Some gamblers gain fame due to the extraordinary scale of their winnings while others draw notice because of their legendary winning streaks. There are gamblers who become famous because of their performance in high-profile tournaments and players whose reputation is traced to the strategies that they invent.
Join Grande Vegas online casino as we embark on a journey to learn about some of history's most famous gamblers.
King Henry VIII
King Henry VIII of England is best known for his 6 wives, two of whom he had beheaded and 2 he divorced which led to the establishment of the Church of England and a violent schism with the Pope and Catholicism.
In his day, Henry VIII was also noted for his lavish gambling habits. He was one of history's most passionate and high-stakes gamblers – with losses coming out of the royal treasury. Henry enjoyed a wide variety of games including card games, games of dice and backgammon. He was an early sports bettor, betting on sporting events like jousting and horse racing.
Henry VIII is, perhaps, best remembered for his massive losses, which came at the expense of the country's treasury. According to historical records, Henry lost amounts equivalent to millions in today's money. One famous—and shocking—story that illustrates Henry's recklessness involves a bet that he made with one of his courtiers in which he bet the bell tower at St. Paul's Cathedral on a single roll of the dice. Partridge then had the bell tower demolished and the bells melted down for scrap metal.
This famous royal gambler actually banned his soldiers and the lower classes from playing games of chance!
Casanova
Giocomo Casanova, the famous 18th century adventurer, author and seducer, was an avid gambler who used his winnings from Faro, Basset and lottery games to finance his travels and lifestyle. Casanova viewed gambling as a profession that would fund his extravagant, globe-trotting lifestyle. In his autobiography, he provided a vivid, firsthand account of the high-stakes world of 18th-century European gambling houses and his own complex relationship with chance.
Throughout his life, Casanova's primary source of wealth was his winnings from the gambling tables. His life was a constant swing between extreme wealth and dire poverty, often determined by a run of luck. He would arrive in a city with substantial funds, gamble them away or multiply them, and then be forced to reinvent himself to recoup his losses. Casanova was able to use his winnings to maintain the lavish lifestyle required to move in aristocratic circles and finance his travels, his fine clothes, his gastronomic tastes and, of course, his famous romantic pursuits.
Casanova's memoirs are remarkably candid about his gambling activities. He admitted to using card tricks and to cheating. For Casanova, thrill and risk were as important as the money.
Charlie Wells
The phrase "break the bank" is said to have originated in Monte Carlo in the 1891 when English gambler Charles Wells won so much at Monte Carlo roulette tables that the casino had to close the tables several times because they had run out of cash.
Monte Carlo casinos traditionally started each day with a cash reserve of 100,000 francs – "the bank." In 1891, Wells visited the casino in July and, over the course of several sessions, won over a million francs. His success was astonishingly consistent. He was reported to have won 23 out of 30 spins at one table and, in a legendary run, successfully bet on the number 5 on five consecutive turns of the wheel.
When questioned, Wells claimed he had perfected an "infallible system" for winning. Casino security was unable to find evidence that he had cheated, though that was the general assumption. Another theory suggests that Wells' wins were a carefully orchestrated publicity stunt by the casino management to drum up new business.
During subsequent gambling sessions, Wells lost his money and he died poor in London and was buried in a pauper's grave.
Edward Thorp
Edward Thorp was a mathematics professor who invented the strategy of card counting, thus proving that blackjack is beatable.
Before tackling blackjack, Thorp teamed up with renowned mathematician Claude Shannon (the "father of information theory") to find a mathematical edge in roulette. They invented the first wearable computer (early 1960s) which was concealed in a shoe and used to calculate the predicted landing sector of the roulette ball based on its initial speed and position to give them a significant, verifiable edge over the house.
He then focused on applying his academic expertise in probability and statistics to blackjack, with the goal of transforming blackjack from a game of chance into a solvable mathematical puzzle. Thorp used the IBM 704 mainframe computer—one of the earliest computers to perform millions of simulations which he used to mathematically prove that the casino's house advantage in blackjack could be overcome if the player was able to keep track of the cards already dealt.
Thorp's "Ten-Count system" demonstrated that a deck rich in high-value cards (10s and Aces) would favor the player while a deck rich in low-value cards would favor the dealer. In 1962, Thorp published Beat the Dealer: A Winning Strategy for the Game of Twenty-One, where he revealed his mathematical proof and strategy to the public. The book shot up to the top of the New York Times best-seller list and forced Las Vegas casinos to make necessary changes to combat the influx of card-counters.
Thorp went on to enjoy a successful career in the stock market, becoming a pioneer in the field of quantitative finance.
