What about predicting online roulette?
Having discussed the possibilities for predicting roulette spins with a real wheel it’s time to think about online roulette which uses a random number generator. It’s worth bearing in mind here that there are a few sites which use a webcam link up of a real wheel. Obviously the methods mentioned in the previous article are relevant there.
It’s worth knowing a little bit about how a random number generator works. Mathematicians actually refer to them as pseudorandom number generators (PRNGs) because they do not generate truly random numbers but instead generate sequences of numbers which (it is hoped) are indistinguishable from random numbers. There are many different approaches but the basic idea is to start with a seed number which is used as an input to the PRNG, then the output is used as a new input. A well designed PRNG will produce outputs which are evenly distributed and unpredictable.
A little thought shows that eventually a PRNG using this method alone will start to repeat (once an output is generated which is the same as the seed). To combat this elements of randomness can be inserted into each input. Common methods include measurements of the time, mouse position, radioactive decay, radio interference or cameras pointed at lava lamps or the sky.
A further problem which any piece of software aiming to track and exploit problems with a casino PRNG will have is that you don’t necessarily get a stream of numbers being generated for a particular table. All the websites I saw selling this type of software seem to be assuming that there’s a separate PRNG running for each table, which generates a new number each time the wheel is spun. In fact it is more usual for them to have the PRNG running all the time, generating many thousands of numbers per second. When a table needs one it is simply given the latest to be generated. This alone provides huge problems for any piece of predictive software, as it is difficult to see how it could possibly infer the link between successive results.
The icing on the cake is that the end user does not have raw access to the PRNG output. The output will typically be a very large number which is then assigned via a hash function to one of the numbers on the wheel. This adds a further level of obfuscation to tracking the PRNG outputs.
In summary I simply cannot see how these pieces of software can possibly work. Even if the PRNG was poorly designed and the numbers were generated on a per wheel basis, the period before repetition would be so immense that you would need to capture a massive amount of data before any prediction could begin.
If I were cynical I would say that these “roulette predictors” were probably nothing more than a PRNG wrapped up in a user interface to trick the user into thinking their input is affecting the output. I’m open to be proved wrong if anyone has one they’d like examined.
