Rowdy Roulette #168 

 

Run out of Sin City for running the roulette tables at casinos all along the strip, Rowdy Roulette is a Vegas legend, famous up and down the strip for her encyclopedic knowledge of scams and her finesse in putting them into practice. She helped stage 2,000 slot-machine jackpots and hustled 1,500 blackjack games. That’s a track record that puts her in the Vegas pantheon with the likes of Bugsy Siegel.

In her heyday, she thought nothing of raking in tens of thousands of dollars over the weekend; on one occasion she knocked off 20 jackpots in a single day. But her true talent lies in beating roulette, which Rowdy insists can be easier or more complicated than beating slot machines, depending on how carefully the casino watches its wheels. If the wheels were left unguarded when they weren’t being used, Rowdy would measure a wheel’s numbered stripes, cut identical stripes from a sheet of lead, paint them to match the originals and slip them into about a quarter of the slots on the wheel at which she would later be playing.

The gig was finally up, after taking casinos for more than seven figures over her infamous career, on New Years Eve of the new millennium, when the ball leapt off the wheel altogether and attached itself to her amble bosom as she leaned over the wheel with her heavy duty under wire bra. Chased from the Strip by an incensed croupier, she lost him on Freemont Street, barely escaping Sin City with her life.

Still at the top of the Nevada Gaming Commissions most wanted list, word is Rowdy now lives under an assumed name in Phoenix and took up skating and is running a gambling ring around that.