Joseph Hobson Jagger (1830–1892) was a British engineer, known as "The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo" (a song composed and written for Jagger).
How did he manage that?
In 1873, Jagger hired six clerks to secretly record the outcomes of the six roulette wheels at the Beaux-Arts Casino at Monte Carlo, Monaco. He discovered that one of the six wheels showed a clear bias, in that nine of the numbers (7, 8, 9, 17, 18, 19, 22, 28 and 29) occurred more frequently than the others. He therefore placed his bets and quickly won a considerable amount of money, £14,000 (equivalent to around 50 times that amount, or £700,000 in 2005). Over the next three days, Jagger gained £60,000 in earnings with other gamblers. In response the casino rearranged the wheels, which threw Jagger into confusion. After a losing streak, Jagger finally recalled that a scratch he noted on the biased wheel wasn't present. Looking for this telltale mark, Jagger was able to locate his preferred wheel and resumed winning. Counterattacking again, the casino moved the metal dividers between numbers around daily. Over the next two days Jagger began to lose and he finally gave up. But he took his remaining earnings, two million francs, then about £65,000 (around £3,250,000 in 2005), and left Monte Carlo never to return.
Do you see the effect of a biased wheel? The same effect goes to throwing a die. A perfect 6-sided die shows a fair chance of 1 - 6, i.e. 1 in 6 chance.
Warning: this occured in the old times; with the modern machines, one is never possible to beat the casinos. Plus, the casino CCTV watches one's every move. Do you think one can easily and hopefully safely walk out of the casino? The golden rule is NEVER EVER GAMBLE!
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