The Amazing Tale of Joseph Jagger </br>rise in popularity of. The game of roulette has been with us for over 250 years, sufficient time to develop lots of systems, myths and stories. Joseph Jagger is one of many who have sought their fortune in the casinos through a massive roulette payout. Incidentally it helps if you understand the game of roulette for this story, you can find them here if you don't know them - [rules of roulette]Joseph Jagger's background however was entirely different, in fact he was an engineer in a small town in Yorkshire. His main inspiration originated from mechanics of the roulette wheel, he was certain that a lot of roulette wheels may have built in imperfections which could create a small bias in the numbers that were spun. In the casinos of Europe, the house edge is so small that any slight advantage or bias would create the possibility of huge winnings for a disciplined gambler with access to this information.For most of people the dream would have finished here, but Joseph Jagger was no idle dreamer. In the year of 1873 he actually got a group of 6 clerks together and they set off for Monte Carlo. The clerks were the 'clockers' tasked with analyzing and recording as many spins as possible in order to detect some bias. The casinos had never come across anything like this before, so they welcomed the clockers in to do their work.In 1875 the next phase of the plan was ready for action, the clockers though they had identified a single biased wheel that appeared to favour a certain group of numbers, meaning that certain roulette bets would have a much better chance. Joseph didn't hang around and instantly started betting on that specific wheel. His very first day he won over $70,000 an enormous sum in 1875. Of course the bias was not so obvious that it guaranteed winning consistently but as any gambler knows an advantage or 'edge' will soon grow if you play sensibly. On the second day he alone won about $300,000 and his growing group of followers also won a huge amount as well.Of course by this time Jagger had become a very serious problem to the casinos who were losing big time. They weren't quite certain on Jagger's secret but they did guess correctly that it had something to do with the wheels. During the night they moved all the tables and the following day Jagger didn't notice he was gambling at a different table. Initially he began to lose heavily until he noticed the lack of familiar scratch marks on the wheel. He went in search of his selected wheel and when he found it soon started winning again. The Casino owners had now figured out the problem, the wheel was indeed biased due to some problem with the frets - the little dividers between the slots on a wheel. The casino replaced the offending frets and effectively destroyed the bias on that particular roulette wheel. With his advantage destroyed he began to lose heavily, but he was no fool and soon stopped gambling and cashed in his winnings. His profit was something equal to about 5 million dollars today, he paid up his associates and returned to Yorkshire to quit his job and invest his winnings.This amazing man was often touted as the 'man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo' although this is not quite true you have to admire him, in these days were we can login and play online roulette in minutes, even making it to Monte was quite an achievement. He certainly masterminded a huge roulette payouts and the Yorkshire engineer certainly caused a stir.
