Is that where the term “breaking the bank” came from in relation to casino gambling?
Mel G. While bedside reading this past week, Mel, I happened to uncover the answer to your question in the just-released, revised version of Kevin Blackwood’s Casino Gambling for Dummies. On page 160, he writes that in Monte Carlo in 1873, an Englishman named Joseph Jagger identified a biased roulette wheel where nine numbers were appearing more often than randomness would allow. “Jagger pounced, and before the casino bosses figured out what was going on, he walked away winning with $350,000, an enormous sum in his day,” Blackwood wrote, regarding the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo. I’m with the Casino Gambling for Dummies author in that Joseph Jagger was the first famous gambler to get some publicity in 1873 for breaking the bank, but, Mel, it was a con artist, a public relations-thirsty casino owner, a song, and a music hall star that made the term “Break the Bank” most memorable. In French, if a gambler wins more than the chips that exist on the table, he was said to have “fa
Mel G. While bedside reading this past week, Mel, I happened to uncover the answer to your question in the just-released, revised version of Kevin Blackwood’s Casino Gambling for Dummies. On page 160, he writes that in Monte Carlo in 1873, an Englishman named Joseph Jagger identified a biased roulette wheel where nine numbers were appearing more often than randomness would allow. “Jagger pounced, and before the casino bosses figured out what was going on, he walked away winning with $350,000, an enormous sum in his day,” Blackwood wrote, regarding the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo. I’m with the Casino Gambling for Dummies author in that Joseph Jagger was the first famous gambler to get some publicity in 1873 for breaking the bank, but, Mel, it was a con artist, a public relations-thirsty casino owner, a song, and a music hall star that made the term “Break the Bank” most memorable. In French, if a gambler wins more than the chips that exist on the table, he was said to have “fa
