Break the Bank

A genuine gambling term dating to around 1600. In 19th-century casinos, "the bank" referred to the pool of money the house kept on hand to pay out winning bets. If a player won more than that pool could cover, the table was closed and covered with a black cloth, and the player was said to have "broken the bank." The phrase's most famous real-world example is the Englishman Joseph Jagger, who won over 2 million francs (roughly £80,000 at the time) at the Casino de Monte Carlo in 1881 after working out a mechanical bias in one of the roulette wheels, a genuine bank-breaking win still referenced in gambling history today.