Roulette - Real-life Roulette Exploits

Real-life Roulette Exploits

• In 1873, Briton Joseph Jaggers made the first famous biased roulette wheel exploit. Mr. Jaggers, with a team of six accomplices, carefully observed all the wheels at the Monte Carlo casino and found one wheel with significant bias. By taking advantage of this flaw they managed to win over $325,000, an astronomical sum in 1873.
• In the summer of 1891 at the Monte Carlo casino, a part-time swindler and petty crook from London named Charles Wells broke the bank at each table he played over a period of several days. Breaking the bank meant he won all the available money in the table bank that day, and a black cloth would be placed over the table until the bank was replenished. In song and life, he was celebrated as "The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo".
• In 1992 in Gdynia (Poland) in Jackpol Casino, Paweł Piskorski (Polish politician, former Secretary General of Platforma Obywatelska and Member of European Parliament, today Leader of Stronnictwo Demokratyczne) claimed to have won 4,950,000,000 zloty (approximately $175,000 today). This, at least, was the explanation he gave to the revenue office for his income that year. The claim is implausible, because the house maximum at that time was 1,000,000 zloty: he would have had to have won 138 times in succession, with each bet set at the house maximum.
• In 2004, Ashley Revell of London sold all of his possessions, clothing included, and placed his entire net worth of US$135,300 on red at the Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas. The ball landed on "Red 7" and Revell walked away with $270,600.
• On 2 October 2009, Derren Brown (as part of his controversial "The Events" series) bet £5000 of a member of the public's money on a single number of a roulette wheel somewhere in Europe. This was shown live across the UK using a camera hidden in Brown's sleeve. He claimed that he would use the laws of physics to predict where the ball would end up, based upon the speed of the wheel and the ball. Brown took approximately three seconds after the wheel started spinning to place his £5000 bet on the number 8, only to see it land on 30 — just one number out. It is not known whether any other less successful bets were filmed but not broadcast (Brown has used, and explained, this "cherry picking" technique on at least two other TV programmes, in coin tossing and horse racing).