Diary of a professional punter

After i had been there a few months they got rid of the guy I had been hired to replace and I took over everything and started speaking to Frank on a daily basis. Every day i would talk to him and and he would call up with opening numbers for NFL and a lot of the things he told me seemed like common sense but i would always take it in good grace and was generally fairly deferential and self effacing. On the odd occasion I would ask what i thought was a challenging question and he would respond with what sounded like riddles a favourite of his was "11 is a lot bigger than 10....that is mighty hard to fade". On another occasion I told him Tony Bloom was almost certainly betting into us and that i thought we should aggressively try and get with the other side to which he responded "you can't overcome that 11-10 in the NFL". I would often tell him about interesting theories I had heard of including the maths that proved teasers were beatable in certain spots and I thought we should change our teaser odds which he thought was preposterous. I was beginning to find our talks a bit irritating and i largely went about running the business my own way and it was really paying off and the firm was holding a much better hold percentage than ever before and we were way ahead of all of our targets. i had put all the girls (almost my entire staff was female) on good performance related bonuses and we were all pulling the same direction and on to earn good money. of course as always we had run very well but I think we were doing a fair amount right.

Towards the end of the NBA season and as everything else except baseball was winding down it was decided by senior management that it would be a god idea for Frank and I to take a trip together to Costa Rica so I could be introduced to various of the bigger bookies over there at Cris, Bodog etc. By this point i was beginning to wonder how much Frank was really at the cutting edge of the industry but I was still fascinated by the guy and was pretty excited about spending a week with him and meeting the various guys he knew in Costa Rica and the trip started fairly well. I met him at Miami airport and he was pleasant. It occurred to me that De Niro was a truly amazing actor because whilst he looked nothing like Frank he had the mannerisms absolutely downpat. We spent the flight with him telling me stories from the old days and they were really fascinating. He told me how De Niro spent three months living with him in order to get the character. Of course I asked how much of what was in the film including the famous muffin scene was true and he assured me it was all true. We got there and met the head guys from Cris and had a nice dinner and over the rest of the week we toured around and met a lot of guys in the industry and Frank was treated like royalty and with deference everywhere but i realised that most of the sharper guys felt largely the same as I was beginning to and thought the industry had passed him by a bit. I also noticed that as we went from book to book Frank would be quite unpleasant about other places we had been (and often been shown incredible hospitality) and was very fond of saying how people had no clue how to run a business. I began to wonder what he was saying about us and our business and feeling a little uncomfortable. He was also extremely rude and unpleasant towards anyone that we came across outside of the industry. In one case I can remember him and I had gone for lunch and a waitress came over to take our order and began speaking in Spanish. Frank stared at her for about 20 seconds before snarling "how about fucking English?" and then turning to me and saying "can you believe this fucking broad?". I wanted the ground to swallow me up. By the end of what was actually a fairly educational and good trip we had pretty much run out of anything to say and he had largely ceased bothering with any pleasantries and tact and was fairly happy slagging off my bosses and coworkers to all and sundry. Basically, it seemed to him that nobody, including the firm that paid him a handsome consultancy fee, had any idea of how to run a business and even some of the sharpest bettors in the world had basically no idea. If I could surmise his world view it was that the only time things were ever done right in the casino and sports betting world was in about 1979 at the Stardust. At the end of the trip he walked into the US queue at the airport and just didn't bother waiting for me at the other side and got in his car and went home without so much as a backwards glance. i just didn't know what to make of it.

Anyway I went back to Antigua and although he still called he largely called and spoke to the girl he was friendly with (despite slagging her off) and I just got on with running the business. I spoke to the biggest shareholder there who had the connection with him and he assured me not to worry and that he was bitter at others success in building big businesses. That summer we continued to win and by September we had surpassed our annual profit targets and everyone was on target for big bonuses. Frank was still on the scene but he only really spoke to the girls and the COO who still valued his opinion. Towards the end of the year she had a call with him where, thinking we were doing really well (our share price had gone up a fair amount, we had surpassed all targets etc, it was the best year in the history of the company), she asked his opinion on our results for the year. I found out later that he proceeded to tell her that we were worse than useless and with anyone decent at the bookmaking helm we would have made millions more. This happened to coincide with our worst month of the year. We didn't lose but we made less than usual which, for a business that relies heavily on NFL, isn't that unusual but the timing couldn't have been worse as it was as though it proved what Frank had said. He had also assured them he could secure the services of someone that would ensure they made more money. Three days after Xmas I was told my contact wouldn't be renewed. I was devastated and had no idea what I had done wrong. I got the maximum bonus my contract allowed but 25% of my bonus agreement was discretionary to the board. i got none of that and despite hitting the maximum performance targets and bonus they were effectively telling me I had done an awful job. It crushed me. I had a job I loved and had met the girl of my dreams and now I didn't know what i was going to do next. Luckily Lisa decided to give up her job ( a very good one) at the same company and follow me to the UK (we eventually got married) but my confidence was shot and it was like everything I thought I knew was wrong.

Within a couple of weeks of me leaving Antigua the new guy had been installed but results didn't go anything like as well and he was unpopular. Within two months Frank had, amazingly, stuck the knife into him and he was gone. Frank was turned to by the board to give guidance to a new younger team but results didn't improve. After a year when we had made nearly $30m the first quarter of the next year resulted in a loss. More changes were made but another loss resulted and the CEO was replaced. In July I got a couple of phone calls asking if I could be tempted back. I wanted more than anything in the world to be able to walk back into that office with my head held high but I had a lot of conditions including the most important one that Frank Rosenthal had no part in the business anymore (alright a bit of extra money was fairly important too). I was surprised to find that everyone was very happy to agree to those terms but when I got back there I discovered he had shafted basically everyone in one way or another. When we got rid of him he put a big article on his website alleging lots of baseless things about the owner of the company and bribed us for a payoff (which sadly he got). I got back to Antigua for football season and did my best to turn it around. We had an okay season and the business was returned to profitability but Lisa had started college in the UK and my heart wasn't in it anymore. I was very paranoid and my heart just wasn't in it anymore and I eventually decided to come back to the UK the next summer. A few months after I left I decided I needed to talk to him again and sent him a very polite email basically saying that i regretted that our relationship hadn't worked out. This is an extract from the email he sent me in response:

LIFE, WORK, THE LEARNING CURVE IS ALL PART OF NATURES PROCESS. THE ONLY HUMANS THAT NEVER MAKE A BAD CALL/DECISION ARE ONES WHO NEVER TRIED. YOUR YOUTH CAN SERVE YOU WELL, AND GOOD FORTUNE CAN REACH YOU SO LONG AS YOU REMAIN CONSISTENTLY OBJECTIVE AND REALISTIC ACROSS THE BOARD. A VERY BRIGHT FRIEND OF MINE ONCE (YEARS AGO) REMINDED ME THAT, "LEARN TO LISTEN; LISTEN TO LEARN."

This condescending email went a long way to persuading me he was in actual fact an absolute prick and I eventually moved on. A few years later I was messaged by some friends to tell me that Frank had passed away. I felt nothing and, if I am honest I was shocked to find I felt a little relieved if anything. I certainly wasn't particularly sad and this worried me. The next day I went to the shop to buy my racing post and was reading it on my way home when I turned the page and saw Franks picture and an obituary. The headline read "Thank god he's dead" and much of the article was taken up by people saying what a piece of work he had been. It seemed almost nobody had anything nice to say about the man. i got back to my office at home and cut out the article and put it on my noticeboard but then I realised that he had cast a shadow over me for too long and I took it down. I also vowed that above almost everything else I did nobody would ever be able to write a headline like that about me.