If you are a casino gambling fan, then you have probably read all about some of the best poker players, card counters and many of the legends of the gambling world. What you may not ever have realized is that one player in particular, Dr. Richard Jarecki, had a system to beat Roulette, which is one of the games with the highest house edge. Sadly, Dr. Jarecki passes away recently at the age of 86, but this gives us a chance to speak about his time being a casino legend.
Dr. Jarecki was born in Germany, and as you may have already figured out, he was in fact a trained doctor. He wasn’t one of these people who started out in gambling and stayed in it – he was a very smart man who studied to be a doctor, but had a love of casino games. He was a student of the casino, and his particular love became roulette. Of all the games to choose, roulette gives players some of the worst odds of winning. However, in the 1960s and 1970s, Dr. Jarecki made his way across Europe taking frustrated casinos for millions of dollars.
Roulette, as you may know, is more of a game of luck than that of skill. Players place bets on numbers from 1-36 (plus a zero) and hope that the ball spinning on the wheel falls in their lucky spot. There aren’t many betting systems to speak of when it comes to roulette, but that didn’t stop Jarecki from figuring out a way to beat the game.
Now, you have to remember that there are a couple of items in play that can cause a player to think they can find a system. There is a human dealer, who spins the wheel and the ball to start each game. Also, the wheel and ball are not digital, so they possess physical characteristics that can be affected externally. What Jarecki started to do was track each spin – the speed of the wheel, the inconsistencies of the speed when spinning, etc. – and after observing wheels for up to 10,000 spins, he was able to track a zone in which the ball would drop if it entered the wheel at a certain point.
This seemed flawless – there was really no way for the casino to stop him from betting (he wasn’t himself changing the gameplay, he was just making a VERY educated guess). However, after being taken for well into the seven-figure range, casinos started to try to make it more difficult for Jarecki to take advantage. The casinos would switch dealers more often, with each having their own style, but he was able to figure that out as well. Some casinos switched the locations of the different wheels, but Jarecki had also memorized certain characteristics about each wheel (nicks, scratches etc.) so he was able to track the location of his favorite wheels.
Finally, Jarecki and his wife move on from the European casinos and left for the United States. It was there that he started to become legendary in the tournament world, winning roulette event after event and making a lot of money along the way. He and is wife finally made their way to Manilla where he spent the majority of the remainder of his life.
Jarecki will long be remembered in the gambling world for his prowess in roulette, although there is no doubt that many casino owners are happy that he won’t be taking their money anymore. Jarecki didn’t write a book about his strategy but he is referenced in other authors’ works, and he will forever be remembered as the man who took on roulette and won.
