Online and offline gambling is one of the most popular industries worldwide. Hundreds and thousands of people tune in to play their favourite games via their mobile devices or PCs or by arranging a night out with family and friends.
Whether the choice is to play at an online casino or make an effort to visit your local casino, one of the favourite games is roulette, with its iconic wheel and buzz that surrounds the roulette table. We created this article to explain why roulette remains so popular and list some of the biggest roulette winners, those lucky enough to have Lady Luck smile on them.
If you prefer playing at an online casino, the choice of roulette games is huge. Today you can play all the old favourites such as European, American and French roulette and a good selection of speed games, multi-ball and multi-wheel games, all at the touch of your fingertip.
The best online casinos will also offer live roulette games, which are about as close as you can walk through the doors of a land-based casino. In live online roulette games, your games are streamed to your screen from a physical casino or studio and hosted by a real live human, and all games occur in real-time, and you can chat with your fellow bettor’s in-between games.
Attractive and Convenient
Being able to play roulette at any time and from any location you happen to be (as long as you have an internet connection) appeals to many people. We all lead busy lives, so anything that offers us some entertainment when we choose is welcomed.
Roulette has always been a casino game that attracts glamour and glitz. Beautiful people are seen as the wheel is set spinning, and the ball is added to land hopefully on your winning number, odd or even, depending on your preference or both.
Because roulette is a game of chance that attracts many different types of people, including celebrities, it is always gratifying to find out about the big winners. Below we have listed some of those lucky roulette players who have struck lucky.
- First, let’s return to 1891 to visit a small-time crook called Charles Wells, who one night visited the iconic Monte Carlo Casino and began to play roulette. Some say he won 23 out of 30 consecutive spins, enjoying a lifetime winning streak. Breaking the bank, Charles Wells won close to a million Francs inspiring the song ‘The Man Who Broke the Bank of Monte Carlo’. Unfortunately, this massive win did not stop Mr Wells’s criminal activities. He eventually spent eight years in jail and died in 1922 in Paris, broke.
- Next on our list of big roulette winners is Ashley Revell. In 2004 Mr Revell decided it was time to do something drastic and withdrew all his savings and travelled to Las Vegas with the express intention of wagering it all on roulette. Not only did Mr Revell withdraw his life savings, but he also sold his home, car, watch and clothes, gathering every penny he could. The story of Mr Ravell grabbed the general public’s imagination, so much so that a TV mini-series was documenting the event. Wagering all that he had, Ashley Revell placed $135.000 on red and waited for the ball to land in a pocket, red seven finally. In just one spin, Mr Revell had doubled his money, walking away with $270k and used his winnings to start an online poker site called Poker UTD.
- Chris Boyd, a programmer, achieved similar results to Ashley Revell after choosing to wager $220.000, which he had collected over three years. After flying to Las Vegas, Mr Boyd found a casino willing to take such a big wager that ended up being Binion’s Horseshoe Club. Interestingly, Binion had a strict betting limit of $100.000 but decided to make this one exception. Since the casino only had American roulette wheels (with the double zero pockets), they also agreed to cover this pocket, meaning the game played out like it would if using a European wheel with the single zero. Mr Boyd bet all his $220.000 on red and won, and some say the ball landed on seven red – the same number and colour that Ashley Revell won on.
- In 2017 Pedro Grendene Bartelle, the owner of the third-largest footwear company in Latin America, placed $35.000 on a straight bet (number 32) and won himself $3.5 million.
- Even before he became 007, Sean Connery was a gambling buff. In 1963, he visited a casino in Saint-Vincent, Italy, where he made multiple bets on the same number, 17. When he left the table, he had gained a profit of over $27.000. His first bet on 17 got him nothing which was the same result on his second wager. On the third go, he was lucky and decided to let it ride and won again, and amazingly he let it ride and was lucky once more. The odds of hitting a win thrice in a row are 1 to 50653.
In Conclusion
Although roulette is a game of chance, some people have struck it lucky, and as the ever-popular game is one of chance, there is no saying that one day – it might just be you!
