Although the rules are similar to those of its illustrious predecessor, electronic English Roulette nevertheless does have some particularities. First of all, multiple gaming stations and touch screens surround the automated wheel or face a giant screen onto which the Roulette wheel is projected. Electronic Roulette in Casinos It is possible to play electronic roulette at some online casinos such as 32 Red, 888 or Black Diamond where they are also referred to as Automatic or Auto Roulette. This method focuses on roulette betting on the internet, or the electronic roulette terminals in bookmakers. The vendor of this method states 'we have all seen and probably had a go at playing the roulette machines. Electronic Roulette in Casinos It is possible to play electronic roulette at some online casinos such as 32 Red, 888 or Black Diamond where they are also referred to as Automatic or Auto Roulette. The use of electronic roulettes allows casinos to save on the cost of organizing games and hiring personnel.

Diamond Roulette is a fully automated version of the roulette game, available with a single or double-zero roulette wheel. It uses air pressure to launch the ball onto the brim and a series of optical and proximity sensors to track the ball during its path and detect its final position.

Can Roulette Be Rigged?

Gamblers who don't understand the inner workings of a casino sometimes wonder if the games they play are set up fairly. When a casino patron loses against a slot machine, for example, he or she might wonder if the machine was somehow rigged. Authentic roulette eliminates some of this suspicion because it makes use of a physical wheel that is spun by hand. An electronic roulette game could be rigged, however, as Pierre Coulon proved when he used his laptop recently to remotely help a female friend win a jackpot at the Paris Casino in Blackpool, England.

Coulon was the managing director of the Paris Casino at the time of the incident. Upon investigation, officials discovered that the surveillance cameras normally trained upon the facility's electronic roulette game had been moved. Coulon later admitted to manipulating the outcome of the game via laptop so his female friend could win some cash. He cited a dispute with his business partner and co-owner of the casino as the reason why he committed the crime. Prior to this event, Coulon, who spent 40 years working in the gambling industry, had no instances of criminal activity in his personal record.

About Roulette Wheel Bias

Roulette is a game of chance, but a person's chance of winning or losing can definitely be affected by wheel bias. A biased wheel is one that does not select numbers completely at random. Physical irregularities and normal wear and tear can alter a wheel in a way that causes it to favor certain numbers more than others. This irregularity, if discovered by a casino patron, can boost his or her odds of winning tremendously. For this reason, casinos do everything they can to detect such flaws and prevent customers from taking advantage of an edge in their favor.

Bias Caused by Wheel Manufacturers: Not Likely

Gambling equipment manufacturers are aware of the potential for irregularity and the great harm a defective wheel could ultimately do to a casino's bottom line. For this reason, wheels are manufactured to extremely high standards. A concentrated effort is made to ensure that all wheels are perfectly symmetrical and homogenous in weight and texture. A manufacturer of bum equipment would quickly go out of business, after all. Bias caused by the manufacturers is, therefore, highly unlikely.

Bias Caused by Normal Wear and Tear: Likely

A roulette wheel is spun thousands of times per day; it is only natural that wear and tear would gradually break it down. Sometimes the ball hits the wood with such force it becomes chipped, causing weight to be unevenly distributed. Sometimes 'rotor wobble' develops, in which the wheel gradually becomes crooked due to routine cleanings in which the rotor is removed from the spindle. Sometimes 'pocket defects' occur. In this situation, certain number pockets become slightly enlarged due to repeated force, or the felt between the pockets loosens, causing abnormalities in ball recoil. Any or all of these situations can occur during the lifetime of a roulette wheel, causing bias.

Wheel bias in itself is not harmful, or helpful, to anyone. The phenomenon only becomes harmful to the house when patrons discover it and develop their own personal ways to capitalize upon it. Similarly, wheel bias is only helpful to patrons if they realize it's there and seize the opportunity to profit from it.

Joseph Jagger Rips Off the Beaux-Arts Casino in 1873

Roulette wheel bias is nothing new, nor is the casino patron's desire to capitalize upon it. Almost 150 years ago, a man named Joseph Jagger won 65,000 pounds from Monte Carlo's Beaux-Arts casino through his knowledge of the facility's weakest wheel. Jagger spent time studying all six of the casino's wheels and deduced that one of them favored a grouping of nine adjacent numbers. After a fair amount of suspicious winning, the Beaux-Arts caught on to Jagger's tactics and tried to move the games around the room order to confound him. In the end, however, the gambler's profit was much higher than that of the house.

One Century Later: Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo Wins Big in Madrid

Over 100 years later, at the Casino de Madrid in the 1990s, Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo happened upon a defect that won him over a million euros over the course of several days. The casino eventually figured out what Garcia-Pelayo was doing and tried to sue, but the courts ruled in the gambler's favor, saying it was the casino's responsibility to maintain their equipment.

The Dealer Controls the Ball

The outcome of electronic table games can be controlled by computer, as Coulon showed the world in the Blackpool incident. The outcome of authentic games can be capitalized upon by scrutinizing players who have correctly identified an equipment defect. One last question remains: can a roulette dealer, or croupier, purposefully determine where a ball will land?

Debate exists as to whether croupiers can control the outcome of their spins. Anecdotally, some croupiers claim to possess this superior skill. Skeptics are quick to point out, however, that the wheel and its ball are spun in different directions, making it nearly impossible to control the outcome of a spin. It would take an extreme amount of fine motor coordination and muscle memory for a croupier to purposefully dictate this outcome.

For over a century, people have been looking for ways to cheat the roulette wheel and win big money. Whether through electronics or the identification of a physical equipment problem, this goal is occasionally achieved. For those who wonder if casinos sometimes cheat their patrons by rigging machinery, the answer is yes. In the case of roulette wheel bias, it is sometimes the patrons who cheat the casinos.

What Else Might Interest You:

COMMENTS:

By loading and joining the Disqus comments service below, you agree to their privacy policy.

Electronic roulette appeared in the mid-twentieth century and quickly became included in the range of games available in casinos. Electronic roulette differs from live roulette in that it does not require the presence of a dealer as it uses an automated system to release the ball. There are different types of electronic roulettes such as Diamond Roulette by Interblock, Dominator by Greentube or Red Winner by Picmatic.

Electronic Roulette in Casinos

It is possible to play electronic roulette at some online casinos such as 32 Red, 888 or Black Diamond where they are also referred to as Automatic or Auto Roulette. The use of electronic roulettes allows casinos to save on the cost of organizing games and hiring personnel. In addition, for land based casinos, the electronic version occupies less space than conventional roulette, which makes it possible to provide a game room with more machines that more players can use at the same time.

You can find electronic roulette machines in many of the well known casinos in the top gambling cities of the world including The Mirage in Las Vegas, The Venetian in Macau, The Hippodrome in London, The Macau Sporting Club in Cork, The River Rock Casino Resort in British Columbia and The Star Casino in Sydney.

Free Electronic Roulette

In some casinos it is possible to play free electronic roulette online thanks to the no deposit bonuses or welcome bonuses. These allow you to get to know the casino games and play for free without having to make a deposit. Although there are often restrictions to the gambling games you can play using the funds from a no deposit bonus.

At 888 online casino you can play electronic or auto roulette for free with their no deposit bonus of €88.

Electronic Roulette Machines

The operation of electronic roulette machines is very simple. As in any roulette game, your goal is to guess on which number the ball will land.

The electronic roulette software is based on an electronic circuit where an air blower launches the ball and rotating plates accelerate its movement. The ball is launched around 60-80 times per hour, which is approximately every 30-45 seconds. Although this varies from one model to another. The electronic roulette machine has an auto roulette wheel in the centre and bet terminals with touch screens located around it. Despite what many think, they do not use magnets, instead, the system has optical and proximity sensors that detect the position of the ball.

The wheel is covered with a protective cover to prevent any type of tampering, damage or unauthorized access. This game of chance can accomodate several players at once although it is also possible to find individual electronic roulette games.

Electronic Roulette Bets

Before you start playing, you have to know about the different roulette bets. In the electronic version, you do not place your chips on a table, instead you must use an electronic screen.

Some machines have systems of protection against simultaneous bets, so they do not allow you to bet identical sums on opposite positions like black/red, odd/even, low/high, etc. If such bets are made, a warning message will appear stating that the bet is not valid and the player must withdraw or modify their bet in order to continue the game.

Casinos usually include new and different bets on their electronic roulettes. But in general, you can bet on the 37 numbers with simple bets such as black/red, lower (1-18) / higher (19-36), odd/even or combination bets.

Automated Roulette Machine

You can combine inside bets with outside bets. Inside bets are:

• Trio is a bet on the first three numbers eg: 0, 1 and 2 or 0, 2 and 3.
• Split is a bet on two numbers that are beside each other on the betting table eg: the line between 25 and 28 puts a bet on both numbers.
• Street is a bet on three numbers that are in a row eg: 7, 8, 9 or 19, 20, 21.
• Corner is a bet for four numbers that are in a square eg: 17, 18, 20 and 21.
• Sixline is the bet for six numbers that form a rectangle, if you place your chips where the line below 31 and 34 and the line between 31 and 34 make a T, you will be betting on 31, 32, 33, 34, 35 & 36.

Outside bets:

• Column is a bet on one of the three rows of numbers as shown on the betting area.
• Dozen is a bet for the first, second or third dozen numbers (1-12, 13-24 or 25-36).

Electronic Roulette Manufacturers

There are several electronic roulette developers:

• Fazi is the leading developer of electronic roulette in the Balkans. Their games include Optimum, Key One, Zed and Triple Crown.
• Greentube stands out for its 24 terminal electronic roulette that can be found in some of the larger casinos around the world.
• Picmatic is a Spanish developer that since 1984 has been developing arcade machines and roulettes. Among them are Red Winner Roulette and Bill Roulette.
• The company Interblock, based in Slovenia, has developed Diamond Roulette and Organic Roulette. In addition Interblock has also created Chinese roulette and individual electronic roulette machines.
• IGT has created electronic roulette machines with one and two zeros.

Despite the different roulette models that we can find in the market, the latest generation electronic roulettes have some common characteristics:

• They use three sensors to quickly detect where the ball falls.
• They include an automatic change of the ball.
• The wheel has a high hardness coverage with carbon fiber and several highly reliable fraud prevention systems.

Casino Automated Roulette Machines Jackpots

Electronic Roulette Games

There are two main types of electronic roulette games, the European version (with a zero) and the American version (with two zeroes). European roulette has 37 numbers, 18 red, 18 black and one zero, and American roulette has 38 numbers, 18 red, 18 black and two zeroes.

As the electronic European roulette has 37 numbers (from 0 to 36), this gives an advantage to the casino of 1/37 or 2.70%. While the American roulette, which has 38 numbers, gives the casino an advantage of 2/38 or 5.26%.

How to win at Electronic Roulette

Electronic roulette, like live roulette with a dealer, is a game of chance, so victory depends largely on luck and the bets you make. Throughout the history of roulette, countless strategies and tricks that can help you learn how to win have been developed. These include the Martingale system and the Law of the Third.

Land based casinos try to prevent manipulations and any kind of unfair play. For this reason, one of the essential criteria when deciding whether or not it is worth playing a particular electronic roulette, is that the wheel must be visible, otherwise it could have been tampered with or altered so that it becomes unreliable.