It’s no secret that most gamblers lose. The odds of gambling always favor the house and no matter where your luck is at, chances are that you’re going to be walking out of the casino with less money than you came in with.
However, winning at gambling is not some astronomical improbability. People win all the time, and sometimes they win really big. So here are some gambling success stories from people that have beaten the odds and earned millions.
In 1992, a man by the name of Archie Karas decided to visit Las Vegas, the capital of gambling, with only $50 in his pockets. Now Karas wasn’t really a lucky gambler since he had recently lost a couple of million in a poker game. But there’s a game for losers too, and it’s called Razz. This variation of poker rewards low poker hands instead of high ones.
Karas took a $10.000 loan and was quickly able to pay it back with interest. Later, he tried multiple other games and amassed the incredible $40 million over the course of 3 years. He was a big gambler, however, and although this story made him a legend, he eventually lost it all.
Peter Edwards
Bookies offer a chance for you to bet on almost anything. In the year 2000, Peter Edwards placed around $80 on his 3-year-old grandson, Harry, to make the Welsh National football team one day. And wouldn’t you know it, thirteen years later in a World Cup qualifying match against Belgium, Harry Edwards made his debut and also made his grandfather a very rich man. The odds that the bookies gave Peter were 2500:1, winning him around $200.000.
The MIT Students
When it comes to the game of Blackjack, you can easily have a huge advantage by counting cards. However, casino dealers know this too well and if they notice you are raising and lowering your bets at the right time, you might get asked to step away from the table.
About a decade ago, a few MIT students found a way past this by working as a team. Two of them would signal the third member when to bet big, while they served as a distraction and tried to break even, while keeping a low profile. In the end, they won millions.
The most improbable story we could find is of a woman named Patricia Demauro, who got extremely lucky at the game of craps in one of the Atlantic City’s casinos. She was able to avoid rolling a seven for 154 consecutive times, beating some truly astronomical odds and winning around a million dollars. Her hot streak lasted for more than four hours, thus breaking a world record in this category.
Sean Connery
If you’re a James Bond movie fan, you probably know a legendary scene from “Diamonds Are Forever” where sir Sean Connery portraying 007 places a bet on number 17 while at a roulette table. Of course, he wins in a movie, but there’s a story behind this particular number.
As a matter of fact, Sean Connery was playing at a roulette table in Italy one night in 1963 and placed a bet on that exact same number. He missed the first two times, and then hit 17 for three times in a row, winning himself 17 million Lire, which would translate into almost $200.000 today.
