It’s the stuff that dreams are made of – heading to the casino with a fistful of cash and coming away with millions of dollars. It’s the reason that we take our chances on the roulette wheel and the slot machines, and why we learn all the strategies for blackjack while practicing our poker face.
Winning big at the physical or online casino can happen to anyone, and in this article, we will look at some of the most famous winners in history; people who were lucky and people who knew how to play the game, as well as some that hustled or lost as much as they won.
Kerry Packer
Often referred to as the most famous gambler in the world, Australian media mogul Kerry Packer found time to hit up casinos around the world while he grew his media empire.
Packer was an avid gambler, who made casinos nervous – there were some times, like in 1999 when he visited some casinos in London – where he went on an unbelievable losing streak. In just three days he was dealt the biggest gambling loss in British history, costing him AUS$28 million.
However, this isn’t what he is most famous for. Packer won AUS$33 million at the world-famous MGM Grand Casino over the space of a few days – somewhere in the region of $40 million. He’d often call casinos in the cities he was visiting to ask them how much cash they had available, only stopping to play if they had more than $500k to hand.
Casinos didn’t know what to make of the man – a good day for him could destroy profits, while a losing streak earned a lot, so a visit really was make or break. For the staff, croupiers and waiting staff alike, Packer was the ideal player – tipping big (often six-figure sums) and ensuring that no matter how his night ended, the workers were taken care of.
After his death, it was reported that over the course of his gambling career, he had a net loss of about $20 million on the Strip, but that didn’t stop him coming back for more whenever he could.
Elmer Sherwin
If you want a story about a player striking it lucky on a billion to one chance, then the tale of Elmer Sherwin will definitely hit the spot.
Sherwin was a casual slots player, often spending a couple of hundred dollars at a time in casinos as he travelled around with his wife on vacation. He decided to visit the newly opened Mirage casino on November 22nd, 1989, and play the Megabucks slot. With just $100 and a $3 stake, Sherwin hit the jackpot – something that the game designers said was a 1 in 4.98 million chance. That day, he took home the $4.65 million jackpot.
What makes this story even better is that 16 years later, he did it again. He said that his goal was to be the lucky one who won the jackpot twice; with odds so high his chances were miniscule. On September 16, 2005, Sherwin visited the Cannery Casino in Downtown Las Vegas and played the trusty Megabucks slot – hitting the jackpot again for a tidy win of $21.1 million.
When he won, he decided to donate much of his profits, including a large sum to the rebuilding and recovery efforts following Hurricane Katrina.
Sadly, although he wanted to be the first man to do it a third time, Sherwin died shortly after his last win.
Archie Karas
Born into poverty in Greece, Archie Karas came to the US on the deck of a ship where he worked as a waiter. When he made it to Oregon, he spent much of his time honing his pool skills, using them to win bets and wagers and making some tidy profits.
It wasn’t long before he set his sights on a new way to win bets so switched to poker, and it didn’t take long for him to be just as good at hustling in poker as he was in pool. He played all over the country, against some of the best professionals in the world, making and losing millions without really caring – according to him, it was all about the game, rather than the money.
His most famous poker winning streak came following a particularly bad run, where he left Los Angeles with nothing but a beat-up car and $50. When he arrived in Vegas, he soon met up with some of his pokercontemporaries and managed to get one of them to front him $10,000, which he managed to play with (and win back), putting himself in profit. This all took place in The Mirage in 1992, and after hustling a well-known pool and poker player on the pool tael, he netted a cool $1.2 million before moving onto high stake poker.
He famously sat at the poker table in Binion’s Horseshoe with $5 million, offering to play any player that could manage the $500,000 stakes in the game.
Over 30 months, through a series of increasingly high stakes games with some of the best poker players in the world. Karas had amassed $17 million – which he lost in just three weeks.