For several years, on various occasions, Thorp and Shannon, together with their wives, tried out their methods in Las Vegas. They ran into the snag that they didn’t need to be too apparent in at all times putting late bets. Therefore, they needed to mix their optimum bets, made after the wheel had revolved a couple of times and could be tracked, with random ones, placed before the spinning started. Finally, in 1966, Thorp decided to let the cat out of the bag and publish their strategies. Such flaws, the scholars realized, supplied the key to profitable prediction. By studying the mechanical idiosyncrasies of various machines, they developed predictive models, carefully placed bets, and manage to win thousands of dollars.