The Story of Billy Walters

There have been numerous stories down the years of big gamblers hitting the casinos in Las Vegas, London, Monte Carlo and Sun City using all types of roulette betting systems, but one of the biggest stories of all happened in 1986 in Atlantic City. An American businessman named Billy Walters flew into Atlantic City and asked one of the big casinos if they would raise the maximums on their roulette wheel in return for him depositing a cool $2 million in their cash desk.

The casino agreed and when Walters started to play on roulette, they licked their lips even more simply because he was on a double zero wheel which has a far greater house edge. Walters was betting $2000 per spin on one of five numbers so was wagering $10,000 per spin. Slowly but surely he began to get ahead but the casinos in Atlantic City were more than used to high rollers and “whales” and they were not worried.

But there was some secret that they didn’t know. For the previous few weeks, Walters had a team of people doing nothing more than clocking the numbers on all the wheels in that casino. They had spotted a wheel with a strong bias. Now a biased roulette wheel is one that for some reason is not performing randomly.

Maybe the ball track is warped or the number dividers are loose or the ball deflectors are not doing their job or maybe the wheel hasn’t been properly levelled. Whatever the reason, certain numbers are appearing more often or in some cases less often. These wheel clockers had discovered a biased wheel and reported the fact to Walters. The problem that the casino had was that they couldn’t risk upsetting a big punter like Walters.

He had been in that casino numerous times and was a very good customer. So they could hardly come down with the heavy treatment when he suddenly gets lucky. At the outset, this was all the casino thought it was…….someone getting lucky. So they persevered in the knowledge that his run would end and they would get back all that he had won and his two million on top of that.

But Walters didn’t stop winning and he ended up getting several millions dollars ahead which was a huge sum of money when you consider that he only stood to win $70,000 per win less the $8000 on the other four losing numbers so his net win per spin was only $62,000. The casino in question eventually called time on Walters and is was only on very close examination that it revealed the wheel had defects.

This resulted in a strong bias towards the numbers that Walters was betting on. These types of biases have been documented numerous times and I was even approached several times whilst I was in gaming to provide data on roulette wheels to certain punters.

You see when roulette is approached by way of systems then the game is unbeatable as the odds defeat the player even on single zero wheels. But it is those same pay-offs of 35/1 that are the weak link in the game of roulette and is why the casino management spend more time focusing on security on this game than any other.

This article was written by Carl “The Dean” Sampson