The gambling world is full of countless stories of people who won big and lost it all. For every success story, there are equally compelling examples of astronomical losses.
Fred Smith, founder of Federal Express, was the subject of one such shocking gambling story. He lost his entire fortune on a single roulette wheel spin!
Akio Kashiwagi
Akio Kashiwagi was a rich Tokyo real estate investor with alleged connections to the Yakuza. He also loved to gamble and would often bet millions of dollars in casinos. He was known as the “casino whale.” In 1990, he won over $6 million in Atlantic City at the baccarat table. This put a huge dent in the casino’s bottom line and caused many people to worry.
In order to keep his money, he agreed with Donald Trump that he would bring $2 million and stay at the table until he either won it or lost it. He played for five days and was down $10 million before he gave up.
Unfortunately, he was murdered on January 3, 1992 at his palatial home near Mount Fuji. His body was found with more than 150 stab wounds and it was believed that the Yakuza were involved in his murder. The case remains unsolved. This is another example of how money brings trouble.
Fred Smith
If prostitution is the oldest profession, gambling is certainly the oldest hobby. The ancient Chinese had games of chance on tiles, and you can find scenes of Romans wagering on animal fights carved into their pottery.
Fred Smith was born in 1944 in Marks, Mississippi, the son of a wealthy business owner who founded the Dixie Greyhound Bus Lines. As a child he suffered from a bone disease in his hip sockets, which required him to use crutches and braces throughout his childhood. He graduated from Yale University with a bachelor’s degree in economics and went on to serve as a Marine Corps second lieutenant in Vietnam.
During this time he wrote a term paper about express overnight delivery of time-sensitive packages. This paper would become the basis of his company, FedEx. He has won numerous awards and honors for his business leadership and philanthropy, including the Global Leadership Award from the U.S.-India Business Council and the Peter F. Drucker Strategic Leadership Award. He has a strong interest in sports, and is a co-owner of the Washington Redskins NFL team.
John Montagu
John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, is known as one of the most famous gamblers in history. He was a British politician and statesman with a keen political mind and excellent speaking skills. He was also an avid sportsman and a big fan of gambling.
In private, however, he was a rake and a profligate gambler. His wife, Martha Ray, was so upset with him that she tried to get a divorce from him. However, divorcing in the eighteenth century was extremely difficult.
He was credited with inventing the sandwich because he would eat a piece of beef between two slices of bread while gambling. However, the story is mostly apocryphal. He was a friend and supporter of Captain James Cook, who named the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) after him. He was also a member of the House of Lords. He was an ardent Whig and a supporter of the Duke of Bedford. He was a great admirer of the playwright John Wilkes and once wrote a poem that was considered offensive and blasphemous.
Francois Blanc
Francois Blanc and his twin brother Louis grew up in a small town where the circus would come to visit each year. The boys were impressed and wanted to get involved in the circus so that is what they did when they grew up.
The brothers worked as part of a troupe and got to travel all over Europe, learning all the tricks of the trade. When they were done with this they opened their own casino in Bad Homburg. They soon realized that they needed to do something unique to stand out from Paris, which was the gambling capital at the time.
So they came up with the idea of removing the double zero from the roulette wheel to make it more attractive to gamblers. They also improved transport links in order to lure people in and they were successful. They soon became known as “The Magician of Homburg” and later on, The Magician of Monte Carlo.
