Roulette records – who won the most?

There is another constant in life and particularly apt when it comes to casino gambling and this is the fact that the house always wins. This is certainly true when it comes to roulette. The game was designed originally to make money for the house when the 0 and the 00 numbers were introduced on the wheel to increase the odds for the house.

If you do not play with a roulette strategy in mind then, in the long run, the house will always win against you, taking back what it gives. Let’s look at some records set by players.

The biggest roulette wins

Some people were lucky enough to defy the casino odds and win big. Charles Wells is probably the first multi-million winner on a game when he won over 2 million francs in Monte Carlo in 1881. He was a small-time crook that struck dumb luck over 2 days.

The biggest win in modern times was by Pedro Bartelle who won $3.5 million on a single spin in Brazil in 2017. Bartelle won his money when he placed a single straight $35,000 bet on his lucky number 32 Red. Bartelle was already a millionaire so probably did not need his roulette wins.

The occurrence of a Single Number in Roulette

There are 36 standard numbers in a wheel. The odds in that the ball will land on any single number is 1/37 for single 0r French and 1/38 for American with the added 00. When the same number occurs time after time then that can be attributed to a great coincidence.

The longest vetted series of a single number landing multiple times was in El San Chuan in Puerto Rico on 9 June 1959. On a game of American Roulette, the number 10 occurred six times in a row. The probability of this outcome was calculated to be 0.000000000332122593261671.

Repetition of the Same Colour in Roulette

The longest recorded streak of a single color winning occurred in 1943 in an American casino when the color red occurred 32 times in a row. Depending on which version of the game this occurred on, the chances of a single color streak is even less than that of a single number occurring 6 times in a row.

We can calculate this probability in the French version as 0.000000000096886885 – and the odds of this happening is 10,321,314,387:1. This same calculation on an American roulette wheel is lower, yet a staggering 0.00000000004127100756 – with the odds of 24,230,084,485:1.

Marathon roulette croupier

Roulette records do not only depend on the outcome of the wheel. There are some records that also depend on the human element. The record for the croupier that spend the longest unbroken time spinning the wheel was set in Estonia in February 2005.

Intan Pragi of Estonia set the longest croupier marathon at the aptly named Olympic Casino in Tallin, Estonia. In the 48 hours of being a croupier, he spun the wheel 1,650 times. His attempt was witnessed by casino staff and the Estonian Gambling Operator Association to guarantee fair play.

The oldest croupier

The oldest croupier that is still employed is Joanna Dodd who was born on 15 January 1936 in the USA. She was 79 at the time of the record being set and was employed at the Flamingo Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. Although she preferred to work as a poker dealer it is sure that in her long and illustrious casino career that she must have spun the wheel at the roulette table at some stage of her life.

If she hasn’t, then she still certainly deserves an honorable mention in this list of records.

Something completely different

It is not only humans and the actual roulette wheel’s result that causes records to be set but it also seems that casino buildings can hold these prestigious record honors. The Casino du Liban in Beirut, Lebanon holds a Guinness World Record acknowledged record of housing the biggest interactive ceiling wheel in the world. The croupier and the punters play the game on a normal table layout but the roulette wheel is an interactive set up inside the dome ceiling.

This strange record can no doubt have a positive impact on Lebanese tourism as gamblers like to have novel experiences.

The exciting and entertaining game of roulette has many facets and there is plenty of opportunities to get lucky breaks and even set records while playing the game. Roulette records vary from the number of consecutive times a certain number or color has hit to the amount that has been won while playing the game.

There are also records related to the size of the wheel or endurance records set by the croupiers themselves. You might not be able to attempt some of these records at online casinos but you will experience entertainment by playing online nonetheless.