Requiem for a Sports Bettor

Betting on sports has never been high-stakes or reachable. However, with the invasion of Europe-based businesses in the game, the pros are feeling getting banned from plying their trade and pumped. Is this the ending of the sports bettor?
I’m not a bookmaker,” Gadoon Kyrollos informs me as we walk through the Hard Rock Casino in Atlantic City, playing with penny slot machines. “I am a sports bettor.” Kyrollos is actually one of the highest-rolling sports bettors in the United States. He bets millions of dollars every year from NFL matches to the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest. He is known throughout the world by the name Spanky, and in sweatpants his hoodie, and backpack, he very much looks like a 40-year-old variant of the Little Rascal. His backpack isn’t carrying snacks and school books. It is filled with bricks of cash, nearly $150,000 worth.
“Bookmakers hang a number,” he explains, as he pantomimes holding a gun gearing up to his eye and pulling the trigger. “And that I snipe’em.”
Despite the bag full of money, Spanky is transfixed by the cent slot machine, pumping one invoice into it after the following. On his cellphone he consults a recorder which tells him how to perform with this specific machine so that it is”plus EV,” or positive expected value, meaning that the player has an edge within the system over time. “Here is some real insider shit I am showing you right here,” he tells me, referring to his spreadsheet, which has formulas for dozens of different slot machines plugged into it. “I mean, it is likely a border of, for example, $12, but in case you were walking down the road and saw $12, you would bend down and pick it up, right?”
It’s very important to Spanky that I understand the gap between bookmaking and gambling, because a lot of people don’t know or appreciate the differentiation, including the Queens district attorney, who charged Spanky with bookmaking in 2012, a charge he states originated from a widespread harassment of the business.

Read more here: http://jikoobelt.com/adv03/?p=14354