MONTE CARLO PROFITS AND LOSSES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12931, 29 July 1905, Page 5 (Supplement)

MONTE CARLO PROFITS AND LOSSES.

Xkws which concerns great sums of money has a curious way of leaking out into publicity, however tightly guarded; and although messieurs the directors of the Casino Company of Monte Carlo are discreetness itself in this matter the world has already learnt the fact that their wonderful cashcoining machine has, during the season 19041905, earned for their shareholders the magnificent sum of '£1,440,800, an increase of roughly £80,000 on the right side of the balance-sheet— right side for them, at least, if not for the Riviera' tripper— the takings of 1903-1904. What, this increase is due to, or supposed to be due to, we are not told; but its significance, to the student of Economy not less than to the student of Morals, is very considerable. It would appear that M. Blanc, the Napoleon of the roulette wheel, though dead, "yet speaketh," and with a voice which is the sweetest of music in the Moncgasque's ears; whose echoes, moreover, are, heard not infrequently on the Parisian Bourse, when shares in his modestly-styled " Societe Anonyme des Bains de Mcr et Ccrcle des Etrangers," come into the market. It would, appear, likewise, that the increase in' his " salary" from £50,000 per annum to £70,000, which the Prince of the Sunny Promontory recently extorted from the Casino Company when he renewed their lease for another fifty years, is not so ruinous a piece of blackmail,.an was then supposed; and that the £100,000 which was spent on the local theatre ana orchestra, though seemingly extravagant, has proved a sound investment, notwithstanding the continued loss on these latter attractions. •I'HK MAX 1-EOa CHICAGO. Docs-any fly who walks into M. Blanc's parlour, one is tempted to wonder , ever issue thence as fat as when lie entered.' One would fancy not— judge by the .figures, of, this paralysing /balance-sheet. Nevertheless, the stories of fortunes made at' Monte Carlo persistently outnumber those of fortunes lost. Whether this singular phenomenon is traceable to the " Press .subvention," which in 1901 (the last report in which it seems openly to be alluded to) cost £20,000, it would be impossible to say, though it is admissible to have suspicions,. That versatile gossip, Lieutenant-Colonel Newnham-Davis, vouches for the truth of an anecdote which credits a Chicago friend of his with scooping five hundred thousand francs in the Suites dc Jcu in a single day, a'nd (greater marvel still!) having the horse sense to "skedaddle" with*the whole cum intact. There is no reason to doubt, too, that in the 1901-2 winter season one of the Russian Grand Dukes, playing in the Club Privee, made two hundred thousand francs. A FAMOUS " SWELL-MOIISMAX." Probably more money has been lost by the Monte . Carlo " Bank", through . fraud than through what we must, for lack of a better name, call "honest" play. An institution such as the Casino is a tempting bait for the professional swindler ; and there arc - moro such gentry harboured in Monaco's three miles of territory than in any other spot of similar size on the civilised globe. True, the majority of them prey not on the 'bank but on its dupes. Stake-snatching, and various ingenious variants of the confidence trick, from their main stand-by. Still, the bank itself suffers from their attentions. A copy of that remarkable weekly. Rouge et Noir—the " Organe de Defense des Joueurs de Roulette et de Trcnte-et-Quarante" —contains a full, true, and particular account of one of the most famous, and most amusing,'of the many attacks on the bank which have been planned within recent years. The prime mover in the plot was a magnificent '' swell-hiobsman" Ardisson, who had successfully " worked" nearly every pleasure-resort on the Continent ; , and who now, for the first time, turned his attention to the seemingly unassailable fortress of wealth by the Tideless Sea. Ardisson, it seems, "spied out the land" at Monte Carlo a month or more before lie

attempted operations; and,:clad in an 'unassuming disguise, made a particular study of tlie gaming tables and the methods of play. Like many wise folks.'before; and since, lie came to the conclusion that roulette was unworthy of his attentions. Its

companion game, trentc-et-quarate, gave him, however, some food for thought. , It wa's played with cards;' it was non-me-chanical, the "personal equation" entered into its procedure; and, finally, the stakes were high. In trentc-et-quarante, then, lie saw his opening. - CREATING A DIVERSION. Vanishing for a space from - the neighbourhood of his blissfully ignorant victims he returned eventually, accompanied, . by a friend of his own sex (and profession); and a couple of beautiful and well-dressed ladies. The party ranged themselves, two on each side 'of the trente-et-quarante board; and whi'.o the croupier was shuffling the cards the lady 011 one side engaged the umpire preparatory to starting a fresh set of deals ; in. ingenuous chatasking explanations, of how the game was played., and.so forth— while she on the other requested Umpire Number Two to supply her with gold change for a banknote. At the precise instant when the croupier was ready to begin one of the ladies dropped fifty louis on the lloor, where they.rolled noisily hither and thither, creating a most, unseemly diversion, and attracting all eyes from the cloth. Attendants gathered up her x gold;-whereupon the game proceeded. The Ardisson quartette, as the Gallic chronicler ay fully has it, "attaqucnt vigoureusement par paquets de mille la rouge cfc la couleur;". and behold, "Rouge . gagne et couleur!' no less than three times running. , And, , to cut a long story short, whichever way the quartette stake (and they have the finesse to vary'their staking more than once), they win. After eight coups, " la societe se retire majestuouseincnt," carrying with them 180,000 francs of the bank's money. At the door of the Casino a smart carriage awaits them, and in five minutes they are whirled across the frontier. HOW IT WAS DONE. The secret of M. Ardisson's staggering success only transpired when too late. .Horrified at the loss to the bank which the eight abnormal coups had caused the umpires ordered the cards to be examined. There were eighty-four too many in the pack. The. croupier had been bribed to insert a specially-shuffled slab of cards at a, given signal; and the disturbance caused by the fall of madame's gold pieces, had drawn all eyes from his deed. Two months' imprisonment was his sentence; a period of discomfort lie could afford to disregard when weighed against his personal profits. It is more than improbable that' there will never be another Ardisson. It is quite certain that there will never ■ be another Jaggers. Ja-ggers is the only Britisher who figures at all outstandingly in the annals of Monte Carlo. He was a Yorkshireman; Hind after weeks of watching and recordkeeping ho discovered that one of the roulette wheels had a bias towards a certain number. He and his assistants persistently backed that number, and with the aid of a large capital contrived to make a substantial income. The trick was eventually detected by Casino inspectors, and nowadays the wheels are not only very perfectly constructed, but their parts are interchangeable; so that even if there existed a bias in any wheel it shifts from number to number daily. NOT TIME GAMES OF CHANCE. A bomb, arranged to explode in the gasmeter cellar of the Casino and extinguish the lights, formed the crux of another carefully schemed attempt to rob the tables. These arp now illuminated with enormous six-buraered oil lamps, as well as electricity ; so the plan would be futile. Thousands of false counters—in the day when counters were played with instead of coin—are another disagreeable memory for the Kane heirs.. The counters were, many of them, redeemed; bub never again will a croupier accept anything but solid metal and notes. Of false money there has, of course, been plenty; but that (it is perhaps not unfair to hint) is as easy to foist on the player as on the bank—if not easier. Even the paper wrapped "rouleaux" of five-louis pieces ("plaques") must be torn open nowadays when placed on the cloth. " Chance," says ■Professor Karl Pearson, "is not scientifically chance unless the improbable happens l in due nroDortioii." The improbable, at

Monte Carlo, is that a . player should abstract money from the bank's coffers and it is safe to assert that this event does not "happen in due proportion." From which ft is evident that neither roulette nor trente-et-quarante are true games of chance, and that the £1,430,800 which they have earned this year might, with a .good deal more fairness to mankind in general, and the travelling public in particular, have found a resting-place elsewhere. .