the Gonzalo method, winning with roulette
6 september 2022
Every roulette player knows that the casino has an advantage in the game. With an American wheel, that's even bigger than with the dollar pair. Nevertheless, there always remain individuals who, possibly using the Gonzalo method, want to try to make a profit not by game, but by acumen.
This is not just the case with roulette. We once spoke to the owner of slotenfabriek Lips. He told him, " all we can do is keep innovating and making locks that keep us ahead of burglars. Because burglars always find ways to open the locks."
When playing games, a casino often has to wait for the first detection of cheating or errors in equipment before solving the problem and usually for good. This is what happened after using the Gonzalo method.
Born in 1947, the Spaniard Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo was determined to become an important filmmaker. He studied at the film school and made several films for a period of time. But he always found time for other activities. They happened to come his way or he developed them out of Wonder.
It sometimes got in the way of his film ambitions. Because after founding a radio station and starting a nightclub, he rolled into the music world. In Spain, he became best known as a music producer. During the same time that he produced albums by many well-known Spanish musicians, he also undertook all kinds of other activities. For example, he was the manager of several bullfighters.
According to some sources, Gonzalo already went to casinos in his student years. he would gamble there because of lack of money. But it was the film school that lacked money. The school was closed before Gonzalo could graduate. It accelerated the start of his entreprénzdship. In the Sixties and seventies, however, it consisted mainly of music and film.
Casino games were at most a pastime, such as going to the cinema or visiting a cafe with friends. It was not until the late 1980s that Gonzalo gave more serious attention to the casino game. And a few years later became a legend in the history of roulette .
During a conversation with his five sons and some cousins, croupiers came up. Some of those present suggested that there was a difference in the throw of the ball. Each croupier did it differently. Even if the deviation is small, this would affect the outcome.
Gonzalo liked the conversation, as it happens more often at birthdays and such meetings. But in this case, it seemed interesting to him to see if the assertion of his relatives was true. So he asked a cousin to visit casinos, mainly the Big Casino of Madrid .
The nephew made notes such as the name of the croupier, which wheel they were on, the movement with which they threw the ball. And of course he also noted the box on which the balls had ended up when the wheel had come to a standstill.
After a day of filming or producing music, Gonzalo analyzed the data. He soon realized that the croupiers had little to no influence on the course of the ball. But he did see an anomaly in the wheel used. Some numbers fell on certain wheels more often than would be statistically normal.
He suspected a malfunction of the wheel in the roulette table and decided to investigate this further. First, he let the nephew collect data for several more months. They confirmed his suspicions. There were deviations in the wheels. Gonzalo decided to create a team, which was headed by his son Ivan.
The team went to play in the Big Casino of Madrid. They played for a month and left the casino every day with a million pesetas profit. At that time, that was equivalent to about 13,000 guilders. And had a value comparable to $ 22,000 now.
That sounds wonderful of course, a profit with a converted value of over 600,000 dollars in a month. But it was hugely labour intensive. Gonzalo and members of the team often spent more than 10 hours a day playing.
The results of Gonzalo and his team, of course, did not go unnoticed. Gonzalo's trick soon came out. Fit that many casinos the frequency of maintenance or replaced their roulette wheels. Some arcades did that immediately, others a little later.
But applying the Gonzalo method is hardly possible anymore. The roulette wheels today are made of other materials. Casinos also check the wheels more often. And if one of them deviates too much and often, the wheel is replaced.
But as ‘the old Lips’ already indicated, casinos cannot help but try to stay ahead of the smarter ones. With the improved roulette wheels and digital devices, it is almost impossible to detect a statistical anomaly, if there were one. Cheat is the only possibility if it does not work out with just playing, or you have a criminal streak from home. Although cheating today is also much more difficult than it used to be.
Nevertheless, in cafes with old slot machines in particular, you can still come across people who claim to have a winning system that is different from just playing the game. For example, they are talking about a click sound, after which it takes ten bnzdts for the jackpot to fall. Or a certain combination after which, again a number of bnzdts later, a maximum payout follows.
As an objective observer, statistically you already saw that more money went into the slot than they will ever get out of it. But perhaps that belief in such a deviant winning system is as attractive as watching the spinning discs of the slot machine.
