Norman Leigh and his roulette expedition part two

Carrying on from the first part then and I don’t buy this simply because the era that we are talking about here is 1966 and not 2006. I think that the more likely reason was that Leigh firmly believed in his own mind of the viability of his system and even convinced himself which would have made the task of selling it to others a lot easier. I know from personal experience that casinos will bar players if they are winning too much money if they do not fully understand the reasons behind why they are winning.

Because we are talking about 1966 and not 2006 then I firmly believe that the casinos acted through fear brought about through ignorance and lack of knowledge. Modern day casinos tolerate system players and even encourage them by placing score cards and writing equipment at the side of the table to assist them. They fully understand that there is no mathematical system available that can beat them and that they will eventually get the system players money.

But while the casinos knew only too well about betting systems back in the sixties, they were not overly aware of the strange looking “Reverse Labouchere” system which is vastly different to the normal progression type systems. A two week period is actually a very short amount of time to prove the validity of whether a betting system is working or not so the fact that Leigh and his team won nearly sixty grand is academic really.

The fact is that the game was terminated by the casino with them being £58,000 ahead at that time which is a vastly different story. The gaming world is full of punters who have been ahead by astronomical amounts and then only to lose it back. I could fill an entire book with stories of punters and even system players who were ahead for considerable lengths of time only then to be wiped out by one big blow out, every casino employee in the world would have similar stories.

But despite the fact that casinos tolerate system players, this does not alter the fact that they are not overly fond of them. This is mainly because of the fact that they tend to bleed small amounts of money for long periods without giving anything back in return by way of action on other games. System players tend to be very careful with their expenditure inside casinos and tend not to get involved in any other game apart from Roulette. In short, they are not interested in any other casino activity other than the game where they can execute their system.

The very best systems can defer loss for very long periods indeed and it is this strange quirk that creates the illusion that some of them actually work. The Labouchere system is one such system, named after of one Queen Victoria’s ministers. The “Reverse Labouchere” turns the normal system requirement of adding to the bet after a loss on its head. It essentially only increases the bet when you are already ahead but it does require significant starting capital to operate effectively. Look out for the third and final part of this series coming soon.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson
Author – “Killer Roulette”