Famous Roullete Players
The lure of Roullete has attracted gamblers of all types since the game’s origins in the 18th century. This traditional casino game seems like a relatively easy affair until your chip stack has dwindled. Famed physicist and mathematician Albert Einstein has been quoted as saying that the only way to win at Roullete is to steal from the house. This warning from a seasoned mind has not kept gamblers from taking their chances at Roullete. The history of Roullete has yielded some great success stories along with a few notable failures from individual players.
The cinema has been a place where fantasies about Roullete fame have been played out for the public. Casablanca features a scene where Humphrey Bogart’s character Rick uses a rigged Roullete wheel to help out a poor patron. Robert Redford played a character named Johnny Hooker in The Sting who loses most of his money on a fixed Roullete game. The popular German film Run, Lola, Run included a scene where the title character placed a 100-mark bet and won more than 129,000 marks by betting on 20. These popular depictions of Roullete have spurred on modern players who want to strike it rich at the table.
One of the great tropes in Roullete history has been the successful cracking of the Roullete wheel by gamblers. Joseph Jaggers was one of the first Roullete players to gain fame by breaking the house. Jaggers and his compatriots went to a casino in Monte Carlo in 1873 in order to take advantage of a biased Roullete wheel. His team observed every single Roullete wheel in the casino to assess which wheel had the most substantial bias. Jaggers finally found his mark and won $325,000 in Monte Carlo and became famous throughout the gambling community.
Famous Roullete Players
Charles Wells has been celebrated as one of the most famous Roullete players in British gaming history. Wells came into his Roullete fame as a thief who was trying to use his cunning skills to take advantage of a Roullete game. He went to Monte Carlo in 1891 to break the bank at a casino by observing Roullete table results. Wells proceeded to bust the house by winning the table limit at each table, thus preventing Roullete from being played until more money was available. This feat turned Wells from a social pariah to a hero among gamblers taken for thousands by the house.
Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo accidentally became a famous Roullete player during a test of the Roullete wheel at Casino de Madrid in 1990. He determined that the typical Roullete wheel could not be mathematically random due to system flaws and user error. Garcia-Pelayo spent time at the Casino de Madrid taking down the winning numbers at each Roullete table. His work allowed him to use a computer analysis program that could assess the likelihood of winning numbers at a given table. He turned his experiment into a financial windfall by winning more than a million euros over a few days. Garcia-Pelayo was a famous Roullete player who has encouraged other players to use mathematical analysis to beat the house.
Roullete has not been immune to unlikely successes by inexperienced players. Ashley Revell traveled from London to Las Vegas in 2004 to try his hand at an unlikely even money bet. Revell sold everything he owned including his entire wardrobe in order to fund a trip to Las Vegas. He arrived at the Plaza Hotel Casino and placed a bet on red worth more than $135,000. Revell became famous for doubling his chip stack to more than $270,000 when the ball landed on seven. This courageous bet by Ashley Revell has inspired the average Roullete player to put their winnings on the line.