn the brain to mush but at times it can focus the mind to an amazing degree and during my convalescence I happened to experience one of these moments of white hot clarity. I was thinking about all of the games in a casino and one by one I went through the rules and the game play and I thought about where someone might have missed one or another hidden flaw. (Now I’m quite certain I’m not the first person who has ever done this as greater minds than mine have looked for the “Holy Grail” of systems when it comes to casino games. There are actually hundreds if not thousands of websites claiming to have accomplished just that and for a mere $59 they’ll send you a book or DVD explaining how to make “thousands of dollars a day” playing one casino game or another. Don’t waste your money… I’ve checked them out and they’re all frauds.) I’d often thought that roulette might offer the best chance for success because the house edge in that game is founded upon the principle that the wheel, with its many little bumps and 38 spaces, plus the fact that the ball is spun in the opposite direction from which the wheel is turning makes it a perfect random number generator. In other words, the result of one spin is in no way influenced by the previous spin and it is therefore impossible to do better than make a random guess at where or in what number the ball will drop. However, my mind began to think of ways in which I might take at least some of the randomness out of the equation. For example, if I could somehow make some of the spaces a little bit smaller then the ball would be less likely to land in those spaces and I would of course place my bets on the other numbers. Conversely, if I could make some of the spaces bigger, the ball would be more likely to land in those spaces and I would bet on those numbers. What if I could find a way to block some of the spaces completely with some kind of clear filler to prevent the ball from landing on those numbers at all? Well, although these ideas and others like them do have merit in as much as they are all valid concepts, I also realized that unless I knew someone in the casino who could do this for me or I could sneak in one night myself to adjust one of the wheels, none of these scenarios would ever come to pass. Of course the other thing stopping me from doing any of those experiments was the fact that I would be cheating. I admit that I am a gambler and I also admit that I’m always looking for an edge, but whether it’s in poker, roulette, blackjack or any other game, I would never resort to cheating. I know a lot of people don’t care a fig if they cheat, as long as they make money and don’t get caught but that’s just not an option for me.
So, there I am, lying in bed with all sorts of numbers and formulas running through my head when all of a sudden it hits me… and I know I’m about to make a very large sum of money. I grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and began drawing the Sic-Bo wheel. After all my thinking about roulette and how to alter the wheel to my advantage, I suddenly realized that someone had already done this for me but not with a roulette wheel, with the Sic-Bo wheel!
I knew that although the wheel still had the numbers 1 through 6 six times spread around the wheel, it was no longer in a uniform manner and this had to mean that certain numbers were closer or farther apart from one another and this meant that certain sections of the wheel might have more large numbers than small and vice versa.
I was so excited as I KNEW I had found the “flaw” for which I had been looking. All I had to do was to figure out how to make this work to my advantage. In order to do that I needed to know exactly how the numbers were placed on the wheel… and this is where I encountered a slight problem.
I wanted to go immediately to the casino and have a look at the wheel but I was so weak I didn’t think I could do it. I hadn’t been out of the apartment for over 2 months and my legs had turned into little stir straws with feet. I had to try though so I pulled on a pair of jeans and a shirt… and then spent the next 5 minutes catching my breath. I thought I’d take the elevator down to the lobby, walk outside, hail a cab and then I could just sit in the casino for as long as I wanted, taking notes and thinking thoughts. I did manage to make it out of the apartment door but when I got to the elevator I realized that I was not only too exhausted to continue on my little journey to the casino, I hadn’t even enough strength to get back into my door only 20 feet away. I sat down for a few minutes and then spent another 10 minutes or so crawling back into my apartment and then when I closed the door behind me I just spent the next 12 hours sleeping in the entrance.
It took me almost a week of effort to gain the strength required to make it to the casino. My medical condition had settled down and I was beginning to heal but I had lost a lot of weight and muscle and it took a lot of small steps (literally) to get to the point where I could stand for more than a few minutes and walk more than a few blocks. I finally did get out of my building one day though, flagged a cab, got to the casino and took a seat in front of the Sic-Bo table.
There it was. Right in front of me. The key to winning who knew how many thousands of dollars. I had made it.
The first thing I did was draw the wheel with the proper placement of the numbers. (By the way, you might think that a casino would frown upon someone taking notes or drawing diagrams right at a casino game but they’re not worried at all. Go into any casino and you’ll see all sorts of people with cards and notes and systems and the casino management just rubs their hands with glee.) It took me a little while but I found what I was looking for. Someone had done a fairly good job of moving the numbers and still keeping balance between the high and low numbers around the wheel but I soon discovered that there was one little section on one side of the wheel with a few too many high numbers clustered together and of course another section on the other side with a few too many low numbers in close proximity to one another. This was pure gold. I’m going to explain why this slight difference could possibly make such a huge difference to me, a player who had seen this “flaw”.
I’ve explained that when the “big” players, the ones who were betting the table maximum on the triples rolled the balls, they would make every effort to space the balls evenly hoping that the balls would then land evenly spaced in the wheel. I’ve also explained why this strategy did not change their odds and made no difference in the long run. What no one else noticed though was that although it was practically impossible to spread the balls evenly and have them land evenly spread, it was very simple to roll the balls together and have them all fall together in a very small section of the wheel. I’ve told you that there are “even money” bets on the table that pay 1-1. One of these bets lets you choose “high” or “low”; a high number being anything 11 and up and a low number being anything 10 and below. Now, imagine you know that in one section of the wheel there is a little clump of numbers, let’s say 8 numbers, where if 3 balls were to fall in that section, the total would end up being a low number 75% of the time. Now imagine that with a little practice, you knew that when the wheel was moving at a certain speed, in a certain direction and if you released all 3 balls from your hand at the same time and rolled them down the track at a certain speed, that you could get them to all fall within that little clump of 8 numbers. Finally, if every time you rolled those balls you made a wager that a low number was going to come up and 3 times out of every 4 a low number DID come up… well, you’d make a lot of money. A LOT of money.
So, there I was, sitting at the table, watching people make their wagers and roll the balls. It took a little while but after a couple of hours I had a pretty good idea of the average speed of that wheel and after rolling more than a few times myself (I played a few dollars just to be part of the game) I began to get a very good feel for how fast and from what distance I’d have to roll the balls to get them to land where I wanted them to land. Of course, by that point I’d practically passed out from exhaustion but I did what I went there to do and now it was just a matter of putting it all into practice.
I went home and collapsed… but for the first time in a long time I felt pretty darn good about how my day had gone.
It took another couple of weeks before I decided to venture out again and by then I was strong enough to walk a couple of blocks and I had put on some weight. My stomach had decided to sort itself out and I was on the road to recovery. I’ve heard people say, “If you have your health, you have everything.” I don’t know if that’s entirely true but I do know that when I’m sick I can’t even imagine what it feels like not to be sick and there is not one moment when I’m not thinking about how lousy I feel. When I’m not sick, I can’t even remember how awful everything was because it was so darn awful but I do know that I never want to feel that way again.
So, armed with my little secret and with nothing but time on my hands, I headed back to the casino to see for myself exactly what I could accomplish. I didn’t have any monetary target in mind; I just wanted to test things out and prove to myself that I was right and it was for real.
I walked into the casino and sat down at the table. I made sure to sit the right distance down the track and I bought in for $100. I figured if I played $5 a spin and could turn $100 into $200, I’d be doing ok.
I watched everyone place their bets and roll the balls and did my best to focus on the speed of the wheel and get a feel for the timing. After a few more spins, the balls were given to me and I placed $5 (the table minimum) on “low”. Everyone else placed their bets including the “big” bettors and I can’t tell you how amusing it was to see their faces when I rolled the balls all in a little group down that track. Of course the balls all landed in more or less the same area of the wheel and of course a triple didn’t come up and of course everyone admonished me for not spreading them out and of course they all lost their money… but wouldn’t you know it, the 3 balls all landed in low numbers, the total was below 11 and the dealer reached over and placed a $5 chip beside my $5 chip. I had won.
Looking back now, I’m amused at how delighted I was to pick up that $5 chip. I knew I wouldn’t win on every bet I placed but I did win on the first one and from that point on it would never again be a question of “How?”… only how much.
That first week was an interesting one. I played every day and I spent an average of about 3 hours at that game. The first day I ended up winning over $200. I had raised my bet from time to time, sometimes betting $10 or $25 a spin. I’ll tell you though, I was scared to death that at any moment someone would tap me on the shoulder and ask me to follow them to a little room in the back where Guido would be waiting for me with some pain-inflicting implement resting in his greasy hand. After a couple of days however and a few more $200-$300 wins, I began to see that no one was paying any attention to the skinny guy who couldn’t even figure out how to roll the balls right.
After a week or so and about $1,000 in my pocket, I decided to go into the casino with an actual plan of action. I felt comfortable that I hadn’t drawn any attention to myself and I also knew by then that I could not lose. Can you imagine what it must feel like to go into a casino KNOWING that you cannot lose? In case you can’t imagine what it must feel like, I’ll tell you. It feels weird. I can’t explain it other than that.
I went in to the casino with the goal of making $500. I played $25 a roll, sometimes $50 and after a couple of hours I’d made my $500. Just like that. I looked around the place and started to giggle a bit. I was standing in the world’s biggest ATM and I could withdraw as much as I wanted.
It was after I got home that afternoon that I realized I had to make a decision. I figured there were two ways to go about this and I had to choose the one that made the most sense. I knew that $500 a day adds up to an awful lot of money pretty quickly and after a couple of years I’d have over a quarter of a million in the bank. I also knew that up to that point, no one had given me any reason to believe that my play was being scrutinized in any way and if I could make $500 a day, why not $1,000 or $5,000? I suspected that eventually, someone would take notice of what I was doing if I did it long enough and there was always the chance that I’d be barred from the casino or that the game itself would be changed back to its original form or even removed. What if I was making $500 a day and in two weeks I did get that tap on the shoulder? I made up my mind. I was going to make as much as I could as fast as I could and just let the chips fall where they may… so to speak.
The next day I won over $1,000. The next day it was over $2,000. I began to play the house limit and the wins came very fast. There were times when there were only a few people at the table and every once in a while it would be me by myself. I knew that with the amounts I was winning I would be discovered sooner or later so I found ways to avoid detection. I would take chips that I had won and instead of keeping them in front of me on the table I’d furtively slide a few into my pocket now and then so it would appear I hadn’t won as much as I had. I’d also make sure to lose a big bet more often than I should and make it look as if I was having a bad day. My favourite thing to do was to play other games at high limits to spread some of the money around the casino. I’d play blackjack at $200-$500 a hand knowing that I’d usually break more or less even. I’d put $500 a spin on roulette and then if I lost I’d chase it just like any other gambler. It was hilarious though when I’d put a huge bet down on another game and just by pure luck win a couple of thousand dollars. It almost made it look like I was just a lucky guy who won at everything he played.
Every time I’d finish for the day, I’d walk to the casino cash cage to cash out my chips and I’d always have $2,000 or $3,000 or more. The girl who sat there and saw me every day must have wondered what the heck I was up to but she just counted out the money and smiled. There were days when I won well in excess of $5,000 and I would always make a point of playing a couple of thousand and losing it before I headed out the door.
I didn’t have a bank account but I did have a bunch of elastic bands so every evening I’d place the cash in a drawer in the kitchen in bundles of $5,000 and cover it with a dish cloth. After a couple of months I had almost a full drawer.
After a while, I was known fairly well by the dealers and most of the players as well. I would play almost every day and I’d usually be in the casino for 2 or 3 hours. There was a very nice restaurant in the hotel above the casino and after every session I’d go upstairs and have a wonderful meal and tip the waiter way too much. Things were, to say the least, going well.
The most amazing thing about this whole story as far as I’m concerned is the fact that while I played my little system and made thousands of dollars just playing the even money bets, not one of the “big” money players ever seemed to figure out what I was doing. I am truly amazed by this fact. They’d continue to play their long shots and lose hundreds or thousands of dollars a day while I’d be sitting right beside them playing the low numbers and making thousands of dollars. It was so bizarre that they never seemed to figure out what I was doing, to the point that when I would roll, they would actually refuse to place a bet knowing that I never rolled a triple, instead of saying, “Gee, this guy always wins and I almost always lose… why don’t I just put my money where he’s putting his money and maybe I’ll win too.” Life is funny.
Then one day, something rather strange happened. I had just cashed out and was walking upstairs to the restaurant when I had the curious feeling that I was being followed. I stopped walking and turned around and there, looking rather timid and nervous was a little Filipino man. We looked at each other for a few moments and then he said these words to me…
“You always win.”
“Pardon me?” I said.
“You always win”. He said again. “I see you. You play small number and small number always come up. You always win.”
I’ve never been in an episode of The Twilight Zone, but if I was I imagine it would have felt something like this. This little man was looking at me like I was some kind of wizard or a Juju Man. He was staring at me with what was unquestionably a look of awe. This man was afraid of me. It was more than a little unsettling. The thought crossed my mind, “How do I get myself into stuff like this?” I suppose I could have told him that I always win because I know when to release the balls when the wheel is going the right speed and it’s all because some casino dude had made a big mistake… but I don’t think he’d have listened to any of that. We stared at each other a few moments longer and then he said I should give him $100. I asked him why I should give him $100 and he said it’s because I always win. He went on to tell me that he had lost the money he was supposed to have spent on groceries for his family and said again that I should give him $100. I thought about it a moment and when I reached into my pocket I noticed that I still had a $100 chip that I hadn’t cashed out. I held it out toward him and he held out both of his hands to receive the chip with no less reverence than if I had been a priest giving him the Holy Communion. I dropped it into his hands and told him to go buy groceries.
I sat down to a nice meal as usual but now I had something new to think about… someone had noticed what I was doing. Perhaps he hadn’t figured out what I was doing, but he had certainly figured out that I always win. This bothered me because for the first time in a long time I began again to wonder if anyone else had noticed. If it was an employee or manager in the casino, the worst they could do to me would be to bar me from the place which was no big deal but what if someone else had notice and instead of telling me I should give them $100 they just kicked the snot out of me and took whatever I had in my pocket? Not good. I figured it was time for me to scale things back a bit and be more cautious.
After my meal I popped into the casino to lose a thousand or so at roulette and there was my little friend, standing at the Sic-Bo table. He was startled to see me and looked more than a little sheepish but as I stood there looking at him he came up to me and said, ”Give me $100”. I told him I’d already given him $100. He told me that he had lost the $100 and didn’t have money for food and that I always win. I leaned in close to his face and said in a very stern but quiet voice, “Go home and don’t ever come back into this casino again. It is a bad place and bad things will happen if you return.” What had once been a look of awe became a look of dread and he literally jumped back from me and fairly ran out through the door… I doubt he ever went back. Being a Juju Man is kind of fun.
I now move forward in the story to late one Wednesday night, or rather very early one Thursday morning. As I said, this was a small casino and they were not open 24 hours like most casinos you’d find in Nevada or Atlantic City. This place opened at 11:00am and closed at 4:00am. It was 3:55am and they were calling last 3 spins to let everyone know it was closing time. I had only come in an hour or so earlier and was only up about $2,000. I dumped $500 on those last 3 spins and headed home. The next day I got up at noon, showered and dressed and headed back down to the casino to make an early day of it. I walked in the door… and stopped dead in my tracks.
The game was gone.
Whathefuuuuuuu?
Yup, where the game had been only 8 hours earlier now stood a shiny, new roulette table. I just stood there for a minute or so, trying to convince myself I was still in bed and this was a bad dream. Nope, I was in the casino and the game was gonzo.
I asked the roulette dealer where the game had gone and he asked me, “What game?”
“The Sic-Bo game that’s been here in this spot for about the last 10 years”, I said.
“Oh, that game… I dunno.”
I looked frantically around the room somehow expecting that I’d see the game hidden away in some dark corner… but no such luck. I did see the casino manager however and I walked right up to him and demanded to know where the Sic-Bo game had gone. He seemed a little startled at my brusqueness and simply told me that it had been here the night before when he left, and now it was no longer here.
The strange thing is that he really did seem to have no idea where it went… and he didn’t seem to care much either. I told him that games don’t just up and walk out the door on their own and that someone must have taken the game out and replaced it with the roulette table. He thought about it for a moment, told me that he guessed I was right about that but that he hadn’t done it and didn’t know who had.
It was over. Without question, someone had either figured out what I was doing or had finally decided that the game had lost too much money and should be removed. Looking back, I really don’t think that anyone ever caught on to what it was that I had been doing. I’m pretty sure that I would have had someone say something to me if that had been the case. More likely the numbers just didn’t make sense to them and rather than figure out what the cause was it was easier to remove the game and be done with it. I could be wrong. It’s possible that someone had been watching me closely enough and seen that I had “cracked” the game and rather than make any kind of scene and have to admit that someone had goofed, the decision had been made to quietly make the game go away.
In the end, I made a lot of money, I had a lot of fun and I proved that I could actually beat the casino at its own game… literally. I often look back and think about what I would have done had I known on that final night that the game would not have been there the next day. I probably would have called a few friends and had everyone play the table maximum until we took all of their money or they kicked us out. The end result for the casino is that they lost a lot of money and in removing the game they killed what little action they had in their small casino… and in only a few months the casino itself closed its doors for good. I had thought on occasion during my winning days that perhaps I should contact someone in the press and have them come and watch me with the stipulation that they never tell a soul until such time as the game might disappear or I might be banned. I so often wanted to tell someone else about it and have someone actually witness me making thousands of dollars just so that… well, I’m not exactly sure why to tell you the truth. Perhaps it would have been so I’d have had someone to verify what I had done or perhaps I thought it would have made a good story for some reporter. I’ve told others the story from time to time and most seem to believe that I’m telling the truth. I’ll never forget that feeling though… that indescribable feeling of knowing I could not lose.
What did I do with all of the money? I bought a car, I paid some bills, I ate at fancy restaurants and I took some trips to various places around the world. I calculated the total that I had won and gave 10% to the church I used to attend… you should have seen the Pastor’s face when he looked at the huge stack of $100 bills that I put in his hand. I told him to use half of it to send kids to summer camp and the rest of it could be put to whatever use he thought would be best.
I play poker now. I used some of my Sic-Bo winnings as a bankroll and discovered that I'm a pretty good player. I work when I want to work and I enjoy life more than I probably deserve to. I keep an eye out for the next "flaw" simply because I believe that if I found one once, there's no reason why it can't happen again. I may never find something as good as Sic-Bo but looking back I realize that that was a once in a lifetime thing. Even if I never do find anything like it again, it's fun to remember that feeling... and it sure was some feeling.
When I hear people talk about +EV play I just laugh... I doubt anyone will ever have this kind of advantage again. I actually had almost a 50% ADVANTAGE.
I apologize about the slow start and the rather elementary explanation about gambling and odds in general... my friend had never been in a casino before and I wanted her to understand things in as much detail as possible... plus, as you may have noticed, I tend to ramble on...
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SHORT VERSION (Recommended)
Back in 1999 I discovered a flaw in a table game called Sic-Bo. The game was different from the dice version of Sic-Bo you might see today. It involved rolling 3 balls down a track into a wheel (with numbers 1-6 six times) and wagering on the outcome of the roll. Someone in casino management had moved the numbers around on this wheel in order to prevent what they perceived to be possible AP but in doing so they created a flaw in the basic game itself that I exploited. I began by winning small amounts and after a while I realized no one had noticed what I was doing or that no one cared. Either way, I ended up making about $120,000 in just under 2 months. One day I came in to play and the game was gone. No one admitted to knowing where it had gone or even knowing who had moved it. I took the money, had a blast for a couple of months (traveling, buying a car, etc...) and bankrolled what is now a very fun and profitable life as a poker player.
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LONG VERSION (Only for those with as much time on their hands as I)
As you might know, I’ve done my share of gambling. I’ve played pretty much every casino game there is and I enjoy the action. It’s always intrigued me that people have created places where anyone can walk in the door, put some money on a table, be dealt a few cards or watch a wheel spin around in circles and then be given a whole bunch more money… and walk out the door. As far as I’m concerned that’s a pretty cool place. Of course the reason these places exist is that for every person who actually walks out the door with more money than when they walked in, there are dozens more who leave some behind. Did you know that if a blackjack player simply plays what’s called “basic strategy”, the house has less than a 2% advantage? The casino will even hand you a card if you ask that shows the best way to play your hands. Roulette has a house advantage of 5.26%, craps averages around 3% or so and most other games are under 5%. It doesn’t sound like a lot, does it? Well, it’s not really but even with this small advantage, casinos around the world make millions of dollars off of suckers… many millions a day in fact in some of the larger casinos. So, call me a sucker because I assure you I’ve donated my share.
There was a game in one of my local casinos called Sic-Bo and I had played it many times. It was a simple game to play and kind of fun. Imagine a wheel, much like a roulette wheel but instead of being divided into 38 sections like a roulette wheel with numbers 1-36 plus the “0” and “00”, this wheel had only 36 sections and the numbers 1-6 six times in succession. Leading to the wheel was a long track about 6 inches wide and 12 feet long. The object of the game was to roll 3 small wooden balls down this track and as they landed in the wheel, the sum of the three numbered slots into which they would fall would be the winning number for that roll. For example, if the balls landed in a 2 slot, a 4 slot and a 5 slot, the sum total of the three balls would be 11 and therefore the winning number would be 11. There was a layout, also similar to roulette layout and there you could place bets on all sorts of different numbers and combinations. The basic bets would be on the numbers, from 4 to 17. The lowest possible number that could be rolled (without rolling a triple) would be a 4 as this meant that 2 balls had landed in a 1 slot and the third had landed in a 2 slot for a total of 4. The highest of course (without rolling a triple) would be 17, with 2 balls landing in a 6 slot and the third into a 5 slot. You could place a bet on any number from 4 through 17 and if your number was rolled you would win. The payouts were based on the odds of that number being rolled with the numbers 4 and 17 giving the biggest payouts (as these numbers were the least likely to be rolled) 5 and 16 the next highest, followed by 6 and 15 and so on. The easiest numbers to roll would be 10 and 11 as there were many more combinations that would add up to these numbers. The 10 and 11 spots paid 6 to 1 on your bet so a bet of $5 on the number 10 would pay $30 if a 10 was rolled. The number 15 paid 21 to 1 as it was less likely that number would be rolled. To roll a 4 or 17 was very unlikely and these numbers paid 70 to 1. There were other betting options as well including betting high or low (11 through 18 vs. 3 through 10), odd or even. These were “even money” bets and paid 1 to 1. You could also bet on the true long shots and these were the triples. If I placed a bet on a triple 3 for example, I was betting that all three balls would land in a 3 slot for a total of 9. Seeing as there are only 6 slots for any number, this really was a long shot as it would be very unlikely that this would happen for any triple. Because it was such a long shot, the payout was very high, at 300 to 1. A $5 bet on triple 4 would pay $1,500 if a triple 4 was rolled. As I said, it was a simple game but pretty fun and always exciting when a long shot came in. If a triple was rolled and no one had bet on it the dealers would always, “tut-tut” and shake their heads and tell everyone at the table how they should have been on it and how much money they would have made. The dealers liked the game as well because it was very easy to deal and when a long shot came in and they made a big payout, they’d usually get a decent sized tip.
I had played Sic-Bo many times in a number of different casinos and as with all other players I’d lost money in the long run. Sure, there had been times when I had walked in and placed a bet on a long shot and perhaps won and made some money but in all the times I’d played there was no question that I’d lost money. The reason for this goes back to the house edge I’ve told you about. Although the triples pay 300 to 1, the actual odds of a triple being rolled are 360 to 1 and so the house had almost a 16% edge on the player for this bet. That’s a huge advantage and like all bets in the casino, in the long run it always catches up to the player and makes money for the house.
I recalled having been in a small casino downtown that had a Sic-Bo game that usually had heavy action. This meant that there were a lot of players betting a lot of money and from time to time the casino would have a bad day. Of course, over time the casino would always make money but once in a while, if enough players bet enough money on one of the long shots and this number came in, the casino might actually pay out more on that one roll than they’d make from the game during the entire day. Let’s say that there are 6 people who all bet $10 on a triple 3 and a triple 3 is rolled. This means the casino would have to pay $3,000 (300 to 1 for a $10 bet) to each one of them for that one roll which would be an $18,000 payout. For a small casino, that’s a pretty big hit and could easily be more than they’d make on the game for an entire day. These things happen though, in every casino every day. Someone gets lucky and wins a big pot and the casino just has to suck it up and know that over time they’ll make up the loss and show a good profit.
Here’s where this story shows how greed can be a dangerous thing. This small, local casino realized that they did have a lot of heavy action on this game and that they could incur a big loss with one roll of the balls. Someone decided to do something about it and in doing so, created the most amazing opportunity for me to make money. Remember how I said that the balls are rolled down the track and into the wheel? Well, what I didn’t tell you is that one reason players liked this game is that it is the players themselves who roll the balls and not the dealer. It’s a great inducement for the players to play because they feel they have some level of control over the outcome. After all, if they are rolling the balls then they will be directly responsible for where those balls land, right? Well, yes and no. Keep in mind that although the player would roll the balls, the balls would have to be released from the hand a good 10 feet or more from the wheel. Not only that, as the balls are rolling down the track toward the wheel, the wheel itself is turning and just like a roulette wheel there are little bumps along the side of the wheel so that as the balls fall in they tend to bounce this way and that way and even the motion of the turning wheel would jostle them to the point where it would be almost impossible to actually have much if any power over where they would eventually land. But the players who played regularly did realize one important fact about the relationship between the rolling balls and the wheel – they understood that because the numbers on the wheel were in 6 groups of 6, numbered one through six, and that the numbers were evenly spaced, in order to roll a triple, the balls would also have to be evenly spaced as they fell into the wheel. In other words it would be impossible to roll a triple of any number if even only two balls landed side by side as these two balls would then be in slots that were consecutively numbered; a 2 beside a 3, a 5 beside a 6 and so on. It would be impossible to roll a triple if the balls landed close together or with very little separation. This is very important as once this was realized, the players would make every effort to evenly space the balls as they released them so that they might be evenly spaced as they fell into the wheel. Of course, the reason the players did this was to (in theory) make it more likely for a triple to be rolled and of course the reason they wanted this to happen was because the triples were the long shots and had by far the highest payouts. 300 to 1 is a huge payout regardless of how much you’re betting and these players would always bet the table limit on this bet which was $10. Just imagine if you could play this game and on every attempt bet on a 300 to 1 shot. Even if you only bet $1 per roll, if you could make this happen once in less than 300 rolls you’d make money in the long run. The players knew this and did their best to increase the possibility that this would happen.
The fact is that although each of the regular players had their own funny method of releasing the balls in an attempt to have them be evenly spaced as they fell into the wheel, the physics of the game including gravity, inertia and centrifugal forces made it impossible to achieve anything more than a random roll; no better than if someone wearing a blindfold had picked up the 3 balls and wildly thrown them down the track. I saw so many different methods of releasing the balls (most included having them separated at the top of the track) and people who played this game regularly did everything they could to increase their chances of winning the big one. What they never did realize though was that no matter what they did, it really made no difference in the long run. The funny thing though is this – I realized that what these players did made no difference in the long run but not only did the players not realize this, the casino itself did not realize this. In fear of losing its edge, someone in the casino decided that something had to be done to counteract the player’s strategy. What is amazing about this is that even casinos (well, casino managers anyway) don’t understand odds and random chance and are as foolish as the players themselves.
One day when I went into this casino, I noticed that someone had taken all of the numbers on the Sic-Bo wheel and rearranged them. I understood immediately the reason that this had been done. Someone figured out that the players were spacing the balls evenly at the top of the track in order to (hopefully) have them land in the wheel at even intervals. This same someone realized that if a player could achieve this then the possibility of a triple coming up would be increased and therefore the likelihood of having to pay out a big win to the players would also be increased. This obviously made someone very nervous and so this someone decided that to render this strategy useless they would rearrange the numbers on the wheel in a completely random order so that the player would have no possibility of “stacking” their roll to the disadvantage of the casino. I looked at the wheel and saw that the numbers were still in 6 groups of 6, but rather than in numerical order, they were “randomly” shuffled. I chuckled to myself and wondered at how someone who runs a casino can have such little understanding of odds, randomness and the house edge.
Back in late 1999 I became very ill and ended up spending a lot of time confined to my bed. One day I was thinking about gambling (as I often do) and I asked myself why I can’t come up with a way to beat the house (casino) at its own games. I know that all of the games have a built in advantage or “edge” and this is why the casino always makes money; you can’t beat the edge. It all comes down to simple (or in some cases rather complex) math but in the end it is indisputable… the casino will always win. The casino wins because it has created games and specific rules for these games that will always give it the edge over the player. As long as these games are played by these rules, there’s no way around the numbers and the player will always lose in the long run. There is however a man, a mathematics professor from MIT named Edward O. Thorpe who beat a casino game and even wrote a book about it and how he did it. The book is called “Beat the Dealer” and explains how by understanding the game of blackjack and the rules by which the game is played, a shrewd player with patience, discipline and a good memory can actually turn the house advantage upside down and put the odds in the favour of the player. How this is done can be found in the pages of his book and to some degree by watching the movie “21”. The strategy can be used (and I’m sure still is being used) today although perhaps to a much lesser degree due to the fact that casinos are now very aware of this “flaw” in the game and thus have changed the rules of the game and game play enough to eliminate this from happening again. The notion that someone has actually beaten a casino at its own game has always made me wonder if this could be done again and so over the years I’ve often put my mind to the task of finding another “flaw”.
Spending hours and days and months alone may turn the brain to mush but at times it can focus the mind to an amazing degree and during my convalescence I happened to experience one of these moments of white hot clarity. I was thinking about all of the games in a casino and one by one I went through the rules and the game play and I thought about where someone might have missed one or another hidden flaw. (Now I’m quite certain I’m not the first person who has ever done this as greater minds than mine have looked for the “Holy Grail” of systems when it comes to casino games. There are actually hundreds if not thousands of websites claiming to have accomplished just that and for a mere $59 they’ll send you a book or DVD explaining how to make “thousands of dollars a day” playing one casino game or another. Don’t waste your money… I’ve checked them out and they’re all frauds.) I’d often thought that roulette might offer the best chance for success because the house edge in that game is founded upon the principle that the wheel, with its many little bumps and 38 spaces, plus the fact that the ball is spun in the opposite direction from which the wheel is turning makes it a perfect random number generator. In other words, the result of one spin is in no way influenced by the previous spin and it is therefore impossible to do better than make a random guess at where or in what number the ball will drop. However, my mind began to think of ways in which I might take at least some of the randomness out of the equation. For example, if I could somehow make some of the spaces a little bit smaller then the ball would be less likely to land in those spaces and I would of course place my bets on the other numbers. Conversely, if I could make some of the spaces bigger, the ball would be more likely to land in those spaces and I would bet on those numbers. What if I could find a way to block some of the spaces completely with some kind of clear filler to prevent the ball from landing on those numbers at all? Well, although these ideas and others like them do have merit in as much as they are all valid concepts, I also realized that unless I knew someone in the casino who could do this for me or I could sneak in one night myself to adjust one of the wheels, none of these scenarios would ever come to pass. Of course the other thing stopping me from doing any of those experiments was the fact that I would be cheating. I admit that I am a gambler and I also admit that I’m always looking for an edge, but whether it’s in poker, roulette, blackjack or any other game, I would never resort to cheating. I know a lot of people don’t care a fig if they cheat, as long as they make money and don’t get caught but that’s just not an option for me.
So, there I am, lying in bed with all sorts of numbers and formulas running through my head when all of a sudden it hits me… and I know I’m about to make a very large sum of money. I grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and began drawing the Sic-Bo wheel. After all my thinking about roulette and how to alter the wheel to my advantage, I suddenly realized that someone had already done this for me but not with a roulette wheel, with the Sic-Bo wheel!
I knew that although the wheel still had the numbers 1 through 6 six times spread around the wheel, it was no longer in a uniform manner and this had to mean that certain numbers were closer or farther apart from one another and this meant that certain sections of the wheel might have more large numbers than small and vice versa.
I was so excited as I KNEW I had found the “flaw” for which I had been looking. All I had to do was to figure out how to make this work to my advantage. In order to do that I needed to know exactly how the numbers were placed on the wheel… and this is where I encountered a slight problem.
I wanted to go immediately to the casino and have a look at the wheel but I was so weak I didn’t think I could do it. I hadn’t been out of the apartment for over 2 months and my legs had turned into little stir straws with feet. I had to try though so I pulled on a pair of jeans and a shirt… and then spent the next 5 minutes catching my breath. I thought I’d take the elevator down to the lobby, walk outside, hail a cab and then I could just sit in the casino for as long as I wanted, taking notes and thinking thoughts. I did manage to make it out of the apartment door but when I got to the elevator I realized that I was not only too exhausted to continue on my little journey to the casino, I hadn’t even enough strength to get back into my door only 20 feet away. I sat down for a few minutes and then spent another 10 minutes or so crawling back into my apartment and then when I closed the door behind me I just spent the next 12 hours sleeping in the entrance.
It took me almost a week of effort to gain the strength required to make it to the casino. My medical condition had settled down and I was beginning to heal but I had lost a lot of weight and muscle and it took a lot of small steps (literally) to get to the point where I could stand for more than a few minutes and walk more than a few blocks. I finally did get out of my building one day though, flagged a cab, got to the casino and took a seat in front of the Sic-Bo table.
There it was. Right in front of me. The key to winning who knew how many thousands of dollars. I had made it.
The first thing I did was draw the wheel with the proper placement of the numbers. (By the way, you might think that a casino would frown upon someone taking notes or drawing diagrams right at a casino game but they’re not worried at all. Go into any casino and you’ll see all sorts of people with cards and notes and systems and the casino management just rubs their hands with glee.) It took me a little while but I found what I was looking for. Someone had done a fairly good job of moving the numbers and still keeping balance between the high and low numbers around the wheel but I soon discovered that there was one little section on one side of the wheel with a few too many high numbers clustered together and of course another section on the other side with a few too many low numbers in close proximity to one another. This was pure gold. I’m going to explain why this slight difference could possibly make such a huge difference to me, a player who had seen this “flaw”.
I’ve explained that when the “big” players, the ones who were betting the table maximum on the triples rolled the balls, they would make every effort to space the balls evenly hoping that the balls would then land evenly spaced in the wheel. I’ve also explained why this strategy did not change their odds and made no difference in the long run. What no one else noticed though was that although it was practically impossible to spread the balls evenly and have them land evenly spread, it was very simple to roll the balls together and have them all fall together in a very small section of the wheel. I’ve told you that there are “even money” bets on the table that pay 1-1. One of these bets lets you choose “high” or “low”; a high number being anything 11 and up and a low number being anything 10 and below. Now, imagine you know that in one section of the wheel there is a little clump of numbers, let’s say 8 numbers, where if 3 balls were to fall in that section, the total would end up being a low number 75% of the time. Now imagine that with a little practice, you knew that when the wheel was moving at a certain speed, in a certain direction and if you released all 3 balls from your hand at the same time and rolled them down the track at a certain speed, that you could get them to all fall within that little clump of 8 numbers. Finally, if every time you rolled those balls you made a wager that a low number was going to come up and 3 times out of every 4 a low number DID come up… well, you’d make a lot of money. A LOT of money.
So, there I was, sitting at the table, watching people make their wagers and roll the balls. It took a little while but after a couple of hours I had a pretty good idea of the average speed of that wheel and after rolling more than a few times myself (I played a few dollars just to be part of the game) I began to get a very good feel for how fast and from what distance I’d have to roll the balls to get them to land where I wanted them to land. Of course, by that point I’d practically passed out from exhaustion but I did what I went there to do and now it was just a matter of putting it all into practice.
I went home and collapsed… but for the first time in a long time I felt pretty darn good about how my day had gone.
It took another couple of weeks before I decided to venture out again and by then I was strong enough to walk a couple of blocks and I had put on some weight. My stomach had decided to sort itself out and I was on the road to recovery. I’ve heard people say, “If you have your health, you have everything.” I don’t know if that’s entirely true but I do know that when I’m sick I can’t even imagine what it feels like not to be sick and there is not one moment when I’m not thinking about how lousy I feel. When I’m not sick, I can’t even remember how awful everything was because it was so darn awful but I do know that I never want to feel that way again.
So, armed with my little secret and with nothing but time on my hands, I headed back to the casino to see for myself exactly what I could accomplish. I didn’t have any monetary target in mind; I just wanted to test things out and prove to myself that I was right and it was for real.
I walked into the casino and sat down at the table. I made sure to sit the right distance down the track and I bought in for $100. I figured if I played $5 a spin and could turn $100 into $200, I’d be doing ok.
I watched everyone place their bets and roll the balls and did my best to focus on the speed of the wheel and get a feel for the timing. After a few more spins, the balls were given to me and I placed $5 (the table minimum) on “low”. Everyone else placed their bets including the “big” bettors and I can’t tell you how amusing it was to see their faces when I rolled the balls all in a little group down that track. Of course the balls all landed in more or less the same area of the wheel and of course a triple didn’t come up and of course everyone admonished me for not spreading them out and of course they all lost their money… but wouldn’t you know it, the 3 balls all landed in low numbers, the total was below 11 and the dealer reached over and placed a $5 chip beside my $5 chip. I had won.
Looking back now, I’m amused at how delighted I was to pick up that $5 chip. I knew I wouldn’t win on every bet I placed but I did win on the first one and from that point on it would never again be a question of “How?”… only how much.
That first week was an interesting one. I played every day and I spent an average of about 3 hours at that game. The first day I ended up winning over $200. I had raised my bet from time to time, sometimes betting $10 or $25 a spin. I’ll tell you though, I was scared to death that at any moment someone would tap me on the shoulder and ask me to follow them to a little room in the back where Guido would be waiting for me with some pain-inflicting implement resting in his greasy hand. After a couple of days however and a few more $200-$300 wins, I began to see that no one was paying any attention to the skinny guy who couldn’t even figure out how to roll the balls right.
After a week or so and about $1,000 in my pocket, I decided to go into the casino with an actual plan of action. I felt comfortable that I hadn’t drawn any attention to myself and I also knew by then that I could not lose. Can you imagine what it must feel like to go into a casino KNOWING that you cannot lose? In case you can’t imagine what it must feel like, I’ll tell you. It feels weird. I can’t explain it other than that.
I went in to the casino with the goal of making $500. I played $25 a roll, sometimes $50 and after a couple of hours I’d made my $500. Just like that. I looked around the place and started to giggle a bit. I was standing in the world’s biggest ATM and I could withdraw as much as I wanted.
It was after I got home that afternoon that I realized I had to make a decision. I figured there were two ways to go about this and I had to choose the one that made the most sense. I knew that $500 a day adds up to an awful lot of money pretty quickly and after a couple of years I’d have over a quarter of a million in the bank. I also knew that up to that point, no one had given me any reason to believe that my play was being scrutinized in any way and if I could make $500 a day, why not $1,000 or $5,000? I suspected that eventually, someone would take notice of what I was doing if I did it long enough and there was always the chance that I’d be barred from the casino or that the game itself would be changed back to its original form or even removed. What if I was making $500 a day and in two weeks I did get that tap on the shoulder? I made up my mind. I was going to make as much as I could as fast as I could and just let the chips fall where they may… so to speak.
The next day I won over $1,000. The next day it was over $2,000. I began to play the house limit and the wins came very fast. There were times when there were only a few people at the table and every once in a while it would be me by myself. I knew that with the amounts I was winning I would be discovered sooner or later so I found ways to avoid detection. I would take chips that I had won and instead of keeping them in front of me on the table I’d furtively slide a few into my pocket now and then so it would appear I hadn’t won as much as I had. I’d also make sure to lose a big bet more often than I should and make it look as if I was having a bad day. My favourite thing to do was to play other games at high limits to spread some of the money around the casino. I’d play blackjack at $200-$500 a hand knowing that I’d usually break more or less even. I’d put $500 a spin on roulette and then if I lost I’d chase it just like any other gambler. It was hilarious though when I’d put a huge bet down on another game and just by pure luck win a couple of thousand dollars. It almost made it look like I was just a lucky guy who won at everything he played.
Every time I’d finish for the day, I’d walk to the casino cash cage to cash out my chips and I’d always have $2,000 or $3,000 or more. The girl who sat there and saw me every day must have wondered what the heck I was up to but she just counted out the money and smiled. There were days when I won well in excess of $5,000 and I would always make a point of playing a couple of thousand and losing it before I headed out the door.
I didn’t have a bank account but I did have a bunch of elastic bands so every evening I’d place the cash in a drawer in the kitchen in bundles of $5,000 and cover it with a dish cloth. After a couple of months I had almost a full drawer.
After a while, I was known fairly well by the dealers and most of the players as well. I would play almost every day and I’d usually be in the casino for 2 or 3 hours. There was a very nice restaurant in the hotel above the casino and after every session I’d go upstairs and have a wonderful meal and tip the waiter way too much. Things were, to say the least, going well.
The most amazing thing about this whole story as far as I’m concerned is the fact that while I played my little system and made thousands of dollars just playing the even money bets, not one of the “big” money players ever seemed to figure out what I was doing. I am truly amazed by this fact. They’d continue to play their long shots and lose hundreds or thousands of dollars a day while I’d be sitting right beside them playing the low numbers and making thousands of dollars. It was so bizarre that they never seemed to figure out what I was doing, to the point that when I would roll, they would actually refuse to place a bet knowing that I never rolled a triple, instead of saying, “Gee, this guy always wins and I almost always lose… why don’t I just put my money where he’s putting his money and maybe I’ll win too.” Life is funny.
Then one day, something rather strange happened. I had just cashed out and was walking upstairs to the restaurant when I had the curious feeling that I was being followed. I stopped walking and turned around and there, looking rather timid and nervous was a little Filipino man. We looked at each other for a few moments and then he said these words to me…
“You always win.”
“Pardon me?” I said.
“You always win”. He said again. “I see you. You play small number and small number always come up. You always win.”
I’ve never been in an episode of The Twilight Zone, but if I was I imagine it would have felt something like this. This little man was looking at me like I was some kind of wizard or a Juju Man. He was staring at me with what was unquestionably a look of awe. This man was afraid of me. It was more than a little unsettling. The thought crossed my mind, “How do I get myself into stuff like this?” I suppose I could have told him that I always win because I know when to release the balls when the wheel is going the right speed and it’s all because some casino dude had made a big mistake… but I don’t think he’d have listened to any of that. We stared at each other a few moments longer and then he said I should give him $100. I asked him why I should give him $100 and he said it’s because I always win. He went on to tell me that he had lost the money he was supposed to have spent on groceries for his family and said again that I should give him $100. I thought about it a moment and when I reached into my pocket I noticed that I still had a $100 chip that I hadn’t cashed out. I held it out toward him and he held out both of his hands to receive the chip with no less reverence than if I had been a priest giving him the Holy Communion. I dropped it into his hands and told him to go buy groceries.
I sat down to a nice meal as usual but now I had something new to think about… someone had noticed what I was doing. Perhaps he hadn’t figured out what I was doing, but he had certainly figured out that I always win. This bothered me because for the first time in a long time I began again to wonder if anyone else had noticed. If it was an employee or manager in the casino, the worst they could do to me would be to bar me from the place which was no big deal but what if someone else had notice and instead of telling me I should give them $100 they just kicked the snot out of me and took whatever I had in my pocket? Not good. I figured it was time for me to scale things back a bit and be more cautious.
After my meal I popped into the casino to lose a thousand or so at roulette and there was my little friend, standing at the Sic-Bo table. He was startled to see me and looked more than a little sheepish but as I stood there looking at him he came up to me and said, ”Give me $100”. I told him I’d already given him $100. He told me that he had lost the $100 and didn’t have money for food and that I always win. I leaned in close to his face and said in a very stern but quiet voice, “Go home and don’t ever come back into this casino again. It is a bad place and bad things will happen if you return.” What had once been a look of awe became a look of dread and he literally jumped back from me and fairly ran out through the door… I doubt he ever went back. Being a Juju Man is kind of fun.
I now move forward in the story to late one Wednesday night, or rather very early one Thursday morning. As I said, this was a small casino and they were not open 24 hours like most casinos you’d find in Nevada or Atlantic City. This place opened at 11:00am and closed at 4:00am. It was 3:55am and they were calling last 3 spins to let everyone know it was closing time. I had only come in an hour or so earlier and was only up about $2,000. I dumped $500 on those last 3 spins and headed home. The next day I got up at noon, showered and dressed and headed back down to the casino to make an early day of it. I walked in the door… and stopped dead in my tracks.
The game was gone.
Whathefuuuuuuu?
Yup, where the game had been only 8 hours earlier now stood a shiny, new roulette table. I just stood there for a minute or so, trying to convince myself I was still in bed and this was a bad dream. Nope, I was in the casino and the game was gonzo.
I asked the roulette dealer where the game had gone and he asked me, “What game?”
“The Sic-Bo game that’s been here in this spot for about the last 10 years”, I said.
“Oh, that game… I dunno.”
I looked frantically around the room somehow expecting that I’d see the game hidden away in some dark corner… but no such luck. I did see the casino manager however and I walked right up to him and demanded to know where the Sic-Bo game had gone. He seemed a little startled at my brusqueness and simply told me that it had been here the night before when he left, and now it was no longer here.
The strange thing is that he really did seem to have no idea where it went… and he didn’t seem to care much either. I told him that games don’t just up and walk out the door on their own and that someone must have taken the game out and replaced it with the roulette table. He thought about it for a moment, told me that he guessed I was right about that but that he hadn’t done it and didn’t know who had.
It was over. Without question, someone had either figured out what I was doing or had finally decided that the game had lost too much money and should be removed. Looking back, I really don’t think that anyone ever caught on to what it was that I had been doing. I’m pretty sure that I would have had someone say something to me if that had been the case. More likely the numbers just didn’t make sense to them and rather than figure out what the cause was it was easier to remove the game and be done with it. I could be wrong. It’s possible that someone had been watching me closely enough and seen that I had “cracked” the game and rather than make any kind of scene and have to admit that someone had goofed, the decision had been made to quietly make the game go away.
In the end, I made a lot of money, I had a lot of fun and I proved that I could actually beat the casino at its own game… literally. I often look back and think about what I would have done had I known on that final night that the game would not have been there the next day. I probably would have called a few friends and had everyone play the table maximum until we took all of their money or they kicked us out. The end result for the casino is that they lost a lot of money and in removing the game they killed what little action they had in their small casino… and in only a few months the casino itself closed its doors for good. I had thought on occasion during my winning days that perhaps I should contact someone in the press and have them come and watch me with the stipulation that they never tell a soul until such time as the game might disappear or I might be banned. I so often wanted to tell someone else about it and have someone actually witness me making thousands of dollars just so that… well, I’m not exactly sure why to tell you the truth. Perhaps it would have been so I’d have had someone to verify what I had done or perhaps I thought it would have made a good story for some reporter. I’ve told others the story from time to time and most seem to believe that I’m telling the truth. I’ll never forget that feeling though… that indescribable feeling of knowing I could not lose.
What did I do with all of the money? I bought a car, I paid some bills, I ate at fancy restaurants and I took some trips to various places around the world. I calculated the total that I had won and gave 10% to the church I used to attend… you should have seen the Pastor’s face when he looked at the huge stack of $100 bills that I put in his hand. I told him to use half of it to send kids to summer camp and the rest of it could be put to whatever use he thought would be best.
I play poker now. I used some of my Sic-Bo winnings as a bankroll and discovered that I'm a pretty good player. I work when I want to work and I enjoy life more than I probably deserve to. I keep an eye out for the next "flaw" simply because I believe that if I found one once, there's no reason why it can't happen again. I may never find something as good as Sic-Bo but looking back I realize that that was a once in a lifetime thing. Even if I never do find anything like it again, it's fun to remember that feeling... and it sure was some feeling.
Happiness is underrated
January 18th, 2011 at 11:21:18 PM
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I suspected it was Sic-Bo, I should have said so.
"It's not called gambling if the math is on your side."
January 18th, 2011 at 11:59:07 PM
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Great...story.
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.---George Bernard Shaw
January 19th, 2011 at 12:40:41 AM
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Great story, thanks!
When a rock is thrown into a pack of dogs, the one that yells the loudest is the one who got hit.
January 19th, 2011 at 5:31:01 PM
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I enjoyed reading your story, thanks. I believe you and I believe wholeheartedly casinos, especially the mom and pop ones, can make mathematical errors in favor of an observant player. I would like one thing clarified though:
You said the track was approx 12 ft long and it fed into a roullette wheel type apparatus. If this is the case then the dealer spun the wheel, bringing in human variability. If that wheel was spun a fraction faster or slower than what your timing was based on, by the time the balls travelled 12 ft they would land at the very least in an adjacent section and possibly two sections away, maybe more. This means not only would you not have an advantage, you quite possibly would be at more of a disadvatage depending on the wheel layout. I'm just wondering how you adjusted for speed of the wheel.
I ran into a similar positive situation on a casino boat. As an incentive to put money in action the managers would give you 8 $25 match plays for a buy in of $1000. In addition, on the first BJ hand of the night everyone would receive a free paper ace and could bet up to $50 on this hand. They had 2 cruises a day 7 days and they would do this every cruise. To increase my advantage I would bank other regulars and split the match plays with them after they gave me the chips they got with my money. I wasn't worried because we were in the middle of the ocean, they weren't going anywhere. I would play my first hand of BJ, go collect my chips and additional matchplays discreetly, and play them at the craps table on the pass line. After they were used I would bet the minimum with max odds, and enjoy myself knowing I had way the best of it. On one cruise I remember I had 22 matchplays of $25 (actual value approx. $12.50 ea). Add to this a free buffet and a free ace at $50 and I was up $300 before I started. Oh I wasn't the only one who did this, and they went out of business.
You said the track was approx 12 ft long and it fed into a roullette wheel type apparatus. If this is the case then the dealer spun the wheel, bringing in human variability. If that wheel was spun a fraction faster or slower than what your timing was based on, by the time the balls travelled 12 ft they would land at the very least in an adjacent section and possibly two sections away, maybe more. This means not only would you not have an advantage, you quite possibly would be at more of a disadvatage depending on the wheel layout. I'm just wondering how you adjusted for speed of the wheel.
I ran into a similar positive situation on a casino boat. As an incentive to put money in action the managers would give you 8 $25 match plays for a buy in of $1000. In addition, on the first BJ hand of the night everyone would receive a free paper ace and could bet up to $50 on this hand. They had 2 cruises a day 7 days and they would do this every cruise. To increase my advantage I would bank other regulars and split the match plays with them after they gave me the chips they got with my money. I wasn't worried because we were in the middle of the ocean, they weren't going anywhere. I would play my first hand of BJ, go collect my chips and additional matchplays discreetly, and play them at the craps table on the pass line. After they were used I would bet the minimum with max odds, and enjoy myself knowing I had way the best of it. On one cruise I remember I had 22 matchplays of $25 (actual value approx. $12.50 ea). Add to this a free buffet and a free ace at $50 and I was up $300 before I started. Oh I wasn't the only one who did this, and they went out of business.
January 19th, 2011 at 5:55:06 PM
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Quote: clarkacalI enjoyed reading your story, thanks. I believe you and I believe wholeheartedly casinos, especially the mom and pop ones, can make mathematical errors in favor of an observant player. I would like one thing clarified though:
You said the track was approx 12 ft long and it fed into a roullette wheel type apparatus. If this is the case then the dealer spun the wheel, bringing in human variability. If that wheel was spun a fraction faster or slower than what your timing was based on, by the time the balls travelled 12 ft they would land at the very least in an adjacent section and possibly two sections away, maybe more. This means not only would you not have an advantage, you quite possibly would be at more of a disadvatage depending on the wheel layout. I'm just wondering how you adjusted for speed of the wheel.
After many, MANY hours watching the wheel and enough rolls to get a real feel for things it wasn't hard at all. Once I had the right distance it was pretty easy to guage things. The wheel was usually about the same speed every spin (you'll see the same thing with roulette dealers) and my rolls were very consistent. It was funny because there was a little nick in the wood on one part of the wheel and once I had mentally calculated the speed of the wheel and saw that little nick pass a certain spot on the wheel housing I got to the point where I could probably have hit the section with my eyes closed. The wheel would do 2.5 revolutions before the balls dropped in and I was only 12 feet away so it was actually pretty easy after a while. I did get to the point where if the wheel was a bit faster or slower I could make the right adjustment at the release. It's like one of those goofy carnival games you see (at the real carnival that is... the ones where you can win cheap stuffed animals by throwing balls at bottles or trying to catch something on a fishing line), they look easy and seem impossible when you try them but the people who run the games have done them so many times that they can "win" the game over and over without much effort.
Happiness is underrated
January 19th, 2011 at 7:42:29 PM
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Thanks for the warning! Great story.Quote:(seriously long story so be warned...)
I saw something very similar to what you're describing...at a carnival!Quote: TheNightfly...It's like one of those goofy carnival games you see (at the real carnival that is... the ones where you can win cheap stuffed animals...
There's a reason they call them "Carnival Games"...
I invented a few casino games. Info:
http://www.DaveMillerGaming.com/ —————————————————————————————————————
Superstitions are silly, childish, irrational rituals, born out of fear of the unknown. But how much does it cost to knock on wood? 😁
January 19th, 2011 at 11:32:35 PM
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nice story but don't the triples pay 180-1 because the odds are 216-1
January 19th, 2011 at 11:57:48 PM
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Not on a wheel as the poster describes. It's a wheel not dice. To triple it, you need to hit three particular holes. The first ball is 6 in 36 of hitting your number. The second ball is 5/35 and the last is 4/34. => 1 in 357 for a particular triple (and 1 in 59.5 for any triple). Once a slot is taken, you have less places for the ball to fall and hit another number of the same value, unlike on three dice.
"Then you can admire the real gambler, who has neither eaten, slept, thought nor lived, he has so smarted under the scourge of his martingale, so suffered on the rack of his desire for a coup at trente-et-quarante" - Honore de Balzac, 1829
January 20th, 2011 at 12:39:06 AM
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Quote: appistappisnice story but don't the triples pay 180-1 because the odds are 216-1
I found some photos on the web... boy, do these bring back memories.
As the balls drop into the wheel the odds of a triple coming up diminish as the first and second balls land. Once the first ball lands in a number (let's say a "2" slot) there are only 5 "2" slots left of the 35 remaining open slots. If the second ball also lands in a "2" slot there are now only 4 "2" slots left of the remaining 34 open slots. The math is (36/6 X 35/5 X 34/4) or (6 X 7 X 8.5) = 357.
You can see on this layout that there are a lot of different wagering options. You can bet a specific triple straight up, any triple, a specific pair, and specific number (4 through 17) or the outside even money bets (high or low). The chips used are similar to roulette in that every player uses their own colour for inside bets. You'll also notice that there is a track leading to the wheel from both sides so one wheel would be accessible to twice as many players with a track and a layout on each side.
The odds on this game is are different from the Sic-Bo game game you might see today that is played with dice. With the 3 dice it's just (6 X 6 X 6) = 216 to calculate the odds of a specific triple.
Happiness is underrated
January 20th, 2011 at 1:49:06 AM
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Why do you think it took them so long to figure out you were taking so much money from them? That part of the story makes no sense. You went all the time and played the same setup and always won big and nobody noticed. Wow.
"It's not called gambling if the math is on your side."
January 20th, 2011 at 2:02:57 AM
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I guess it was for a few reasons. I did manage to keep under the radar pretty well I think. I spread my winnings around the casino a lot and tried to look like I was just winning and losing here and there. I also think that (like most casinos I've played in) there really isn't as much scrutiny as we're all led to believe. I always figured that no one would believe that anyone could actually beat a game (consider all of the people who post on this site with their "systems") and no one really cared to pay very close attention. I'm more surprised that other players didn't figure it out. Almost 60 days without a losing session and most wins were well over $1,000 and some were over $5,000. I honestly could have made $100,000 in the space of 3 or 4 hours if I had wanted to and had the table to myself.
Happiness is underrated
January 20th, 2011 at 5:04:19 AM
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Thats the time to hire a knock-out broad or two. A knock-out broad, a low cut dress ... ain't nobody going to notice you are winning if there is this slightly slutty, slightly drunk knockout broad at the other end of the table. They are going to notice the game is running at a loss sometime, you might as well hit them big before then!
January 21st, 2011 at 9:44:24 AM
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Cool thread. Sucks ill never be able to play a Sic-Bo wheel. thats looks like awesome fun. what LV casinos used to have this?
January 21st, 2011 at 9:54:18 AM
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DUHHIIIIIIIII HEARD THAT!
