Biggest ever casino table game wins

Alright let me say from the top, yes I realize this list is NEVER going to be completely accurate.   Most of history’s biggest wins will forever remain a secret between the happy player and not so happy casino.

Most of history’s biggest punters are very discreet about their gambling exploits. Take Zeljko Ranogajec. Never heard of him?  He’s a professional gambler who bets an estimated $1 billion each year.  His biggest wins will probably only ever be known only by him and his bookmaker(s) and speculated on by the rest of us.

But then you get the odd big win that makes into the public domain for one reason of another: the casino in question is a public company and has to issue a profit warning; a streak occurs in a public gaming area and captures the attention of surrounding players; or the winner simply let’s the cat out of the bag.  The media catches wind and the story breaks.

Here are some of biggest documented table game wins (ie blackjack, baccarat, craps etc…jackpots like MegaBucks don’t count) considering both the size of the dollars and/or the length of the streak involved.

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Blackjack

In May 1995 Kerry Packer won $20 million from the Las Vegas’ MGM Grand.  Reports vary on how quickly he got there and how much he was betting per hand.  News Ltd takes the line from the Paul Barry biography, saying Packer was playing up to 8 hands at once on multiple tables, betting up to $250,000 per hand and at one point won 20 hands in a row. Within 40 minutes of his initial bet he was $25 million up.  He finished $20 million ahead and gave $1 million of it to his dealers as a tip.

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From December 2010 to April 2011 Don Johnson, the CEO of Wyoming-based Heritage Development LLC, won $15.1 million from three major Atlantic City casinos.  The streak was confirmed by Johnson and verified by casino insiders to the Press Atlantic City to have comprised:

  • $4.23 million at Caesars Atlantic City in December; then
  • $998,000 at Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa also in December; then
  • $1.8 million again at Borgata during March and April; then
  • $2.25 million in 2 nights again at Borgata later in April; then
  • $5.8 million at Tropicana Casino also in April.

The Tropicana win came in just 12 hours.

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In November 1991, Kerry Packer was playing blackjack at a table in the public area of the  Las Vegas Hilton and won $7 million on the night.  The win prompted the Hilton to build him a special private room and invite him back the following year…he gave back $10 million. source: News Ltd
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Blackjack Hall of Famer Ken Uston relied more on a masterful understanding of the mathematics of blackjack, team play strategy and a lot of patience than a massive bankroll to produce one of the games’ most impressive streaks.  Time magazine wrote that Uston and his team members accumulated winnings of over $4.5 million during a systematic attack on tables around America between 1975 and 1981.

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In Casino Player magazine’s “100 Greatest Events in Casino Gaming” edition, Frank Scoblete tells the true story of a bum who cashed his $400 social security check and turned it into somewhere between $1.3 million and $1.6 million during a week of phenomenal luck.  Scoblete writes:

“The folks who deal to him and the folks who serve him say he is the rudest, crudest, but luckiest bastard they ever saw–with the emphasis on the “b” word. At the height of his winning he alienates just about everyone he comes into contact with at Treasure Island”

Unfortunately he also managed to drop it all before being kicked out of the casino by none other than Steve Wynn.

Roulette

Around Christmas 2004 Philip Green, owner of the Arcadia Group of retail businesses, went on a roulette streak at London’s Les Ambassadeurs that included a single night win of £2 million, and other wins of at least £1 million according to the Telegraph. The wins resulted in the casino’s owner, London Clubs International, having to issue a profit warning.

Baccarat

In 1990 the Wall Street Journal reported that in February of that year Akio Kashiwagi took $6 million from the Trump Plaza in Atlantic City and $19 million from the Diamond Beach casino in Darwin.  Kashiwagi was a Japanese real estate mogul known also as The Warrior and was infamous for trying to re-negotiate settlement of losses after unlucky sessions.

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In the last 2 months of 1997 Melbourne’s Crown Casino lost $55 million to unnamed Asian high rollers. One player took $12 million according to then Chairman Lloyd Williams. The wins forced Crown Ltd to have to raise additional funds via a rights issue.
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In May 2001 The Age newspaper reported the story of a Chinese player named Mo Chan who took $10 million from Sydney’s Star City Casino in just under a month playing in their Endeavour Room.  When the casino cut his limits to try and limit the damage an outraged Chan left the casino vowing never to return.  A Star City insider told the Age, “If he had $10 million of my money and was playing a game of pure luck I would want him to stay so that I could get it back.”

Craps

Tom Breitling, former owner of the The Golden Nugget in downtown Las Vegas, writes in his autobiography Double or Nothing of the gambling habits of one of the Nugget’s biggest high rollers, identified only as Mr Royalty.  Here’s an excerpt from the book:

“He’d pulled up at The Nugget one night at the end of September in his $350,000 Maybach and six hours and three minutes later walked out with $4,753,200 of our money. A week later he came back in for three and a half hours and took us for another $1.5 million.”

By the way, Mr Royalty wasn’t actually royalty.  He was a young video game developer who Breitling describes in his book as, “a five-alarm asshole”.

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On May 23 2009 a New Jersey grandmother named Patricia Demauro playing craps at the Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa in Atlantic City rolled her point 154 times in a row  – a streak lasting 4 hours and 18 minutes.  The odds of this happening are 1 in 1.56 trillion.

Mrs Demauro has never disclosed how much she won on that incredible night but as you can imagine it’s a number that many have speculated on.  Reasonable bets would put her winnings in the hundreds of thousands.  Expert bets (she was a novice) would have seen winnings in the millions.

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