Croatian Roulette Mastermind Rakes in Millions

In his first-ever interview, one of the most secretive and successful roulette players in the world revealed how he beat the game in casinos Worldwide.

Croatian Roulette Mastermind Rakes in Millions

The man who beat the odds at Roulette is a Croatian genius who made millions by outwitting casinos around the world. He argues that anyone can beat the odds with consistent practice and concentration.

In his first-ever interview, one of the most secretive and successful roulette players in the world revealed how he beat the game in casinos Worldwide.

Nearly two decades ago, the elusive roulette maestro Niko Tosa and two of his accomplices were detained after earning £1.3 million at the luxurious Ritz Club casino in London over several evenings. Scotland Yard officials dropped the charges after a nine-month investigation following outlandish suspicions that the trio had cheated by using lasers and microcomputers to predict the direction of the wheel.

Tosa now argues that his approach is straightforward, despite being challenging to duplicate, in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek: The first step is to locate a roulette table with a slight bias or imperfection that decreases randomness. Second, make a mental prediction of where the ball will land when it has started moving based on countless hours of practice with a home wheel.

Tosa, who resides in a little Croatian village, dismissed the idea that he relied on a computer as a fictitious tale from a James Bond movie, telling Bloomberg: 'We are peasants.' '

You can call me Nikola Tesla if I have such a device!' he said, insisting that his edge at the roulette table resulted from intense mental concentration, an achievement that seemed to be almost superhuman. Tosa is a fictitious name, and little is known about him. As a condition of the interview, Bloomberg agreed to keep his real name secret and his picture was never released. He resides in a tiny Croatian seaside village, south of Dubrovnik, which was used as the setting for King's Landing in the Game of Thrones television series. Tosa is thought to be in his 50s.

Despite the fact that the town is not wealthy, even by Croatian standards, Tosa originates from a well-known family, according to Kit Chellel, the Bloomberg writer who was able to locate him there and have an interview with him in November.

Tosa freely acknowledges using fictitious names and disguises to enter casinos unnoticed all over the world. He also claims that he has been assaulted multiple times by thugs from the casinos who were enraged by his skill at Roulette.

According to reports, he has been seen in casinos in Romania, Poland, Slovakia, and even Nairobi, Kenya, suggesting that he has been further abroad in search of gambling establishments where he will not be recognised and kicked out. With the exception of the infamous event at the Ritz Club in London on March 15, 2004, Tosa has largely remained unnoticed.

In 2020, after failing to recover from pandemic lockdowns, the members-only casino that catered to royals and housed celebrities like Al Pacino, Johnny Depp, and Bill Clinton was unfortunately, permanently closed down.

When Tosa visited the Ritz in 2004 for several nights in a row with two friends—a Serbian businessman named Nenad Marjanovic and a 32-year-old Hungarian woman labelled "chic and beautiful"—security personnel at the Ritz quickly became aware of his presence. Security watching on CCTV observed that Tosa, who appeared to be the leader, initially studied the casino before choosing a specific table. He then said that he had been looking for a table that had been moved from the one where he had previously had success.

On each spin, Tosa and his partners would proceed in the same manner: they would wait until the ball was moving, then, as soon as betting was about to end, they would shoot their arms out to place a wager, usually on a group of consecutive numbers rather than a single number.

Over numerous sessions at the Ritz, the trio, who had initially won a few thousand pounds, raised their total earnings to $1.62 million (£1.3 million). When Tosa and his fellow guests returned to the Ritz the following night, police were waiting and arrested them on suspicion of "deception."

When police checked the group, they discovered no hidden devices. When analysed, the mobile phones and a gadget similar to a Palm-Pilot found on them did not show any signs of suspicion. Nothing but piles of cash and a list of nearby casinos marked with cryptic symbols like pluses and minuses were found when their hotel rooms were searched.

In addition, investigators dismantled the roulette table in search of any hidden gadgets or gimmicks, examined security footage of the trio, and interrogated the croupier who was manning the table, but they were unsuccessful. Scotland Yard abandoned the case in December 2004 following a nine-month inquiry, giving Tosa and his associates the freedom to leave with the money.

Understanding the fundamentals of Roulette, particularly key distinctions between the wheels used in the US and Europe, is essential to comprehend Tosa's alleged betting scheme.

The croupier spins a wheel with numbered pockets, before releasing a ball that is rotating in the opposite direction from the wheel.

Players must anticipate where the ball will land and wager on specific numbers, sets of numbers, odd/even numbers, or red/black. Until the ball completes its third rotation around the wheel, bets can typically still be put, however, at that point, the croupier will typically announce, "No more bets!"

Compared to American wheels, which have both '0' and '00' pockets, European wheels only have one '0' pocket, which is an automatic house victory.

This nearly doubles the house edge at American roulette tables, which is approximately 5.26 percent as opposed to Europe's 2.7 percent, which is more player-friendly.

Blackjack, on the other hand, has the best odds for players with a house margin that is often less than 1%.

'Neighbours' bets, which cover a total of five successive pockets on the wheel by placing a wager on a specific number and the two numbers on either side of it, are the main component of Tosa's method.

Tosa believes that the condition of the wheel is crucial, and he looks for specific tables where a minor flaw or bias lessens the outcome's randomness.

Then, by keeping an eye on the wheel and the ball right up to the time when bets are closed, he claims that he can forecast where the ball will land with sufficient accuracy to overcome the house edge.

A roulette wheel is said to be kept at Tosa's home, and he has spent countless hours honing his skills at watching it spin and developing a mental intuition for where the ball will land. If Tosa is to be believed, he has solved a mathematical and physical puzzle that has confounded scientists for many years. Albert Einstein allegedly once said, "No one can win at roulette unless he steals money from the table while the croupier is looking."

Stephen Hawking, a renowned scientist, has stated this about Roulette: "It is practically impossible to predict the number that will come up." If not, physicists would be rich from gambling. Tosa is hardly the only roulette genius to overcome the odds, though.

Dr. Richard Jarecki, a young medical researcher from New Jersey, won the equivalent of $8 million in today's money at roulette tables in Europe in the 1960s after putting in countless hours to establish a strategy.

According to a story by The Hustle, Jarecki also relied on locating roulette wheels with some flaw that lessened unpredictability. The young physician would observe roulette wheels for hours over thousands of spins, capturing and analysing the data to determine whether any certain numbers appeared more frequently than would be predicted by chance alone.

'I [experimented] until I had a rough outline of a system based on the previous winning numbers,' he revealed in 1969 to the Sydney Morning Herald. 'If numbers 1, 2, and 3 won the last 3 rounds, [I could determine] what was most likely to win the next 3.'

Jarecki was quickly banned from a number of casinos for making too many winning bets when the casinos caught on. Casinos also promptly modified their roulette wheels to lessen bias and improve unpredictability.

Many casinos have also enhanced their wheels further since the Tosa tragedy at the Ritz in 2004, converting to scalloped pockets to lengthen the time the ball bounces erratically.

Tosa, nevertheless, isn't deterred and recently revealed to Bloomberg that he's getting ready to embark on yet another foreign casino tour.