Professional roulette players and successful roulette attacks are not fiction. They do exists and there are very well documented. Here we will take a look at 7 high stakes roulette players, their great wins and bad losses.
Roulette High rollers with huge wins
Mike Ashley
Mike Ashely is the owner of the football club Newcastle United and his net-worth is over $3 billions. In the year 2008 he was able to live the most outstanding fifteen minutes playing roulette. At the Fifty London casino in Mayfair, he placed a “complete maximum” roulette bet on number 17. This mean that he bet straight up on 17, on its 4 splits (16-17, 14-17, 17-18, 17-20), its 4 corners, the second dozen, Black, Low and Odd. This was a monster bet that won him £1.3 million. After the game he simply left after appreciating the croupier while spectators who were excited applauded him.
Ashley Revell
Ashley Revell is a London man who took the bull by the horn. Luckily, it paid off for him and made him richer. He actually took what could be referred to as a lifetime gamble when he gathered together all his possession which included most of his clothes and his house. After selling all of these, he was able to raise $135,300. He proceeded with this whole sum to the roulette table and placed a roulette color bet, selecting red to be his lucky color. Fortunately for him, the ball landed in a red pocket on the number 7. He was able to win a total sum of $270,600, out of which he tipped the croupier with $600, thanked him and went out with the rest.
Charlie Wells
Charlie Wells was able to successfully break the bank at the Monte Carlo Casino over 100 yrears ago, in 1892. He was able to get lucky when he was on a particular roulette table, without taking a break for about 11 hours. He forced the casino to restock his chips more than 10 times. After the 11 hours on the roulette table, he was able to win $1,000,000 from just $4,000. While a person would be considered lucky for winning $1,000,000 from $4,000 in the current world, the value of this money in the year 1892 was however worth much more than it is worth presently. To give a glimpse into the amount he won, just 25 years before he won the money, Russia sold the state of Alaska for $7,200,000 in 1867.
Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo
Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo was a record producer who was not very successful in producing music. His passion for mathematics and roulette however paid him more than his producer job. He went round Madrid looking for roulette wheels that were biased. He got fortunate when he found 1 in Casino de Madrid. From the casino, he was able to attain more than $1,000,000. Without any reason however, he was banned. He subsequently sued the casino to court. He got a favorable judgment with the judge charging to casino to go and repair their wheels.
Roulette High Rollers who lost big
Gambling can go out of hand. And when the losses start coming it’s hard to stop. Like someone said: ‘The two toughest things to do at roulette is to walk when you are winning and to walk when you are losing.’ And there is not long before the situation is out of hand. But except the horror stories there also high net worth players who are ready to win and lose big; and they are a totally different story. $100.000 to them is what like a $100 bill to you.
Frank Sarakakis
Frank Sarakakis is a tycoon in the automobile industry in Greece. In the year 1994, within the period of a year, he lost a total of £8,000,000 playing roulette in London at Crockfords. Previously he had also lost about £8,000,000 at Ritz Casino, in the year 1988. This makes a total of £16,000,000 lost on the roulette table.
Robert Maxwell
Robert Maxwell is a man who lived a luxurious lifestyle. He was a tycoon in the media sector. He lost big and very quickly in London while trying his luck on roulette in the Ambassadeurs casino. He ended up losing £1,500,000 in a period that was not up to a total of 3 minutes. He lost the sum from playing at the same time at multiple roulette tables. If you should decide to find the amount he lost every second and minute within that time, it gives us an average of £8,000 per second and £500,000 per minute.
Faoud-al-Zayat
Faoud-al-Zayat seemed not to have any luck with the roulette table whatsoever. Within 15 minutes, he lost £500,000 to Aspinall’s Club casino in London while playing roulette. He subsequent played with another £500,000 and lost that also. Probably with the aim of winning back his £1,000,000 and winning at least £250,000, he used another £1,250,000. He then (surprise!) bet and lost that money too. He owed the Aspinall’s casino over £3,000,000 within a few years.
The casino, Club Ltd., sued Al-Zayat in 2006. In subsequent court filings, it came to light that he had wagered 91.5 million pounds at Aspinall’s from 1994 through 2006, losing 23.2 million pounds. However justice Nigel Teare in 2008 cleared Al-Zayat of his unpaid losses, ruling Aspinall’s violated U.K. laws that prohibit casinos from extending credit to indebted gamblers.