Casino Roulette Wheels
Jafco
Roulette
Roulette wheels come in
many sizes, suitable for playing at home, social clubs or in the casinos. The
standard casino roulette wheel is precision engineered, mainly wooden and with
a 32inch (80cm) diameter.
A full size roulette
wheel makes a superb ornament in its own right and our often veneered with
Maple, oak, cherry and mahogany.
The roulette wheel is
made up from several parts which are all designed to be uniform, though this is
harder to achieve than may first appear.
The wheel Rotor
The roulette wheel Ornament
The roulette wheel number
pockets
The roulette wheel
Frets
The metal Diamonds/pins
The Roulette
Wheel Rotor
The wheel rotor,
sometimes called the roulette wheel bowl, is the main rotating part of the
wheel and pushed each spin at varying speeds by the croupier. The roulette ball
is thrown in the opposite direction to the wheel rota and these directions
usually alternate from spin to spin.
Modern day manufacturers
produce roulette wheels with very high quality bearings and this usually
results in a wheel rotor with an extremely low deceleration rate. There is a
slight conflict of interest here in that the manufacturers seek perfection in
their wheels, even sometimes to the point of almost perpetual motion. On the
other hand the casinos are fully aware that a professional’s life is naturally
made easier when playing a wheel with almost no deceleration. It almost allows
the player to be able to disregard the roulette wheel deceleration factor altogether
and work on the basis that it is a fraction more than zero...
Roulette seems to always
be about weighing one factor up over another. For example if the manufacturer
was to turn around and say ok we will make high decelerating Roulette wheels
just like the old days, then they will simply run into the problem where the
wheel will keep stopping during the pay out, a roulette no no, or the dealer
will get frustrated with having to perpetually pause their payouts just to give
the wheel additional pushes.
The final outcome of
all this is that generally visual players do not need to be too worried about
modern wheel deceleration rates. If ones bet position is too far back because
of extra numbers lost through deceleration, then we simply need to move the
position of all our bets closer to the pin and in a uniform way. This is one
reason why we use cards with the Visual Roulette Betting System. The cards make
everything constant and very flexible in terms of bet position moving. It
should also be noted that bet positioning can also be changed for varying
bounce phases, and for balls that arrive later or earlier than normal.
The Roulette
Wheel Ornament
Situated and fixed to
the very centre of the rotor is the roulette wheel ornament which comes in all
shapes and sizes, often showing the wheel manufacturer’s name and frequently
personalised to the Casinos specifications.
On the ornament top
there is usually a semi sphere hollow where the spare ball is kept.
Roulette Wheel
Number Pockets
At the end of the spin
the roulette ball comes to rest in one of the 37 number pockets (European
Roulette). These roulette number pockets will vary in shape, size and depth and
such variations will also contribute towards how the ball will react and bounce
on landing. In today’s game manufacturers are marketing what they call low
profile pockets which is where the pockets are far less deep than previously in
order to encourage a longer and more random bounce. In reality the pro player
needs to simply bet a bit further back than before. It also creates new and
interesting overlaps for the visual players in that there are some situations
where a longer bounce is in fact beneficial.
The
roulette wheel Frets
The roulette number
pockets are separated by metal frets which are designed to hold a landing ball
on a fast moving wheel rota. The shape and size of the metal frets will create
the varying depths of the number pockets.
Scalloped shaped number
pockets have also been designed from forged metal. In this situation there is
no requirement for wheel frets.
It is the roulette wheel
frets that are the focus for many players through out the history of the game.
Over time and general wear and tear it is always possible for internal metal
cracking to occur and it is well known that this type of fairly undetectable
problem can give rise to an unusual bounce and the possibility of creating a
biased number or biased sector of numbers. It is this focus that has won many
players many millions over the years.
With modern day
technology these wheels are harder to locate but they will always exist. The
secret to playing a successful modern day biased number roulette system is to
know how to locate these special hot numbers in a far more rapid and less time
consuming way.
The
Roulette Ball Track
The ball orbits and
spins around on the slightly sloped roulette ball track which is located just
under the wheel’s top surface. This ball track is meant to be very smooth
allowing the ball to run free and without friction from any objects, temporary
or otherwise.
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Of course there are many
other forms of friction in play and the shape and design of the roulette ball
track plays a very important part in roulette system play. There are ball
tracks which have a slightly more curved edge which results in more friction as
more of the balls surface will be in contact with the wooden part of the wheel
as it rotates around. If there is more friction in this way, the result is a
roulette ball spin that will last less time than when a track is designed
differently. This is where two very well known manufacturers differ in that
when the same ball is spun on both wheel types the Cammegh spin may be around
13 seconds and the John Huxley may be more like 17 seconds. These small things
are in fact huge factors for the professional roulette player.
In recent times a new
material known as GarniteTM is being used to form the surface of the roulette
ball track. It is claimed that this material is more stable during temperature
change etc. I can see why so many players used to say that they thought the
tracks were now being made of stone, afterall this new material looks like
granite and even the name could get confused. I don’t know if that confusion is
deliberate or not but I know that one of my main wheels used in my videos is
designed using this new material and yet it still gave up a whopping margin !
The ball track plays a
very significant part in playing roulette in that this is one of several areas
that can become worn and sometimes so worn that it can give rise to roulette
ball track tilting.
Roulette Wheel
Diamonds/pins
These are the metal ball
stoppers fixed onto the wheel just below the ball track. Introduced
comparatively late in the game’s history, they were originally brought in to
mix things up a bit but in reality they just created a whole new way of beating
the roulette wheel.
Roulette Pins are made
in many shapes and sizes but are more often diamond in shape. Manufacturers
are continuously changing the design of the roulette diamonds as their prime
objective is to increase the bounce variety. The fact that they are always
changing tells us quite a lot and in particular, that there seems to be no
perfect shape!!
In reality the resulting
bounce will depend far more on how the ball is behaving at any given moment.
The ball action is changing constantly and can be very different from one
moment to the next, Sometimes the ball is heavily being affected by drag and in
these conditions it will come racing in but with back spin allowing it to dive
straight in to the number pocket. There will be other phases too, such as the
very slow rolling ball that will arrive late with a small amount of forward
spin giving rise to the traditional plus 8 type of bounce. During some of the
worst conditions the ball will arrive at the landing pin still fizzing with
spin and there is no way of predicting the way the ball will zip away from the
pin when contact is made. It should also be said that as players we have the
choice of when to play and when not to and it is during these mixed up periods
that the player should withdraw from the roulette table and possibly from the
casino too!. The secret here is being able to predict exactly when these bad
and good periods occur and that has certainly been the main focus of my
research over the years.
Roulette
Wheel signature
There weren’t too many
useful things I read in roulette books but I must admit to becoming very
curious about the roulette game when I read a chapter about how roulette wheels
have an individual and unique signature. This is all about how two identical
looking wheels can be made by the same person in the same place, even on the
same day and yet the result will always be two wheels performing slightly or
very differently. When I first read about this I saw it as one of the first
clues on the fact that if wheels behave differently then that’s evidence that
the game can’t be random. It seemed obvious that the key would be to discover
exactly how a wheel is different and then play to that difference. This is a
key fundamental of my visual roulette system where we are constantly looking
for any of these irregularities which can either be major and offer up a huge
winning advantage or minor and offering up a good but lower advantage.
Roulette Wheel Makers
One of the world’s
leading roulette wheel manufacturers is Cammegh which I believe is a break off
group from the original TCS (Technical casino supplies) company. They certainly
make beautiful roulette wheels and like all others there will always be number
of design features that we like from a playing point of view. They have been
mostly marketing their low profile wheels where the number pocket frets are low
in order to promote a longer bounce.
Probably the worlds best
known roulette wheel manufacturer is the John Huxley Company based in South London. They have been making high quality wheels for many years and their
wheels are found pretty well everywhere. I know these wheels well and started
my playing days on the john Huxley mark 2 wheel which had gloriously deep pockets
! The John huxley Mark4 wheel which introduced very diamond shaped pins /
diamonds was probably one the worlds best selling wheels.There are many other
manufacturers around but for the pro roulette player the important part is to
view each wheel carefully to see precisely what it has to offer before playing.
Obviously if you know exactly what you are looking for, then at least you have
a chance of finding it!
Copyright 2011 Jafco. All rights reserved
Keywords relating to this roulette article; Roulette
Wheel Parts, roulette wheel track, roulette ball spin. Systems and strategies
for roulette.
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