SECRETS OF MONTE CARLO

Greymouth Evening Star, 4 July 1938, Page 8

SECRETS OF MONTE CARLO

! * SYSTEM- TO BEAT THE BANK. e — i' LONDON. May 28. In London this week, the Man Who Made the Bank at Monte Carlo, the financial genius responsible for the casino's amazing post-war boom, talked of systems and swindlers. 3 Said M. Repo Leon, for 13 years r managing director of the company con--5 trolling the casino from which he re- ' tired three years ago: “Monte Carlo, l it is really all sad. The consistent " gambler cannot win. It is the unalterable law of chance that he must lose. “1 know of only one lifelong gambler 1 who left the casino for good with a fortune in his pocket. He was an Italian prince, who made a. million francs, then worth £13,000. You see, he died the same night in his sleep. "I myself have never gambled. I have never backed a horse or bought a sweepstake ticket. At roulette or fyente-et-quarante the bank must win. At roulette, tho bank's chance is 3.2 per cent, better than the players’. At trente-et-quarante it. is 2.1 per cent, better. “Those are the figures - worked out. by my expert, statisticians whom I employed to study title mathematics of gambling. Their calculations proved that any man who thinks he has a ‘system’ to beat the bank must be mad. “The cleverest swindler I have ever crossed swords with.” said M. Leon, “operated at the baccarat table when the open bank game was being played. He was a tall, distinguished-looking man with greying hair, and dark tinted spectacles. “After investigation we discovered his ruse. The backs of the high cards in every pack with which he played were coated with a colourless varnish, impossible to see with, the naked eye, which glowed with a reddish hue when seen through his tint-ed-glasses. “Cards at. the casino are kept in a safe. A new pack is used for each 'game. So the eroo khad made tre cardkeepor his accomplice. There have been other clover methods of cheating. One trick required two small pieces of modelling clay concealed in tho palm of tho hand. "Tho crook would stake, say, 20 francs on tho roulette table with a 100 franc chip stuck in his hand. If ho won ho would thump his hand over his stake and call out, ‘That’s mine.* When the croupier went to pay him he discovered the 100 francs bill there. The 20 francs had been supirited away by means of the other piece of clay.”