Question of the Day - 21 April 2011

While the longest crap-roll ever, and its subsequent smashing by a grandma in Atlantic City, is well documented, we've been unable to find equivalent data for the longest lucky run at the roulette table, although we did come across some other interesting stats in the course of researching this answer.

As far as the official rolling record goes, from May 28, 1989 until May 23, 2009 this was held by a Hawaiian named Stanley "Golden Arm" Fujitake, who clocked 118 rolls in three hours and six minutes at the California in downtown Las Vegas before sevening out.

Fujitake's record stood for almost two decades until New Jersey grandmother Patricia Demauro got on a lucky streak that lasted four hours and 18 minutes, when she rolled the dice at Atlantic City's Borgata hotel-casino 154 times consecutively -- a 1-in-1.56-trillion shot. It was only the second time that Demauro had ever played the game and to put things in perspective at a more comprehensible level, the average number of dice rolls before sevening out is eight.

According to gambling expert and writer Frank Scoblete, who authored Beat the Craps Out of the Casinos, there was actually a higher number of successive dice rolls prior to Fujitake's run, with a man operating under the pseudonym the "Captain" throwing 147 times consecutively in 2005. If true, this effort apparently was never officially registered and, either way, was beaten fair and square by Demauro.

As to roulette records, as above, we were unable to find any information about the longest winning run. However, thanks again to Scoblete, we can share some other interesting statistics.

• Apparently, the longest streak one color has hit in a row in roulette in the last 250 years was 32 consecutive reds in a Brazilian casino some half-century ago.

• Scoblete recounts how Barney Vinson, Huntington Press author and long-time dealer at Caesars Palace, witnessed the number 7 come up six times in a row at Caesars' roulette wheel #211 on July 14, 2000. The odds of that happening are three billion to one.

• In 1959 while in South America, Vinson also witnessed something that had only once been recorded prior, when the number 10 appeared six times in a row on July 9th at the El San Juan Hotel in Puerto Rico.

• The following can't be verified, but it's said that black came up 23 times in a row at the Imperial Palace in Las Vegas some time in the early '90s.

• Scoblete also recounts how he was told by an American Airlines flight attendant that he/she witnessed in England how a roulette ball rocketed off the wheel and almost hit a croupier in the eye. He batted it away, whereupon it hit a chandelier, came back down, ricocheted off a player's cigarette holder, and dropped back into the wheel in the #4 pocket. Again, this is apocryphal, but we hope it's true.

For other gambling and casino records, check out the QoDs for 8/8/2005, 1/20/2008, and 2/18/2011, all of which can be found in the QoD Archives (LVA members only).

QoD Contributing Expert Stewart Ethier further elaborates on the errors in the calculations we quoted: "'Fujitake's record stood for almost two decades until New Jersey grandmother Patricia Demauro got on a lucky streak that lasted four hours and 18 minutes, when she rolled the dice at Atlantic City's Borgata hotel-casino 154 times consecutively -- a 10-in-1.56-trillion shot.' "I think you meant a 1-in-1.56 trillion shot. [Ed: Since corrected.] This was the figure published by Time online but it was discredited almost immediately. (It is the chance of no 7s in 154 rolls, which is a very different event.) The correct probability that the shooter's hand lasts 154 or more rolls is 1 in 5.59 billion. A good source for this is: www.causeweb.org/wiki/chance/index.php/Chance_News_49#A_new_record_in_craps "But if you want the *definitive* calculation of this probability, please see the enclosed reprint of an article I wrote. (The reprint cannot be posted for copyright reasons, but a non-copyrighted pre-publication version is available here: arxiv.org/abs/0906.1545v2.)" A reader writes in to correct and clarify, for which thanks: "In today's QoD (4/21/11), you made a reference to a roulette outcome of the number 7 appearing six times in a row, and commented that the odds of such an occurrence is 39 million to one. That is not entirely correct. The odds of a SPECIFIC number appearing six times in a row, is indeed 39 million to one. However, the eye-witness account was not specific. The odds of ANY number appearing six times in a row, is actually the odds that any number repeat FIVE times in a row, or 79 million to one."