MelissaA
Brenton
Shilpa Karhik
The First Person To Gamble & BREAK The Bank!
May 18th 2007 00:20
The very first person to 'break the bank' was a British engineer while visiting a Monte Carlo casino back in 1873.
Joseph Jaggers, an engineer and mechanic in Yorkshire, began to ponder the mechanics of roulette wheels. Were they really perfectly balanced? Were the numbers the ball landed on really random, or were some numbers more likely to come up than others?
Jaggers hired six clerks to record every number that came up on the roulette wheels in the 12 hours a day the casino was open. He then spent the next six days reviewing the results.
Finally he found the result he was searching for. Of the 6 casino wheels, 5 produced totally random results, while the last one did not. Nine numbers in particular kept showing more often than probability would have indicated.
On his first day of betting he won $70,000. By the 4th day he had amassed $300,000.
The casino, realising something was amiss, moved the wheels around that night. When Jaggers went to his usual table, the wheel was not the one he had been plying on previously.
On a losing street of high magnitude, he eventually realised that a small scratch he had become accustomed to observing on his wheel was no longer there. The truth finally dawned on him, and he set off looking for his winning wheel.
He ended up winning a sum of $450,000,and don't forget, this is 1873 we're talking about here!
The casino had one last trick up its sleeve. They had their manufacturer design a set of movable frets, the metal barriers that separate numbers on the wheel. Each night after closing, the frets would be moved to new locations around the wheel. Jaggers eventually went on a two-day losing streak.
Realising the circumstances he took off from Monte Carlo with his remaining $325,000 profit.
The song "The Man Who Broke The Bank At Monte Carlo" was written the year he died.
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