Gonzalo Garcia Pelayo's Life
1 Pelayo's Early Days of Wheel Bias Analysis Gonzalo Garcia
Pelayo was born in Madrid on the 💶 25th of June, 1947. He was enrolled in Spain’s
Official Film School in the 1960s but his film-making education came 💶 to a halt when the
establishment unexpectedly closed down. It was at this point that Pelayo turned to
music, accepting 💶 a job at the National Radio which laid the foundations of his
successful carrier in the entertainment industry. Among his 💶 most prominent achievements
are the creation of the Andalusian rock genre and his producer work with established
Spanish musicians the 💶 likes of Carlos Puebla, Luis Pastor, and Maria Jimenez. In the
1970s and the 1980s, Pelayo turned to his old 💶 passion for film-making and created
several feature films including Living in Seville and Manuela. Pelayo’s career as a
roulette player 💶 began in the early 1990s when he decided to take up the game as a
hobby. At first, he played 💶 solely for entertainment purposes at Casino Gran Madrid but
then it dawned on him that maybe some numbers showed more 💶 frequently than others. This
is when he began recording the outcomes of the spins to determine whether there were
reasonable 💶 grounds for his suspicions. Pelayo soon came to the realization it was
rather laborious for a single person to collect 💶 data for multiple wheels, so he decided
to recruit his son Ivan and daughter Vanessa to assist him in this 💶 task. They would
spend hours upon hours each day at the Casino Gran Madrid to record the outcomes the
roulette 💶 wheels produced. While his children busied themselves with data collection
(they recorded over 30,000 results manually!), Pelayo, who was keen 💶 on math, took it
upon himself to create computer software that would enable him to accurately analyze
the recorded results. 💶 The program he created in the simple QBasic language would assign
a numerical value to every numbered pocket on the 💶 roulette wheel. The higher the
frequency of occurrence of a given number, the greater numerical value the software
would assign 💶 to it. This enabled Pelayo to create a profile for each wheel his children
clocked, helped him identify biased wheels, 💶 and compile lists of the numbers with
abnormally high hit frequency. Such numbers were more likely to occur, he reasoned.
💶 This was a turning point for the entire Pelayo family.
2 The Pelayos' Success in Casino
Gran Madrid After profiling numerous 💶 wheels, Pelayo established that exploiting such
biases can overturn the casino’s edge and give the player the staggering advantage of
💶 6%. The player would not win on every spin, of course, but a smart person armed with
this bias information 💶 could never lose to the house over the long run. The roulette
team expanded, with more members of the Pelayo 💶 family joining in. Pelayo understood
that losing streaks would occur despite his advantage and that he needed a more
substantial 💶 bankroll to recover from these bad runs. Despite his successful carrier as
a film-maker and music producer, he was by 💶 no means a rich man. Pelayo decided to sell
the rights of one of his documentary films which helped him 💶 build up the bankroll to
aroundR$2,200. Since Pelayo’s simulations showed pocket bias, he and his family members
decided to bet 💶 straight up on the favored numbers. Individual numbers had smaller odds
of showing (1 to 36) but they yielded higher 💶 payouts of 35 to 1. The Pelayos’ starting
bankroll was insignificant in size, which helped the family avoid casino detection
💶 early on in their roulette career. The family suffered a poor start in the beginning,
losing half of their initialR$2,200 💶 investment while playing at Casino Gran Madrid.
Despite this disappointment, the Pelayos did not give up but continue to wager 💶 on the
favored numbers. The bias soon began to pay off which encouraged the family to start
visiting the casino 💶 as many as six times per week. Now that the whole family was
recruited to the team, the Pelayos could 💶 afford to send a member to each of the biased
tables. This tactic proved useful because it prevented the staff 💶 of Casino Gran Madrid
from finding out they were associated with each other. After a couple of months of
play, 💶 the family succeeded in increasing their tinyR$2,200 bankroll to overR$100,000.
This encouraged them to bet higher and higher amounts on 💶 the biased numbers. Despite
this success, the Pelayos did suffer some bad streaks losing the hefty sum ofR$80,000
on one 💶 occasion.
3 Casino Madrid Strikes Back These bad runs were more than offset by
the Pelayos’ massive wins that amounted to 💶 hundreds of thousands. Pelayo prohibited the
team members from tipping the dealers. This, along with the mind-blowing profits they
generated, 💶 drew the attention of Casino Gran Madrid. The floor personnel was ordered to
monitor the Pelayos’ play to figure out 💶 what was going on. They applied different
tactics from pressuring the team members and instructing the croupiers to spin the 💶 ball
at a higher speed to switching wheels between different tables. All these efforts
proved futile. After months of repeatedly 💶 playing the same biased wheels, the members
of the Pelayo team were able to recognize them by small physical imperfections 💶 like
scratches, for example. The casino countered with cheating accusations and tried to bar
them permanently from its floors. Things 💶 escalated to such an extent that the matters
were taken to court. The Spanish Supreme Court ruled in favor of 💶 the Pelayos reasoning
that exploiting biased wheels is a form of advantage play, not cheating. The family
finally quit Casino 💶 Gran Madrid not because they were prohibited from playing there but
because of a wheel change which eliminated the bias. 💶 By the end of this stint, biased
wheels had made the PelayosR$1 million richer.
4 The Pelayos Take on Las Vegas 💶 Their
massive success at the Casino Gran Madrid tables encouraged the Pelayos to go on a tour
across European casinos, 💶 with the first stop being Amsterdam. The family’s good run
continued there as they amassed profits to the amount ofR$400,000 💶 over a period of
several months. This fuelled the Dutch casino’s suspicions so they called Casino Gran
Madrid and the 💶 Pelayos were exposed. As the family traveled to other major European
cities like Vienna and Paris, casino after casino barred 💶 them because of their
advantage play. They would exploit the tables in each country for three to four months
until 💶 local casinos would eventually detect them and ask them to leave. As the family’s
reputation traveled all over the continent, 💶 one security guard in a Copenhagen casino
even threatened them with his gun when they tried to enter the premises. 💶 Pelayo’s
nephews decided to call it quits and the team whittled down to three members, Pelayo,
his wife, and his 💶 son, Ivan. It was becoming increasingly difficult for the Pelayos to
get any action on European soil, so they started 💶 to explore the possibility of
attacking the roulette tables on the other side of the pond. Las Vegas seemed like 💶 the
perfect option for advantage players of the Pelayos’ caliber. However, an assault of
Sin City came with several drawbacks. 💶 For one, the roulette tables there played under
the American rules and featured wheels with a single and a double 💶 zero, which doubled
the casinos’ advantaged to 5.26%. Enhanced surveillance also proved to be an issue. It
was much harder 💶 for advantage players to go undetected in Las Vegas casinos. The family
managed to maintain their advantage over the double-zero 💶 wheels by looking for more
pronounced number biases. As for detection, the team members tried to blend in as much
💶 as possible by changing their accents.
