Gambling Through the Ease of Baccarat

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  It is said that Pascal invented roulette. Driven by its mathematical genius, it gave rise, without knowing it, to one of the most prosperous industries...

  It is said that Pascal invented roulette. Driven by its mathematical genius, it gave rise, without knowing it, to one of the most prosperous industries of today. In October 1658, Pascal published the book HISTORY OF ROULETTE, based on the methods of Roberval, a French scholar who had preceded him in that direction.
  The modern age records among the illustrious players of the specialty Madame Pompadour, at which time, and perhaps because of her influence, roulette was introduced in France.

  According to the well-known dictionary of the language of the Royal Spanish Academy, the word “martingale” comes from the French martingale (and this one from Provençal Marthale, from Martigue, city of Provence). The most common usage is the third: trickery, artifice to win.

  But winning is always much more difficult than leaving the shirt on the green cloth. When it begins to hit, you can come to believe that everything is a matter of doubling the bet to unseat the house. But the gusts of more than ten repeated chances are frequent.

  The secret is to retire on time. And, in these cases, you never know when it’s “on time”.

  To face the casino with certain chances, you would have to own a bank as unlimited as the house itself, which is difficult in state casinos, since within the tangle of bureaucratic organizations, banking also has the Exchange house.

  The record, at some point, had Monte Carlo, with 26 consecutive blacks (it is convenient to consign this data conditionally, because who knows what miracles a dealer’s hand will be doing as I write these lines). Precisely, the maker of the gamblers’ destiny seems to be the croupier, who becomes the owner of haciendas and fortunes by throwing the whimsical ball into the roulette dish.

  For that reason, one of the most common cabals is to follow from table to table the course of some that seem to favor luck. But roulette also has its contraindications for the superstitious. Just knowing that their 36 numbers, added, give nothing less than 666, figure that the biblical mythology symbolizes the devil, some of them have stopped playing forever.

  In 1861, France was left with most of the fertile land of the small principality of Monaco, leaving the Grimaldi family only a cliff on the Mediterranean, looking to Italy. The mother princess, Carolina, then suggested her son Charles III to go in search of a character of dubious prose, called Francois Blanc. The antecedents of this subject were the foundation of a luxurious casino in Luxembourg and another one in the city of Baden-Baden (Germany). The roulette, which had enriched Blanc, at that time began to create a certain bad reputation, because some characters, after losing fortunes, decided to follow the path of suicide. When settling in Monaco, Blanc coincided the casino rating with the ban on the sale of weapons in the district. Anyway,

  Francois had a son, Camille who followed in his footsteps: one of the phrases attributed by the legend to the young gambler is “noir ou rouge, C’est toutjours le blanc qui gagne” (black or red, always wins the white), allusion to his own surname. Another anecdote describes him saying, with a poker face, “he’s coming back, it’s borrowed money”, when an Englishman named Deville Wells ousted Monte Carlo in one night.

  This sprinkled of cuts, some certain and others probably apocryphal (who knows), can not forget Dostoyevsky and his passion for roulette. His life was divided between the green cloth and the white of the leaves; he played and wrote in his country and outside of it. As they say, the novelist sat chair to such an extent that he was imitated by many who thought that to write with his mastery, first they had to have several bad nights in a casino.

  In the United States, the government decided to organize an official lottery in 1875, and the few bills that survived the time, signed in handwriting by George Washington, are today precious pieces of collection.

  Currently, in the country of the North the game is not limited to the slot machines of Las Vegas or the casinos of the big cities, publicized until the satiety in the Hollywood blockbusters. Until waiting for the change of lights of a traffic light can be nuanced with a “scratch”, expended by a machine in exchange for a coin. The future is no other than an era of super-technical lotteries, violently competitive, inviolable, infallible, computerized, and even transnational: on May 9, 1992, the first lottery world draw was held, in which Argentina committed its participation.

  The Emperor Charles I of Spain, on August 24, 1529, ordered from Toledo to the Hearings and Justices of the Indies: “Prohibit, imposing great penalties, the great and excessive games, and that neither play with dice, nor have them in their power (…) and that nobody plays cards or another game more than 10 pesos in a 24-hour day “.
  In 1596, Felipe III decreed in Madrid: “A lot of idle people, of restless life and depraved customs … gather together in public plannings for the interest of cheap and playing cards; and now points to the head because these together, games and disorders, are usually in the house of governors, magistrates, mayors … we send … punish and punish the crimes committed in gambling houses and boards of empty people “.

  On September 7, 1594, the third of the Felipes pointed out from his palace of San Lorenzo, that the “evil of the game” was still widespread in the highest social classes, and that “some togained ministers, should give a better example in their actions, and correct and punish excesses, commit and consent, having in their homes public planks, with all kinds of people, where day and night are lost and honorable and haciendas are ventured “.
  Thus, the situation of gambling in the dominated continent, favored by distance, disobedience and oblivion, was seen in Spain. Things could not be clearer: in 1610, the son of Felipe II prohibited the high Spanish authorities in America from “having gambling schemes, even with the pretext of taking alms for hospitals, and other works of piety”.

  Among the many anecdotes about who and how was invented we can relate the following: two captains with their troops facing battle and being the forces, to avoid a massacre decided to cast lots on who would be the winner; fearing that the opponent would cheat with dice or decks agreed to roll a car wheel on its previous axle mark and a Norman arrow would point to the winner. It was never known who was the winner.

  The French Revolution with its moralizing impetus tries to thin the institution of the game. Curiously, in the case of roulette something unusual stops her, a “guild” of banking assistants (something like the current croupiers) requests the Board to be granted the “concession to operate the Nimbes Game House”. The workers of the carpet adduce “the lack of wages” (a delay of payment of six months, the only retribution) and commit to deliver 50% of the gross income to the government. Between tug-of-war, “precarious permission” is extended. Nimbes heiress of the old Reims becomes the gamblers’ paradise.

  Modern roulette, however, is clearly Parisian thanks to the famous Madame Pómpadour and the seductive influence she exerts over the lord of Sartine (chief of police).

  The Casino Royale was founded in 1769. Napoleon closed it in 1799 but because of the turmoil caused by the measure, it was reopened. Mix of curiosity and desire for wealth the “cruel jeu” (as it is baptized) spreads throughout Europe, with an inevitable sequel of desperate and fortunate. The principality of Baden forbids it in 1872 and the same happens in the City of Light, (useless efforts) however, the numbered wheel of passion is already raging everywhere.

  The successors of Lord Bristol, founder of the first “summer hotels”, sprinkle spa centers with roulettes. Sir Robert Crompton financial manager of the first Casinos de Juegos de Sociedad enunciates his very clear thesis: “Where there are idle people there is money, there where there are people also occupied. Entry to the Casino is free of voluntary, unforced acceptance.

  Meanwhile, a principality – that of Monaco – tries its luck with the fortune of others. “The casinos do not play everything consists in exchanging the money between the bettors” and it is inaugurated in that same year its Sala Dorada. Between 1870 and 1900 more than 180 “Houses of Fun” open in Central and Eastern Europe also in Moscow and Istanbul, they only have access to the same nobility and the dominant caste as the price of tickets is equivalent to a week’s wage of an average operator.

  In North America, after some resistance, roulette begins in 1855 in the legendary city of Tucson and next to San Diego are the pioneers. The state of Nevada in a single year (1890) authorizes the operation of 230 private casinos. It is estimated that the average American bets $ 4000 annually against just 1700 of the European.

  One of the first studies was conducted in the seventeenth century “notables of mathematics” – among them the French Blas Pascal and Pierre de Fermat – scientifically study the phenomenon. Numerous “statistical laws” or “algebraic formulas of chance” are born of that deep tracking but always the conclusion is the same, the banking with time never loses, but it is not like that, the casinos had to implant the maximum position to maintain gains.