There are lots of stories from down the ages about massive casino wins, unbeatable systems and incredible scams. The vast majority of the are completely false or at least widely exaggerated tales which have been changed over the years to sound more dramatic. They’re great fun to read especially when you’re waiting to play or as I sit at home to login to my favourite Dublin live online Casino on a Saturday night. Some we’re not even sure ever happened at all, take for instance the famous story of Joseph Jagger. However there’s one tale which is absolutely true and happened in the 1980s, the main character at the center of this story was a very rich car salesman who won a fortune in Atlantic City.
This is the amazing tale of Billy Walters. The guy was a used car salesman as well as a known big hitter in Las Vegas who frequently won and lost enormous quantities of money. In 1986 Billy Walters hit the casinos in Atlantic City on roulette in a big way. Only this time he was actually doing something different … a lot different. Just What Billy Walters did was to make a proposition certainly never seen or heard before in Atlantic City. He offered to deposit a sum assumed to be $2 million with a casino in return for them increasing their highest wagers on roulette. A traditional casino called the Golden Nugget accepted the offer and Billy travelled in from Las Vegas in order to start his date with destiny.
Doing this is precisely where Walters’ strategies varied drastically he bet $2,000 for each number on five numbers and certainly never once changed his bet. What initially struck the casino workers as being strange was actually that Walters persisted on playing on double zero roulette instead of single zero. It is actually here where the advantage for the house substantially increases to a whopping 5.26 per cent. Instead of worrying that they were being set up, the casino gaming staff just took Walters as another impetuous punter who really did not have an idea about exactly what he was doing. After all they knew full well about his track record for losing big sums of money in Las Vegas, which meant that they were more than happy to accommodate him. Walters played five numbers– 7, 10, 20, 27 and 36. For the benefit of European readers, 7 and 20 and 10 and 27 are situated alongside each other on a double zero American wheel. Walters and an affiliate of his bet hour after hour and it was pretty soon apparent to all present that the casino administration was worried.
A succession of worried telephone calls and huddled meetings revealed to anyone that the big managers at the Golden Nugget were actually far from happy. On and on, Walters relentlessly played the same figures. Once in a while he would opt for a break and his associate would hold the fort and carry on with the action. Each and every time that Walters struck one of his five numbers, the winnings was $70,000 less the $8,000 that he sacrificed on the other four numbers, leaving behind him with a win of $62,000. With action totalling $10,000 per spin, Walter’s actual expectation per spin was minus $526 therefore it was actually it’s not surprising that the casino embraced his activity initially. But after nearly fourty hours of continual play, and Walters being literally $4 million ahead, the casino moguls put an end to the game. They also attempted to circulate tales in the local papers that Walters had merely gotten on a streak. The reality was that this wasn’t down to good fortune and the casino management realised it. All of a sudden they understood exactly why Walters had not played on the much better single zero wheels. It really wasn’t because he was a dummy but because there was something amiss with the wheel in which he had been playing on. Billy Walters was ruthlessly exploiting what is referred to as a biased wheel, and he was exploiting it to the full. A biased wheel is one where the near randomness of the result has been disrupted, for whatever reason. This can possibly be done artificially by an individual but most of the time it is brought on by constant repetitive wear and tear. But the false information which was put out by the casino bosses was simply another illustration of them not wanting the truth to be known. Even the best roulette wheels on the planet are susceptible to deterioration.
So exactly why did the casino stand for Walters’ action for so long before calling time? Well, initially, no one had actually previously been hit to that extent before with biased wheel play. Secondary, Walters’ history as being a known big hitter and a losing casino player to boot provided him the ideal cover for his coup. When it became obvious precisely what was occurring it was far too late.
As it later turned out, Walters had a crew of wheel clockers touring the casinos in Atlantic City performing nothing else but taking down numbers. He already had the information at his disposal and all he needed to know was the best ways to interpret it accurately to see if a bias existed. This process of identifying real bias and not imagined sequences is an area that’s not well understood by many casino executives and certainly not back in the mid-1980s.
Source: http://www.playonline-roulette.com/casino/the-martingale-system-a-simulator/
