LURE OF MONTE CARLO

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 3939, 18 March 1930, Page 7

LURE OF MONTE CARLO

gamblers and their “SYSTEMS”

Where be now your gambols that were wont to set the tables on a roar ?

The answer, Hamlet, to your slightly modified conundrum is at Monte Carlo, one of Nature’s paradises, and a Grand Guignol Theatre of, human emotions from the sublime to the merely silly (writes Professor R. J. A. Berry in the Melbourne ‘Argus’). Nature has endowed the Riviera with a lavish hand, and, notwithstanding the spoliations of man, the efforts of American advertisers, and other exploiters of human credulity, it remains the most beautiful piece of country within easy reach of Western Europe. Within every coil of this wonderfully indented coast a constant surprise of form, colour, or con trast awaits you, and over the whole of it is flung a genial warmth of sun and iridescence which rejuvenate alike both body and soul. To this gorgeous spot there came in 1863 a young Frenchman who had,‘‘done time” in gaol, and from that visit there sprang the roulette tables of the Casino of Monte Carlo. . ... Francois Blanc commenced life as a waiter in a third-rate Parisian restaurant. In a fit one day of financial exaltation he experimented with the accounts of the establishment, but as an infuriated proprietor objected to ms eating-house harbouring more than one robber at a time,” Francois hurriedly left with a total capital of twenty francs. With that genius which passes for “finance” when the stakes are high, but is called “ common larceny ” in the less gifted, Francois Blanc manipulated the Stock Exchange so skilfully as to transmute his twenty francs into several hundreds of thousands, and an ungrateful country gave him seven months’ hard labour. Dung this enforced period of reflection Blanc discovered two great human truths that the quickest road to wealth is to cater for the purely animal instincts of the hignest of the animals, and, no matter how attained, that such wealth can always conceal even the shadiest of pasts. Let loose on the public once more, Blanc set up in Homhurg a highly successful and eminently aristocratic gambling hell, at which even a Lord High Chancellor of England paid him moral and material tribute. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 finally closed Blancs little effort at Homhurg, but as he had long had his eye on Monte Carlo he was in no way incommoded. BLANC’S CONCESSION.

Somewhere about this time Blanc puichased from the impecunious Prince ot Monaco full gaming rights over the now famous Rock. Were it not attested fact, Blanc’s offer to the Prince might seem to savour more of the gold and glitter of the ‘Arabian Nights. It comprised an annual payment to the Prince of 50,000 francs, one-tenth ot all profits, the equipment and maintenance of the Prince’s stout little army of 1 9 0 men, the further maintenance of a police force of eighty Monagascans, the subsidising of all the public seivices of the eight square miles of the principality, including—most ironical ol all—the church. But the broad-minded cynical Blanc went even further. tie undertook to give the clergy a living wage, and to erect churches wherein they might preach against the evils of gambling, while Blanc pushed on with the iob Blanc got his concession, and converted the rock of Monte Carlo into a veritable Garden of Eden, with himself and his Casino as the. serpent. To condemn sin is easy, to define it rather more difficult for even the best of us only seriously damn those sms of which we believe ourselves gui tfess, and if gambling be indeed a sin, as so many non-gambling sinners at ipjjcf. is it coeval with human nature.’’ Blanc played it to capacity. In 1887 the year of the Monaco eaith-Sake-a capital of £1,200,000 returned a proßt of W90,M0, .ncreasod six years later to nearly £900,000, and the 120,000 people who had a nutter a t the tables in 1870 had multiplied to more than 2,000,000 a year or two ago. The earthquake left the Casino un- “ Breaking the bank” is a populu l diversion everywhere, except at Monte Carlo, where the bank Iways, and sooner, rather than later, breaks u u. Charles Wells the hero °f l he ,« a hall song of the nineties broke the bank at Monte Carlo. lthl " an hour Wells won the whole of the 100 000 francs with which each croupier is daily provided, and so is popularly believed to have broken the bank. So far, however, from the hank being broken, the croupier merely sent to the cashier for more, and within the next half hour recovered the whole ol the lost 100,000 and 25,000 more francs of Wells’s own. . Roulette, trente et quarante and the like, as played at Monte Carlo, are hut glorifies! variants of the humblei “ pitch and toss ” of the magnates of the “ two-up ” schools. From the earliest days of the Rock there have been ingenious devisers of systems for the breaking of the bank. All ot these have one feature in common, and that is their eventual and certain failure What these system merchants forget is the secret police employed by a sophisticated directorate, who are ever on the watch for such systems and for the evolution of a countersystem to smash them. For instance, an arithmetical doubling of the stakes —a certain non-loser if continued long enough—is precluded by the establishment of a “maximum,” and even Pierpont Morgan could not break the hank for this very reason. No one is allowed to stake more than a fixed sum on any one turn of the wheel of fortune to the directorate.

the ingenuity of jaggers. The ingenuity which the romantic history of Monte Carlo reveals as having been devoted to the devising of “systems” is as astonishing in its cleverness as it is pathetic in its absolute futility The one conspicuous success was that of an Englishman -Juß' gers—who got away with not less than £60.(100. and Jaggers’s system has the further merit of being the only strictly honest method which has ever been proved unbeatable by the bank during the short time that the bank permitted it to be plavod. It can no longer be played. Jaggers was a clever mechanic and mathematician. He knew that if a spinning wheel bo imperfectly balanced, the heavier side will always come to rest. Jaggers discovered that the roulette wheels at Monte did not run quite true. For five weeks ho had a small army of clerks engaged all day

at six roulette wheels, noting down the winning numbers. From these observations and the law of averages, daggers was able to work out the spots in each roulette wheel, which numbers, in consequence, turned up more frequently than they should have done. In four days he won more than £OO,OOO. The secret , police of the Casino were immediately set on his tracks in order to discover his system. This, to the consternation of a frenzied directorate, they were unable to do One, more astute perhaps than his fellows, perceived the possibility of inequality in the wheels. To test the theory, the roulette wheels were changed in the night, and next day, lo and behold, Jaggers’s weak spots did not work, and his system came to an end for all time. The Casino directors take no risks with “ systems, daggers, however, had the good sense to withdraw, with sufficient “ profits to make him independent for life. ft is popularly believed that Monte Carlo is a sort of “suicides’ paradise regained,” and that battle, murder, and sudden death await the gullible victims of the Casino’s greed. Tragedies, of course, there have been, but probably more suicides result from losses on the English turf than from the gaming tables. But an extremely able Monte Carlo directorate, with the aid of its secret police, usually knows a lot more about its unsuccessful clients’ affairs than these think or suspect, and many a would-be suicide is warned off Monagascan territory in ample time to prevent the last of all tragedies. Fashions change, even at Monte Carlo, and suicide has now largely been replaced by the “ viaticum.” The bank, when it has won your all, will kindly pay your fare home. It finds this cheaper than burying you.