Jun 15 2010

The Most Famous Roulette Player in History

Roulette is one of the most glamorous casino games and maybe that has something to do with the way in which Hollywood films portray the game. For example, all-time classic ‘CasaBlanca‘ has been setting roulette rules on people’s minds for decades. Apart from that, some players in real life have also managed to make a reputation for the game and even more dramatically than the movies.

We always hear about the celebrities in the poker world; however, most online gamblers do not know that there also have been some famous casino players, such as Joseph Jagger, who is regarded as the most famous roulette player in the world.

Jagger is originally from Britain and he lived in the mid 19th century and was famous because he speculated that the outcome of the roulette wheels was not entirely based on chance but that the mechanical imbalances in the machinery would result in biases towards specific outcomes.

The roulette player became even more popular when he decided to test his theory in 1873 and hires six clerks to secretly record the numbers called on the roulette wheels at Monte Carlo. Jagger managed to prove that one of the wheels showed a clear bias because nine of the numbers occurred a lot more frequently than many others.

Jagger managed to make some money at Monte Carlo by following his theory and on his first daythere he made about £60,000 and his winnings added up to about £3 million. As more players decided to use the same technique to make money playing roulette, the casino soon realized what was going on and shifted the position of the roulette to prevent it from happening.

I think we are lucky because in online gambling this risk is unexistent because the results are given by a random number generator (RNG) so that everything stays fair.