Sometime around 1960, Jarecki developed an obsession with roulette, a game where a little ball is spun around a randomly numbered, multi-colored wheel and the player places bets on where it will land.
Though roulette was considered by many to be purely a game of chance, Jarecki was convinced that it could be “beat.”
He noticed that at the end of each night, casinos would replace cards and dice with fresh sets — but the expensive roulette wheels went untouched and often stayed in service for decades before being replaced.
Like any other machine, these wheels acquired wear and tear. Jarecki began to suspect that tiny defects — chips, dents, scratches, unlevel surfaces — might cause certain wheels to land on certain numbers more frequently than randomocity prescribed.
