Drake makes a $250,000+ Roulette bet
Rap Artist Drake lays down $250,000+ on the Roulette Table

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.

Social Media posts about Drake and Roulette
Lots of people on social media had things to say about Drake's Roulette bet and his love for Roulette.

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's higher limit chips
Aria's $25, $100, $500, $1000, $5000, $25,000 chips. Not pictured: their $100,000 chip (Yes, they have them!)

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 11 Black and 23 Red 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.

We can definitely see $255k in $1k and $25k chips
We can definitely see $255k in $1000 and $25,000 chips. There may be another $8k-$10k on straight-up and split bets we can't see that cover the 6 Black , 9 Red , 18 Red , and 28 Black .

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.

A closer look at the center column bets
Drake's Bets in the center column. There are two $25,000 chips on the 11 Black and there is a single $25,000 at the base of the 23 Red .

I also think the $24,000 and $39,000 stacks on the 20 Black and 23 Red 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%.

Drake wisely chooses the Single Zero Roulette wheel
Single Zero Roulette reduces the house advantage to just 2.7% compared to the 5.26% house edge of Double Zero Roulette.

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.

There's a plastic cisc with the word 'COMPLETE' on top of 6 of the center column bets
6 of the center column bets have a plastic lammer with the word "COMPELTE" 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 8 Black would look like after being broken down to its component bets:

Breakdown of the Complete Bet and the associated payouts
This is how a $40 Complete Bet on the 8 Black 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 23 Red 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.

Drake's Complete Bets
The four Complete Bet sizes that Drake made and their distribution amongst neighboring 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.

Applying the Complete Bet breakdowns to simple Roulette Bets
Applying the Complete Bet breakdowns to simple Roulette Bets. The bottom set of bets is the summed up values for the bets covering 4 Black through 30 Red .

Now we can add these numbers to the numerous $2000 Straight-up and Split bets he has sprinkled around the table and we get:

The final betting scheme with no Complete Bets
This is what Drake's bet would look like if there were no Complete Bets. The numbers between the red and black cells represent Split and Corner Bets. The numbers along the bottom represent Street and Double-Street bets.

And by using the Distributive Property of Roulette Bets, we can recreate this betting scheme using only Straight-up bets:

A betting scheme that matches Drake's bets but with only Straight-up bets
Here's a betting scheme that produces the same results, but comprised of only Straight-up bets.

Payouts for Each Number

And for our grand finale, we have the payouts below:

The payouts
What the payouts would be for every number

Jackpot Hits

The major jackpot number is 11 Black , which pays +$465,000.

Coming in at second place is 23 Red , which pays +$342,600.

Whacks

There are 10 major WHACKS, which are the 0 Green , 1 Red , 2 Black , 3 Red , 31 Black , 32 Red , 33 Black , 34 Red , 35 Black , and 36 Red , which each lose the entire -$255,000 wagered.

There's also a mini-whack on 6 Black , 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 6 Black 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 8 Black 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.

Drake reportedly has a $700k watch with a functioning Roulette wheel in it.
This watch is straight up baller.

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.

🎰Gambling/Gaming | 🧮 Math/Programming/Technology