From the man who sold everything he owned to place a bet on a single spin, to the gambler who holds the longest winning streak in history, even to the ones Lady Luck left behind, the world of gambling is filled with unimaginable stories.

Join us as we check out the highs and lows of our beloved, crazy, roller-coaster ride of risk!

We be rollin’, they be hatin’

Let’s ease ourselves in by chatting about an unlikely craps winner who beat the odds spectacularly.

On 23 May 2009, an elderly New Jersey woman by the name of Patricia Demauro rolled her way into the record books at the Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa in Atlantic City. For an unprecedented 4 hours and 18 minutes, she shot the dice 154 times without sevening out. (The average number is 8.)

Thankfully some eggheads have crunched the numbers so we can tell you that the odds of anyone pulling this off are 1.56 trillion to one. To put that in context, Stanford University professor Thomas Cover reckons you have a better chance of being hit by lightning (a million to 1) or winning the lottery (1 in 100 million) than repeating what Mrs. Demauro did!

What makes this feat even more astonishing is that Demauro had only played craps once before in her life. It’s said she pocketed a well-deserved $180,000.

With BitStarz there’s no need to jet off to Atlantic City to see if you can beat Mrs. Demauro’s winning streak. Click on the following links and play Craps Live or First Person Craps from the comfort of your home.

Lighting does strike twice!

Winning a jackpot is a once-in-a-lifetime event. Usually. World war II veteran Elmer Sherman bagged a stunning $4.6 million on slots at the Mirage in 1989 and went on to land a gargantuan $21.1 million at the Cannery Casino in 2005 at the age of 92.

Sherman hit the win both times on International Game Technology’s Megabucks. Apparently, the chances of winning a single top prize on this machine is less than 1 in 10 million. Let his achievement sink in, then.

It’s rumored that Sherman donated most of his second winnings to the relief effort for Hurricane Katrina.

Win the war but lose the battle (spectacularly)

Going down in the history books for the biggest loss ever is not what anyone wants to be known for. Sadly, that’s exactly how the world will remember businessman-turned-gambler Terrance Watanabe.

Watanabe sold the Oriental Trading Company to focus on his true passions – baccarat and blackjack. Unfortunately, it seems the games didn’t care for him in quite the same way.

Watanabe went on a gambling spree in Vegas in 2007 and his bets amounted to – wait for it – $835 million! Now if that wasn’t eye-watering enough, it’s been documented that he posted a loss that year of a staggering $127 million.

That’s almost enough to buy the 5,187-acre Vatuvara private island resort in Fiji. The cost for this spectacular piece of land? A cool $155m.

Betting the farm

Right, time for a change of pace. Have you ever felt reckless, or just brimming with self-confidence? Well, our next hero must’ve had a double serving of both. Back in 2004, 32-year-old Englishman Ashley Revell decided he would sell everything he owned and wager it all on a single bet.

In old money, his bet added up to $135,000 and while you’d think casinos would be knocking down his door, his negotiations with the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino actually fell through.

The Plaza Hotel and Casino took him up on the offer of a single bet on either red or black. The stars truly aligned for the ballsy Revell, who beat the odds and walked away $270,600 richer.

Now please don’t sell your stuff to emulate Revell, but if you do want to test your luck at roulette, check out our Table Games section.

Nothing left to lose

This brings us to another interesting story of risking it all. Ever heard of a little company called FedEx? They’re the guys who deliver billions of packages every year to the far-flung corners of the globe. But did you also know that the company is only in existence today because of blackjack? That’s right.

In 1973, founder Frederick Smith was deep in the ordure. His company was facing bankruptcy and a desperate Smith hit on a crazy notion. He’d fly to Las Vegas with the company’s last $5,000 and risk it all.

Considering that FedEx is still around today, you don’t need to be a brain surgeon to guess that Smith pulled it off. He turned his $5,000 into $27,000 which was enough to save the floundering company and in 1976, it turned its first profit. Job done!

Hitting the jackpot

We’ve heard about the biggest loser, but what about the biggest win in a single night? When it comes to table games, that title goes to Australian billionaire Kerry Packer.

In 1995, Packer decided to try baccarat and blackjack at the MGM Grand. Now the word is he wasn’t that familiar with the games but was betting $250,000 each round. He scooped somewhere in the region of $20 – 40 million in just 40 minutes.

As for the biggest slot win in history, that happened in 2003 at the Excalibur Casino in Las Vegas on the now infamous Megabucks machine. And the prize? An astounding $39,713,982.25 for an unnamed engineer from Los Angeles.

The biggest win we’ve ever had at BitStarz was a whopping €2.4 million and it landed on GameArt’s Azrabah Wishes slot!

Smarter than the rest

Our final story is a really interesting one. A player, known only by his crypto address 0xa169DF5ED3363cfC4c92ac96C6C5f2A42fCCBF85” won the equivalent of $3 million after he beat a popular Ethereum game known as Fomo3D.

Described as “a social experiment in greed”, Fomo3D works like this. Players continually buy keys as a counter counts down, and each purchase adds time to the clock.

The winner is the person who, when the clock runs out, was the last to buy a key. Our hero out-skilled everyone and used automated key-buying bots, and jammed up the ETH blockchain long enough to block out other players and clinch that final key.

The game’s inventor said, “It sounds like the winner carefully studied the behavior of the [bots] people had managing buy-ins for them. Watched their behavior. Spent days and lots of ETH testing ways to defeat them.”

They reckon the winner spent some 40 – 50 Ether on his way to bagging himself 10,000 ETH, which was half of the pot. In case you’re wondering, the remainder was distributed among the players and put back in the pot.

Are you ready to win big?

The biggest-ever crypto win here at BitStarz landed a mind-boggling 61.05 BTC. At the time (due to the price of Bitcoin) it was worth €318,000 but in today’s money, it would’ve been around €2.7 million!

The most money ever won with crypto at BitStarz was €354,240.04 at the time (or 11 Bitcoin). Fast-forward to today and that’s like €483,286 or $557,819.

We don’t know about you, but we’ve suddenly worked up an appetite. Time to gorge ourselves at the BitStarz buffet, then! Oh, but let’s make a pact not to do a Watanabe… that just wouldn’t be good.

Dream big and win bigger, people!