If you go into the stock-market and buy the first stock your eye happens to catch on the list, you at least stand an even chance of its going up or down, while your brokerage and stamp charges will not amount to the 1·66 per cent. charged as brokerage by the Casino; whereas in the stock market the action will be comparatively slow, at Monte Carlo the brokerage charge is approximately 1·66 per minute. If fifty _coups_ are played per hour, it means that as brokerage the bank each hour absorbs 83 per cent. of all the money staked for one _coup_, while each day the bank takes for its commission for permitting you to play there, about ten times the average amount staked on the table at any one time. As Sir Hiram Maxim says, the martingale is the least defective of all the systems. Were there no limit and no zero, this system of 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc. must infallibly win, as, whenever a gain is made, no matter how many previous losses there have been, it lands the player a winner of one unit. The defect, however, is that, starting with the minimum stake, the maximum is reached at the eleventh doubling, and a run of eleven is of by no means an infrequent occurrence. Against this the bank protects itself in its most vulnerable place; even then, were its limits removed, yet it would be steadily levying its 1·66 commission. It is accordingly not necessary for the company to have recourse to underhand work as charged by Captain Weihe; the income of £1,245,008 realised without trickery, on an average stake per table would be 611·55 fr. Any one who has been at Monte Carlo will admit that this is probably very much below the average amount of money on the table at each spin of the wheel; and with such an income, where arises the occasion for illicitly supplementing it? The following is a table of stakes needed to realise the known _profits_ of the company: 611·55 fr., average stake each Bank percentage, 10.15 fr. of 14 tables 8,561·70 fr. total stakes at 14 ” ” 142·69 fr. tables, 50 _coups_ per hour 428,085·00 fr., average stakes ” ” 7,134·75 fr. each 12 hours the Casino is open 5,137,020·00 fr., total daily ” ” 85,617·00 fr. stakes, 365 days a year Casino is open 1,875,012,300·00 fr., total ” ” 31,250,205·00 fr. yearly stakes £75,000,492 sterling equivalent ” ” £1,245,008