Roulette has a deep history in casino games and offers good odds of 35:1, but even with these odds, most do not seem to win a lot in roulette. However, that doesn’t mean that no one ever wins. Most believe roulette to be a game of luck and chance, but is that true?
While luck plays an essential factor in gambling, especially at the Roulette table, does that mean there is no way to nudge that luck toward yourself? Well, a college professor thought about doing just that.
Between 1964 to 969, a college professor won eight million dollars at roulette. Was it by luck, or were there other factors at play? Read on to find out.
What Are the Odds of Winning in Roulette?
Before we go into how and what the college professor did to win eight million dollars, we first need to understand how amazing it is to win eight million dollars in roulette.
A roulette wheel has 37 numbers; 18 red numbers, 18 black numbers, and one green number. The probability of you winning and the odds you get depend on your bet type.
If you bet on a single number, your odds are one to 36. If you bet on even or odd numbers, your odds are one to 19. The greater the odds, the lesser the payout.
So, your chance of winning on a single bet is 0.03% or less. Statistically speaking, less than 13% of roulette players win.
A college professor from the University of Heidelberg was one o them, who won eight million dollars over five years, from 1964 to 1969.
Who is the Professor?
It turned heads when a college professor won eight million dollars at roulette, and everyone wanted to know who he was.
The college professor was Richard Jarecki, a doctor born in 1931 in Germany. Richard Jarecki was one of the few who escaped Nazi Germany and moved to the United States in the early 1940s.
Richard Jarecki graduated from Duke University and earned his medical degree from Heidelberg University in his home country. He later moved back to Germany after getting married and continued his academic life.
In the mid-1960s, Jarecki started to frequent casinos around Europe. Jarecki had a knack for mathematics and wanted to use his skill to win big.
While Jarecki began with card games like blackjack, he soon switched to roulette, a game he thought he could beat.
Jarecki knew that European roulette has a house edge of 2.7% and American Roulette has a house edge of 5.26% and kept the information into account when he made his move. It soon became news when the college professor won eight million dollars at roulette.
How Did He Do it?
Roulette is a game that consists of a spinning wheel and a ball. The wheel has pockets that are colored and numbered, and the players bet on where the ball will land once the wheel stops.
Unlike card games, roulette relies on the mechanics of the wheel, and for someone skilled in mathematics, like Richard Jarecki, roulette was an opportunity.
Jarecki and his wife, Carol, along with some hired help, frequented different casinos and wrote down the results of thousands of spins on different roulette tables.
Once the data was collected, Jarecki used his mathematic knowledge to calculate the probabilities of these tables, finding out that some of these tables were more likely to land on specific numbers and colors.
Additionally, he calculated which number the ball would land on a roulette table based on where it landed previously. The tables he chose were flawed and followed a specific sequence.
Once the calculations were completed, Richard and Carol Jarecki loaned $25,000 and started robbing casinos for everything they had.
Jarecki told Sydney Morning in 1969 that he experimented with a rough outline, saying he could determine the following likely winning number based on the previous three rounds.
The Jarecki’s did not stay at one casino, but their scheme included different casinos in Germany, Italy, Monte Carlo, and Las Vegas. He collected data from these casinos and then robbed them for thousands. This entire process would take him five years, but it was well worth it.
Soon, the couple collected $625,000 from their casino roulette hunt. If the money was converted in today’s time, taking into account the inflation, the college professor won eight million dollars at roulette over five years.
The casinos soon saw him as a worthy enemy and tried all sorts of things to confuse him, including switching the tables. Still, Jarecki had memorized the minute differences between the roulette tables. Some casinos even tried to ban him from entering.
The casinos were losing money, and they needed to do something. The casinos started to introduce digitized tables.
However, Jarecki did not plan to continue the scheme for long and soon stopped once he was happy with his income.
What Happened to Richard Jarecki?
After filling his pockets, Jarecki moved to the United States in the mid-seventies and became a commodities trader. However, Jarecki did not give up gambling completely. He enjoyed playing blackjack and roulette and often visited Atlantic City and Las Vegas casinos.
The college professor won eight million dollars at Rulette and lived a good life. He passed away in 2018 at 86, leaving behind his wife, a son, two daughters, and six grandchildren.
To Sum Up
A college professor won eight million dollars at roulette, and everyone wanted to know the secret. However, it is probably not possible for such a thing to repeat itself. With the invention of digitalized Roulette tables that use programmed software, it has become much more difficult to calculate the probabilities.
However, there is no telling what might happen. Many did not imagine someone could strategize winning at a Roulette table, but Richard Jarecki proved them wrong. Hopefully, you are inspired by the fact that a college professor won eight million dollars at roulette, and maybe you can too.
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