Niko Tosa – the Croatian Roulette Genius
Have you heard of Croatian roulette guru Niko Tosa? He reckons he has taken multiple casinos around the world to the cleaners and won millions. he puts it down to practice and focus.
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Niko Tosa shocked the Ritz Club casino in 2004 with a big winning streak.
Niko, along with two accomplices were arrested in London after scooping £1.3 million at the Ritz Club over several sessions.
They were accused of roulette wheel clocking with lasers and microcomputers. However, Scotland Yard was unable to produce any evidence of cheating, and dropped the charges.
Tosa claims his system is simple, but requires dedication. First, you need to hunt down an imperfect wheel that has a slight bias or defect. Then, his technique involves mentally estimating zones where the ball will land once it is in motion, a technique honed over weeks of practice on a home wheel.
Tosa, who comes from a small Croatian village, laughed at the accusation that he used sophisticated technology, simply stating: ‘We are peasants.’
Tosa is not his real name, which is a pseudonym used in an interview with Bloomberg. The news outfit agreed to conceal his real name as a condition of the interview.
He is in his 50s, and lives in a small coastal village south of Dubrovnik, Croatia.
Tosa admits to using other pseudonyms at casinos around the world undetected, and says he has been assaulted several times by casino security teams maddened by his success.
International Player
He has been seen at roulette tables in Romania, Poland, Slovakia, and Kenya, as he travels further afield and plays at casinos where he won’t be recognized and thrown out.
For the most part, Tosa has kept a low profile apart from the dispute with the Ritz Club in London on March 15, 2004.
In 2004, Tosa visited several nights in a row with two friends, a Serbian called Nenad Marjanovic, and Livia Pilisi, a beautiful; 32-year-old blonde Hungarian woman. They chose a roulette table in the Carmen Room, a secluded area reserved for VIPs, and stated to play with a strategy that caught everyone’s attention..
Niko Tosa, Nenad Marjanović and Livia Pilisi would wait until six or seven seconds after the dealer released the ball, and when the pace of the noise of the ball on the wood began to slow, they would quickly place their bets covering as many as 15 numbers at once in hot zones.
The three were synchronised with their movements, and the security team became more and more concerned as their winnings piled up. They didn’t win every spin, but were defying the odds with streaks of eight, ten, or even thirteen wins in a row.
And they built up their bets, betting up to £15,000 on a single spin.
Investigated for Fraud
Security teams watching on CCTV noticed that Tosa, who was the team leader, ‘read the room’ and made a visual scan of the casino on entry and choice one table. He explained that often it was a table that he had been successful on before, after it had been moved to another location.
The team of three, who began with a few thousand pounds, built their bank-roll to £1.3 million. When the Croat left the Ritz in the early hours of March 16, he turned £30,000 into £310,000. His Serbian friend did even better, building his pot to £684,000 from an initial £60,000. Tosa and the Serbian did most of the gambling while their female friend ordered the drinks.
When Tosa and his partners returned to the Ritz, police were waiting, and arrested them on suspicion of ‘deception’.
Scotland Yard searched the team but found no devices. Their mobile phones and a Palm-Pilot type device found on them did not appear suspicious during analysis.
Investigators dismantled the roulette table looking for hidden devices, watched detailed CCTV footage of the team, and interviewed the croupier from the table, but came up with nothing.
After a nine months, Scotland Yard dropped the case, and returned the roulette winnings to Tosa and his team and informed them that they were free to walk away with their winnings.
Tosa’s System
Tosa’s system was based on Hot Zones, or Neighbours’ bets, in which a bet is placed on a certain number and several numbers either side of it. They favoured the Call Bets such as Orphelins (orphans), Voisins du Zero or le Tiers du Cylindre (a third of the wheel).
The state of the wheel is the important factor, and the team searches for tables where some slight defect or bias reduces the randomness of the game.
Albert Einstein is reported to have said: ‘No one can win at roulette unless he steals money from the table while the croupier isn’t looking.’ Well, it looks like Tosa and his team have proved him wrong.
Tosa joins a list of players that claim to have cracked the roulette code. Dr. Richard Jarecki claim to have cracked the code – he also looked for imperfect wheels.
Casinos of the world watch out! Tosa is going on tour again sometime soon, and he has a big selection of fake beards. If Tosa hadn’t been stopped at the Ritz, he reckoned that he would have returned the following day and won £10 million.
The Ritz got off lightly.