The Infallible System

Derren Brown did a wonderful special this week – debunking belief systems again – this time, the belief in an unbeatable gambling system. He did start the show with a demonstration of long odds which seemed far more likely a magic trick, and then demonstrated the possibility of tossing a coin heads ten times in a row, but quickly moved on to showing a member of the public being given ‘infallible’ horse-racing tips, and (gaining in confidence) increasing their bet each time.

The System

Cutting to the chase, after about five bets, the single mum met with the ‘mysterious tipster’ only to find it was Derren! He talked her into gathering a lot more money for one final big bet. On the day he told her about the method he had employed (more on that in a moment) and that this time it was a real risk (!) When the horse he said he had put her money on lost, she panicked, but he told her to check the ticket he had got for her, and in fact he had put the money on the correct horse.

[SPOILER ALERT]

As Derren himself told the audience at home how he did it, this is not an expose, but you might just want to watch it first and figure it out later. I knew pretty early on what he was doing, but not the exact scale of it, but I have studied scams, cons, magic, probabilities, get-rich-quick schemes, etc so it seemed like familiar ground.

Essentially, he started out with 8000 people and divided them into groups (five groups for a five horse race, six groups for a six horse race, etc) and simply apologised to losers (the tv company offered to reimburse their small losses) and continued with winners, each time shrinking the group of people being filmed (all unaware of each other, and thinking they were the only participant).

These folks began to trust the ‘system’ and the tips, and raised their stakes. Improbable events really spooked them, however (when the woman’s horse was running third, and the front runner fell at the last jump and took out the second placed horse) for instance. How could he predict that!

What most amused me about his ‘dirty trick’ at the end (letting her think she had lost, now that she knew there was no ‘magic’ involved, only to reveal he was still right) was the thought that perhaps she wasn’t really the ‘last one standing’ but that he had reduced it to five before the revelation, and was still using the same principle to guarantee a cliff-hanger with a happy ending…

We may never know!

The Tipster Scam

This scheme of tipping was used in the past as a scam, and you simply asked for a share of any winnings from your subscribers. You would offer the range of tipped horses to your users, apologise to the losers (guaranteeing better luck next time) and taking a cut from the winners...some of whom (the 'winners') would be recommending your ‘system’ by word of mouth. It’s a perfect scam, as tipping can only appear an ‘art’ not a ‘science’. Does anyone check how accurately newspaper tipsters (who can’t use the risk-spreading scheme) actually predict results? Do they do any better that astrologers and mediums? Or does the usual self-fooling ‘remember the hits and forget the misses’ psychology work for them, too?


Oh, and tossing ten heads in a row, with no fake coin, and no camera tricks?

I think it took them about nine hours of filming until they witnessed that!