BROKE THE BANK AT MONTE CARLO

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 2338, 7 January 1926, Page 3

BROKE THE BANK AT MONTE CARLO

PLACES LAST STAKE ON ZERO. WORKED OUT MATHEMATICAL CERTAINTY, LONDON, January 5. Known throughout the world as the man who several times broke the oank at Monte Carlo,' through using a complex mathematical system, developed from the law, of averages. Captain de Courcty Bower, died in penury at Hampstead,: where he had utterly occupied a single room in an apartment house. Captain Bower amassed a fortune .if £1,500,000 from Chilean nitrate and other South American ventures, and he returned to London, lavishly tipping barmaids and waiters in £IOO notes. He soon spent his fortune, in addition to his wife’s legacy of £1,000,000 from a Hungarian sportsman, Prince Batthyani. With the last £27,000 Captain Bower went to Monte Carlo in 1911 prepared to stake the lot. He broke the bank thrice in one day, winning £243,000, which lie quickly dissipated. A man with a passion for mathematics, Captain Bower spent 40 years in developing his system of play at roulette, a game that was devised by Pascal, the great French mathematician, who declared that he would show a means of beating it. However, he died without publishing his key to the problem. His statement, however, was most interesting, since it showed on the highest possible authority that the problem admitted of a solution. Captain Bower attacked the question, and after many years of patient research, to use his own words, “reduced The breaking of the bank to a mathematical ertainty."