Roulette is one of the few games at a casino that can be played with little or no prior knowledge of the game necessary. Even a newly landed alien would pick up the concept after a spin of the wheel. There have been a few big winners since Blaize Pascal first came up with the concept in the 1600s, and here we document a few of history’s highest, and most interesting, rollers.

Sean Connery (1963) – $27,000

In 1963, fresh from filming the second James Bond film ‘From Russia With Love’, Sean Connery headed to a casino in Saint-Vincent, Italy. There he stopped by the roulette table and put an unknown amount of money on 17. It didn’t hit. He tried 17 again. It didn’t hit. He tried 17 a third time. This time it hit. Instead of walking away, Connery did something stupid – he put everything on 17 again. It hit again. Then he did something monumentally stupid – he put everything on 17 again. It hit, again, at the odds of 1 in 50,653. Connery walked away with $27,000, the equivalent of $220,967.48 today, presumably as thrilled and baffled as everyone else at the table.

Mike Ashley (2008) – $1,627,157.89

Continuing with the 17 theme, billionaire businessman and owner of Newcastle United football club Mike Ashley visited Fifty London casino in Mayfair, London in 2008. There he placed a ‘complete’ bet on all possible combinations of his lucky number 17, includes all splits, corners, streets and six-line bets that included 17, totaling a stake of $952,482.67. He needn’t have bothered going to all the effort – the ball landed on 17 itself, resulting in a profit of $1,627,157.89. All within 15 minutes.

Joseph Jagger (1873) – $375,000

Joseph Jagger was a clever man. In 1873, with a deep understanding of mechanics and engineering, he entered a casino in Monte Carlo and convinced six clerks there to write down the results of all roulette wheels in the casino for two weeks. Checking over these results, Jagger found that one of the wheels was slightly biased towards particular numbers – the pockets 7, 8, 9, 17, 18, 19, 22, 28 and 29 were hit a lot more than the others, illustrating to Jagger that this wheel was not completely random. Armed with this information, Jagger headed back to the casino and manipulated the biased wheel day after day, racking up win after win. The casino eventually cottoned on and removed the faulty wheel, but not before Jagger had pocketed $375,000, the equivalent of $7.8 million today. Jagger invested his winnings in a business and never entered a casino again.

Charles Wells (1891) – $382,500

Charles Wells was a small-time crook and gambler who, in 1891, went to the world-famous Monte Carlo Casino Resort and began to play roulette. There he experienced the winning streak to end all winning streaks, with sources proclaiming he managed a 23 out of 30 hit rate, running the table dry of funds and netting himself around 1 million francs (approximately $5 million in today’s money). But Wells wasn’t done. He went back days later and did it all again, legally according to the casino who by now were watching him like a hawk, ending up with something in the region of $10 million. No one knows what he did with his money, but he ended up dying flat broke in 1922, so we can hazard a guess.

Will You be Next?

So long as you don’t plan on taking the Joseph Jagger approach, playing Roulette can be a fun, relaxing way to spend a few minutes, with every chance you’ll join the 17 gang in the process. Choose between American, European or even Speed Roulette at Bitstarz today, and see what you can walk away with.