There were also some early shoe-based devices I have read about, which used earpieces (difficult to avoid breaking the thin wires necessary to hide them, and prevent damage from sweat). Some of these stories unfortunately weren't documented super well -- I think I came across them from the original participants chatting on a long-defunct forum or newsgroup -- but it is mentioned in passing here: https://jimsudmeierstories.com/adventures-with-a-concealed-b...

> Then around 1976 came “David,” using the Z80 microprocessor, oriented towards team play (the Big Player making the big bets) with hand keyboards operated through holes in pockets and transmitters to signal the Big Player. Later came “Thor,” a computer to track the shuffling (and possible clumping) of multiple decks. One of his inventions involved networking players together with fine wires about 3 feet long. Then there were “Magic Shoes” in which 12 batteries, computer, and all were hidden in “Frankenstein” shoes. Later still there was “Narnia, the sequencing computer.”

The inventor Keith Taft talks about it in more detail in an interview here: https://www.lasvegasadvisor.com/gambling-with-an-edge/interv...

Yhe initiator of the scheme, Edward O. Thorp, was also a father of modern blackjack card counting, and wrote the definitive book about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_counting#History_of_blackj... . "The Invention of the First Wearable Computer" http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/graphics/courses/mobwear/resourc... is Thorp's paper about the blackjack-computer scheme.

(Another famous '70s card counter, Ken Uston https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Uston ended up writing one of the very earliest video game guides, Mastering Pac-Man (it came out in 1981, the same year as Tom Hirschfeld's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Master_the_Video_Games .) Apparently one of its readers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semyon_Dukach discovered Uston's blackjack books as a result, got into blackjack and so ended up on the later, late-'70s-to-early-2000s MIT Blackjack Team led by J.P. Massar .)

Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudaemons

The Eudaemons were a small group headed by graduate physics students J. Doyne Farmer and Norman Packard at the University of California Santa Cruz in the late 1970s.[1] The group's immediate objective was to find a way to beat roulette using a concealed computer, with the ulterior motive of using the money made from roulette to fund a scientific community. The name of the group was inspired by the eudaimonism philosophy. .... As a science experiment, the group's objective was accomplished: to prove that there was a way of predicting where a ball would fall in a roulette wheel given input data about the timing of the passage of the ball relative to the wheel.

A previous wearable roulette computer had been built and used in a casino by Edward O. Thorp and Claude Shannon in 1960–1961, though it had only been used briefly.[2][3]

Android isn't a real-time OS, but System.Nanotime() works just as well with the built-in timer as an external oscillator.

I suspect they're grabbing a digital input state change interrupt to get some real time processing, if you could get Android to give you access to a timer ISR that would work just as well.

Leaving the bets open while the ball is spinning causes a lot of players who think they can time the ball (or as another commenter said, believe the dealer might be cheating) to bet and presumably yields higher profits.

There are other countermeasures developed nowadays, such as Cammegh's RRS (Random Rotor Speed): https://www.cammegh.com/our-products/roulette-wheels/mercury... - essentially after bets are closed the wheel is able to ever-so-slightly slow down at random times, throwing off any prior calculation.

Yes this would defeat it, but standard practice is that you can keep betting a couple rotations into the spin. The reason for that is that some people believe the croupier can target his shot to some extent. (I don't think it's farfetched that someone who spins a ball 8 hours a day could get above chance at targeting.)

I'd never heard of "edge sorting" prior to this comment, but reading the Wikipedia entry for it, it strikes me that the technique relies entirely on the cooperation of the croupier/dealer coupled with inconsistent printing/cutting of the pattern on the rear of the card?

I've not spent a lot of time in casinos, but I am surprised that given the technique is apparently widely known, dealers are not more reluctant to accede to player's requests to rotate a card for "luck" or "superstition", or whatever other rhetorical device is used to convince.

It also seems like simply taking care in the production of the cards and their backing design would afford a significant degree of preventative protection too. Sure it might drive the cost of a pack of cards up given the extra precision needed when printing and cutting the cards, but this does not seem beyond the resources of a casino.

I'd love to see footage of how Ivey manipulating the dealer into rotating cards unfolded.

> How would you the end user know?

There are "provably fair" schemes where casino reveals a hash of the outcome before players bet.

I know nothing about the sector and might have butchered some details but I see an interview one time with some professional online gamblers. They all had many millions in many play accounts but took only a tiny amount from each every month much less than the maximum withdraw. Barely enough to live on.

They explained that some games were rigged but still had to give [big] prizes to someone to keep the show going. Some would organize events and send their big players on trips.

Like an open secret no one talked about. The system is this: For a good while keep depositing more money into the account than spend and leave all the winnings. If they are cheating such account will win incremental amounts. Cheating or not they need to show their players are real people periodically so they organize VIP events and send the top players.

When asked if their winnings were real they examine the poker faces around them for a while until one said that it was irrelevant. I wont cash out either way!

don't gaming commissions perform anonymous audits to make sure your game has the odds it claims to have?