The Professor Who Beat Roulette
About 50 years ago in the vicinity of the Italian Riviera, a renowned researching managed to beat the odds, stumped casino owners and walk away with a fortune.
Dr Richard Jarecki who was 38 at the time had placed a bet of $100,000 on a single spin of the wheel, which silenced the whole room. The onlookers could not believe his luck and were in awe. Could he really be this lucky?
What they did not know was that he had not left it up to chance. He had, prior to making the bet, spent many hours and days studying to devise an ingenious method of winning, which brought to his windfall victory on that one night.
Nazi Germany to New Jersey
Dr Jarecki was born into a Jewish family in Germany in 1931 in the midst of the global chaos. The aftermath of World War I left Germany in the throes of economic hardship. The tides were even higher for Jarecki and his family, being Jewish. His parents had been stripped of everything they posses and were forced to flee to New Jersey, America, in search of a better life.
Once landed in New Jersey, Jarecki who always had the wit and intelligence and was gifted with a mind who could retain numbers and statistics, took great pleasure in “habitually winning money” from his friends. He, later on, pursued medicine in order to please his father, subsequently gained fame as one of the world’s renowned medical researchers.
Though his success in the medical research field is undeniable, many did not know of his harboured secret and his true passion, which can be found in the halls of the casino.
The Strategy
For Jarecki, it wasn’t much about the money, it was to satisfy himself in beating a machine.
Sometime in the 1960s, he developed an obsession with roulette and was convinced that the roulette machine could be defeated by scientific calculation and analysis. As he discovered that the machines would go untouched for many years, until it wears out, he had devised his suspicious that the tiny dents and chips which would occur over the years, has a tendency of steering the tiny ball onto certain numbers more frequently than randomosity prescribed.
From there, he had taken his time to make observations, recording the spins and analysing the data for statistical abnormalities. “I [experimented] until I had a rough outline of a system based on the previous winning numbers,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald in 1969. “If numbers 1, 2, and 3 won the last 3 rounds, [I could determine] what was most likely to win the next 3.”
After months of studying, he took with him an amount of $100 and was prepared to challenge the roulette machine with his well-analysed data.
After making his fame as a medical researcher, he had moved back to Germany, where he had to pursue not only his medical career but his “hobby” in the casinos.
With his wife, the pair had recruited a team of 8 players to scout roulette wheels across Europe to record the same data for his analysis. When the data and strategy were ready, he had made his strikes after securing a loan from financiers, securing a victory of approximately £625,000.
Of course, he would not stop there, over the years he had the time and again continue with his strategy in beating the wheels and halting the casino owners – to a point where he was banned for 15 days by a casino owner for ‘being too good’. He had cost the casino so much that San Remo Casino had given up and replaced all 24 of its roulette wheels at a steep cost, all to prevent Jarecki from returning.
In total, Jarecki reported having made a total of $1,250,000 (that’s $8,000,000 today!) throughout 1964 – 1969.
In 1973, he eventually returned to New Jersey partnered with his brother to begin his career as a commodities broker, which, needless to say, multiplied his fortune in a great sum.
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