A Yorkshireman Takes on the Monte Carlo Casinos </br>The enduring success of roulette, is unquestionably partially due to it's rich and enduring history. The game of roulette has been with us for over 250 years, sufficient time to develop lots of systems, myths and stories. Few of those who seek a system or method that will make their fortune in the casinos have ever heard of Joseph Jagger. Incidentally it helps if you understand the game of roulette for this story, you can find them here if you don't know them - simple rules of rouletteHis background would have been a long way from the glittering casinos, he was in fact a mill engineer in a small town in Yorkshire. This is where his inspiration came from - an enduring passion in mechanics and specifically the roulette wheel, he was positive that most wheels would have imperfections that if identified could create a small bias in the numbers that were produced. In the European casinos, the house advantage is so slight that any small advantage could create huge winnings for a disciplined gambler.This is where for most, they would have given up - but Joseph Jagger made plans to put them into practice. By the year of 1873 he had hired a group of 6 clerks and made his way to Monte Carlo, an amazing journey from Yorkshire. His clerks were the 'clockers' who would analyse and record every spin on as many roulette wheels as possible in order to spot some bias. For the casinos who had simply never seen anything quite like this, they just let the clockers in to do their work.In 1875 the next phase of the plan was ready for action, the clockers though they had identified a single biased wheel that appeared to favour a certain group of numbers, meaning that certain roulette bets would have produced much better odds. Joseph didn't hang around and instantly started betting on that specific wheel. On his first attempt he won over $70,000 in a day, a huge sum in 1875. Of course the bias was not so obvious that it guaranteed winning consistently but as any gambler knows an advantage or 'edge' will soon grow if you play sensibly. On the next day Joseph Jagger won over $300,000 and his growing group of fans won also.By now Joseph Jagger had become a serious problem to the casinos who have been losing vast amounts of money. They weren't quite sure how he was winning but they did guess correctly that it had something to do with the wheels. That night they switched all the wheels around and the next day Jagger failed to notice that he was playing at a different wheel. Initially he began to lose heavily until he noticed the lack of familiar scratch marks on the wheel. He went in search of his 'biased' wheel and pretty soon started winning again. The Casino owners had now figured out the problem, the wheel was indeed biased due to some problem with the frets - the little dividers between the slots on a wheel. They replaced the offending equipment and removed the bias on that particular roulette wheel. With his advantage removed he then started to lose, but Jagger was no fool and soon stopped playing and cashed out his winnings. His profit was the equivalent of about five million dollars today, he paid up his friends and returned to Yorkshire to quit his job and invest his winnings.This amazing man was often touted as the 'man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo' although this is not quite true you have to admire him, in these days were we can login and play online roulette in minutes, even making it to Monte was quite an achievement. He arranged one of the largest roulette payouts ever made, and the engineer certainly caused the casinos quite a shock.
