Do Roulette Tables Have Magnets In Them?
No, roulette tables don’t have magnets in them. Read on to find out why.
Why They Don’t
I’d never thought about magnets in the game before, until a reader emailed me recently asking the question. Apparently it’s a kind of conspiracy theory he’d seen on a few discussion forums like Quora.
1) The first reason casinos don’t use magnets (or other cheating devices) is they don’t need to – roulette, like any other casino game, has odds that favour the casino. I.e., they will always make profit more often than a player. Therefore, taking a big risk like ‘rigging’ the game more in their favour wouldn’t be worth the risk.
2) It would be almost impossible for them not to be discovered – unless it was some kind of underground, illegal gambling den, there would be too many people involved
3) Going back to risk, most casinos now (especially in Vegas) are owned by huge corporations who would never want the legal drama of such things
But…
Whilst magnets in roulette tables definitely isn’t a ‘thing’ nowadays, it’s often rumoured it was many years ago, probably when casinos were small, underground and/or illegal affairs. The idea was that by using cheating devices (like magnets) the house had a much bigger edge as the ball would be drawn to an area of the wheel more often than others.
Which reminds me of this wonderful scene in ‘Casablanca’:
How Would I Know If A Casino Is Using Magnets?
In short, there would be now way to know unless you could take the wheel apart and look at it. However, it’s not something I worry about and neither should you.
Odd Things Do Happen In Roulette
Remember, roulette is a game of chance. You will see ‘patterns’ in terms of what numbers, groups or numbers or colours appear in a row. This doesn’t mean anything strange is happening, it’s just what you’d expect to see across a large number of spins.
As human’s, our minds try and find patterns and meaning in everything – so it can make us feel suspicious if there’s things like the ball landing on black ten times in a row for example.
Just relax and enjoy the game!