Читать книгу Great Gambling Scams - Howard Monte/Nigel Montgomery - Страница 7

Nice is magnificently situated on the Baie des Anges, surrounded by the foothills of the Maritime Alps, some 19 miles from the Italian border. It has a splendid old town, separated from the busy new town by the river Paillon. With its sheltered situation and mild climate, Nice is one of the oldest established winter resorts on the Côte d’Azur, and is also a very popular summer resort too. The old town of Nice is a maze of narrow streets and lanes, dotted with colourful cafes and restaurants. A flower market is held every day on Cours Saleya. The 17th-century cathedral has rich stucco decoration, fine choir stalls and beautiful wood panelling in the sacristy. This magnificent Baroque building was once the palace of the Counts of Castellar. It has a handsome entrance hall, an 18th-century pharmacy and ceiling paintings in the state apartments. The Jardin Albert 1er runs north-east from the sea front to the busy place Massena, the hub of the city’s traffic, which is where the Fountain Du Soleil is situated. And the Casino Municipale.

When Norman Leigh first walked into the Casino Municipale with his father in the 1950s, I doubt he could have imagined the incredible sequence of events that was to be played out in that grand building over the following decade. That first visit to the casino ignited a touchpaper and started a chain of events so incredible that Norman Leigh has gone down in the history books of gambling as a legend, the man who orchestrated an event held as impossible by all expert opinion: breaking the bank at roulette.

This incredible gambling story started after Mr Leigh Sr, on that first visit to the Casino Municipale in Nice accompanied by his son, embarked on a disastrous betting adventure on the French roulette tables that was to see him financially ruined. Mr Leigh had fallen for the oldest trick in the book – gambling on the theory that even-chance bets on the outside chances at roulette must eventually come good in one’s favour. A very dangerous philosophy. The hapless Mr Leigh threw good money after bad trying to break a sequence of a run on the roulette table. He kept doubling up his wagers, almost in a panic, in large old French Franc casino plaques, in an attempt to try to break the house’s run on an even chance coming up time and time again.

Betting systems are as old as the hills and fall into broad categories: betting the same after each decision (known as flat betting); raising wagers after wins (called positive progressions); and raising money after losses (called negative progressions). The negative progression was the system that Mr Leigh employed. ‘Labouchere’ or ‘Martingale’ are the correct names for this betting strategy of raising bets after losses, and, while this system can often be profitable in the short term, time and time again one streak of bad luck can completely wipe you out.

The origin of ‘Martingale’ dates back to the 18th century. It is named after Henry Martingale, an English casino owner who is reputed to have urged losing punters to ‘double ’em up’ with their wagers. ‘Martingale’ is one of the oldest betting systems using a negative progression, and the system is very simple. The player uses a betting series that is twice as large as the preceding one, as with 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 etc. So long as you win a bet, you will continue to bet at the lowest level – in other words, a wager of one chip. If you lose a bet, you will move up to the next wager, doubling the amount of the previous wager. Use of this system ensures that, whenever your wager eventually wins, you will win the amount of the original wager, in this instance one chip. However, Martingale is extremely dangerous and risky, because occasionally long runs can occur against you on even-money chances, and by the time you get to your 11th and 12th wager you are up to 1,024 and 2,048 units to try and recoup your original one chip – as the unfortunate Mr Leigh found out, to his enormous cost, when he watched in horror as black came up 13 times in a row, while he was betting in ever-increasing sums on red.

Even if he had not wiped himself out financially at that stage, the casino had a trump card up their sleeve. They had a table maximum, which he would have reached on the very next spin anyway, to thwart his attack. A story is told in The Sealed Book of Roulette, which came out in 1924, that Arnold Rothschild once said to M. Blanc, manager of the casino in Monte Carlo, ‘Take off your maximum and I will play against you as long as you like.’ Rothschild knew that without a maximum bet he could use the Martingale system and eventually beat the house. But this didn’t help poor Mr Leigh Sr, who didn’t even have the cab fare back to the hotel, let alone the means to get himself and his son back to the UK. Young Norman would never forget the smug look of self-satisfaction on the face of the chubby young casino manager as he stood by the roulette table in his black dinner jacket and bow tie, arms folded, having wiped out the Englishman. It was a look that was to haunt him for years to come.

As if the casino manager’s smirk wasn’t bad enough, Norman then had to suffer the indignity of attending the British Consulate in Nice that very evening and listening to his father tell a pack of lies to the officials there – that they had been robbed at knifepoint by French peasants at the roadside, and needed their fare home and some pocket money provided for them. The helplessness, poverty, despair and humiliation remained deeply engraved on Norman Leigh’s mind and, as soon as they returned to England courtesy of the British Consulate, he dedicated himself to formulating a plan that would enable him to exact his revenge on the Casino Municipale in Nice. He did not care how long it took. Revenge would be sweet, and worth waiting for.

Over the following years, Norman Leigh turned himself into an extraordinary man. Despite having no formal education, he taught himself to speak six or seven languages fluently. He loved taking risks, just like his father – hence his interest in gambling. He always dressed smartly, wore a suit with a white shirt, bow tie or cravat, and – importantly – had an agile mind when it came to mathematics. The size and speed of his father’s loss at the casino in Nice continued to torture his mind, yet he was convinced that there must be a method or system he could devise that would enable him to recover all the money, and more. And so Norman Leigh devoted the bulk of his time in playing around with roulette systems and methods, spending endless hours in casinos and practising on the life-size roulette wheel he had at home. He felt certain in the back of his mind that there must be a method or strategy that could put the house in the same unfortunate position as the punter when a long run or sequence occurred, causing the bank to participate in the role of the player and have them hoping for a break in the run. And, of course, being forced to pay out, just as his father had to, as long as the run continued. How wonderful it would be, he thought, to reach the house limit on a winning streak!

He believed strongly that such a system could be devised, and spent hours experimenting with various staking plans and strategies, but one of the problems he faced was that there were six even-money options on a roulette table, so how was he to choose which one the run would occur on? It could be red or black, high or low, odd or even. One thing struck home during the hundreds of hours of practice spins on his wheel at home. He noted that long sequences – or imbalances, as he preferred to call them – occurred with incredible regularity on many of the even chances. But he had to devise a way of being able to capitalise on such a run, or imbalance, while at the same time protecting his bankroll should such a run not occur. Risk versus reward ratio, to put it bluntly.

For the bulk of the early 1960s, Norman Leigh spent over fifty hours a week practising and refining roulette-staking disciplines. He supported himself during this period by playing roulette for real money, and having the odd bet on a horse or dog he’d received inside information about from his gambling cronies. While he found some success with various perms and systems he devised, he couldn’t convince himself that he had perfected a strategy that would see him through to his final goal, a goal he had now decided simply had to be achieved and which took over enormous importance in his life.

By 1965, he was almost there. But there was still one vital ingredient missing. He had now established – through thousands of practice spins, which he had meticulously logged – that there were indeed long series of imbalances on the even chances at roulette: runs of high numbers outnumbering lows, long streaks of blacks outnumbering reds, large percentages of odds over evens. But he still couldn’t fathom out a staking discipline to take advantage of these imbalances efficiently. Maybe the great Albert Einstein had been right when he said, ‘The only way to win at roulette is to steal the money when the dealer isn’t looking.’ But Norman Leigh wasn’t to be put off.

One day, in the spring of 1965, he decided to go for a stroll to clear his head, and try and think the whole thing through calmly. It was while he was out, taking in the fresh air, that he went back in his mind to the cause of his father’s downfall at roulette all those years earlier. He theorised that the reason so many players lose with ‘Labouchere’ is that they run into the house limits, or lose their playing capital, and are unable to recoup losses. Since the bank has almost unlimited capital in comparison to the players, the bank can out-wait most player assaults, knowing that either the house betting limit or the player’s own limited financial resources will bring about the player’s demise. The Labouchere system was first discovered by Henry Labouchere, an English gambler who travelled the world playing it until he died in 1912. It was the Labouchere system that had caused his father’s downfall, as it meant investing higher and higher amounts, spin by spin, to recoup the losses. Why was it not possible, he wondered, to put the house in the position of ‘Labouchere’, where they had to keep paying out during the run of imbalance? Runs, he was now quite convinced, were not abnormal. Surely he could build a staking discipline that took advantage of these imbalances?

His mind kept wandering back to that Labouchere staking method that had been so costly. And then he got it, in a flash of inspiration. If the Labouchere system was the dangerous and expensive culprit, all he had to do was create a staking system that was the opposite of Labouchere. Or an inversion of it. Leigh reasoned that a reverse-betting strategy was the approach that would most closely resemble the bank’s approach to most other players. He would wait out the small losses until a large win occurred. He rushed back to his home and grabbed his working papers. The solution had been staring him in the face for months. The Reverse Labouchere system was born, and Norman Leigh just couldn’t wait to put what he had discovered to the test.

The Reverse Labouchere roulette system begins with a series of numbers – any you want to use – with each number representing the chip amount you are going to risk. Norman Leigh started with 1-2-3-4-5-6, but later refined it to 1-2-3-4. The size of your wager will always be the sum of the outside two numbers. So in the first example the bet would be 7 chips, and in the second – the one Leigh stuck to – it would be 5. The beauty of the Reverse Labouchere is that, when the bet wins, the size of the wager is added to the end of the sequence, in the first example 7, and the next bet would be for 8 units (1 plus 7). But – and here was the Achilles heel to roulette that Norman Leigh had unwittingly uncovered – if the bet lost, you crossed out two numbers from your sequence from either end, and the next bet became the total of the outside two numbers left. In the first example, then, if the first bet had lost, the numbers 1 and 6 would be crossed out, and the next bet would become 7 units (2 plus 5), and, if this won, a 7 would be added, and if it lost the 2 and 5 would be crossed out. This betting pattern would continue until either all the numbers had been crossed out, in which case you started again, or until such time as the progression lasted until the house limit was reached. When this natural winning streak occurred, the Reverse Labouchere staking system would have dictated maximum payout, and the player would then take down the final winning bet, realising a huge profit (around 6,000 units).

Leigh got out his scribblings of series of roulette numbers he had experienced in real life both in casinos and at home on his practice wheel. He started applying the staking system to the six even-chance outside bets, and added and reduced his stakes according to the outcome of the spin. While there were certain draw downs, and – frustratingly – progressions that looked promising often fizzled out, he was encouraged to see that on several occasions progressions carried on right the way to the mythical table maximum, culminating in a massive payout that more than made up for any of the small and inevitable losses. He spent the next few weeks spinning the wheel, placing the chips and working the Reverse Labouchere system until he was satisfied and convinced that it worked. And work it did: over the course of 100 sessions, 96 were profitable, and some winning sessions were extremely profitable.

Norman Leigh had three problems with the system, though. First, how would he handle the staking plan when a zero came up? Until now he had simply ignored it and carried on, but the more he thought about it, the more he decided it was beneficial in the long run to count it as a half result, and make up the balance of the chips to the correct bet. Casinos remove half your stake from an even-money bet when zero comes up. The second, and more serious problem, was how to physically handle the Reverse Labouchere betting system in a live casino. At home on his practice wheel, he had plenty of time to calculate and place his bets on the six even-money chances, but he was painfully aware that in the real hustle and bustle of a casino that would not be possible. And, third, how would he finance the operation? He went to bed that evening feeling rather dejected, but woke up the following morning with a brilliant idea. He would recruit 12 players, show them the system and take them to France with him to beat the casino. He would even ask them to bankroll the operation, and he would take his cut of the action. That morning, Norman Leigh placed a classified advert in the following day’s edition of the Evening Standard, and waited for his phone to ring.

The response was phenomenal. He got responses from people of all walks of life, from different backgrounds and of different age and sex. Out-of-work actors and actresses, a struck-off accountant, a retired schoolteacher. The list was endless. By the end of the week, he had arranged a series of meetings at his home, where he would demonstrate the system to his new recruits, and then carefully select the 12 he would bring with him to France to take on the Casino Municipale in Nice.

Each time potential candidates arrived at Norman’s home for interview, he took them into his room, where the roulette table was set up, and lectured them like a schoolmaster. He took this mission extremely seriously, and he had no room on board for passengers. Some fell by the wayside there and then; others became even more interested. By the middle of 1966, Norman Leigh had his team together, they were sufficiently bankrolled and Norman noted with satisfaction that they all entrusted him with their stake money, which he would change slowly over a period of time in the West End into French Francs. They agreed that, as the scheme was his brainchild, Norman would keep 50 per cent of the profits after expenses.

The team spent weeks practising the Reverse Labouchere system on his home roulette table until they had the staking discipline absolutely perfected and spot on. Norman decided that they would go to France and play for ten days, with two teams of six on each roulette table, each playing the staking system at the same time on odd, even, red, black, high and low, with him as an overseer in charge to make sure everything went according to plan. As the casino staff would swiftly uncover the team, with their notepads for writing down the progressions and their unusual betting patterns, he decided that he would inform the casino management that he had devised a system that he believed would win at roulette, and ask if they had any objection to him trying it out and using it. This was a gamble worth taking, as he knew the management would welcome them with open arms. He also knew, deep down, that they would beat the casino.

In the summer of 1966, Norman Leigh took his team of 12 to Nice. They checked into a hotel near to the casino, and dined in a restaurant together the same evening. There, Norman Leigh delivered his last lecture to the group. The very next night, they were going to the Casino Municipale to put the Reverse Labouchere roulette staking plan to test, and, if all went well, they would be doing the same for the next nine nights as well. Norman Leigh handed out 12 manila envelopes to his team; each was crammed with their stake money in French Francs.

Over a decade after leaving the casino with his father, both of them with tails between their legs, Norman Leigh led his team to the Casino Municipale in Nice. Norman Leigh’s heart missed a beat as he entered the glitzy surroundings, but not because of the extra tables that had been installed, or the redecoration, or the bustle of the gaming floor. It was because of the casino manager he set eyes upon, chubby and resplendent in his dinner jacket, arms folded, just as he had been all those years earlier. Norman Leigh screwed his eyes up and looked at him with pure malice, took a gulp, hoped he wasn’t recognised and went straight over to him. ‘I believe I have discovered a betting system that can beat your casino at roulette. I have brought a team of 12 players with me from England, and, if you have no objections, I would like to put my system to the test at your casino.’

The manager, who had heard it all before, let out a small chuckle and welcomed these new punters with open arms. He never even gave Leigh a cursory glance and, if he had, he wouldn’t have recognised him anyway. Over the years, he had taken great pleasure in watching a host of English punters go bankrupt in his casino. Norman Leigh’s team headed for two empty roulette tables, got out their pads and pencils, and started work.

Almost as a mirror image to their weeks of preparation, nothing much happened for the first couple of hours. A small progression on odd fizzled out on one table, and on the other a similar streak on red was thwarted just as it was about to mushroom. Norman Leigh, meanwhile, was hovering between the two tables, keeping an eye on everyone, and making sure nobody was uncomfortable or panicking, and that the crib cards were keeping the staking plan accurate.

One of the bizarre features that Norman Leigh had noticed about the Reverse Labouchere system was that a progression that fizzled out just as it started looking promising often reappeared and got going again with gusto shortly afterwards. And that was what happened on the first roulette table with odd. The man playing odd was a retired schoolteacher from Epsom, one of the stronger and more reliable members of Norman’s team, and one that he had selected from the early batch of applicants. All of a sudden, odd started unbalancing even quite dramatically, and the bets were becoming substantial. Norman looked over the teacher’s shoulder to see the progression on his pad, which now looked like this: 606, 744, 882, 1,068, 1,254, 1,512, 1,770, 2,100, 2,430, 2,760, 3,162, 3,564, 4,018, 4,522, 5,026. The next wager would be 5,626 units, approaching the table maximum, and, if that one obliged, the streak on odd would have run its course, and the player would draw down his winnings and start all over again with a bet of just five units. By now there was a small crowd of onlookers at the table, in awe of the towers of chips and plaques in front of the schoolteacher. ‘Fait vaux jeux.’ The dealer spun the wheel. The little white ivory ball spun round and round and clanked into a slot with number 11 on it. ‘Onze, noir, impair.’ Just over three hours after walking into the Casino Municipale, the first progression had climaxed, netting the team a substantial win. The schoolteacher neatly stacked up his high-value winning plaques, and then staked the minimum, five units, on odd, just as he had been taught.

Meanwhile, on the other table, a similar progression was taking place on the low numbers. Norman wandered over to observe. This time it was the turn of the out-of-work actress to be the centre of attention as the low numbers prevailed. A second mushroom climaxed with almost the same ease as the first, and the team had hit the house limit twice within the space of a few minutes. They carried on playing for about another hour, during which nothing much of note happened, all the even chances balancing each other out. Norman then gave the signal to cash in and leave, and meet him in his suite at the hotel. He hurried up to his rooms, and pulled six bottles of chilled champagne out of the fridge; he hadn’t believed in his wildest dreams that he would be celebrating this quickly. Two successful progressions on the first day! The team arrived, all in a jolly mood, and spilled their French Francs out on to the bed. Norman poured the champagne as they counted the large bundles of French banknotes into neat stacks. They had won the equivalent of $18,500. Norman took his half and shared the balance out among the other team members, who were absolutely thrilled at the ease of their tax-free gains.

The following night, they were back at work in the casino. Nothing happened. They drew a blank on night three as well, which was probably just as well, because what happened on night four was quite extraordinary. Literally the minute they sat down at the tables, a progression started on red, quickly followed by one on even on the other table. Within a quarter of an hour, both progressions had maxed out, and another took over on high on the first table. This one matured as well, and by now, with the team having hit three successful mushrooms in less than an hour, the casino management started taking a little more interest in them. ‘Your system seems to be working well, Monsieur, but we have seen these things before. You’ll give it all back in time.’ How wrong they were, as the team went on to have the most successful night ever, culminating in five successful winning streaks, and winning over $50,000.

On night five, the casino started playing tricks on the team. Shills – players employed by the house – were used to crowd the teams at the table, and take their seats during toilet breaks. Croupiers were told to spin the ball quickly when a progression was in progress to put the players off, and not allow them sufficient time to calculate the next bet and place the wager. Waiters were instructed to spill coffee on the laps of team members that were placing large bets. But none of this thwarted the efforts of Norman Leigh’s team, who were now driven by adrenalin, and the lure of plenty of tax-free Francs courtesy of the casino. They actually only hit one progression that night over a period of six-and-a-half hours of play, but that was soon made up for on night six, when two more came in. By the tenth night, the team were up the equivalent of over $160,000, and the casino were giving them some serious heat. Just as a progression was getting going, the casino manager came over to the table and closed it down there and then, in the middle of play. The staff draped a black cloth over the table, and the manager then did the same thing on the other table that the team were playing on. The game was over and the team was made to leave.

Although the casino had closed the table, they had still suffered a very substantial loss indeed, and, as the casinos in France were government-owned at the time, the French government was obliged to bail the Municipale out (it also ejected the team from the country). Norman Leigh had well and truly had his revenge. He and his team arrived back in England over $160,000 richer, amid a blaze of publicity in the English press. A book was written about the episode, and Leigh became a cause célèbre among the roulette players of the world.

Would the Reverse Labouchere system work today, in a modern casino? Remember that Norman Leigh and his team were playing in Monte Carlo in the mid-1960s. They were allowed to play without too much interference and heat for the first few nights, and they were also playing in games where the minimum to maximum betting spreads were huge, which was necessary to make his approach work.

I first discovered the Reverse Labouchere system in the late 1970s and put it to the test, on my own, in a Birmingham casino. Instead of using a team of six at the table, I covered the even-money outside chances on my own, but, instead of backing all six as Norman Leigh’s team did, I simply subtracted the differences, and covered just three, high odd and black. One needs a very versatile mathematical mind to achieve this. Despite the casino trying every trick to put me off my stride – changing dealer after every spin, spinning short and generally giving me heat – I enjoyed one long progression, on odd, which took me to the table maximum. I won £9,000.

The following night, eager to repeat my performance, I returned – to find myself barred from the casino. It seemed that English casinos, at any rate, considered the system at least as dangerous to them as card counting at blackjack. Still, I bought a 1973 mustard-yellow Porsche Carrera Targa – registration EEB 2 – with my Reverse Labouchere winnings, so I wasn’t that put out!

I have recently tested Norman Leigh’s system against a database of real roulette results and found that it still works. But, for the Reverse Labouchere system to perform consistently, betting spreads of up to 1–2,000 need to be found, for example, a roulette table with $5 minimum and $10,000 maximum on the outside even chances. These can still be found in certain casinos in the world, but the negatives must also be pointed out, too: Norman Leigh and his team could play with starting units of only 25 cents; today we must start with $5 in most casinos. A bankroll of around $15,000 to $20,000 would be required. The play is very obvious to casino personnel and incredible perseverance is required. I’ve heard about a few teams operating today who have duplicated Norman Leigh’s system successfully. But one word of advice: don’t try this on casino sites on the internet. The system only works on real roulette tables. This is because of the theory that no roulette wheel is mechanically perfect and is therefore subject to biases in certain sectors, or towards certain numbers. It could well be these biases help make the Reverse Labouchere system the one that allows the player to beat the house at roulette.

After his success in Monte Carlo, Norman Leigh lived like a prince, but sadly squandered his winnings and died like a pauper some years ago, alcoholic and alone in a bed-sit. I wonder if any of his team members are still around. Whatever the dismal circumstances of his demise, Norman Leigh deserves high praise for discovering and refining the Reverse Labouchere method, and employing it to devastating effect against his lifelong enemy, the Casino Municipale in Nice.