In 1949, Albert R. Hibbs – who was a noted mathematician – along with his fellow student Roy Walford took time off from school to go to Nevada. They didn’t go there just to enjoy watching people play. They had better plans. They had gone there to study closely the bias of roulette wheel at Reno and Las Vegas casinos so that they could later use the mathematical edge that they had over other players.
A Winner’s Guide to Blackjack, Craps, Roulette, Baccarat, and Casino Poker. This is a book that is very easy to read and provides updated strategies and analysis for some of the most played casino games. This book has effective information through which players can increase their winning odds.
Another legend is about the biased roulette wheel favouring the house in casino gambling. It is said that the roulette wheels can never be perfectly balanced and that results in the ball being thrown on some areas more than the others.
So the possibility is that if the wheel is studied for its results continuously over a period of time, the numbers that are showing a better percentage of winning than the other ones can be tracked. So those who can manage to analyze this information can bet on the winning numbers and at least increase their probability of winning.
Edward Thorp was another very famous mathematician who developed the mathematics of risk strategies for casino blackjack. Edward Thorp received his PhD. in mathematics in 1961. He was also an M.A. in Physics and was an MIT lecturer. He taught mathematics and quantitative finance. Edward wrote a paper that described some of his early blackjack tricks that he practiced on an IBM 704.
In 1962 Edward Thorp came out with a book titled Beat the Dealer and this book shook the very foundations of entire casino gaming industry. After reading Thorp’s book people started winning and making easy money in blackjack games.
The effect of the book was such that most casinos altered the rules of the game to tilt it back in their favour. However, this led to a very strong reaction from players who started boycotting the casinos that implemented altered rules. Finally, the casinos had to resort to the old rules but they still managed to keep out the ones that were totally cracked by Thorp.