Great Gambling Scams. Howard Monte/Nigel Montgomery
not allow them sufficient time to calculate the next bet and place the wager. Waiters were instructed to spill coffee on the laps of team members that were placing large bets. But none of this thwarted the efforts of Norman Leigh’s team, who were now driven by adrenalin, and the lure of plenty of tax-free Francs courtesy of the casino. They actually only hit one progression that night over a period of six-and-a-half hours of play, but that was soon made up for on night six, when two more came in. By the tenth night, the team were up the equivalent of over $160,000, and the casino were giving them some serious heat. Just as a progression was getting going, the casino manager came over to the table and closed it down there and then, in the middle of play. The staff draped a black cloth over the table, and the manager then did the same thing on the other table that the team were playing on. The game was over and the team was made to leave.
Although the casino had closed the table, they had still suffered a very substantial loss indeed, and, as the casinos in France were government-owned at the time, the French government was obliged to bail the Municipale out (it also ejected the team from the country). Norman Leigh had well and truly had his revenge. He and his team arrived back in England over $160,000 richer, amid a blaze of publicity in the English press. A book was written about the episode, and Leigh became a cause célèbre among the roulette players of the world.
Would the Reverse Labouchere system work today, in a modern casino? Remember that Norman Leigh and his team were playing in Monte Carlo in the mid-1960s. They were allowed to play without too much interference and heat for the first few nights, and they were also playing in games where the minimum to maximum betting spreads were huge, which was necessary to make his approach work.
I first discovered the Reverse Labouchere system in the late 1970s and put it to the test, on my own, in a Birmingham casino. Instead of using a team of six at the table, I covered the even-money outside chances on my own, but, instead of backing all six as Norman Leigh’s team did, I simply subtracted the differences, and covered just three, high odd and black. One needs a very versatile mathematical mind to achieve this. Despite the casino trying every trick to put me off my stride – changing dealer after every spin, spinning short and generally giving me heat – I enjoyed one long progression, on odd, which took me to the table maximum. I won £9,000.
The following night, eager to repeat my performance, I returned – to find myself barred from the casino. It seemed that English casinos, at any rate, considered the system at least as dangerous to them as card counting at blackjack. Still, I bought a 1973 mustard-yellow Porsche Carrera Targa – registration EEB 2 – with my Reverse Labouchere winnings, so I wasn’t that put out!
I have recently tested Norman Leigh’s system against a database of real roulette results and found that it still works. But, for the Reverse Labouchere system to perform consistently, betting spreads of up to 1–2,000 need to be found, for example, a roulette table with $5 minimum and $10,000 maximum on the outside even chances. These can still be found in certain casinos in the world, but the negatives must also be pointed out, too: Norman Leigh and his team could play with starting units of only 25 cents; today we must start with $5 in most casinos. A bankroll of around $15,000 to $20,000 would be required. The play is very obvious to casino personnel and incredible perseverance is required. I’ve heard about a few teams operating today who have duplicated Norman Leigh’s system successfully. But one word of advice: don’t try this on casino sites on the internet. The system only works on real roulette tables. This is because of the theory that no roulette wheel is mechanically perfect and is therefore subject to biases in certain sectors, or towards certain numbers. It could well be these biases help make the Reverse Labouchere system the one that allows the player to beat the house at roulette.
After his success in Monte Carlo, Norman Leigh lived like a prince, but sadly squandered his winnings and died like a pauper some years ago, alcoholic and alone in a bed-sit. I wonder if any of his team members are still around. Whatever the dismal circumstances of his demise, Norman Leigh deserves high praise for discovering and refining the Reverse Labouchere method, and employing it to devastating effect against his lifelong enemy, the Casino Municipale in Nice.
Richard Marcus – The World’s Greatest Casino Cheat
Richard Marcus readily admits that he was hooked on gambling from a very early age. The incredible roller-coaster ride culminating in his becoming, without doubt, the greatest casino cheat ever started years earlier in elementary school, where he started flipping baseball cards with his school mates. As he had accumulated the biggest collection of baseball cards in the neighbourhood, housed in 20 shoeboxes, his collection became the target of his crooked schoolboy peers, who were determined to relieve him of his prized collection no matter what. It was there that he first learned about cheating at gambling.
The baseball cards had coloured banners on them depicting the player’s name and team logo, with two teams sharing one colour. When these kids flipped cards, the cards were held face down, and each turned the top card over. Whoever matched the colour of the previous card won. Then they started playing for serious stakes: whoever matched ten colours won a huge pile of cards. Richard lost his whole baseball-card collection flipping over a couple of days, but soon realised that he had been cheated out of it. His school friends had gone to the amazing lengths of memorising all the teams, players and colours on every single card. When it was Richard’s turn to call, and they saw he was calling correctly, they simply held the top card in place and pulled out the one in second place underneath. Because of this sleight of hand, Richard couldn’t win any pots, and his precious baseball-card collection passed into the hands of his cheating peers. This very first experience of gambling changed Richard’s life forever, making him determined to be on the side of the cheaters rather than a victim, and turned him from adolescent baseball-card collector to grown-up thief.
By the age of 13, Richard was missing school classes regularly, and was already involved playing in poker games downtown and visiting the track when he should have been in class. He needed a constant supply of cash to finance his gambling, both at cards and at the track, and was not averse to pulling off the odd con or two. One of his favourites in those early days was a trick he had picked up from a movie. He would send one of his trusted mates into a candy store to buy some chocolate for around 50 cents, and got them to pay for it with a $20 bill on which Richard had drawn a little heart in crayon next to the presidential portrait. Once his friend had come out of the store with the change of the twenty, Richard went into the store next. He would also buy some candy, and pay for it with a dollar bill. When the shopkeeper had placed the note in his cash register, and paid Richard the change for the dollar, Richard would go into a well-rehearsed song-and-dance routine, insisting he had paid with a $20 bill and demanding change from it. He would then deliver his coup de grace: ‘I know I paid you with a twenty, and I can prove it. My grandmother gave me that $20 bill last night and drew a little heart on it in crayon.’ Of course, the shopkeeper would go back to the till, pull out the top $20 bill in the cash drawer, see the heart on it that Richard had described, and melt. Richard got his 19-odd dollars in change – and a free candy bar. By his early teens he had palled up with an Italian boy called Paul who came from a Mafia family and they must have pulled this one off a thousand times all over Bergen County and New York. They used candy stores, delis and even busy supermarkets to pull their ruse. Their well-practised routine earned them plenty of cash, as did the next scam Richard figured out, one that they would put into force the minute they had learned how to drive…
Four years later, Paul drove his new GTO into a filling station and asked the attendant to fill it up. Paying for the gas with a $100 bill, and making certain he flashed the cash so the attendant saw the wad it had been peeled from, Paul went into his newly rehearsed routine: ‘Jesus, my dad’s gonna kill me. I know I had it on ten minutes ago.’
‘What?’ the attendant enquired.
‘My diamond ring. My dad bought it for me for my 18th