Daniel Simon – Businessman and a Roulette Fan!

I was born in immigrants family in Holland and grew up, finished high school as well university there. During university studies I worked in an mid size international IT company as accountant, later shortly after receiving MBA in finances I took the position of CFO of European office, couple of years later I was leading partner of management buyout program of the same company. This was definately also a turning point in my carreer – moving from employee status to become owner, though I continued working of course, mainly in the US head office then already. Slightly before dot com crisis we sold the company and multiplied our investment.

It is not correct to say, that I am retired by now, I do not have to go to office every morning at eight and stay there until evening, but sure I have to work and take care of my investments, which I have divided into three parts – I have some stock investments, real estate portfolio, which contains mainly several commercial estates in Eastern Europe and also I am minor partner in an US based venture capitalist company.

Hyde Park – one of best places for walking in the whole world!

I first enetered a casino in late 1980s in Las Vegas and there was my first experience also with roulette. We we´re visiting a conference in Las Vegas and afterwards everyone from our company US office went to casino, so did I followed. I choosed roulette because of I simply did not know anything about casino games – roulette was a simple one and pretty easy choice for me. I must say I lost my fifty dollars, I went to the table with…

And then came actually long break, probably a year or so I was not even thinking about roulette or casinos or anything like that. At some point I was in Italy on a trip by car with my girlfriend, whom I got married to some time later and we went to casino San Remo. First thing I noticed there was, that roulette wheel had only single zero, instead of double zero system in American Roulette, of course I noticed also, that payouts we´re the same as in Las Vegas. Due to my profession, which is everything about numbers, formulas and mathematics I understood at the same moment, that it is significally more player friendly roulette table, than the one I played at in Las Vegas. So we played there until the early morning hours and left with a amount of lires in our pockets, which those days was enough to pay for our remaining trip and even to allow some little shopping to be done at those french riviera boutiques.

Of course I got much more interested in the game. Cannot say, that I got addicted or at least I do not admit it to myself. Those days there we´re no internet forums or anything similar of course, so as a very first thing after noticing the single zero roulette wheels used in Europe, I made calculations myself and found out, that casino edge in this game is significally low.

Since then I have been playing roulette every now and then, we have celebrated some business deals with fine dining and casino visits, as well going to casino and play some roulette just for entertainment purposes.

I am aware of most of those strategies and have tried them out, but I haven´t picked only one or few, I like to combine different strategies, start with one, then at some point switch to another and so on.

I haven´t made any exact statistics, but I guess that I am wheter more less on breakeven or maybe showing small profit, but more importantly than money, I am definately significally on plus side from emotional point of view. I have made some very good friends thanks to roulette, also it has always been the very best entertainment for me and those gin tonics at the table are for free as you know!

I haven´t taken it the way or for reason to make money, but to have fun and not loose too much money.

Casino du Palais de la Mediterranee – Daniel walked out of this venue with more than €12000 in winnings!

In late 1990s I walked into Casino du Palais de la Mediterranee in Nice with about 20000 francs (about €3000) in my pockets and left just few hours later with over 100.000 francs(over €15000), so the amounts I have played on, have not been so huge actually. Biggest losses have not exceeded few thousand Euros in todays value. I am very disciplined person in general and I do not feel myself good, when loosing, I always keep good track of my money and once I loose over a limit, I have set for myself for that particular evening, I just leave and usually I don´t visit casino again for some period after that.

I cannot name any specific one, but of course those ones I like to visit, where European Roulette is played, thats for sure. In general I like most those ones in French Riviera, probably the climate and relaxed overall atmosphere of the whole area playes a great role of that. But close to where I live in London, Hippodrome Casino is a nice venue, fuzzy one to have few drinks and play some roulette.

No, I have not so far. My son is playing online poker and he has been introducing me to that online gaming world. I think I like real casinos more, due to the atmosphere and socialicing part and so on, but I of course understand, that whole world is moving to the i(’i’ like internet) kind of direction and I promise, that soon I will try out online roulette, at least for once. I have seen that nowadays also those live coverages are shown from real roulette table over internet, so it is of course quite close to the experience of being in real casino. Just no free drinks are offered!

Yes, my home is in central London and I like it most times very much. Especially all the parks, they are my definate favourites, walking has been my favourite outdoors hobby throughout my whole life and for sure there is no better place to walk, than in all those parks here. I have also a winter home in southern Spain, so when it gets too cloudy, rainy and foggy here, we spend together with family some time down there every year also.

Haa – thats a easy one. That was long ago, one friend of mine, who already by then was relatively wealthy person told me something, which sounded as follows: only few of them, who want to become billionaires, really become one. But among them, who don´t want to become, no one becomes! Of course, it is not an complete answer to your question, you need also act to it and have good people and partners around you, but having an clear target and vision – this definately is very important and in very many times a key factor, which might be missing for succeeding.

Often people like to talk to me, that on those old days, it was so easy to get rich or someone, who lives in particular place in the world is almost a born to become a business tycoon due to his country, he lives in. I can say, it is really not like that. It is possible to become rich not depending, where you live or how much starting capital you have. There are just different ways and things you need to do or act, depending on where you live or do business. Especially during todays internet era, everyone has chance to become very very successful.