The nobles of Europe loved to gamble on the wheel. They loved it right up until the very moment when they lost all their money and property. Then they had to find a rich American woman to marry, usually a Southerner; a woman who was interested in a title and, in exchange, was ready, willing, and able to support her noble Prince Destitute with wads of cash from her daddy.
On a perfectly balanced wheel, not one of the Ugly Seven is a winning strategy. They each will lose the percentage that the house has over them on the total amount of money a player bets in the long run. On Europe's single-zero wheel, that edge is 2.7 percent on the inside bets and 1.35 percent on the outside "even-money" bets when the casino has an option called "en prison." On the American double-zero wheel, that edge is a frightening 5.26 percent on the inside bets and, in some casinos, a 2.63 percent edge on the outside "even-money" bets where the "surrender" option is allowed (see table tips). So, if over the course of a lifetime of playing roulette, a European nobleman or woman bets one hundred million dollars on a combination of inside and outside wagers, he or she can expect to lose between $1,350,000 and $2,700,000. An American can expect to lose between $2,630,000 and $5,260,000 on those same wagers.
Over the years ingenious roulette players have figured out ways to beat the physical wheel, as opposed to the mathematical underpinnings of the theoretical game, by locating wheels that were slightly biased in favor of certain numbers. These wheels may have had design flaws, or usage flaws that over time caused the ball to favor some numbers or sections over others. Players call such strategies "biased-wheel play" and it was just such "play" that was used by the few individuals who were able to "break the bank" at Monte Carlo in the early part of the Twentieth Century. They recorded tens of thousands of spins and when they found a wheel that was obviously "off" -- they came on with big bets and battered the venerable casino to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars (today, with inflation, that would be millions). So while the math of roulette might be merciless, the mechanics of the game just might be beatable if you have the time, discipline, and, in some cases, the talent.
Take the example of a "dealer signature." For years gambling writers have speculated that some dealers might be able to influence the fall of the ball because they get into a "rhythm" where they pick the ball up a certain way, wait a given beat, then release the ball with the same speed each and every time. These dealers are not aware of what they are doing and their signature is therefore unconscious. Nevertheless, a certain pattern can develop where the ball lands within "X" number of pockets from the last spin. So a dealer might spin in such a way that more than two-thirds of the time the ball lands within ten to twenty pockets of the last hit.
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