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Imagine the feeling of landing one of the biggest casino wins ever. A win so big, your life changes in an instant.
You will never need to work again. You’ve gone from pauper to prince, with the turn of a card or the roll of the dice.
The house always wins. In the long run, it’s true. But, sometimes, the casino takes a beating. The whales come to play and they win. Even the little old lady, spinning the slots on a Sunday morning, can hit a monster.
Pull up a seat at the table, as we reflect on the table game players who seduced Lady Luck and took home one of the biggest casino wins ever.
Biggest Blackjack Win
The biggest ever blackjack win was a huge $20 million back in 1995.
Blackjack has one of the lowest house edges of any casino game if you follow perfect blackjack strategy. When you win, you double your stake. If you hit a blackjack, it (usually) pays 3/2; a $10 bet wins $15 (plus stake).
To win big at blackjack, you need to play big. The perfect cue to introduce the biggest of them all: say hello to Kerry Packer. One of the masters in big casino wins.
Kerry Packer – $20 million (ish)
The mix of truth and urban myth surrounding Australian media tycoon Kerry Packer makes sorting fact from fiction difficult. However, one thing is clear: Packer both won and lost eye-watering amounts of money at casinos around the world.
The most famous Packer blackjack win was in 1995, when he won millions playing eight blackjack boxes simultaneously, at $250,000 a hand. The exact amount Packer won varies from $10 million to $40 million.
The Independent and Seattle Times both report the win at $20 million, the biggest blackjack win ever. Whatever: it was all small change for the greatest gambler ever, as well as a rough day for the casino’s accounts manager.
The multi-billionaire was also legendarily generous with his cash, regularly tipping waiting staff life-changing sums of money.
Packer was regarded as a dangerous player: fast, aggressive, and spontaneous. He would gamble in short bursts of insanely high action, leaving the casino no time to recover if he got ahead.
However, Packer could also lose a fortune in a matter of hours.
Biggest Baccarat Wins
Baccarat is another game with a very low house edge, but often big casino wins. It’s the preferred betting choice of James Bond and can be played at all the best online casinos.
There is really no skill involved in the game; just luck and good bankroll management. If you want to win big at baccarat, it takes either a tournament or very deep pockets.
Lin Haisan – $12,890,500
No biggest casino wins ever list would be complete without this very public win.
In 2015, Macau casino junket investors Suncity Group organized a World Series Baccarat Championship with a $15 million prize pool.
The tournament was won by Hong Kong cardsharp Lin Haisan, who took home the top prize worth a cool $12.9 million – a new world record baccarat tournament prize, as verified by the Guinness Book of Records.
Akio Kashiwagi – $6 million
Is a win a win, if you lose it all a few weeks later? That was the case for Japanese whale Akio Kashiwagi who famously gave Donald Trump palpitations, when he won more than $6 million at his Atlantic City Plaza Casino. Kashiwagi was playing around 70 hands per hour, at $250,000 each.
- A distraught Trump invited Kashiwagi back several months later.
- A contract was written that said the player could only double his money or lose it all during his trip.
- This time, the Japanese property magnate hit a losing streak and dropped $10 million at the tables.
- Trump called time on the action and ended up with a profit.
- In 1992, Kashiwagi was found murdered with a katana-style sword and owed US casinos “at least” $9 million.
Best Roulette Wins
Roulette is a game of pure chance – or is it? Slight deviations, quirks, flaws, faults, and patterns can shift the odds in favor of the player. Did our first pick know something the casino didn’t?
Pedro Grendene Bartelle – $1.2 million
Google this story and you will see scores of tales reporting that sandal manufacturing billionaire Pedro Bartell won $3.5 million like the video above, with a $35,000 bet on a single number.
The fact is: that pay-out equates to odds of 100 to 1 which simply don’t exist on a roulette wheel.
What is true is that Bartelle did wager an insane amount of money on the single number 32 – and it hit. The bet took place at the Hotel Conrad in Punta Del Este, Uruguay. In fact, Bartelle won $1.2 million from his $35,000. Still not a bad result to have one of the biggest casino wins.
Charles Wells – $5 million (inflation-adjusted)
Fraudster, embezzler, con artist and one of the biggest ever casino winners. Charles Deville Wells was a national hero in late nineteenth-century London.
In 1891, he broke the bank at the Monte Carlo casino; starting the day with $5,000 and ending it with $5 million. There were no chips and it is said that the pile of cash grew so tall his mustache was no longer visible.
With a reputation as a serial fraudster, it’s more than likely Wells was in cahoots with the casino director, sharing the spoils and generating priceless publicity for the casino.
Today, he would be barred from every casino in town after his big casino wins.
Winning a Craps Fortune
To the uninitiated, craps can appear a complex and complicated game. If you know what you are doing, and can avoid ever rolling a seven, craps is a game that keeps on giving.
William Lee Bergstrom – $777,000
When it comes to big bets, few can match the sheer swagger of William Bergstrom, aka the ‘Suitcase Man’.
On September 24, 1980, Bergstrom called the bluff of Benny Binion – the owner of Binion’s Horseshoe Casino. Binion was an old-school gambler and pledged to honor any bet of any size.
- Bergstrom had two suitcases: one contained $777,000, the other was empty.
- He wagered $777,000 on the ‘don’t pass’ line at the craps table and won.
- Binion took it in the chin and helped Bergstrom pack his winnings into the empty suitcase. He won a total of $1,554,000.
In 1985, however, Bergstrom killed himself following a $1,000,000 loss on craps. His suicide note suggested taking his own life was due to a breakdown in a relationship with his partner.
Bergstrom’s family said he was not a big gambler, was still very wealthy and just made the bets to be remembered in Las Vegas.
The Golden Arms: Patricia Demauro and Stanley Fujitake
It’s almost impossible to work out exactly who wins what at a craps table. There are multiple bets in play and they keep on paying until someone craps out.
A ‘Golden Arm’ is a term used in the game of craps to describe a player who manages to roll the dice for over an hour without losing.
The first well-publicized instance of this was in 1989 at the California Hotel and Casino after an extraordinary performance by Stanley Fujitake. He rolled the dice 118 times over the course of three hours and six minutes without hitting a seven.
During Fujitake’s historic streak, the casino faced losses exceeding $1 million, while Fujitake himself walked away with approximately $30,000 in winnings.
- The current record for the longest roll was set on May 23–24, 2009, by Patricia DeMauro, a grandmother from New Jersey.
- DeMauro rolled the dice 154 times over an impressive 4 hours and 18 minutes at the Borgata in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
- This achievement surpassed Fujitake’s long-standing record by more than an hour and remains unmatched to this day.
Demauro rolled for longer but the stakes were lower. The casino is estimated to have lost only $200,000 – a lucky escape. Had deeper pockets been playing, it would have been a bloodbath at the Borgata.
If you fancy increasing your chances of winning at the casino game, check out the perfect craps strategy here.
Biggest Sportsbook Win
At all the best online sportsbooks, the outcomes are the same. You either win or lose. But for some, winning is a habit that can make you millions, like Jim McIngvale.
Jim McIngvale – $75 million
It took veteran gambler Jim McIngvale 71 years to make the bet of a lifetime, when he wagered $10 million and won $75 million.
Perhaps the king of the biggest ever casino winners, he took Caesars Palace to the cleaners.
McInvgvale parlayed the Astros to take the World Series in 2022. The Houston team obliged, when they beat the Phillies at Minute Maid Park in 2022.
The furniture entrepreneur – known as Mattress Mack – probably didn’t see much of the winnings, as he brilliantly uses the bets to offset promotions at his chain of furniture stores. ‘If the Astros win, you get double your money back’. Everyone’s a winner.
Who’s Next
There is a common factor affecting most of these big wins: the stakes were high. To win big, you need to bet big.
To parlay your way to $75 million, you need to stake $10 million. To win $2 million on a hand of blackjack or baccarat, you need to bet $1 million in the first instance.
If you want to gamble these sums of money, you need to build a business into an empire: media tycoon, footwear entrepreneur, property developer, or furniture warehouse magnate. You then need to generate enough profit to comfortably risk it at the tables.
The main exception is the progressive jackpot slots. Hit one of these and you go from financial zero to hero in a single spin. However, those life-changing giant jackpot wins are as rare as hen’s teeth. Someone will win it one day. Unfortunately, the odds are: it won’t be you.
References
- For the high rollers, the game never ends | The Independent | The Independent (Independent.co)
- Las Vegas `whale’ loses millions in a weekend | The Seattle Times (Archive.seattletimes)
- BBC News | ASIA-PACIFIC | Packer ‘loses $20m’ at cards (News.bbc.co)
- Hong Kong man scoops largest baccarat tournament winnings with $12m prize in Macao | Guinness World Records (Guinnessworldrecords)
