Roulette Skill Or Luck
- Many players argue that roulette is a pure luck game, and they believe there’s no skill involved. This stands as the question of the day – is roulette all luck? Well, in a way it is, just like other games of chance. However, there are some gamblers that are said to have figured out how to trick the wheel.
- The present invention generally relates to games that involve luck and skill, such as poker. Specifically, the subject invention provide means, method and apparatus for the generation of statistics relating to a player's luck and skill as exhibited in prior games (“luck and skill statistics” or “luck and skill scores”).
- Whilst winning slots and roulette seem to be based purely on luck, blackjack requires a little more skill. There are rules that need to be learnt, reactions to be memorized and natural instincts to be developed through practice. Luck thus plays the biggest role in slots and roulette.
Roulette is a game of pure chance right? There is absolutely no skill involved, correct? Well, in the main – yes, just like a slot game such as the Lucky Leprechaun´s Slot. Of course, predicting where the ball is going to land is never going to be something that you’re going to work out with your calculator (although quite a few people have figured out hot zones in biased wheels in the past- but the casinos fixed the wheels pretty quickly as soon as they found out).
Under the 1968 Gaming Act, games of chance, which poker is defined as along with blackjack and roulette, must be licensed by a local authority. Games classified as forms of skill, including.
And there’s no doubt that some people have just got roulette luck in spades. The Sean Connery roulette bets in Italy where he put money down on the number 17 five times and won 3 times in a row is a case in point.
What does require skill , and this applies to roulette as well as trading stocks on the market- is a good money management technique and a logical, non-emotive approach to play.
Throughout the history of gambling, players, experts and critics have argued with regards to the relative merits of various casino games. More specifically, they have debated games such as poker, blackjack and poker, and whether or not their outcomes rely primarily on chance or skill.
While some maintain that these games are determined almost entirely by the hands that players are dealt or the spin of a roulette wheel, others insist that skill, experience and aptitude can be used to influence the course of a session or tournament. Some people, like Gonzalo Garcia, have even proved it by spotting biased wheels and managing to achieve a player advantage of 15%.
Other teams have used electronic cheating devices (roulette computers) to help give them that edge.
The Truth between Two Extremes
As ever, both of these assumptions are somewhat wide of the mark and the truth exists somewhere in-between the two. While it is true that these games are all about chance (some less so, like poker, some more so like roulette), players can also have an effect on the state of their bankroll with skill, strategy and most importantly (in the case of roulette), money management techniques.
The key is to establish a balance in your play- once you understand how much influence you can have on a particular game, and how much is completely outside of your control, you can begin to tailor the way you play.
Of course, this will vary according to the rules of each individual game, so let’s look at roulette as an example.
Clearly, the game is random- each spin of the wheel will result in an outcome that is impossible to predict (unless the wheel is faulty). So what aspects of roulette strategy can you control? Well, you can at least weight your bets to the lower risk bets that cover more of the table. This is especially important if you have a smaller bankroll (in which case you won’t have deep enough pockets to ride out lean periods.
You can make sure that you play European Roulette rather than American, or even better opt to play French Roulette that offers La Partage or En Prison. This will minimise the house edge.
And you can also avoid playing the five number bet in roulette.
The most important thing to have at the back of your mind is the so-called ‘gamblers fallacy’- the belief that you can somehow predict future outcomes on past results (trends, believing the ball is more likely to land in the red if it has hit black 10 times etc). Just remember, that every spin of the wheel is a mutually exclusive event.
One of the most useful roulette tips we have heard is to have a clear target of the money you would like to make before leaving the table (if this is zero, and you just want to entertain yourself for half an hour, this is fine too, just have a figure).. Also have a figure firmly in your mind of the maximum amount you can lose. When you hit your limits, walk away.
The skill in roulette, is to manage your money and your emotions at the table. Play with your head not your heart. Just remember, that high rollers, if they win big early, stop and leave the table immediately. The longer you stay betting, the longer the casino has to try and claw your money back off you. They can’t get it if you aren’t betting!
I once hear a story about a guy who won a multi-million dollar jackpot at an online casino. The thing he reckons made him the most money that day was when he threw his laptop out of the window so that he couldn’t play the slot anymore. Now obviously he could afford to buy a shiny new laptop with 4 times the amount of memory, but the point is, he stopped playing after the big win and cashed out.
It’s called the Hit and Run strategy. Go in. Win Big. Get out. That’s the way to come out ahead.
The first time I visited Las Vegas was on a business trip. I was 21. My official mission: train a large customer on our new software. My unofficial mission: try my hand at a Vegas table game.
Now, I’m a pretty logical person. Given that there is no such thing as luck, I knew that betting at a casino is irrational – unless perhaps you’re cheating, or you’re very good at poker. Still, I thought it would be fun. Pay $20 to say I lost some money in Vegas.
So on my first night, once I was happy with my slides, I ventured down to the casino floor of our hotel. I observed the various games as I passed by, but I knew where I was headed: roulette. It seemed to me that there was no simpler, no purer a way to lose your money in Vegas than roulette. The nakedness of its terrible odds were part of the charm.
I approached a table, and watched the guy ahead of me play, studying the etiquette. When he cashed out, I sat down and turned my $20 into 4 chips, $5 each.
Nervously, I reached out and made the simplest bet I could. $5 on black; I won $5. I put another $5 on black, and again won $5. “Okay, I get how this works.” But I wasn’t there to try and beat the house. I was there to lose my $20. So I took $5, and put it on 17. And won $175.
Of course, I made the next logical move: I cashed out immediately. I had gotten temporarily lucky, and I cashed out feeling like king of the world. I bought a hideously expensive whiskey cocktail and felt proud for trying something new.
The next day, as I was gearing up to fly home, I found myself passing near that casino floor again. Remembering how much fun I had last time, I thought I might as well take a second crack at my goal of losing $20. I sat down at a different table, but this time went right to my patented strategy: I bet $5 on 17. And holy shit, I won $175.
Now, this is not a great thing to happen to somebody. I mean, in one way it was extremely great – sweet, another $175! And cerebrally, I knew that hitting two single bets in a row is an extreme fluke, a 1444 to 1 chance. But the emotional high from that hit, the endorphins and adrenaline, it messes with you. You can enter a casino a logical human being, yet next thing you know you’re asking yourself, “Huh. Am I… good at roulette?”
Roulette Skill Or Luck Character
You will be surprised to learn that I am, in fact, not good at roulette.
After promptly losing $100, I cashed out and headed to the bar. This time I felt less like king of the world, and more just a participant in the human condition. Still, I suppose, $100 was a small price to pay to learn conclusively that I am not good at roulette.
Luck tends to cause problems. When I say luck in this context, I don’t mean the fostered luck that results from being open minded, observant, and keeping a positive mindset. It does seem that people who think of themselves as chronically lucky do have more positive things happen to them, partially due to how they approach life.
Random luck, though, that just happens. Random luck is something you stumble upon. It’s the privilege you were born into, and the coin flips that have gone your way since. While it’s certainly nice to receive random luck, it’s not all roses. When something goes your way, your instinct is to feel like you’ve earned it. Random luck can initially make people feel guilty, and that cognitive dissonance often leads to people reframing their good fortune as the product of skill or hard work. The next thing you know, people feel entitled to the spoils of chance.
Besides the thorny problems of entitlement, if you’re not careful random luck can also make you a less effective person. At best, an unearned windfall can make you less motivated, less hungry to make things better. More dangerously, a lucky success can make you overestimate your skill, leading to a kind of luck-generated Dunning-Kruger effect.
As it happens, most great leaders seem to intentionally stay mindful of the role luck has played in their successes. When luck comes up, Barack Obama is eager to acknowledge the factor it played in his life – skill and hard work were necessary, but not sufficient to achieve what he did. Meanwhile, if you ask his successor about luck, you’re more likely to hear about how luck just amounts to hard work, or that success is not due to luck at all. Such are the differences between a thoughtful leader and a lucky idiot.
In fact, the majority of the highly successful CEOs they study in the book Good to Great name luck as a key factor in their success. While that is kind of strange – the whole point of the study was to determine what objective factors lead to successful companies – luck-awareness seems to actually make people more effective. Correctly attributing some of your success to luck seems to inoculate you against arrogance, and foster that lucky mindset, which we know can itself be helpful.
So, it seems, that’s the formula. Next time you have an unexpected success, don’t let it rob you of your humility. Don’t let your mind trick you into believing you’re somehow good at roulette. But do try to be mindful of your good fortune.
I bet you can think of five reasons you’re lucky right now, and you can create even more luck just by adopting a positive and open perspective on things. All because you happened to read some blog post about roulette.
Is Roulette Skill Or Luck
I suppose you’re just lucky.