9. Norman Leigh
Norman Leigh catapulted to fame when he wrote his now classic book on roulette called “Thirteen again the Bank“. In that book, Leigh told the remarkable story of the team of roulette system bettors that he assembled and then took to the south of France to embark on a series of sessions in which the players themselves won over £60,000.
The year was 1966 so at that time, this was an amazing amount of money. There is no doubt that what Leigh and his team did was remarkable because it actually made the newspapers in England so there is no doubt that this happened to some extent. Of course modern computer simulations using the system that Leigh and his team used have never replicated the success that they had.
This is more than likely to do with the sample size. So we have to say that Norman Leigh and his team of merry men and women in no way found the Holy Grail of roulette……a system that makes money.
Instead what we had here was someone who thought that they had found the Holy Grail and then convinced twelve other people to go along with a venture. It would be very difficult in these more enlightened times to recreate this today although anything is possible.
But you have to give Norman Leigh credit for doing something remarkable even if the results were down to luck. At the end of the day, the team had the casino so worried that they called in the police. That alone is a remarkable feat and deserves to get a place in my Hall of Fame.
