Breaking the Bank.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume III, Issue 115, 15 October 1901, Page 3

Breaking the Bank.

At the end of the London season there i« alway* a rush of fashionable people to the south of Europe, and thia year the authorities of Monte Carlo seem to have made special efforts to attract p»rt of the stream of visitors to their giddy. little town. The proprletora of tha gambling tables spend, an, enormous sum in “ the Pressi and this year one of the stories they have succeeded in, getting through half the newspapers on Jhe Continent refers to .fcn; soheme of “ breaking the bank” that has been discovered by a Portuguese named Almsida.; According to a -telegram published in the London Express, this gentleman haswoo thousand* ;from .the

tables, so, much, indeed, that he is mw prepared to sell his secret for £50,000. It ia remarkable, fay the way, that the inventors of gambling systems are always, willing to part with their “ patents ” tor a consideration. Tb-may seem strange to ordinary mortals that Benhor Almeida, whose road to wealth is represented as being so sura and so easy, does not keep his secret to himself and win the £50,000 at the tables, and as much more as the proprietors are iUolined to lose. But probably his offer is made in the interests of those gentlemen who reap most of their' profits from “ systems " that are intended to reduce chance.to a certainty. The announcement of his good fortune is sure to stimulate the imagination of other inventors. A few years ago an Englishman went to Monte Carlo with a small fortuneaud an idea that could not fail to multiply his wealth a hundredfold. The system, as he called it, was based on a mathematical calculation. He simply took a list ef all the winning numbers iu one evening, and then worked out the chances of their turning up the next (lay.* V(A!hHb« ,end of three months he hang<>d M himself in his bedroom, having lost thousands of his own money as well as thousands of other people’s, and for a day or two the tables were in disfavour with respectable people. But it was only for a day or t wo. Before the end of a week-other inventors were trying their systems, and often with the same, result. The proprietors of the tables, if they are nob already la collusion with the ingenious Portuguese, will doubtless bi very pleased to meet Sonhor Almeida and his invention, and 10 relieve him as promptly as possible of any superfluous cash with which ho may happen to be mcumberod.