Biggest Roulette Win
Even if you don’t know anything about casino games, there is no chance that you have not heard of the term Roulette. If it is making you think about Las Vegas right away, we can’t blame you. After all, Sin City is famous for the roulette game amidst other things. It is perhaps one of the most popular casino games available all across the globe. You can step into a casino anywhere in the world, and there will be a roulette game going on somewhere in the room.
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Roulette strategy experts will know that French Roulette is one of the best games to play for RTP (Return to Player percentage). The game features an insurance bet for players where half a losing even-money bet is returned if the ball lands on zero, pushing the house edge down to 1.35 per cent. Chance plays a big role in roulette and even high probability bets have less than 50% winning odds. Bets with higher payouts, on the other hand, are much riskier. Even-money bets are better for long term profitability, but losing sessions are still inevitable. RouleGENIUS is a roulette software that gives winning predictions about the next outcoming number at roulette. It is considered the most powerful and innovative 2020 roulette predictor on the web which guarantees 94.7% of winning at roulette.
Mysterious Origins of Roulette
It doesn’t matter if you are an expert or an enthusiastic beginner when it comes to playing roulette. Before you venture out further, it’s always good to know the origins of such a game that has kept people entertained for years. The history of this game is a complete mystery. Even though game experts widely accept that Blaise Pascal invented the prototype of the roulette game during the 17th century, there has been evidence of similar games being played even before his time.
A lot of the old stories that try to establish the origins of roulette revolve around breaking the monotony of life with something far more exciting. The truth is, no one knows for sure who started it first. Many believe that people in Ancient China and Tibet played a game similar to roulette involving animal figurines instead of numerical slots. Later on, this game travelled across the seas and continents to the monasteries of France where monks would play it to relieve boredom. Of course, before it made its way to France, the Romans and the Greeks, especially the soldiers in the army were known to play something similar involving a chariot wheel while fighting wars.
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But it is France who takes the cake. Two games, Roly Poly and Even-Odd, are suspected to be the games that inspired Roulette in the 17th century. Pascal was aware of these two games while devising his version because they involved spinning wheels and betting the outcome of it. Up until this time gambling was illegal but during the 18th century, it became legal in Europe under strict laws. This revival saw the popularity of roulette surge in France, especially in Monaco where the Crown Prince, Charles saw roulette as a means to raise money for himself.
Basics and Rules of a Roulette Game
The objective of this game like any other gambling stuff relies on luck and guessing where the small white ball will land. If you guess correctly, you win. It’s a straightforward game, but as a newcomer, you might be alarmed by the different variations and options available. Don’t be scared, as we will walk you through it all. The roulette game consists of a wheel and a board. The wheel contains red and black slots from 1 to 36 and then either one zero slot or two zero slots depending on the type of roulette that has been chosen for playing, which we will talk about later.
Now, let’s move on to the table. The table features numbers and additional sections where you can decide to place bets. Once the stakes are set, the croupier spins the wheel and then throws the small white ball. When the wheel stops spinning, the slot where the ball is on is the winning number. Different games of roulette have different table layouts. However, the rules of the game remain the same throughout.
Roulette Game Variants
Before we move on to how to play a game of roulette, it is crucial that you understand the different variants of the game. The European version of the game is the most popular, and it is the one used in online websites as well. The American version is more prevalent in America, and there’s a straightforward reason why a lot of people prefer the former. The European version of the roulette game contains a single zero slot whereas its American counterpart contains two zero slots. This makes the game not so profitable for the player as a double zero slot means a higher advantage for the house.
The numbers on the European version are arranged differently. For example, the number on the right side of the zero in the European table is 32. But when it comes to the American table, it is 28. The former has 37 numbers on the spinning wheel and the sequence usually looks like this, 0, 32, 15, 19, 4, 21, 2, 25, 17, 34, 6, 27, 13, 36, 11, 30, 8, 23, 10, 5, 24, 16, 33, 1, 20, 14, 31, 9, 22, 18 29, 7, 28, 12, 35, 3, 26. On the other hand, the latter has 38 numbers because of the extra zero is usually arranged like this 0, 28, 9, 26, 30, 11, 7, 20, 32, 17, 5, 22, 34, 15, 3, 24, 36, 13, 1, 00, 27, 10, 25, 29, 12, 8, 19, 31, 18, 6, 21, 33, 16, 4, 23, 35, 14, 2.
The European version also has a classic French variant where the table layout is the only different thing. When you look at its American counterpart, you need to keep in mind that you have a new betting spot on the table thanks to the double zero. It’s not difficult to find the difference when you look at both table layouts side-by-side.
Different Types of Bets in Roulette Games
Now that you have helped yourself with the basic rules and the table layout of roulette, it’s time to take a look at the variety of bets that you can place. This is an essential lesson when it comes to learning how to play a roulette game. You need to understand what and how these bets are before you hit the casinos both offline and online.
There are more than sixteen different types of bets. It’s vital that you know the odds, payouts as well as the house edge when it comes to different roulette bets. This will help you make an educated guess and assess your risk before you gamble.
Let’s start with outside bets. These are the bets made at the perimeter of the table and focuses mainly on groups of numbers rather than a specific number.
1) Red/Black:
Here, you are making a bet on whether the ball will fall on a red spot or a black one. This is even money or 1:1 bet. But due to the presence of one zero or two zeroes in case of the American game, the chances of you winning are less than 50%. This is how the casino benefits.
2) Odd/Even:
This bet is pretty self-explanatory. You are betting on whether the ball will land on an odd or an even number. This is an even money bet as well, but the presence of zeroes again makes your chances of winning less than 50%.
3) High/Low:
You can place this bet if you are betting on whether the winning number will fall within 1-18 (low) or will it be between 19-36 (high). This is a 1:1 bet as well.
4) Columns:
Three columns consisting of 12 numbers are situated on the longest side of a roulette table. Depending on where the ball lands and if you can guess the right column correctly, you can double your bet as the payout is 2:1.
5) Dozens:
This bet pays 2:1 and covers three sets of 12 numbers. The 1st 12 consists of the numbers from 1-12, the 2nd 12 consists of the numbers 13-24 and the 3rd 12 consists of the digits 25-36.
Now, let us move on to the inside bets. These bets as the name give it away, are made inside the rectangle where the numbers are situated.
6) Straight Up:
This inside bet is as simple as it gets. You get to pick any number off the table, and if the white lands on your number after spinning the wheel, you win. If you don’t, then you will lose. However, each of these bets pays 35:1.
7) Split:
This is somewhat opposite to a straight up bet. Here, you bet on two numbers instead of one. More specifically, you bet on the line that separates the two numbers. For example, you can bet on 27 30 or 13 16. If either of these two numbers ends up with the ball, you win. The payout is 17:1 in this case.
8) Street:
You bet on three numbers in a row instead of one or two. The payout is adjusted accordingly to 11:1. For example, you can bet on 25, 26, 27. If the ball lands on any number within this trio, you win.
9) Corner:
In this type of bets, you bet on four numbers that might come up. These four numbers need to touch each other to form a square. For example, you can bet on 1, 2, 4, 5 or 16, 17, 19, 20. These are often termed as square bets or four-number bets. The payoff is 8:1.
10) Line:
Instead of covering one row of three numbers like street bets, you cover two rows of three numbers. Some typical examples are 13-18, 1-6, 7-12. The payoff is usually lower than a street bet at 5:1.
11) Five-Number:
One of the worst-possible bets in roulette, you have a 13.16% chance of winning the game. You wager on a group of numbers like 0, 00, 1, 2 and 3. The payoff is 6:1 and is also known as the top-line bet.
12) Basket:
This is a simple bet based on the numbers 0,1,2 and 3. This pays 6:1 and is called the first four bet.
13) Snake:
Perhaps one of the most different bets in roulette, this bet covers numbers that form a pattern which resembles a snake on the table. The numbers are 1, 5, 12, 9, 16, 14, 19, 23, 30, 27, 32, and 34. This pays 2:1.
Apart from these bets, there are others which are available only for European versions of roulette. These are known as call bets. Sometimes, you might not find them while playing a roulette game online. These bets are usually announced or “called out” instead of placing money on the table. It also means in some cases that you are gambling on credit. This might or might not be legal at all places.
14) Neighbours of Zero
Commonly known as Voisins du Zero, this bet covers all the numbers that are closest to zero in the single-zero version of the game.
15) Jeu Zero
This bet, which also means zero game makes you play for the numbers closest to where the zero is.
16) Tiers du Cylindre
This bet is usually placed on the twelve numbers on the opposite side of the wheel. This includes 27 and 33, and some of the other numbers are 13, 36, 30, 11, 8, 23, 10, 5, and 24.
17) Orphelins
To make this bet, consider all the numbers that make up the two different slices of the spinning wheel outside the Tiers and Voisin’s bet, and it usually includes eight numbers like 17, 34, 6, 1, till 9.
Final bets are another type which is placed on single-zero wheels where you bet on the last digit. For example, if you are betting on a final-5 bet, that means you are betting on 5, 15, 25, 35. There is also a particular type of bet called imprisonment bet or la partage that exists in French Roulette. You get half your bet back if you make an even money bet and then the ball lands on the zero. While playing remember that you need to build a decent strategy to win. One of the most popular roulette playing strategies is the Martingale system. The principle that drives this strategy is that you increase your bet after every loss so that you can win back your money when you finally succeed and start betting the initial amount again using your winnings. You can read more about the Martingale System here.
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We all know the house has an advantage in roulette over the long term, but there are no laws of physics that say it is impossible to win big in roulette. Isn’t that possibility the reason we all play? The house may have the advantage over the long term, but people do win. Some people win big.
This post is all about the people who have beaten the odds and taken the house for astronomical sums of money. I originally planned to rank these winners in order of the amounts of money they won. However, that soon proved to be a fruitless task as the time value of money, time’s effects on purchasing power and currency conversions make it difficult to accurately rank these winners.
All technicalities aside, there is some degree of relativism when we talk about “big winners.” Does Bill Gates placing a $200,000 bet (equal to about one hour of work for Mr. Gates) mean as much as the guy who sells everything he owns and bets it all on red? In pure money terms, sure. In “holy $%&@ that was a ballsy bet” terms, not so much.
Also, you can bet there are even bigger winners than these that we never hear about. High rollers in Las Vegas tend to guard their privacy so we’ll never know about some of the biggest wins of all time. Also, this post only includes live roulette winners. Online roulette is a private endeavor and so we don’t hear about the big winners at online casinos.
1. Ashley Revell
Total take: $135,500
Method: Wagered life savings on red
One day in 2004, Ashley Revell took his life savings to Las Vegas and wagered everything on a single spin of the wheel. And when I say life savings, I mean everything. He sold his house, his car, favorite watch, old trophies, all of his clothes except for the ones on his back and then added every penny in his bank account to create a gambling fund of $135,000.
With not a single possession except for the clothes on his back, Ashley Revell flew to Las Vegas and bet everything on red. Sky One (a UK TV channel) heard about his crazy plan and made a mini TV series out of the event.
On the big day, Revell threw down a $135,500 wager on red in front of an audience of millions. The roulette ball began making smooth trips around the wheel and then began to slow. The orbit wobbled, the ball clanged down into the bottom of the wheel, took a few bounces and eventually came to rest on red 7. With one spin of the roulette wheel, Ashley Revell had doubled his net worth.
$135,000 probably isn’t even near the top 50 largest roulette bets ever placed in Las Vegas, but it ranks very near the top in terms of pure ballsy-ness. This one bet represented everything Ashley had accumulated over 32 years of life.
Where is he now?
After winning the big bet, Ashley Revell started an online poker site by the name of Poker UTD. The site is still live, but I saw a few rumors on the internet that he was looking to sell the site in 2012. It looks like he might still run that site though, so take that rumor with a big grain of salt.
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As of March 2013, he helps people find online casino jobs at igamingrecruitment.com (a WHOIS search on the domain can confirm this). The site is only a few months old, but it looks like Ashley Revell is staying busy and doing well for himself.
2. Charles Wells
Total take: 2 million francs in 1891
Method: Luck
Charles Wells won a million francs at the Monte Carlo in a single night in 1891. He returned later that same year and won another million francs. Unfortunately, his luck came to an end after that.
Charles continued gambling and lost everything. Then, he was arrested for running business scams and sentenced to 8 years in prison. His total take over the long haul was zero, but he did have one beautiful night in which he won a million francs over the course of a few hours.
Most people say he just experienced the lucky streak of a lifetime. Wikipedia even says that at one point during his escapade, he won on 23 out of 30 consecutive spins of the wheel. But keep in mind, this guy was a known scammer who did at least 3 stints in prison. Was it dumb luck or something more? We will never know for sure.
It is tough to quantify a million francs in modern times. Even if you convert francs to dollars and then calculate the effects of inflation, it still doesn’t give us a clear idea of the purchasing power that kind of money had back in the real world back then. The only thing that’s clear is that it was a massive amount of money at the time.
Where is he now?
Underground. It is said he died broke in Paris in 1922.
3. Mike Ashley
Total take: £820,000
Method: A “complete” bet on 17
Mike Ashley is a billionaire businessman and owner of Newcastle United Football Club. News outlets reported in 2008 that he visited a private Mayfair casino and threw down a complex roulette bet worth nearly half a million pounds.
In one spin, he wagered a total of £480,000 on every possible inside wager that includes the number 17. This includes a straight-up bet on 17, all the splits that include the number 17, all the streets, corners and six-line bets. This is called a full complete.
The same news reports also state that he placed wagers on black, odd, the first half, middle column and middle dozen. In the end, he took home roughly £1,300,000 for a net profit of £820,000. It’s not a whole lot of money for a billionaire, but it is impressive that the ball landed exactly where it needed to land to make the bet a perfect winner.
Where is he now?
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Mike is still doing whatever it is that billionaire businessmen do. In recent news, he purchased the fashion chain “Republic” and saved 2100 jobs in doing so.
4. Joseph Jagger
Total Take: $375,000 in 1873
Method: Identified biased roulette wheels
Joseph Jagger worked in the cotton mechanics industry and took his experience with machines to the Beaux-Arts casino in Monte Carlo. There, he paid six clerks to secretly note the results of many spins of the roulette wheels there. He found that one of the wheels showed a clear bias which resulted in the numbers 7, 8, 9, 17, 18, 19, 22, 28 and 29 hitting more often than they should have in a truly random wheel.
Joseph Jagger then visited the casino himself, placed his bets accordingly and won the equivalent of $375,000 over the next few days. The casino eventually wised up to his strategy and got rid of the biased wheel. Jagger kept his winnings, retired from his job, invested the money in his own property and never again returned to the casino.
To put that in perspective, $375,000 back then would have a purchasing power of more than $7,000,000 today. The exact numbers are actually different everywhere you look, but $375,000 seems to be the most frequently cited number. Whatever it was, it was a lot of money.
Where is he now?
Joseph Jagger resides at the Bethel Chapel cemetery in Shelf, England.
5. Chris Boyd
Total take: $220,000
Method: Wagered $220,000 on red
Chris Boyd was a 40 year old computer programmer from England who saved $220,000 over a three year period. He took the money to Las Vegas and searched for a casino that would take such a massive bet. Many casinos refused, but he eventually struck a deal with Binion’s Horseshoe Club.
Binion’s had a max bet of $100,000, but they agreed to take his wager this one time. They also covered the 00 slot on their American roulette wheel, which effectively turned it into a European roulette wheel.
Chris bet all $220,000 on red and won the bet. Legend has it that the ball landed on red 7. If you’ve been paying attention, you will have noticed that this is the same exact slot the ball landed on for Ashley Revell.
Where is he now?
I can’t find any recent information on Chris Boyd. It is said that he vowed to never gamble again. Considering that he was a computer programmer and that it only took him 3 years to save an extra $220,000, I would guess that he’s still doing well barring any health issues.
6. Francis Farrugia, Francesco Baioni and Frank Camilleri
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Total take: Unknown, millions
Method: Cheating / past posting
Francis Farrugia, Francesco Baioni and Frank Camilleri traveled the world for 20 years ripping off casinos using the age-old trick of distracting croupiers in order to add high value chips to wagers after the ball had come to a rest.
The trio was eventually banned from every major casino in the world but that didn’t stop them. Using fake IDs and disguises, they continued to travel around the world to ply their trade. Major casinos launched investigations and eventually the three-man team was busted.
But the story doesn’t end there for these crooks. The only charges that stuck were related to possessing false identification. Francis Farrugia was eventually sentenced to 9 months in jail, but the sentence was suspended and he was released on supervision. His accomplices also served no time.
News articles are saying these guys were “top hatting” but nowhere does it mention that casino staff were involved (top-hatting is similar to past posting except the croupier purposely helps the cheaters). I think these guys were just traveling past posters.
Where are they now?
The trio has managed to stay out of the news since 2011. It is anyone’s guess as to whether they have retired with their money or are back in the game. The next time you visit a casino, keep your eyes open for a trio of three well-disguised Italians.
7. Spot Reserved for [Your Name Here]
Total take: Undetermined
Method: online casino and good luck
If you’re feeling motivated after reading about these stories of the biggest roulette winners of all time, you’re not alone. Millions of people around the world gamble at online casinos with similar hopes of making it big.
The only thing you need to try your own luck at roulette is an account at an online casino. It is impossible to cheat at online casinos, but think of that as a good thing. It eliminates the possibility of ending up in jail (or worse).
Biggest Roulette Win
My top pick for roulette fans is Lucky Red Casino. Lucky Red has a long reputation for fair games and lots of bonuses for both new and existing players. They have a no-download option (compatible with Macs) and a downloadable software package that will let you get started today.
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