Diary of a professional punter

[SuuPRlim]

+1

I jumped on for a nice little sum on your horse as well!

[millidonk]

[tikay]

What took you so long Milli?

[millidonk]

Over 8 months without a post. Madness.

Red,

I am a book or two short on my Xmas list. I want Santa to bring me a book on pro sports betting. What would you suggest?

What took you so long Milli?

Instead of bumping I started reading old posts..

[typhoon13]

Milli

This book does not tell you how to punt but is the story of one of the UK's most feared.

"Enemy umber one"

Patrick Veitch

Brilliant read.

[TightEnd]

I was at University with Patrick Veitch's brother, Jon

In 1989 I was in my final year and about ten of us went to spend the weekend at Jon's house, for his 21st. Big party on the Saturday night etc etc

The Sunday afternoon, we all emerge from various stages of distress, and go into the lounge

There, with three phones, a big piece of paper with lots of calculations etc sat Patrick in a complete trance, watching the final day of the Open, that was to be won by Mark Calcavecchia

Through the afternoon we sat and watched as he made dozens of phone calls, writing stuff down after each, impassive throughout

At the end, after Calc won in a play off, he turned to us and said the first words to us since the night before

"Phew, I've just won xxxxx (£10k plus in 1989!) on Calcavecchia, had him from the third hole onwards today"

and out of the room he went

Never saw him again. Never even asked what he was doing and why.

I'd ask now.....

[typhoon13]

I was at University with Patrick Veitch's brother, Jon

In 1989 I was in my final year and about ten of us went to spend the weekend at Jon's house, for his 21st. Big party on the Saturday night etc etc

The Sunday afternoon, we all emerge from various stages of distress, and go into the lounge

There, with three phones, a big piece of paper with lots of calculations etc sat Patrick in a complete trance, watching the final day of the Open, that was to be won by Mark Calcavecchia

Through the afternoon we sat and watched as he made dozens of phone calls, writing stuff down after each, impassive throughout

At the end, after Calc won in a play off, he turned to us and said the first words to us since the night before

"Phew, I've just won xxxxx (£10k plus in 1989!) on Calcavecchia, had him from the third hole onwards today"

and out of the room he went

Never saw him again. Never even asked what he was doing and why.

I'd ask now.....

Great story

Have you read the book Rich?

[TightEnd]

No, I really should.

[redarmi]

Always wanted to post this but not really sure where it fits and many years later it is still a bit of a sore point for me.  Suppose it is a story about why hero's often arent as you perceive them in real life.

About 12 years ago I was happily working in the industry and getting a few quid punting mainly horses but I started watching the NFL and found that i loved it and wanted to become good at it.  I knew Tony Bloom and he did well and taught me a few basics  about key numbers etc.  Anyway one evening I was browsing the internet looking at NFL punting, handicappers etc and I came across the name Frank 'Lefty' Rosenthal.  I had watched the movie Casino starring Robert De Niro and it was one of my favourites but I hadn't quite grasped the fact that the guy it was based on was a professional sports bettor for years and had effectively introduced sports betting to Vegas.  Whats more he had a website and I devoured every page of it and his story.  Some of the things he said on it seemed, to me, a bit weird and outdated but he was a legend in the industry, hell he might even have been the worlds best known bookie thanks to casino so I took it all for the gospel.  Anyway I spent an entire evening reading it and occasionally revisited the site especially during the NFL season but thought no more of it.

A few months later I got a call from a guy i had worked with a few years earlier for a few firms.  He is effectively a financier who, at the time, was interested in taking public shells and doing reverse takeovers of gambling firms.  He asked if I wanted to have dinner and so I met him and he told me he was working on a deal to bring together three currently private businesses (a casino, a poker site and a sport betting business) into a gaming group that would be listed and would I be interested in being involved if it happened.  I said I was fairly happy where I was but I would listen to what they said assuming they could put it altogether.  A few months went by and he called me back and said a fair bit of the deal had fallen through (as an interesting aside the poker business was Party.  Their business had picked up in the period between agreeing an initial price and now so now they wanted $2m more.  These guys said it was too much.  It might have been one of the most expensive decisions in recent corporate history) but they were still pressing ahead with the sports betting business acquisition and would I meet the management to talk.  We were due to meet at the Halkin hotel in London and I got all suited and booted for the meeting.  Just as I was walking to the hotel a car slowed down and the wndow wound down and the inhabitants pointed one fo those water machine gun things at me and soaked me!!!  I arrived a bit flustered after that but the meeting went well.  Right at the end one of the managers said " we have a consultant we use on our odds called Frank Rosenthal and we would like you to talk to him before we decide what to do, have you heard of Frank"  I managed to nod without portraying how excited I would be to talk to this guy.  I spent the next week or so before this telephone conversation cramming everything I could about American sports.  I memorised how often every NFL pointspread landed, I learnt about baseball era's and college football and key players in the NBA.  By the time came for our call i was as nervous as I have ever been.  I started the call by saying that I thought I had a very good grasp of gambling and probability and had a good general understanding of the betting mechanics of US sports but i wasn't an expert.  i will never forget his response because he said "Neither does the guy running the lines there at the moment.  He's a fucking idiot, you cant be any worse than that moron and those girls" which seemed a bit of a weird given i was going to be working with those people (the general idea was that i would go and start doing soccer for their Asian bookie customers but eventually take it all over) but I glossed over it in my mind.  This guy was an absolute hero so maybe these guys were pretty bad or maybe he was just prone to exageration to get his point across.  Anyway I must have done something right as a week later i was winging my way to Antigua and a month later I flew there to take up my new position.

As soon as I started working there I saw things I thought I could change but it wasn't too bad and they were making money.  The guy that was running the US sports (which was 90%+ of the business) was a bit too old school for my tastes and made a few fundamental errors to my mind but he wasn't a bad fella.  Rosenthal phoned a couple of times a day and gave us opening numbers for a few sports.  In particular he had a very good relationship with one of the girls on the desk which I found a bit weird because he had described them as clueless a few months earlier.  I spoke to him a few times and he went out of his way to explain in great detail some very simple betting concepts which I already knew inside out but I figured I had told him i was fairly new to all of this so he was just being helpful. (will continue later)

[Karabiner]

Fascinating stuff Stu, I'm hooked again...

 

[typhoon13]

Your going to get some avid readers Red

[millidonk]

Sick return post. Red has mafia links.

[Marky147]

Obv timed to coincide with the 'My book will be released on'

More please!

[Ant040689]

I'm also waiting for more, great post.

[chelseaboy]

very interesting red... wheres the rest