We’d all like to imagine ourselves as the high roller who walks in and robs the casino blind by winning massive amounts of cash at the black jack table.
Here are some of the biggest wins and losses casino dealers have seen.
You can check out more answers from the source at the end of this article!
1. I was on vacation in Vegas. I was at the palms playing Blackjack and 1 table over was a guy, sitting by himself. Playing every hand with big stacks of black chips. He was losing, and losing, and losing. He looked so depressed but just kept putting down more and more money. It was super depressing to watch.
I asked the dealer, “clearly this guy has a gambling problem. Its sad to watch. What can a dealer do in that scenario”….The answer was obvious but “if we stop dealing to him, we’ll get fired immediately”.
frankrizzo24
2. Ex-Croupier here.
Worked in a large casino NOT in America. We had a lot of Asian clientele in our VIP room. Once had a guy betting 600k PER HAND on Baccarat. He ended up a few mil and was sharing it around the group of women/escorts around him.
Most I’ve seen lost is 10 Mil in 3 weeks. He has the room Booked for the month so he made his bag man fly back to Thailand and get more money. Nothing was transferred. It was all cash.
Hey_otto_man
3. I work in a well known casino in Las Vegas. It happens multiple times per week that we get high rollers in who win or lose over $1 million. The most I ever saw a person lose was about $9 million in one night. But while that may seem like an obscene amount of money to you or I, that’s what he budgeted himself to gamble that trip. He came knowing he may lose $9 million. Don’t get me wrong, he wasn’t happy, but he didn’t lose his mind, or freak out or anything like that.
Antitheistic10
4. I manned the Roulette wheel for about 6 months back in my college days, and the most amount of money I ever saw someone lose was $2,500. He put $100 on 22 different numbers, red, even, and second half. I’ll never forget his face with 0 showed up.
The most amount of money I ever saw someone win was around $12,000 or so, give or take. It was around Christmas time, and a group from a business Christmas party came in, the boss gave everyone $100 and she came over, put $100 on 13, just wanting to get rid of it and get home.
13, $3,500 instant win. She takes $3,400 back, and puts $100 on 25 … 25 … another $3,400 net gain. I forget the third number, but she did it again. She then put $500 on one of the colors, forget which, and about the same on the thirds, forget which. She won the thirds, lost the color, and walked had me call security over to escort her to cash in her chips. This took her no time, at all. She was very excited, talking about how much this money would help her.
LillyYoyoINeedGogert
5. 60k on blackjack. Guy didn’t even blink. Onto the next hand.
y3llowchocolat3
6. Ex croupier here, quit after this incident.
I lost $3 mil in an hour, won $5.2mil back from the same client. All in the span of 6 hours.
He hanged himself in the suite that night.
anotherasiangirl
7. Ex-croupier from Sydney.
Dude turned over about 20mil in 20 mins. He was just there because it was uni enrollment time for his son, so decided to show them a fun time in the inner sanctums.
Another dude lost maybe 700k and didn’t care, his bag man showed me photos of the private jet they travel in, which had a full sized queen bed in it. Pretty awesome.
Since I’m white, I didn’t really get to deal much in the inners. But if the players lose, they just kick you out and ask for a luckier dealer. Usually an Asian female.
Flybuys
8. I dealt blackjack for a few months at an Iowa casino. A guy was staying at our hotel for a week on business and would play at my table at night because we had some good conversations and he had a few really good runs w me. On his last hand one night he put down $500.
Hit two 8s against me showing a 6. He split them. On the first one he got a 3 and doubled down. Drew a 4 or 5. Second he got a 2 and doubled down on it as well and got another mediocre hand. I forgot what I had exactly but I ended up drawing like 5 cards and not busting and taking $2,000 from him. He laughed and tipped me a couple of black chips ($200). I would have felt bad if I thought he couldn’t afford it (we definitely had some people like that) but I got the impression he was doing just fine.
cfia123
9. Worked in The Grosvenor in Sunderland, England when I was 18 (it was a tiny place) and a taxi driver would come in every night and put 200 on black 8 and laugh and leave after one spin win or lose. He won twice the whole the whole six months I worked there before being sacked.
Nismo1980
10. Had a college kid bet his entire net worth on a hand of blackjack on graduation weekend with his friends watching. Money wise it was under $15k, but it was literally every cent the kid had. Was dealt a 20 vs a 3 and I pulled a 6 card 21. Kid puked everywhere. Not a good look.
FenwayFranks
11. When I was a croupier I was dealing roulette. Guy was up around 20k. By the time I had finished with him he had lost that and spent another 5k. He wasn’t very happy.
SaltySeaDodger
12. I’m a dealer and I’ll never forget my first night on Roullete was the most I’ve ever paid out.
I tap onto the game and I see a STACK of chips on 16. Boom, 16 off the rip for like 6 different people in total. One guy got it good for like 17k. Was an eventful first night on Roullete. That games fun to deal. Blackjack or Baccarat? Awful.
RegretfuI
13. Currently a dealer at a large casino in the US, not vegas. I tap onto my blackjack game and this guy I’m dealing to tells me he is already down around 100k. He’s in his mid 50s or so, wearing a tacky plaid suit. He was betting 500-1k a hand, two hands every time. Over about 4 hours the guy floats between my table and the one next to me buying in 10k at a time. I gave him one good shoe the whole night so I was busting his head essentially the whole time. A couple times it took longer for me to count his buy in than for me to put it in my rack. There were so many 100 dollar bills in my money box it was getting tough to put the paddle in it. My floor tells me after he leaves that he lost 209k after it was all said and done.
He treated it like how I would treat losing 1 grand maybe. He wasn’t happy but he seemed like he could shrug it off. My floor was like yea, I could pay off my entire mortgage with what he just lost. I died a little inside that day but it’s not my money after all.
DavidLuiz9
14. First off, a little background. Casinos in Asia are rumored to ‘rent out’ tables, which means someone can pay the casino for the right to take a percentage of winnings from that table over a period of time. Basically it’s money laundering.
During my many trips to Macau and the Philippines I’ve watched people gamble away millions every hour over days and the only reason I can attribute their behavior is to this type of money laundering. In the 2000’s this was very common to see in Macau. Acrylic covered gold plaques worth Hong Kong Dollars $100,000 thrown across the table like $2 chips over a game of Baccarat many times over.
The first time I saw it happen I counted the amount re-bought at $10 million, which he lost in minutes right after he had just lost a stick in similar size. When I went back a few days later he was still there doing the exact same thing. The amount he lost/laundered easily broke into hundreds of millions if not more.
steev506
15. My mother has had a gambling problem for as long as I can remember. It got worse as I got older. After I graduated and got a job, left the house for good, she started gambling a lot. I got a call from her once at 3am, literally begging me to instantly wire her $1,800 so she could get a flight home from Vegas. I did so in the morning but the transfer would take 3 days. She gambled away her plane ticket and her hotel room too. I didn’t even know that was possible. She was literally just walking around Vegas for those 3 days homeless, waiting for the wire transfer.
My older brother is a lot better off financially than I am, so he got stuck paying some huge gambling debts. About 15 years ago my brother bought my mom a brand new house. He was very well off. As a result, my mom was gambling a lot because she thought he would pay off her debts. She lost a lot of money in some seedy underground gambling den in Hawaii (where gambling is illegal). She owed money to some really bad people, possibly the Japanese mafia. My brother paid her debt (she later admitted to me it was $25,000). As a result, my brother sold the house he bought her and got her a smaller condo instead. They rarely talk to each other now.
iScoopPoop
16. I’m an analyst in a tribal-owned casino in a not-very-wealthy area so we don’t see people losing in the millions, but we’ve got a few patrons that have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars to us over the years. Most of them are local business owners, or were owners that have now sold their company for big profits. So spending that much money here (and presumably the same or more at our local competitors) doesn’t seem to be a problem.
One of our biggest players for about a year was a little old lady who’s husband died and she didn’t have anything else to spend the life insurance on, so she put a few hundred thousand in to us over the year. Once she finished off that amount she basically stopped playing all together, she was just in it for the fun. She’s spent enough though, and is a nice old lady, so most of the hosts comp her a free meal every once in awhile, just to bring her in and check in on her. If she never spends another cent here, she’s still one of our biggest players ever.
Word of advice though, those folks you know who “won a huge jackpot, and have made so much money gambling, and are big winners” well there’s a really good chance that they’re net-negative when it comes to their spending here. We’ve had folks win $100k jackpots and still be a hundred and fifty thousand in the hole. That’s how this works, you might have some big wins on occasion, but every game is advantageous to the house.
AnalTyrant
17. I dealt a pai-gow game (like poker, but players play against the house instead of each other).
Typically, you bet the minimum AND the bonus – it’s stupid not to, the bonus increases your odds to almost 50/50. Without bonus, the odds were closer to 40/60 (bet $100 and you’d expect to get about 90 back, for instance).
The game is very “up and down” – you win some and lose some and often don’t go anywhere at all.
A lady walks in, refuses to get the bonus, and proceeds to lose $10,000 cash faster than seems possible. She arrives at her last 2 chips with stunning speed, displaying the absolute worst streak of bad luck I’ve ever seen.
Against the rules, I suggest she bet the option with her last chip. She hits a straight flush, begins crying, and walks away with $20k. Didn’t tip.
Computer-Blue
18. I’m an ex croupier in the UK. This might not seem like a lot, but I’m not from a big city and I hadn’t been in the job long. A student came in with 40. He won 14,000!! Then he started to lose. Instead of cutting his losses, he thought he could make it back up to 14k. The idiot lost it all. Could of wiped his student debt, could of bought a car, holiday, deposit on house, whatever. Once you start getting greedy, you’re gonna lose it all!
rachett86
19. I used to work in soft count at a casino, and would take care of the machines in the high roller area. I’ve never seen anyone really freak out, but some people would regularly throw away hundreds of thousands of dollars on a bet like it was nothing. Meanwhile, they were surrounded by workers who just watched someone piss away more money then they’d ever see in a lifetime.
I’ll never understand gamblers.
ComradeDroog
20. Not first hand, but talked with a pit boss in New Mexico not long ago.
He had a story about a girl who continued going back to the ATM while playing $5min Black Jack and eventually collapsed on the table saying she had blown a semester of tuition at Princeton…
BruceLeeFanboy
21. I am not a dealer but I was sitting by a guy who was playing blackjack at his own reserved table. He had stacks and stacks of $500 chips and was betting a few thousand per hand and losing almost all of them. Within 20 minutes I watched him lose over 10k and just pull out his wallet and grab a huge stack of $100 bills and throw them in the dealers face. It was crazy because if anyone else did that they would get kicked out but they didn’t do anything to him because he was losing so much money. It was the craziest thing I’d ever seen in a casino. He eventually lost all the money and the floor manager comped him a room and walked him off the floor. Meanwhile I’m at the next table over betting $5 a hand getting pissed when I lose…
Longislandboyyy19
22. I’ve seen a guy lose 20 million or so over a night. $600,000 a hand. He was frustrated but never got angry at the staff.
Meanwhile on the main floor, you get called everything in the book when someone loses $10.
GUE57
23. I was a table games dealer for a while and, honestly, the people who lose a lot of money didn’t really care. It was the regular Joes who would lose $300 in a night that would lose their minds. Their body language would change and I could tell they were there to make money and ended up losing the money they needed to pay bills. These were the hardest.
On the flip side, we would have a guy come in with bank rolls of hundreds and play for 3 hours win or lose. Biggest tip that guy ever gave was $30.
e3kb0m63r
24. I saw someone that I knew, an older gentleman, in his 50’s. Not rich but he loved to gamble on the horse races. He was pretty good at it too he a couple of times won big. Along the lines of 19k one time. But sadly one day i saw him loose a few races get upset and he put down 11k on a “sure bet” ..ya well he lost that 11k….again not a rich man, that was probably almost everything.
King_in_gold
25. Ex-Dealer. I had a very friendly, happy-go-lucky type of customer lose (approx) 900 (Not 56K as he states in the local paper) to me during a dayshift in the casino I used to work at. He seemed quieter than usual after this. I went home at 9pm, during the nightshift he cut his wrists in the toilet & had to be stretchered out of the place. The amounts he mentions in this news article are nonsense. I’m sure he did lose a sum of money over a period of time, but nowhere near 200K. Initially I felt really sorry for him…then he “sold his story” to local media, and lied them to the max.
LeamingtonLiftBridge
26. This was in a California Card Room so you don’t technically play against the house so the house doesn’t technically care who wins or loses as long as they get their “collection” (basically a per-hand fee to play). I was a third party “banker” meaning we put up the money against whoever wanted to bet. We were licensed and everything, but didn’t work directly for the casino.
This one guy brought a lot of action so the casino basically let him run his own games. He was mostly beating us regularly for several weeks at least, 250k there, 500k there, not sure is he ever got over a million in a single game but it was close. I beat him for 750k once. But at that point it didn’t matter to him much he was up so much.
Couple weeks later, FBI came in and pulled him off mid game. Turns out he was running some charity scam.
Eucrates
27. I’ve seen someone bet $25,000 a hand. When they lose they just bet another $25,000. In an evening they’ll lose up to a million dollars and they won’t get upset. I’ve had someone lose 750,000 at my table and he took me out to a beer after. Typically the ones betting huge amounts of money aren’t the ones getting upset, it’s the ones who lose $500-$1000 that go ballistic.
Elatedonion
28. I took 90k from a guy in 20 minutes. He was playing 3 spots on a Blackjack table betting the house max, $500 per spot. They actually pulled me out of the break room to tap out the lump dealer who was on the table. I didn’t feel bad for him. He was a rude jerk to the waitresses and staff and he never tipped a penny. I guess he walked out with $25k the night before and did the same thing. One of those people that owns construction outfit and thinks he’s a millionaire. And treats everyone like they work for him.
BallardLockHemlock
29. The most I’ve seen someone lose wasn’t in the amount of money, per se. It was the gas money home that I saw that hit these people hardest. If someone is gambling hundreds of thousands they probably have the means to at least eat and move around in a vehicle even if they lose it all. At least they have some assets. The poor folks that gambled for hope were, by far, the most shocking experiences I’ve ever had during the short time I spent dealing blackjack.
messenja
30. Dealer, not in Vegas but still considered a large casino. The most heartbreaking losses always come from naive college kids or the regular single parents but the largest loss I’ve ever seen was pretty entertaining.
There’s a regular at our Casino that owns his own company but also used to scam other casinos by having an inside man at his bank confirm credit over the phone that the player did not have. He’s since been busted for this and will definitely be sent to jail once the case is closed. He still has a ton of cash and plays at our Casino being the only one in the area that allows him inside. A few weeks after he was caught, he came to our Casino with 4 brief cases of $250,000 each and said “I’m not leaving until the sign outside says “(insert players name) Casino””. Super upbeat and happy guy. Really nice to the dealers (probably so he wouldn’t get kicked out). After 5 hours, my shift was over and he was down $720,000. The smile on his face looked like he found the money in between his couch cushions.
PM_ME_BLURRY_NUDES