In this post, I’ll define a basic set of data structures and functions to spin a wheel of fortune. In the next post, I’ll show you the simple model casinos use to build a bigger, more attractive pot, without touching the physical wheel and without losing money. Finally, I’ll show you how casinos tweak that model to bend the odds and create near misses.

Let’s say we have a physical wheel with four pockets, which are labeled either miss or win.

type PocketLabel = Miss | Win
type Pocket = { Label : PocketLabel }
type PhysicalWheel = Pocket seq

Three out of four pockets are labeled as a miss, one is labeled as a win. This makes the odds to win one out of four, or 25%.

let (physicalWheel : PhysicalWheel) = 
	[ 
		{ Label = Miss }; 
		{ Label = Miss }; 
		{ Label = Win }; 
		{ Label = Miss }
	] |> Seq.ofList

Spinning the wheel, we should end up in one of four pockets. We can do this by picking a random index of the physical wheel.

let rng = new Random()       
let randomIndex (rng : Random) physicalWheel = 
  rng.Next(0, physicalWheel |> Seq.length)
let spin physicalWheel rng = 
  physicalWheel |> Seq.nth (randomIndex rng physicalWheel)

To avoid a shoulder injury spinning the wheel multiple times, we’ll define a function that does this for us instead.

let spin physicalWheel rng times = 
  [1 .. times] |> List.map (fun x -> spin physicalWheel rng)

Now I can spin the wheel one million times.

let results = spin physicalWheel rng 1000000 

If the math adds up, we should win 25% of the time. To verify this, we’ll group the results by label and print them.

let groupedResults = 
	results
	|> Seq.groupBy (fun x -> x.Label) 
	|> Seq.map (fun (x, y) -> (x, (y |> Seq.length)))
 
printfn "%A" groupedResults

Give or take a few hundred spins, we’re pretty close to winning 25% of the time.

seq [(Miss, 750505); (Win, 249495)]

When the odds are this fair, it’s impossible to come up with an attractive enough payout without the casino going broke. What if we wanted to advertise a bigger pot, while keeping the same physical wheel, without losing money? Tomorrow, I’ll write about the simple model casinos have been using to achieve this.