When we see unusual patterns, it’s natural to be suspicious or curious, but today’s question is only a small part of a much longer letter that sent our “red alert” antennae up just a bit more than normal:
The phenomenon I observed involved only 1 number because the Roulette board, the American version, has 38 possible numbers, 1-36 and 0/00! Logic would lead you to believe that if you spun the wheel 38 times, you would land on each number one time! There are always anomalies in a single game of Roulette, I’ve seen sequences of numbers that had I not seen the sequences with my own eyes I would not have believed it possible under penalty of death! So in all the years of playing I have never and I repeat EVER seen three zeros land in four spins of the wheel, it is a statistical and mathematical impossibility which leaves only one conclusion to explain the phenomenon, that the wheel is being manipulated!
James D.
Elsewhere in James’ message to us he touts he’s “exceptionally good at mathematics of all kinds” so we hope James you know that the odds of the American roulette wheel landing on any one number is indeed 1 in 38, but you’re almost never going to land each number once in a set of 38 spins because, like flipping a coin, it’s far from assured to have an exact distribution in a small sample.
Instead those deviations will smooth out over time, just like the payout of a slot over millions of spins. And in this case, the fact that there are only and exactly 38 outcomes makes it far from a statistical impossibility. In fact, it’s pretty easy to calculate.
The chances of a specific number of your choice landing three times in a row is pretty simple: 38x38x38=1 in 54,872. But the chances of any number landing three times in a row is even more likely, because if you don’t care which number it is, that first number can be any of them, and then you just need that specific number to land twice more: 38×38=1,444.
But you also noted it came three out of four times, further increasing the possibility that it could happen, because you can have a missed spin in the middle there – it doesn’t have to be three back to back..
For comparison, a royal flush comes out something like once in 40,000 hands. People get royal flushes all the time. But of course there’s more video poker machines, and more hands per hour on that vs. the pace of roulette, so it can feel much more rare when perhaps 40-50 spins per hour take place on a roulette wheel in a casino, spacing out those occurrences to feel quite rare.
But this is another great example that just because you personally haven’t encountered it, doesn’t mean the game is rigged or that it is a “statistical and mathematical impossibility” – it’s clearly not, as shown above. It’s certainly unusual. It’s not impossible. And with gambling, emotions can take over when the rare event happens.
So if you feel that strongly that there’s a problem with a rare circumstance occurring, perhaps gambling isn’t the best form of entertainment to pursue. American Roulette’s house advantage is among the worse ones for table games (although 000 Roulette is certainly worse), so casinos don’t need to do much to make money other than run the game and let it play out.
