Wheel of misfortune

With the Stoke cloud hanging over my head, I received an email from Betfair offering me a free £10 bet on their roulette table. I had vowed a couple of years ago never to play online casinos again, after not going to bed for two nights while chasing losses.

But Betfair must have known I was desperate and, showing pathetic weakness of character, I logged on. I decided to split the stake and have two £5 bets on red. Both spins were, of course, unsuccessful. But rather than log off, I decided that I would continue backing red, increasing my stakes each time, until I had made a profit. And that's what I did, starting with £5 of my own money. On the next 11 spins of the wheel, black came up 10 times and zero once. On the 14th spin of the wheel, I place £90 on red. Winning wouldn't have covered all my losses, but it was all I had left in my account. I won - but only because the table was worried that I would walk away because my account was empty. The result of my 15-minute foray into online roulette had cost me £100.

The next evening, I received an email from Betfair saying that for being such a good customer, I had been allocated a free £20 bet. I backed black. It came up red. What a surprise. I was fuming and fired off the following email to Betfair: 'I would be interested to hear your comments with regard to the fairness of your roulette table. I signed up to your casino (tempted by a free bet) on the evening of 5 March. After some initial success, I backed red on virtually every spin of the wheel. In 19 consecutive games between 23.19 and 23.24 I lost 18 times. I know for a fact that I backed red for the last 13 spins in that sequence, increasing my stake each time (I kept a note). And black came up 12 times and zero once. The odds of this happening are more than 8,000/1. Would this same sequence have occurred if I had been backing black? Of course it wouldn't. If you reply, I know that you'll start talking about random number generators. But we both know that the sequences that occurred are not random (it took Derren Brown nine hours tossing a coin to get 10 consecutive heads - I got 12 reds and a zero in less than four minutes). I think it's short sighted to rig your games to such an extent. I could have been a good source of business for the Betfair casino, but in future I will play on websites that are less obviously fixed.'

Within 24 hours, I got the following reply: 'Every spin on casino is totally independent of any other. The chance of a odd/even or black/red is 50/50 every spin. Betfair casino's RNG (Random Number Generator) is a TRNG (True Random Number Generator). It uses a hardware device for getting random numbers. It does not use a software algorithm (PRNG). The hardware generator derives most of its entropy from shot noise. Hence its entropy source is almost entirely quantum and therefore extremely non-deterministic (ie completely true random). The output has been tested extensively by the most stringent tests available and it has not failed any test for randomness in tests utilizing up to 500 billion bits. The hardware unit has passed Dr. George Marsaglia's battery of "Die Hard" tests.'

What Bruce Willis has got to do with anything beats me, but I still think I've been ripped off.