As luck would have it. 9 March 1981
Trevor Leggett was head of the Japanese Department of the BBC.
This is one of his broadcasts to Japan
ZUBARI for 9 March 1981
Hello listeners! It is March now and this morning when I went out of the house to go to the studio, the sky was full of cloud. The weather forecast said, “Probably rain.” Yet, I had suddenly the feeling, an absolute confidence, that it would not rain. So, I did not take a raincoat, nor an umbrella. The temperature is not cold, and I just walked out, with a scarf. It has not rained.
Is this a sort of intuition? No, I don’t think so. I do not like wearing or carrying a raincoat, or an umbrella, and I often go out without them. Sometimes I get wet. So, it was just chance that I have not got wet today. It was a gamble, and today I won.
Still, there are some unusual things connected with gambling. Most habitual gamblers believe that there is what they call the ‘veine’ (luck) – it is a French word. In this state, the gambler knows what is going to happen. One of them told me that it is like a sort of god-like feeling. Without thinking, without any effort, the gambler places his bets and he always wins.
I became interested in this, and read a book by one of the Monte Carlo croupiers, to see what he had to say. He remarked that he had seen something like this only twice. Once was an old woman, very rich, who used to gamble at the roulette table every day. She called it her ‘work’. Like nearly all of them, she lost money on most days. But on one day, he said, he saw her playing with her face radiant: she was betting on the numbers. There are thirty-six of them.
When her number won, she did not take the counters from the table, but moved them to another number. In eight throws, she had won an enormous sum, because each new bet was not only her original stake, but what the croupier had paid her. Then, he said, she seemed to become tense. She lost it all on one throw.
Then, again, she became what he called ‘radiant’, and she won again six times. She seemed to be fainting, and she left the table. The croupier’s assistant collected all the money for her and changed it, paying it over to her later. The croupier said he had only seen one other such incident. But nearly all the other gamblers lost in the long run.
He made one interesting remark: “In my thirty years as chief croupier at Monte Carlo, I have seen only one sensible man who came here. This was an Englishman – I learnt later that he had a very big company, which unexpectedly got into serious financial difficulties. The company was basically sound, but he had made some unfortunate speculations, and he needed about £200,000 immediately in order to survive. If he got that, the future would be assured. If he could not get that, the company would go bankrupt, and he himself would probably be accused to speculating negligently or rashly with the shareholders’ money. Then he would probably go to prison. He could not borrow the money: everyone knew that the company was financially very shaky.
This English man took the last £5,000 which the company had in the bank, and came to Monte Carlo with a gun. He resolved that either he would win the money, or shoot himself.
He put the money on the Red, and left it there. The roulette ball went into a Red compartment six times in succession. The businessman took the £320,000 and went back to London. He saved the business, and became a millionaire.”
The croupier said, “That was a really sensible man – and a brave man too. He sat there without moving a muscle of his face. I had no idea I was watching a man gambling with his own life. It was only afterwards that I learned the story.”
© Trevor Leggett