"El Alemán" / The German, Roulette group

[VLSroulette]

Montevideo, WWII December 13, 1939

In December 1939 When the winds of war raged beneath the Southern Cross (South Atlantic) it fanned the flames of a historic Victory At Sea Saga: The Battle of Rio de la Plata¹.

UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill, concerned about danger to shipping in the Atlantic sea lanes ordered three British Royal Navy (RN) cruisers: HMS Exeter, HMS Ajax and HMS Achilles, to chase the mighty German pocket battle ship Graff Spee and the first WW11 sea battle raged near Uruguay and Argentina.

The Graff Spee mortally wounded, limped into Port Montevideo for emergency restoration. The Geneva Convention allows only 3 days maximum for neutral safe harbor repair and when it became clear that the great battle ship would not be sea worthy the *Captain first made arrangements to have the crew interred in Argentina, scuttled the ship near the mouth of the Rio de la Plata and committed suicide by his naval code of honor.

It was over....but out of the jaws of defeat gave rise to a different battle and victory.

Roulette Battle.

With war over in 1945 and the vanquished Nazi Germany was left in shambles. Many of the released crew had no desire to return to their devasted homes but opted to stay in the new world where the furtile rich soil offered the promise of a fruitful future. Ex ship machine engineer, Herr Helmut Berlin, recognized an opportunity when he first stepped into the seaside Central Casino at Mar de Plata^2:, Argentina.

With his shipmates, Berlin began by observing the idiosyncrasies of the various 50 wheels and used a small spy camera to photograph same for detailed analysis. Herr Hermann Bieger would join the team for 6 hours of intensive daily wheel clocking searching for suspected bias numbers. They began by playing 16 numbers and finished by reducing it to 5 selections. Soon the team was nick named El Aleman (Spanish for German) and in '51 was racking up considerable profits with team members buying cars and expensive gifts.

The casino responded with every countermeasure even moving two wheels to another casino in Miramar but team members quickly found them and once again exploited the advantage. The El Aleman syndicate of 20 members from 50-51 raked in about $425,000 or some $22,000 each.

The Casino was so desperate that it called in the Argentine Federal Police to investigate but as everything was won legally, outside of barring suspected bias players, little could be done against them. Ironically, the El Aleman ex-ship engineers and machinists began by losing a historic sea battle but ended by winning the war against the land-based casinos in the same region.

Many of the syndicate adopted Argentina as their new home and eventually died there.



I believe that the Germans exceeded the profits of Norman Leigh at Casino Municipal in Nice, Joseph Jaggers at Monte Carlo and other syndicates in South America but not that of Billy Walters of AC & LV.

Hope you enjoyed this legendary true life story that I would like to produce as part of a roulette movie.



Where the Ball keeps Spinning,
~RoB





Thanks ~Rob for this very interesting piece of roulette history. As a spanish-speaking fellow, I felt compelled to add these references:

^1: Rio de la Plata = Silver River.
^2: Mar de Plata = Silver Sea.

Hope you guys enjoyed it!
Victor

[VLSroulette]

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