Posted on 10/21/2022 6:29:09 PM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
When a gang of gambling cheats sussed out how to beat the house, they inadvertently highlighted a loophole from a shuffled deck. It took a magician-turned-mathematician to reveal how.
Their company manufactured precision card-shuffling machines for casinos. Thousands of their mechanical shufflers were in operation in Las Vegas and around the world. The rental fees brought in millions of dollars each year, and the company was listed on the New Stock Exchange.
However, the executives had recently discovered that one of their machines had been hacked by a gang of hustlers. The gang used a hidden video camera to record the workings of the card shuffler through a glass window. The images, transmitted to an accomplice outside in the casino parking lot, were played back in slow motion to figure out the sequence of cards in the deck, which was then communicated back to the gamblers inside. The casino lost millions of dollars before the gang were finally caught.
... they needed to be sure that their machine properly shuffled the deck. They needed Persi Diaconis.
Diaconis, a magician-turned-mathematician at Stanford University, is regarded as the world's foremost expert on the mathematics of card shuffling. Throughout the surprisingly large scholarly literature on the topic, his name keeps popping up like the ace of spades in a magician's sleight-of-hand tric
...Diaconis doesn't care for gambling much himself – he says there are better and more interesting ways to make a living. But he doesn't begrudge players who try to get an edge by using their brains.
"Thinking isn't cheating," he says. "Thinking is thinking."
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
After a careful examination, I’m guessing the victim is not much of a card counter; could cause some serious problems.
.
—”Machines have to randomize the shuffle.”
A Dumb question.
Do the machines produce a true random or some form of pseudo-random?
Interesting with many disclaimers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bringing_Down_the_House_(book)
Many ways to make a buck with numbers...
Jerry and Marge Go Large: 60 Minutes’ original story on the Selbees’ lottery loophole
From 2019, Jon Wertheim’s report on Jerry and Marge Selbee, a retired Michigan couple who made $26 million using “basic arithmetic” to crack the code on certain lottery games
Also, the guy who “shaved” the fractions after the decimal on NYSE trades.
Insufficient damage on any single event to prosecute.
Probably wasted his take on attorney fees?
ROTFLMAOWPMP
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.