Businessman Turns $35k Roulette Bet into $1.2m Profit

A Brazilian businessman and millionaire has only added to his net worth after turning a $35,000 roulette bet into a $1,225,000 profit.

Pedro Grendene Bartelle, president of the shoe company Vulcabras-Azaleia, was playing roulette with friends and family at Hotel Conrad in Punta del Este, Uruguay.

As seen through footage on the Daily Mail, Bartelle and his friends made a tower with their chips on number 32. He seemed very confident in his wager, sipping wine and assuring bystanders that his bet would be a winner.

Despite the fact that a single-number bet has just 37:1 odds of winning, lady luck ensured that the group won their bet, which pays out at 35:1.

This ignited a celebration that included Bartelle and his friends jumping around in a circle with arms around each other. One of those celebrating with him was his uncle, Alexandre Grendene Bartelle, a Brazilian billionaire who co-founded Grendene, the world’s largest manufacturer of sandals, with his brother, Pedro Grendene Bartelle Sr.

Success seems to run in the family since Pedro Grendene Bartelle Jr. presides over Vulcabras-Azaleia, the third largest footwear company in Latin America, behind Brazilians Alpargatas and Grendene.

In 2014, Alexandre Bartelle became a billionaire ($2.1b), while his company, Grendene produces Havaianas flip flops.

Although Pedro is one of the few people who’ve actually won $1 million on a single roulette spin, he’s far from the only person to win a million dollars through the game.

According to Wikipedia, professional gambler Billy Walters and his team won $3.8 million at the Golden Nugget casino in Atlantic City. They used a system called wheel bias, where one records results on different wheels until they find one that favors certain numbers.

In the 1990s, Spaniard Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo documented thousands of spins on roulette wheels in Spanish casinos. After recruiting his family to help him in the effort, he won over 1 million euros at Casino de Madrid. The casino tried to sue to recoup their winnings, but they were unsuccessful.

Since this time, casinos have switched to roulette wheels with metal frets to avoid wear and tear, and, subsequently, being taken advantage of through wheel bias.

Nevertheless, it’s still possible for players to win big through roulette, as Bartelle showed with his lucky wager on number 32.