Craps Forum
Hi there
My name is Mike and I have just joined this forum. About 3 - 4 years ago I was quite interestd in AP methods, particularly VB. My first encounter was a few years further back when I met a retired croupier who demonstrated his ability to hit sections on a wheel and I have been interested ever since.
I am fully aware of Bias play and how it has evolved over the years, and how it would be pretty difficult today to apply the methods that Barnhart? wrote about a few years back. I have a basic understanding of how to go about looking for bias in modern wheels, principally through the posts of snowman at Gamblers glenn and Vls forums. I think that bias play was probably the first real method to beat the roulette wheel and is likely to be the last. It is an area that I think i would like to look into in the future.
I have toyed with VB in the past at casinos but the whole experience was inconclusive at the time and I was probably pretty obvious and guilty looking. I stopped pursuing this avenue as I considered that to further my studies I would need a wheel, and being a man of limited means decided I would have to wait. I found that video spins can be great but you cant test out ideas that need controlled conditions, unless you spend hours trawling and editing video clips.
I understand the principles of VB pretty well and have read the likes of Scott, Jafco and Pawlikki. I am seduced by Foresters VB2 I think that it is very clever and a different approach to other methods that I have read, regardless of its slow rotor speed limitation, which is no problem to me as I live in the UK, (at least it wasnt a couple of years back) I also think that this limitation could probably be tweaked out with some thought. using this method I find the jafco videos a snap. It seems that there are many ways to skin the prediction cat.
One of the reasons that I stopped with VB was that I considered that a game with a single dominant drop was becoming rarer and I didn’t know how to cater for multiple drops. I had thought of overlapping numbers as a concept, particularly if the wheel is at a sweet speed, and later read something similar in Jafcos material. However I have always considered it would be in the players interest to be able to estimate which diamond would hit, if they could do this then they could go with the diamond with the least random scatter and only bet those spins, surely this would increase their edge. Ideally to know where on the diamond it would hit would be a bonus. allegedly computers can do this, but I am convinced that the wheel will also tell it in the simple patterns that the ball makes at certain points during the spin. I have also heard rumours that there are people that can do this, so I figure that I am on the right line. of course without a wheel there isn’t an easy way to test these ideas out.
This Christmas, right out of the blue, my girlfriend, bought me a secondhand wheel. to you folks it may be a nothing, but to me it is perfect. as far as I can tell it is a Cammegh connosiuer. the velstone ball track may need a little attention but the rotor bearing is great, way better than Stephanos Mk7 Huxley.(on his videos) there is slight damage to the cone and a few scrapes around the outside,plus a chip in the bowl, but I am more than happy, particularly as they were the wheels of choice at my local casino. I reckon that I have learnt more just looking at and cleaning this thing, over the last couple of weeks, than many years of looking at videos and reading. So now my interest in the subject has been re ignited.
I do worry that studying VB now puts me slightly late at the table, I suspect that I am on the cheese course, but still have coffee to go and with luck a bloody good speaker who will take hours.
I have tried to be honest and frank about where I am in roulette, I know my limitations in knowledge and abilities and I don’t want to BS anyone here. I also will have a couple of questions that I will bring up in separate threads.
Mike
