A roulette straight-up bet paying 70 to1

Advantage roulette players go to painstaking lengths observing wheels, analyzing tens of thousands of outcomes and applying the most complicated statistical methods to try and identify a means of betting with a discernable edge over the house.

Identifying a  roulette wheel bias, or maybe a dealer signature… or scope for application of visual ballistics techniques.  All very, very tough things to do. Some say impossible now in an era of near-perfectly engineered random wheels.

Here’s a much easier way to get an edge over the house…and not just a skinny one either…a massive one.

Find a table paying 70:1 on a straight up bet.

Doesn’t exist, I hear you say.

Normally no.  Everyone knows straight-up bets pay 35:1, and at (European table) odds of 37:1 of a hit…the payout doesn’t quite cover your chances of hitting (there’s that pesky old house edge!).

But for 1 hour last Saturday, Celtic Casino threw convention out the window and paid 70:1 on the 5red straight up bet.

Simple maths

If you have a 1 in 37 (total number of pockets) chance of hitting a straight up bet and that bet pays 70:1, you automatically have an enormous edge over the house for that particular bet. Every 37 bets you place, you are statistically likely to lose 36 times and win 1 time.  The one win you have (assuming same value bets) will almost double your bank roll for the 37 bet sequence.

Let’s say in 1 hour of play there are 74 spins (makes the maths simpler…and at around a spin a minute not a bad approximation of actual spin frequency). You bet $10 every spin on 5red.  That’s $740 staked for the hour. Statistically it is likely 5red comes up twice for the hour. Each time it comes up you win $700, for a total win of $1400. Less your $740 stake and you’re ahead $660 for the hour.

Of course actual outcomes don’t always follow statistically likely results.  And indeed the actual outcome at Celtic on Saturday night saw 5Red hit 4 times for the hour!

If you’d been betting $10 every bet on 5 Red, your total stake would still have been $740.  Your winnings would have been $2800 for a net win $2060!

If you have a reasonable grasp of mathematics you’ll appreciate that for that one hour, Celtic Casino were pretty much exposing themselves to near certainty of giving away lots of money. And that’s indeed what happened.

According to a casino representative a number of players took 8-10k during the course of the hour.

All I can say is brave, brave promo Celtic….and bring on the next one…soon!