Yeah, so this happened.
Social media blew up after rap artist Drake posted a picture of himself on Instagram betting what appears to be over a quarter million dollars on a Roulette spin at the Aria Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
Estimating the Bet
Most of the posts on social media claim that the bet was around $100k, but this is a gross underestimate of the actual bet.
Aria's Chips
In order to estimate Drake's bet you have to be familiar with Aria's high limit chips.
Aria has the standard yellow $1000 chip, but they also have a $25,000 chip that happens to be red, the same color of most casinos' $5 chips.
If you've never seen their $25,000 chip, you might erroneously assume that the red chips at the
base of the
and
are $5 chips.
Drake's Bet
By my account, Drake bet at least $255,000 on this spin. It's probably a bit more because those GINORMOUS stacks obscure the bets that are likely behind them.
,
,
, and
.
If you extrapolate some of his other bets and apply them to bets he might likely make, you can add another $8k to $10k on top. Since he's already hit a quarter million, we won't include the unknown bets in our analysis.
and there is a single $25,000 at the base of the
.
I also think the $24,000 and $39,000 stacks on the
and
might actually contain a yellow $1000 chip that we can't
see, making these two bets much nicer round numbers that align with the other big bets in the center column.
The House Advantage
I applaud Drake for finding a Single-Zero Roulette wheel. There are several of them in Las Vegas and playing at one cuts the house edge almost in half from 5.26% to just 2.7%.
Going by our $255,000 bet estimate, that's an Expected Value (EV) of -$6,885 for this single spin.
The "COMPLETE" Bet in Roulette
But there's more to this bet than people probably realize. One thing that really sticks out is the discs on top of 6 of his center column bets that say "COMPLETE" on them.
I had never heard of the "Complete Bet" before so I did some internet sleuthing to find out what it was.
A Complete Bet (also known as a Maximum Bet) is a bet that is offered to high-rollers who want to make multiple bets involving a single number at a time.
It's generally only offered to high-rollers because it's complicated to pay out and it is usually only implemented at a table where a single person is playing (because of how involved the payout is).
When you make a Complete Bet, your large bet is divided into 40 equal units and spread amongst the following bets that all contain the number where the bet is placed:
| Bet | Amount | Number of bets | Units Bet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Straight-up | 1 unit | 1 | 1 |
| Split | 2 units | 4 | 8 |
| Street | 3 units | 1 | 3 |
| Corner | 4 units | 4 | 16 |
| Double-Street | 6 units | 2 | 12 |
| Totals: | 12 bets | 40 units |
So here's what a $40 Complete Bet on the
would look like after being broken down to its
component bets:
would be broken down and payed out. Screenshot taken
from the
Roulette Bet Analyzer tool
available on this site.
Typically, the bet will be a nice round multiple of 40. This is why I think Drake's bet on the
might actually be $40k, not $39k. Otherwise, the unit size for
his bet would be $975 instead of a nice round $1000 unit bet.
Breaking Down Drake's Complete Bets
Now that we know what a Complete Bet is, we can dissect Drake's bets.
There are four different bet sizes from what I can tell. $50k, $39k, $25k, and $24k. Even though it is likely that the $39k bet is $40k and that $24k bet is $25k, I can't say those higher numbers are accurate with 100% certainty, so I'm going to stick with the conservative amounts.
The above table shows how these Complete Bets will break down to their associated bets. Now we just have map these values to the 6 Complete Bets made.
through
.
Now we can add these numbers to the numerous $2000 Straight-up and Split bets he has sprinkled around the table and we get:
And by using the Distributive Property of Roulette Bets, we can recreate this betting scheme using only Straight-up bets:
Payouts for Each Number
And for our grand finale, we have the payouts below:
Jackpot Hits
The major jackpot number is
, which pays
+$465,000.
Coming in at second place is
, which pays
+$342,600.
Whacks
There are 10 major WHACKS, which are the
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
, and
, which each lose the entire
-$255,000 wagered.
There's also a mini-whack on
, which loses
-$210,000, but that's probably only because
we can't see whether he bet $2000 on it (he most likely did). Betting $2k on the
would shave $70k off that amount (but would
reduce the payoffs of all the other numbers).
Drake Gonna Drake
Drake's a grown-ass man. Don't hate him because he's betting more money than you make over several years. I have no problem with a wealthy person making bets that are more than 5 times the average household income, so long as he's playing well within his means.
This isn't even the first time Drake has posted a nose-bleed level Roulette bet on the internet.
He also posted a TikTok video of him hitting an
with (reportedly) over $200k on the table
(although it's difficult to see exactly how much he bet and/or won). He also posts
photos of himself playing Roulette on internet casinos from beaches and from courtside
basketball seats.
And there have been several social media posts that report that Drake sports a $700,000 watch that literally has a functioning roulette wheel in it. If this is true, that is just incredible and I am insanely jealous.
He's playing Single-Zero Roulette.
He's not betting on
36 or more numbers at a time.
So Drake is performing much better than the vast majority of systems that I've seen lately on CEG Dealer School's YouTube channel.
There's no need to hate on Drake. I'm pretty sure he's betting within his means (although there might be cause for concern that he would bet so much on an internet casino while just chillin' at home on a some random day).
Unfortunately, I couldn't find out the fate of this spin. Hopefully, Drake hit one of his Jackpot numbers and one of his women called him on his cell phone afterwards to congratulate him.
Remember to always gamble responsibly.
