On my niece’s 21st birthday in 1997, My wife and I reluctantly went on a 7-hour casino cruise along with all the rest of the family and friends. It was her wish to make it a memorable time.

My wife was the big gambler in our family. She played bingo with our neighbor at a Catholic church once a month. She was a photographer for a “For Sale” ads magazine and worked full time.

I was an auto body mechanic 5 1/2 days a week for years, and I’m very proud of every job I did. We both made decent money, but it seemed we never had much money. We weren’t drinkers. No drugs. Not crazy with our house or furniture. We did have a young daughter, and I’m sure we spent more on her than we should have… But she was our miracle!

Anyway… We had allowed ourselves $25 each to play the slot machines they had on board. Needless to say, we went through that pretty quickly after our dinner and spent the rest of the cruise walking around and taking in the sights. Neither of us had ever been in any casino before. The lights and the noises were exciting and surprising.

On one level they had table games. Blackjack, Craps tables, and Roulette! I did know how to play Blackjack. Many of my family members play “21” though not for money. I knew nothing about Craps, and I still don’t. I was fascinated with the Roulette wheel, and the way people were betting on it. Most picked particular numbers and put a single chip on them. If a number they chose was spun, they won 35 to 1! I thought that was pretty high.

Another possible bet was to bet the ball would land on either a red or black space. There were 38 numbers altogether. 16 red and 16 black spaces and also two areas were Green. They were an O and a double 00 located on opposite ends of the wheel. If the Green 0 or double 00s were spun , or EVERYONE lost unless they happened to bet on them directly.

It was curious to me that some people would bet $5 on a particular color, let’s say red for this example. If the next spin produced a black space. As a result, they would bet twice their original bet on red again, or $10. These men would keep doing this, doubling the bet $5, $10, $20, $40, $80, until eventually a red space would be spun and he would win.

I’m no math whiz, but I thought about it for a bit and realized that all the man ever won were the original $5 they lost on the first bet. I figured it was pretty crazy to risk so much money only to win $5, but I thought it was pretty safe because the odds are pretty good that out of a 50/50 chance of red or black being spun, it couldn’t be the same color too many times in a row.

My wife was more interested in the music and karaoke happening where the rest of the birthday crowd were enjoying themselves, but I decided to watch and learn a little longer. It often took several spins, but overall the system the doubler had devised was making a few bucks.

All roulette games have a minimum and a maximum bet amount. It is different at all casinos. Most casinos in cities like Atlantic City, Vegas, Biloxi, etc. there is a $5 minimum and a $5,000 max. On this little boat, there was a $5 min. But only a $200 max. bid. It didn’t take too long before the double became a looser. He was with his 4th double, or $5, $10, $20, $40, and a Green 00 was spun. It was a loss for him and everyone else, so he had to bet $80 now. The next spin was black again, and he lost again. He was distraught, but he bet $160 on red. It had to come out with the next spin. It had been black for five turns! The table was silent when the dealer called out “28 BLACK”!

The man lost a total of $315 on that one series of 6 bets altogether. I thought he was insane. Now if he had won his bet of $160 on his 6th bet he would get his $160 back and win another $160. Sounds good but add the chances, 5, 10, 20, 40, and 80, you get $155 that he lost. So if you do the math, he risked $315 to win $5, but he lost that well so he lost the entire $315.

I was so happy to get home that night, especially since the seas got pretty crazy by the time we docked. Lots of rather green looking people. But in the next few weeks and then months that passed I could not get the game out of my mind. I was almost like an addict of some sort. I knew that doubling your bet until you won just would not work for very long before you lost. Winning only $5 at a time when you did finally win would mean you would have to win so very many times to cover one time you lost six times in a row. His logic was along the right lines I thought. I decided to try tripling a losing bet and see how that would go once I found out that in the big casinos the maximum bid was $5,000. That’s huge compared to the $200 on the boat.

I discussed my idea with my wife who of course thought I had been in the paint booth at work too long. Me… Gambling… Thousands of $. So she found a little hand held battery operated Roulette game and bought two boxes of poker chips. She made a mock table with a poster board. We used a clear glass votive candle holder as the marker and let our daughter be the dealer.

To our delight, we worked the system with different adjustments until we were regularly winning every chip in the bank every time we played. Many times our bets exceeded Thousands of dollars, and it was scary, even though it was play money. We devised ways to be able to bid longer but without skipping bets or reducing them. We played every day for months, and in May of 1998, we decided to put together all the cash we could and take a chance of a lifetime. We emptied our pathetic savings account, cashed in insurance policies, and our daughter’s savings bonds. With all that and both our paychecks, we had just under $13,000.

My wife’s cousin had a computer, and she had her search for casinos. The closest to us was Biloxi, Mississippi. So right after work on a Friday night, we hit the road. We arrived at the little motel my wife had reserved in the wee hours of the morning. After a relatively short sleep, we got out our chips, our paper table, and little Roulette game and played for a few hours. We finally got up the nerve to try our system about 9:00 that night. When we sat down and bought in $12,000 chips the staff was all over us it was So sweet. Offering free rooms and dinner. Of course all the drinks we wanted. I don’t think they were pleased that we just drank soda.

I hope you have a picture of what happened so far. I won’t bore you anymore with lots of details. I will just tell you that we played our game, stuck to the system, and in less than 2 hours we had won more than $12,000! And we didn’t play the entire time. We’d play 15 or 20 minutes, and then one of us would make an excuse to leave the game for a while. Hungry, bathroom break, tired, play slots for a while. We would cash in and go to the restrooms to count our chips. I didn’t want to count out there where I knew they had cameras everywhere. I didn’t want them to know how much we had won. They could throw us out! The boy was I naive.

We did finally actually get dinner… for Free, by the way. Then we went to our Free fancy marble and brass room to count our money, and rest a bit. We fell asleep due to lack of sleep the night before and the exhaustion of the stress, fear, and exhilaration of our gambling at the tables.

After we woke up Sunday morning, we went to the first motel we had rented and checked out. Then Back to the Grand Casino in Biloxi. It was about noon by then, and we headed for the tables. I sat down at a slot machine and fed it a $100 bill. Just because I could, and it was something I had never done before. My wife’s eyes were like red ping pong balls as the color drained from her face. This was certainly not like me at all. But when these big, heavy, and very loud tokens started filling up my tray she sat down and dug a bill from her purse.

We never made it back to the tables that the first trip. We were having a blast with the slot machines, and we won another couple of thousand dollars. Then it was time to cash out, check out, and head for home. We both had to work the next day.

I had been at the same place for more than 16 years which made it even harder to quit my job, but we both did. We thought that if we did so well in Biloxi… How good could it be in Vegas! So we made the necessary arrangements and off we went to the bright lights in the desert. I couldn’t believe there were slot machines in the airport! We had to get a map to be able to navigate from our room to the casino, or the restaurant’s, bathrooms, or anything.

We began to play. We won and won, and then we lost a good little bit. I couldn’t believe it. I thought we must have a way to control the outcome of the wheel. Just like in the old movies. We won back our losses, and I felt much better. I stopped playing for a while and just let my wife play the chips. There seemed to be something going on, but I couldn’t figure it out. Then my wife took another hit for over $3,000. I knew from the fear on her face she was reluctant to make the next bet. How was this happening? Why were we now losing so many times?

She made her next bet, and on a hunch of what I thought might be happening, I made a side bet. She lost nearly $10,000 on her bet, but I won $17,500 on mine. She lost it, not knowing what I had done. The dealer almost ran to the pit boss, and he jumped on the phone. He barely took his eyes off of us during his conversation with someone. I told my wife to cash out so we could eat. When we got to our room, I told her what I suspected and what I had done at the table. Once again she, of course, thought I was crazy.

To make a very long story as short as I can I will tell you that we did not play any more Roulette the rest of our week in Vegas. One day we walked from the MGM Grand where we were staying, all the way to the Stratosphere. We went into every casino on that side of the street. We watched the wheels and the boards. We took notes and results. I wish we had had cell phones with the cameras like we have today. It’s much easier to get pics inside the casinos. There are good reasons why they don’t allow photos inside the casinos. I’m not a genius so I’m sure if you could study an extensive collection of original boards from real Roulette games, other people would figure out what I did. How they cheat the players. Like they don’t have high odds in their favor, to begin with… They have to take it all.

There is something seriously wrong. Please take another look at the collage I made from real casinos in Biloxi, Ms. My nieces were wheeling me around in a wheelchair. We were dressed a bit ratty to appear needy, and like just overly excitable low class tourists. We all played about $5 each in slots, then started taking pictures of each other with the boards behind us as not to draw attention that we would even know what they were.

You would think the gaming commissioners would be interested in what they are doing, but you would be wrong. Suffice to say it is Eye Opening.

The good thing is that if you know what they are doing, you can use their knowledge and skill against them to win.

My wife is suffering debilitating, degenerative arthritis, and we rarely go to the tables much anymore. We did this together, and I don’t want to go without her. We don’t need to play. But we think more players should have this knowledge. Not everyone because they would just do away with Roulette or go back to the old type devices to control the results of the spin. But a thousand or two people should not hurt them too badly. I can easily say that I will refund your money if you can prove me wrong because I’m not. We have proven it in almost every casino in the country. We also learned quite a bit about the gaming commissions, fire alarms in casino hotels, local DONATIONS to the towns and officials by the casinos. You can read a bit more about these things in my book if you’re interested. There are things more precious than money that might be at stake where you stay. I do hope you read about them in my book and take them seriously. Have fun and win a ton.