The Spotted Ball, A True Story by Larry Cohen c 2025
Chapter 12
“Get on the 15!!”
So as not to abandon the observant little girl who noticed the two-car phenomenon in the previous chapter, we begin by addressing the question as to the numbers of automobiles on the road taken against their respective makes and models. I beg my readers’ indulgence since, as you all will soon understand, this is not a roundabout route to my point.
If we want to take a look at the models and the manufacturers of automobiles on the road in New York State we need not to go further than the New York State Dept of Motor Vehicle records . There we will find how many Fords, Buicks, Cadillacs, Saabs, Volvos, etc are registered in the state. It would make sense if there were six times as many Fords registered as the higher priced Cadillacs and, possibly 50 times the number of Fords registered as the even higher priced Saabs.
Knowing that, does it make any sense that every 50th car on the road that we observe will be a Saab? Or, for that matter, should every 6th car be a Cadallac? Naturally, these are rhetorical questions since my readers already know the answer. Of course not.
And, so it is with the roulette wheel. Even though there are 38 number possibilities, it would be extremely unlikely that all of the 38 numbers would have to be drawn before one of those numbers would repeat. It is not as though if a number is drawn it is “taken out of circulation”. This is the same principle that prompted the little girl in the back seat of her mother’s car to cry out, “Mommy, Mommy, Look!” She noticed an event that, while at first may seem unusual, is really quite common. (I added the yellow color of the car to include some “color” to an otherwise boring detail. Yet, the color could be included, too, if one wanted to do the math.)
At a casino outing at a heretofore unnamed casino, from my own observation I noticed that number 15 was the outcome in a game in which I was not a participant but only an observer. Then, 15 again…at which point, an older woman in the crowd of onlookers shouted, “Get on the 15!!, since she expected a third consecutive outcome. Unlikely as it may sound, sure enough not only did the 15 deliver a win a third consecutive time, but even a fourth!! I did not read about this in a book but witnessed it myself. The point here being that it makes more sense for numbers to repeat than not repeat.
For a time in Europe, casinos experimented with spinning two roulette wheels at the same time. In order to win, players would have to have the same number on both wheels which would amount to a significant payout (35 x 35). This game was quickly retired for two main reasons. Players were winning too often and the casino was unlikely to get all of its money back after such a win. The first part of this, “players winning too often” adds fuel to the fire of my argument that numbers will repeat even on different wheels on separate tables.
And, logically, even in different casinos…if we had “magical telescopes” that would allow us to witness such things.
to be continued…