There are quite a few documented cases of people betting on a single number in roulette, and it comes up multiple times in a row. Probably the most famous, is the Sean Connery roulette bet in which he bet on the number 17.
It didn’t come in for 2 spins, and then the ball landed in the 17 pocket 3 times in a row. Not bad going!
But what is the record for the number of times a ball has landed in the same pocket in succession?
According to Gambling writer Graham Sharpe who wrote Gambling´s Strangest Moments, the record is an unbelievable six times in a row.
This was witnessed by respected Vegas reviewer Barney Vinson. He claims to have personally been at the table in the summer of 2000 on roulette wheel number 211 in Caesar’s Palace. At approximately half past one in the afternoon, the ball landed in the number 7 six times in a row.
Play the Number 7 at 32Red Casino Here.
You´d have thought the casino lost a fortune, wouldn´t you? Well, none of the punters at the table could believe it would keep coming up, so not many bets were made on the number and the table only ended up losing $300. If someone had bet the number and let it ride- well that would have been a master class in how to play roulette.
Before that, the record was set in the San Juan Hotel in Puerto Rico in 1959. The number 10 also hit six times in a row on that occasion. It does happen! (Just rarely).
The odds of this happening? Well, they were both witnessed on American Roulette wheels which have 38 pockets. So the probability of this happening is one in (38 x 38 x 38 x 38 x 38 x 38), or 1: 3.01 billion. Pretty slim odds! If someone had left a minimum $5 bet down on the number and let it ride for 6 bets, they would have bankrupted the casino.
Could you Hold Your Nerve?
Would you have had the nerve to do that? I think you´d have probably scooped your chips up when the profit hit the hundreds of thousands.
So is this the record? Well, these things are hard to prove- you need witnesses and so on. There is one claim for a roulette wheel that spun the same number seven times in a row. That has been claimed by ex-croupier Liz Harlow-Smith while she was working the tables at the Stakis Club in Bristol (as it was then called).
This was on a European Roulette wheel- so the odds of that happening were almost one in 95 billion.
Click on the following link if you are interested in finding out the record for the number of reds in a row in roulette. The number may surprise you!