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Ashley Revell might be
the luckiest roulette player in the
world, or he might be the craziest
roulette player in the world. He might
possibly be a combination of the two.
But one thing is for sure: Ashley Revell
is a gambler.
In 2004, Ashley
Revell, then age 32, of Kent, England,
sold everything he owned. "Everything"
means every single thing - save one pair
of pants and one pair of underwear. He
then bought an airplane ticket to Las
Vegas, and proceeded to the Plaza Hotel
and Casino. Wearing a borrowed jacket,
he traded in his entire net worth -
$135,300 - for chips, went to the
roulette table, and placed all the chips
on Red.
The bet was placed; the
wheel spun around; the wheel slowed
down. Ashley held his breath,
the crowd held its breath, and the ball
landed on . . . Red 7. In one spin of
the roulette wheel,
Ashley had doubled his money to
$270,600.
Ashley was then asked if he would like
to try to double his money again. In a
moment of sanity, he replied, "No thanks."
He politely tipped the croupier $600,
and walked away with his $270,000.
After the big win at roulette, Ashley
said, "That was just the most amazing
experience I have ever had in my life.
The first thing I am going to do is buy
some new clothes."
The final word belongs to Ashley
Revell's father, who said "He shouldn't
have done it. He's a naughty boy."
JOSEPH JAGGERSIn 1873, the
Englishman Joseph Jaggers made the
first famous
biased wheel attack against the
Monte Carlo casino. His background
was in engineering, working at a
cotton mill in Yorkshire. This
mechanical background made him
wonder whether roulette wheels were
perfectly balanced or just as
subject to wear and tear as his
cotton mills. His hunch was that
there would be a natural tendency to
deviate from perfect outcomes.
To
investigate his theory, Jaggers
recruited a team of six clerks to
clock the six roulette wheels at the
Monte Carlo casino. For 6 days
straight, the team of clerks
recorded every roulette result.
Jaggers himself would then subject
the results to statistical testing
to check whether the results were
truly prefect and random.
Five of the
six roulette wheels were close to
random but a sixth wheel showed
significant bias. A string of nine
numbers, closely connected on the
wheel were showing up far more often
than a random wheel would suggest.
This opened the opportunity for
Joseph Jaggers to make his biased
wheel attack. By betting only on the
numbers showing bias, Jaggers made
$70,000 on his first day. He continued
his attack until the fourth day at which
time he had amassed a profit of
$300,000.
Alarmed and suspicious of the consistent
luck of Jaggers, the Monte Carlo casino
played back. Overnight, the roulette
wheels were all switched around. So when
Joseph Jaggers played at his usual table
the next day, he was in fact up against
a different wheel.
The Monte Carlo casino?s trap worked.
Joseph Jaggers proceeded to lose almost
his entire winnings over the day until
he noticed that an identifying scratch
on his biased wheel had disappeared.
Checking the other wheels he found his
biased wheel again. With a vengeance
Jaggers then proceeded to win $450,000,
a truly massive sum for 1873!
Again the Monte Carlo casino set another
trap. They called for the master
roulette manufacturer to be brought to
the casino. The biased wheel was then
modified with movable frets so that they
could be moved to new positions every
night. While this did not remove the
inherent bias, it did make it impossible
to identify.
The trap again worked for a time. Joseph
Jaggers went on a two day losing streak.
Now, he bowed adieu and walked away from
the table calling it quits but with
$325,000 profit still in his pocket!
Jaggers never played roulette again but
lived in luxury and ease from his highly
successful
biased wheel attack.
The song "The Man Who Broke The Bank At
Monte Carlo" was written the year he
died.
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