gaming Gaming may refer to: Games and sports The act of playing games, as in: * Legalized gambling, playing games of chance for money, often referred to in law as "gaming" * Playing a role-playing game, in which players assume fictional roles * Playin ...

, breaking the bank refers to a player winning a critical sum of money from the

casino A casino is a facility for certain types of gambling. Casinos are often built near or combined with hotels, resorts, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships, and other tourist attractions. Some casinos are also known for hosting live entertai ...

. The literal, extremely rare, situation of breaking the bank, is winning more than the house has on hand. The term can also be used for the act of winning more

chips ''CHiPs'' is an American crime drama television series created by Rick Rosner and originally aired on NBC from September 15, 1977, to May 1, 1983. It follows the lives of two motorcycle officers of the California Highway Patrol (CHP). The serie ...

than there are at the

table Table may refer to: * Table (furniture), a piece of furniture with a flat surface and one or more legs * Table (landform), a flat area of land * Table (information), a data arrangement with rows and columns * Table (database), how the table data ...

. Another situation of it portrayed in fiction is a situation where a gambler will win more money than the casino owns, forcing the casino out of business, and winning the casino itself as a prize. In

blackjack Blackjack (formerly Black Jack and Vingt-Un) is a casino banking game. The most widely played casino banking game in the world, it uses decks of 52 cards and descends from a global family of casino banking games known as Twenty-One. This fami ...

card counting Card counting is a blackjack strategy used to determine whether the player or the dealer has an advantage on the next hand. Card counters are advantage players who try to overcome the casino house edge by keeping a running count of high and low ...

can facilitate a

winning streak A winning streak, also known as a win streak or hot streak, is an uninterrupted sequence of success in games or competitions, commonly measured by at least 4 wins that are uninterrupted by losses or ties/draws. Although sometimes claimed as a ...

that eventually breaks the bank.

Mark Bowden Mark Robert Bowden (; born July 17, 1951) is an American journalist and writer. He is a national correspondent for ''The Atlantic''. He is best known for his book ''Black Hawk Down (book), Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War'' (1999) about th ...

reports in ''

The Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...

'' that blackjack player

Don Johnson Donnie Wayne Johnson (born December 15, 1949) is an American actor, producer and singer. He played the role of James "Sonny" Crockett in the 1980s television series ''Miami Vice'', for which he won a Golden Globe, and received a Primetime Em ...

broke the bank in 2011 winning nearly $6 million at Atlantic City's Tropicana casino after previously taking the Borgata for $5 million and Caesars for $4 million. The Tropicana refused to continue playing with Johnson on the terms the casino had negotiated after Johnson won $5.8 million, the Borgata cut Johnson off at $5 million, and the dealer at Caesars refused to fill Johnson's chip tray once his earnings topped $4 million. Johnson had reportedly negotiated terms with the Tropicana that included a hand-shuffled six-deck shoe; the right to split and double down on up to four hands at once; and a “soft 17" whittling the house edge down to one-fourth of 1 percent so in effect, Johnson was playing a 50–50 game against the house, and with the 20% "loss rebate", Johnson was risking only 80 cents of every dollar he played. In 2005, British investor

Paul Newey Paul Newey (born 6 September 1968) is an English businessman and semi-professional poker player from Dorset, England who co-founded Ocean Finance and later New Wave Ventures. Career In 1991, Newey co-founded Ocean Finance, a loan and mortgage ...

nearly broke the bank at

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...

's Genting Casino Star City, where he won £3 million and forced owner

Stanley Leisure Stanley Leisure is a British casino firm. History The company was founded in the 1950s as a bookmakers in Belfast. It was originally run by Leonard Steinberg, Baron Steinberg. In 1977, Steinberg moved the business to Liverpool after an attempted ...

to issue a

profit warning A profit warning is a warning declaration issued by a listed company to investors through a stock exchange. It warns investors that the profit of the company in the coming quarter will significantly decline when compared with that of the same quart ...

and caused the casino value to decline by 12%. Breaking the bank occurs only if the house fails to cap the total amount payable on a winning bet in a way that bears some reasonable relationship to the total amount of money in play. In contrast,

parimutuel betting Parimutuel betting or pool betting is a betting system in which all bets of a particular type are placed together in a pool; taxes and the "house-take" or "vigorish" are deducted, and payoff odds are calculated by sharing the pool among all winnin ...

by its very nature does impose such a cap, and hence the bank cannot be broken.

References

{{reflist Gambling terminology