One of the best things about roulette is that there’s no limit to how much a player can win if they are lucky and persistent enough. Lately, Ashely Revell, who became a media celebrity after betting his whole life savings and winning in 2004, is in the spotlight again.
Revell claims he’s ready to put all his new fortune on the line again and try another all-in bet. If he actually goes through with it, we may witness some of the biggest roulette wins in history. Until then, we’ll talk about the biggest roulette winners in history so far.
Joseph Jagger
Joseph Jagger was one of the biggest roulette winners in history, but his story isn’t about a brilliant gambler making all the right moves. Jagger was a mechanic who worked in a casino and noticed that one of the wheels had a bias to certain numbers, so he took advantage of it.
The numbers in question were 7, 8, 9, 17, 18, 19, 22, 28, and 29. This dispersion of numbers allowed Jagger to spread out his wagers and beat the system without getting caught. Today’s modern roulette tables can’t be beat this way.
Jagger's total winnings tallied up to 2 million francs over the course of several days.
Richard Jarecki
Richard Jarecki was a medical professional who became famous in the 60s and 70s for his streaks of wins in European roulette. Jarecki also noticed a problem with the physical roulette wheels that favor some numbers and used that fact to have a huge winning streak lasting for years.
Jarecki leveraged this advantage to win a bit over $1 million in various casinos. Jarecki switched establishments a lot to avoid getting caught. However, some of the casinos noticed the pattern and banned him from playing. He also tried his hand in other games but was far less successful.
Mike Ashely
Mike Ashely was vastly wealthy long before he won at roulette. He’s a billionaire entrepreneur who owns many ventures, including the Newcastle United football club. Ashely tried his luck in a private casino in Mayfair.
He wagered over £480.000 in a betting move called the complete bet. It’s a bet on all insider numbers, including all splits, corners, streets, and six-line bets, including 17. Some reports claim that he also put bets on the first half, middle dozen, middle column, black and odd.
Mike Ashley managed to win a total of £1,300,000. The net profit from all that was £820,000.
Sir Philip Green
The story of Sir Philip Green is another story of a billionaire further increasing their wealth at the roulette table. Green is a tycoon in the fashion industry, owning several retail companies. In the world of professional gambling, Green is also known for his love of blackjack, but it’s roulette that brought him millions in a single game.
Those who were there claim that the betting system was simple enough, a combination of single bets and even money. Green won over £2 million in a single night, and some say that it was the first of a series of large roulette wins made that year.
Pedro Grendene Bartelle
Bartelle is also a billionaire, proving that the best way to win at roulette is to have enough to invest in the first place. He’s the owner of the third-largest footwear company in Latin America, a company he inherited from an uncle.
Bartelle’s win is one of the most audacious on our list since it’s a bet made on a single number. Bertelle bet $35.000 on a single number and won $3.5 million in a single spin. It’s not known how many times he tried such a bet before winning.
Chris Boyd
Chris Boyd wasn’t wealthy before making a bet and it took three years for Boyd to collect the $220,000 he needed to make his wager and find the Las Vegas Casino willing to take such a large bet.
Chris wagered the whole sum on red, doubling the amount to $440,000 – cashed out and never bet again. He wagered on red, a bet that pays out 1:1, and the ball landed on seven red.
Boyd's 5 minute roullete return was $880,000 on an initial $220,000 wager.
Ashley Revell
From the beginning of our story, Ashley Revell caught the media attention in 2004 when he put his whole life savings on a single bet. Revell sold his house and all of his belongings and decided to try his luck in the most daring way by going all in – on one specific wager.
The bet was $135,000, and he also put it all on red. That put his winnings to double that amount of $270,000.
Revell started an online poker business with winnings and is doing great so far. However, in recent media appearances, Revell said he would like to do it all again.
Charles Wells
We need to go further into the past for the biggest win on our list, but it’s still a great story, especially because there’s no method to this big win. On one night in 1891, Wells won 23 out of 30 spins in a row—the winnings amount to 2,000,000 francs.
There’s nothing to explain this amazing streak but pure dumb luck. In the end, even though there can be a method in roulette, it is a game of guessing.
How to Win Big?
There’s no rule on how to always win at roulette as it’s a game of luck, and in online casinos, the outcome depends on a random number generator. There are strategies that players can use to increase their winnings incrementally. However, none of the winners we mentioned used this method.
Instead, they relied on blind luck or tried a few risky bets in a row while willing to lose a few times. That said, the best way to win big at roulette is to have a deep budget to dive into and keep making risky bets, which isn’t an option for most.
What Are Your Chances of Winning?
That isn’t an easy question to answer since roulette has almost countless betting options, and the bet you make determines the odds of winning. Many of the winners we mentioned bet on red or even/odds.
The odds of winning such a bet are a bit lower than 50 percent. On the other hand, winning on a single number has the odds of 36 to 1 in most roulettes.
In the broader sense of things, casinos have an edge in favor of the house and a return-to-player rate that’s lower than 100 percent, meaning that these huge wins are rare, and the house wins most of the time.
To Sum Up
Roulette is a game of luck; a player can win big with a single bet - being crypto and or Bitcoin. It happened to some of the people on our list, and the winners were able to cash out their wins without trying to repeat the risky bet.
It also helps if you have a big crypto budget to work with and bet big while losing a few games in a row. That’s why some of the biggest winners out there have already been rich when they entered the casino in the first place.