Look at "The Law of the Thrid" through this lens.........

[TwoCatSam]

You have 18 red and black balls which are either dead or alive.  They are numbered 1-18 and 19-36.  Sound familiar?  You put all 36 (they are live) into a bag and have a left-handed, stoned-on-pot monkey draw a ball.  You put an X on the ball he drew (it is dead) and put it back in the sack.

So you have 35 live balls and one dead one?  Not much chance of drawing the dead one, huh?

Draw on, dear monkey!

Now we have 12 dead balls and 24 live ones.  Can you see how the chances of drawing a dead ball increases?

A few more, James.

Let's assume we have 18 dead and 18 live.  Now we have a 50/50 chance of drawing dead or live ball.

So what have we learned?  That when we start a trot, we have a  small chance of picking the same number.  As the trot continues, the chances of picking a number that has been picked already increases.

Here's the kicker!

You could start with a bag of balls that had 12 of them Xed and the results would be the same as if they had been drawn.  THE NUMBERS DO NOT KNOW THEY HAVE BEEN PICKED OR DRAWN.  It is all an illusion, though a tempting one.

Give up on the "Law of the Third".

TwoCat

[iggiv]

Play roulette,
my dear monkey.
Lose your bet
and don't be cranky.

[Turner]

Sam
You are humanizing it...or in this case Monkeyizing it (is there such a word?)
Every ball has 36-1 chance of being drawn regardless of if its been out once or not.
Normal distribution is a real thing. Law of the third should be called "the law of the fact that a third not showing has the highest probability and less or more than a third is less probable the more it drifts from the mean "
Thats less catchy though.

[Turner]

Its a bit like asking someone to name a famous person starting with G.
They may say George Clooney. If you ask them to name another...they wont say George Clooney again will they?, but someone else may.
Its not "pick another ball" its "pick a ball"
The wheel isnt picking a number...random is and random doesnt know what the last number was.

[nottophammer]

all true in the real world but inthis real world we have the dealer who can interfear

[Turner]

all true in the real world but inthis real world we have the dealer who can interfear

I completely accept that dealer signature is a subject on its own, but for me, in the real world, if something odd or unbelievable happens we blame it on something else...like ghosts.

I think dealer signature is just a ghost story for when random does something improbable...like 15 reds.

i could be wrong of course.

[psimoes]

I think some dealers are good at hitting specific sectors and very good at not hitting specific sectors. Years of practice and natural talent. It's like doing tricks with a football or playing a musical instrument. If you saw a guitar for the first time and listen to the music it makes you'd think it's very difficult if not impossible for a human to play it. They don't even need to be virtuosos to do what they're supposed to.


Here, I think they just play along until you're in a winning streak. That's when they'll spin the wheel slower to brake whatever pattern developed. A slowly spinning wheel makes the ball bounce less. It may work or not, but they won't be blamed for not trying.
One way to fool them is to change the bet right before they announce No more bets. Like moving the chips from third to second dozen. A Monty-Hall haha.

[GLC]

It just feels like what Sam is saying has some real merit.  What if we have 35 dead balls and 1 live ball?  That's 35 to 1 odds of drawing a dead ball.  I know that when I bet on 35 numbers and leave 1 out, (the straight up number equivalent of betting double dozens) I can hit that 1 live ball more often than I should.  And God forbid it should hit 3 times in a row, which we've all seen.  (I even saw 10 hit 3 times in a row with a 00 tagged on the end.) That's a pretty deep hole to dig out of.  It means you need to have that number of a zero not show for 180 spins to get even with the nightmare.

Having said that, I think Sam's right in his conclusion, "Give up on the Law of the Third"  I've never had any luck with concept.

GLC