The

Monte Carlo Casino The Monte Carlo Casino, officially named Casino de Monte-Carlo, is a gambling and entertainment complex located in Monaco. It includes a casino, the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, and the office of Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo. The Casino de Monte-Carlo i ...

was inaugurated in 1863. Since then the bank has been broken on a number of occasions. The expression "

breaking the bank In gaming, breaking the bank refers to a player winning a critical sum of money from the casino. 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 ...

" is used when a gambler wins more money than the reserve held at that particular table in the casino. At the start of each day, every table was funded with a cash reserve of 100,000

francs The franc is any of various units of currency. One franc is typically divided into 100 centimes. The name is said to derive from the Latin inscription ''francorum rex'' (King of the Franks) used on early French coins and until the 18th centu ...

– known as "the bank". If this reserve was insufficient to pay the winnings, play at that table was suspended while extra funds were brought out from the casino's vaults. In a ceremony devised by

François Blanc François Blanc (; 12 December 1806 – 27 July 1877), nicknamed "The Magician of Homburg" and "The Magician of Monte Carlo", was a French entrepreneur and operator of casinos, including the Monte Carlo Casino in Monaco. His daughter, Marie-F� ...

, the original owner of the casino, a black cloth was laid over the table in question, and the successful player was said to have broken the bank. After an interval the table re-opened and play continued. The names of only a few of the men who broke the bank are known, and some are listed below.

Joseph Jagger

Joseph Jagger Joseph Hobson Jagger (2 September 1830 – 25 April 1892) was an English textile industry businessman from Yorkshire, who in around 1881 is said to have "broken the bank at Monte Carlo" by identifying and exploiting biases in the wheels of the ...

was a Bradford textile engineer who looked for and found imperfections in the balance of a wheel which he exploited to win a fortune and break the bank. The casino responded by redesigning the wheels with moveable partitions and introducing spirit levels so that this method could never be used again.

Charles Wells

Charles Wells won large sums of money at Monte Carlo when he attended the casino in July–August and November 1891. He is generally thought to have inspired the song " The Man who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo".

William Darnborough

William Nelson Darnborough William Nelson Darnborough (1869–1958) was an American gambler from Bloomington, Illinois, who was known for his success in roulette at Monte Carlo from 1904 to 1911. During that time period he amassed a fortune of $415,000.($11,374,844) in 20 ...

(1869–1958), also known as 'Bill Darnborough', was an American gambler from

Bloomington, Illinois Bloomington is a city and the county seat of McLean County, Illinois, United States. It is adjacent to the town of Normal, and is the more populous of the two principal municipalities of the Bloomington–Normal metropolitan area. Bloomington ...

, who was known for his success in

roulette Roulette is a casino game named after the French word meaning ''little wheel'' which was likely developed from the Italian game Biribi''.'' In the game, a player may choose to place a bet on a single number, various groupings of numbers, the ...

Monte Carlo Monte Carlo (; ; french: Monte-Carlo , or colloquially ''Monte-Carl'' ; lij, Munte Carlu ; ) is officially an administrative area of the Principality of Monaco, specifically the ward of Monte Carlo/Spélugues, where the Monte Carlo Casino is ...

from 1904 to 1911. During that time period he amassed a fortune of $415,000 ($11,374,844 in 202

In one of the more legendary feats, Darnborough bet on the number 5 and won on five successive spins.

Kenneth Clark

This Scottish industrialist was the father of

Kenneth Clark Kenneth Mackenzie Clark, Baron Clark (13 July 1903 – 21 May 1983) was a British art historian, museum director, and broadcaster. After running two important art galleries in the 1930s and 1940s, he came to wider public notice on television ...

the art historian. It is stated that he "enjoyed gambling and frequented the Casino at Monte Carlo where he met with regular and extraordinary luck. According to Clark, after one such successful evening of roulette, he bought a small, recently created golf course at

Sospel Sospel (; Mentonasc: Sospèl, Italian Sospello) is a commune (municipality) and former schismatic episcopal seat (1381-1418) in the Alpes-Maritimes department in southeastern France near the Italian border and not far from Monte Carlo. Hist ...

, behind

Menton Menton (; , written ''Menton'' in classical norm or ''Mentan'' in Mistralian norm; it, Mentone ) is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region on the French Riviera, close to the Italian border. Me ...

e, and then built a hotel there."

Arthur de Courcy Bower

Arthur Bower—the self-styled "Captain Arthur de Courcy Bower"—was a convicted fraudster who had been sentenced to six months hard labour in 1904. He was subsequently reported to have won the maximum payout eighteen times in a row and to have broken the bank five times on a visit to the casino in 1911. Certain published works claim that it was Bower who inspired the popular

song A song is a musical composition intended to be performed by the human voice. This is often done at distinct and fixed pitches (melodies) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs contain various forms, such as those including the repetitio ...

,Books which claim that Bower inspired the song include: Gilbert, D.: Lost Chords (New York: Cooper Square, 1970); and Lax, R. & Smith, F.: The Great Song Thesaurus (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984) but as his casino wins occurred some twenty years after the song was published, this would seem an impossibility.

References

{{reflist Casinos in Monaco