Speaker 1: Huh, check it down man, Now down man. It is
Speaker 1: the Beating the Book spot back. Still on, Andander, how
Speaker 1: are you doing? Hope all is well during this very
Speaker 1: surreal time that is the global pandemic. Hope you are
Speaker 1: safe with your loved ones. Something to distract you from
Speaker 1: the day to day drudgery of the world that we
Speaker 1: live in these days. Chrissie Andrew's Part three of story
Speaker 1: Times back to back to back. A lot of adventures
Speaker 1: in bad bookmaking on this one, but also a horse
Speaker 1: racing tail thrown in as well. Part three Chrissie story
Speaker 1: Time on a numbers game at Visa Now on the
Speaker 1: podcast right here at Beating the Book. Enjoy it's a
Speaker 1: numbers game with your host still alex and believe in
Speaker 1: Adam's Good Monday morning to you from San Francisco. It's Gill, Alexander.
Speaker 1: It is a numbers game right here at Visa in
Speaker 1: the Vegas Stats and Information Network. Serious except Channel two
Speaker 1: O four, Visa dot Com, the Visa app, food Boast
Speaker 1: link a game plus. Thanks for joining us this morning
Speaker 1: for part three, Part number three of the Chris Andrews
Speaker 1: story Time Special where we call together all the story
Speaker 1: not all the Story Times really, but as many of
Speaker 1: the highlights of story Times from years gone by, on
Speaker 1: the Beating the Book podcast and from a numbers game,
Speaker 1: and try to put it in audio form, back to
Speaker 1: back to back, because honestly, what better time ever is
Speaker 1: there to have done this than now in these strange times.
Speaker 1: Hope your standing safe. I hope you're with your loved ones.
Speaker 1: And that voice you're here in the background is that
Speaker 1: of the South Point Hotel Casino sports book director Chris
Speaker 1: the Andrews my mess book A good morning, Chris. How
Speaker 1: are you man? What's going on town? I'm doing okay,
Speaker 1: I'm doing okay. Ye, actually one fine. You know, I
Speaker 1: joked about it last week. I'd make a great prisoner
Speaker 1: and um, reading, writing and watching a lot of TV stuff.
Speaker 1: That's that's my day and UH in this day and age.
Speaker 1: I guess that makes you like a hero or something
Speaker 1: like that. So yeah, I'm doing good. Glad to hear you.
Speaker 1: And again, you know, if if a distraction is what
Speaker 1: we can create for folks, UH, then I think we're
Speaker 1: doing our job over here. Today we'll go through some
Speaker 1: of the great UH stories and and really these aren't
Speaker 1: stories to start the show. With today so much as
Speaker 1: they are that sort of segment that we had on
Speaker 1: top of stories, which was adventures in bad bookmaking through
Speaker 1: your years. Again, the book is then one day, forty
Speaker 1: years of bookmaking in Nevada. That's where all these come from.
Speaker 1: And you started out, could you remind folks what the
Speaker 1: first couple adventures in bad bookmaking we left off with
Speaker 1: last Wednesday? Oh? I can't remember what are we talking
Speaker 1: about last line today? Oh my god? He's at hockey teasers.
Speaker 1: That's the one that has touched so many people. And
Speaker 1: I hear about that all the time, Dave Coke and uh,
Speaker 1: sever kind of reminded me of it last week. You
Speaker 1: wanted to know whatever happened to a guy that was
Speaker 1: booking hockey teasers? And I would venture to say he's
Speaker 1: probably not the business anymore, But uh, I get I
Speaker 1: get those kind of notes every once in a while
Speaker 1: from guys, and that that seems to have struck a
Speaker 1: lot of people. Are we talking about rocks? He given
Speaker 1: numbers to a guy. This is way way long ago,
Speaker 1: and uh the Ivy League was still I like it one.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a bunch of white guys shooting set shots,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't far from that, and before the shark
Speaker 1: clock in the three point line, and he was giving
Speaker 1: him totals like ninety seven two and the guy thought
Speaker 1: it was one ninety seven and one and one. And
Speaker 1: obviously that guy I don't think he stayed in business
Speaker 1: too long after that either. But those are a couple
Speaker 1: of the ones that I mentioned last week. But we
Speaker 1: got to hold watch others because I've been in there
Speaker 1: a long time. I'm seeing some really bad book making
Speaker 1: over the years, and we're gonna have on some of
Speaker 1: those today. Well, those of us who weren't around for that,
Speaker 1: we sort of we we shake our heads and we're like, wow,
Speaker 1: I wish that kind of stuff would exist, because it
Speaker 1: happens today. They sort of like, ah, your bet is
Speaker 1: nullified and forget you kind of thing. Yeah, no, real
Speaker 1: sustained there is like that. Um, can we do the
Speaker 1: old Let's let's start with the start us opening lines.
Speaker 1: I know you have a story around that, okay, So
Speaker 1: this would be like kind of towards the late eighties,
Speaker 1: mid the late eighties, and this is what Scott Sheller,
Speaker 1: who by the way, preceded me at Colty I took
Speaker 1: over for Scott and uh, Scott, I have certainly been
Speaker 1: friendly over the years. You know, we're not like real
Speaker 1: close or anything. Well we've we've had a relationship. I
Speaker 1: like Scott. He's a big guy. Anyway, Scott really did
Speaker 1: a lot of things to move this industry forward when
Speaker 1: he was at the when he was at the start
Speaker 1: Ust and he would open the line on Sunday night
Speaker 1: at a Startust and it was kind of considered at
Speaker 1: the time like the opening number. And you know there
Speaker 1: was no no Internet, no Chris, no Pinnacle, nothing in
Speaker 1: the Caribbean, none of that crap, you know. So Scott's
Speaker 1: line was the open line, and it was it was
Speaker 1: a madhouse to get to the window when Scott put
Speaker 1: up the numbers and he put them up and he
Speaker 1: had they had a lottery and like you know, you're
Speaker 1: one line or number four, you know what that was
Speaker 1: they had to get and you got to make through
Speaker 1: des and go to the back line. So this was
Speaker 1: a stock more that frenzy. Uh and so I had
Speaker 1: to die and rain And I don't want to mention
Speaker 1: who he is or where we were because guys that
Speaker 1: figure out exactly who he is. But you know, we
Speaker 1: always get there's so many opinions in this business, and
Speaker 1: some are just some are like sort of right, some
Speaker 1: are partially right, and some are way way off. Anyway,
Speaker 1: a lot of guys, a lot of guys who would say, well,
Speaker 1: that opening number is as good a number as anything
Speaker 1: else in the world. And I would always say, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was when Bob Martin was making the line. But
Speaker 1: you know, it was a whole different world back then.
Speaker 1: We didn't have this kind of information. Thought that Bob's
Speaker 1: line wasn't great. Bob was you know, that was the bible.
Speaker 1: When Bob put out a line like seven, that was
Speaker 1: the number, trust me, that was And if it went
Speaker 1: one way or the other, you know, if you went
Speaker 1: back to Bob's number, you were going fun. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't like that anymore. You know, the whole the whole
Speaker 1: world had changed. Everything had changed. But I still had
Speaker 1: some guys you believe that that opening number was a
Speaker 1: solid and number you could possibly get, and this guy
Speaker 1: evidently was one of them. So Scott would open the line,
Speaker 1: I want to say, like about seven o'clock on Sunday night,
Speaker 1: and he would open the line the next day on
Speaker 1: Monday morning at about eleven with Scott's opening number off
Speaker 1: the number that got that around. So some of these
Speaker 1: games moved four or five, six points. You see how
Speaker 1: it goes in college football, and they pros, you know,
Speaker 1: aidan pros can move like a point. Maybe a point happened,
Speaker 1: that's the key move in the pros. But in college football,
Speaker 1: games would move like crazy. Well, he would open Scott's
Speaker 1: original number, the original number he posted on the board.
Speaker 1: So I was getting the I got naturally all the updates,
Speaker 1: you know what Scott opened and what the games had
Speaker 1: moved to. And you know, so by like eleven and
Speaker 1: not everybody. There's like one other guy and he's I
Speaker 1: see him around Las Vegas right now. There's one other
Speaker 1: guy that kind of knew this. And I would be
Speaker 1: there at eleven o'clock when he opened the numbers, and
Speaker 1: you know, by like eleven, third year noon, how was
Speaker 1: like done for the week with all my action, you know,
Speaker 1: any open numbers that I wanted, and then sometimes I
Speaker 1: agreed with the move, and then I would just you know,
Speaker 1: not play or you know what I mean, maybe come
Speaker 1: in and bet the other way or whatever I wants.
Speaker 1: You know, So I had, I mean, I was like
Speaker 1: a kid in the candy store. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: eventually this guy got fired. It cost me quite a
Speaker 1: bit of money and he was replaced actually by a
Speaker 1: friend of mine. So like the Grady train had left down,
Speaker 1: this guy did some unbelievable things. The other one that
Speaker 1: he did so I mean that the football was you know,
Speaker 1: and they it's a ton of money. Yeah, like I said,
Speaker 1: just got the bed into stale numbers for like a
Speaker 1: pretty decent limit. I think he was taken. I know
Speaker 1: I was to die in the game. And it's probably
Speaker 1: about Paul. He was taken. Uh. It really was like
Speaker 1: a lot of Grady. But the other thing that he
Speaker 1: would do that shows you how sharp he was. We had.
Speaker 1: He would put up like the go don't go on fight,
Speaker 1: but he would put up two different numbers, Like he
Speaker 1: put up seven and a half rounds and you know
Speaker 1: over was the favorite, and he put up nine and
Speaker 1: a half round and then under was the favorite. Well,
Speaker 1: he was letting us parlay. You can parlay the over
Speaker 1: seven and a half to the over nine and a
Speaker 1: half and those you guys that camp, you know, you're
Speaker 1: not quite figure. Yeah, if it goes nine and a half,
Speaker 1: it already went seven and a half, so you're written
Speaker 1: you were making one bet essentially getting paid for two
Speaker 1: of them, you know. And this went on for like
Speaker 1: a couple of years, and we had there was another
Speaker 1: friend of mine who was in there doing the same thing,
Speaker 1: and sometimes we would just split it, you know. Uh
Speaker 1: you know, he would tell me, goes, well, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: beg both of them under. I said, okay, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: beg both him over, and like whatever we make we
Speaker 1: would split, you know, and uh t you could make
Speaker 1: a force. He wasn't taking a ton of money on
Speaker 1: these things, but you know, it was good. Every time
Speaker 1: there was a fight, it was good for you know,
Speaker 1: at least a couple hundred bucks in your pocket. You know.
Speaker 1: There wasn't that much risk really. I mean, if it
Speaker 1: came eight rounds, you could lose you know, one unit,
Speaker 1: you know, but actually lose the parley, I should think,
Speaker 1: you know, so it could It wasn't. It wasn't risk free,
Speaker 1: but god nang, it was one of those things where
Speaker 1: you're getting you're making essentially a straight that you getting
Speaker 1: paid for a two team parley. And it was a
Speaker 1: lot of grade in there too, And I just remember
Speaker 1: one day, you know, I was I was making the
Speaker 1: vet and he just he just kind of looked at
Speaker 1: me as, wow, um, I guess if it goes nine
Speaker 1: and a half, it already went seven half. Huh that's all.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I didn't realize that. Yeah, okay, like well
Speaker 1: that that particular gravy train stopped right then and there,
Speaker 1: but we had plenty of others going. That's just the
Speaker 1: kind of book maker was. And he's actually had a
Speaker 1: pretty decent career as ay. Uh, you know, somewhere in
Speaker 1: like the political realm. So that again, that'll tell you
Speaker 1: what kind of realm that is. So that was that
Speaker 1: was the story Number one. I got that that Scott's
Speaker 1: opening numbers, you know, uh like four fifteen hours after
Speaker 1: they were posted, and guys that the start Us were killing.
Speaker 1: He said, there's even a story. And whatnome of the
Speaker 1: guy pulling out a gun to get in line to bet? Now?
Speaker 1: He said, Man, if I'm pulling out a gun, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be robbing somebody. I don't want to be given
Speaker 1: them my money, because that's pretty much what he was doing. Well,
Speaker 1: he was kind of he kind of was robbing someone,
Speaker 1: just not you with the gun right, yeah, probably yeah,
Speaker 1: probably yeah. Um but wait, so hold on now, so
Speaker 1: so those boxing and you can't even call this, I mean,
Speaker 1: can you even call those correlated parlays? I mean those
Speaker 1: are right on top of each other, so they're they're
Speaker 1: as correlated as anything gets. Um, but how long did
Speaker 1: it last? For? How long would you say that you
Speaker 1: had the opportunity to bet those before? And I guess
Speaker 1: what you're suggesting is he was standing right over your
Speaker 1: shoulder and that's what ended it because he finally figured
Speaker 1: it out. Well, yeah, the boxing parlays and I would
Speaker 1: say the start US opening numbers, the start US opening
Speaker 1: everything lasted like two full football seasons. I mean, like
Speaker 1: I said, and didn't say, wow, they didn't take big action,
Speaker 1: but they took like a dime, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: so uh, and that's about all I was betting at
Speaker 1: the time. I had been a little more if I
Speaker 1: had a chance to get a good number or something
Speaker 1: like that. But I mean, you know, when you had
Speaker 1: that kind of great job, I mean, I didn't have
Speaker 1: that big of a bankroller bet every game that I liked,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. There was a lot of
Speaker 1: gravy out there, you know, like I said, you had guys,
Speaker 1: you know, almost killing each other to get in line
Speaker 1: at the start. So I mean I'd walk out of
Speaker 1: there on a Monday with you know plays sometimes you know,
Speaker 1: and uh, it was just it was it was just
Speaker 1: the biggest gravy train I could ever imagine. And he
Speaker 1: always keeping track of my action at the time. And uh,
Speaker 1: when my friend did go in there and replace this guy,
Speaker 1: I told himself, I hope you do okay, but I
Speaker 1: wanted you to tell him. I want to tell you
Speaker 1: how much money you cost me by you getting this job,
Speaker 1: because he was he was way too sharp ever do
Speaker 1: anything that's stupid. He just wasn't going to do that.
Speaker 1: Year late eighties, mid to late um, yeah, probably, I'd
Speaker 1: say like eight six, eighties seven, like right in there,
Speaker 1: right about it there. Yeah, but you know, you've seen
Speaker 1: that a lot, you know, with any time in new industry,
Speaker 1: and it was still sports betting, especially like in the casinos,
Speaker 1: was still like like a relatively new thing, and we
Speaker 1: still had the guys like from the old you know,
Speaker 1: the veggas veterans will know from the old Churchill down
Speaker 1: San Anita, Hollywood, downtown of Saratoga. I measured Bill Dark's
Speaker 1: del mar a couple of times. So those were a
Speaker 1: lot of you know crust, the old bookmakers. It really
Speaker 1: knew what was going on, but a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: these casino executives. And I wrote it in the book
Speaker 1: a lot of times they said, wow, yeah, look at
Speaker 1: this guy. He's a nice guy. He reads the sports
Speaker 1: page every day. He'll just get the numbers and you know,
Speaker 1: we'll be fine. Yeah it looks good. Were highest hues
Speaker 1: are shiant and it was fine. Yeah, well our sports
Speaker 1: book manager fine. And and just to give just to
Speaker 1: give the context christ to those days, because for those
Speaker 1: who aren't aware of Vegas in those days. And by
Speaker 1: the way, great shots at Visa dot Com and the
Speaker 1: Visa app of old Vegas shout out to uh our
Speaker 1: producer today, Danny Burke, for for helping to put those
Speaker 1: up the um the sports books. We we all take
Speaker 1: it for granted now that sports books are inside casinos,
Speaker 1: but in those days, just to paint a picture, those
Speaker 1: were standalone sports books that had by and large the
Speaker 1: names of horse racing tracks. Is that how it was
Speaker 1: generally speaking? Mostly, Yeah, there's a couple that were not.
Speaker 1: Like I said, there was the Hollywood Downtom. But other
Speaker 1: than that, trying to think of some of the guys
Speaker 1: when there was you know the Hollywood which is the
Speaker 1: on Hollywood race track. There was del Mar, Santa Anita, Churchill, Bounds,
Speaker 1: Oh Man, I'd have to, I'd have to. There was
Speaker 1: one the rose Ball, which obviously is not a race track,
Speaker 1: you know, but that's kind of where that's where most
Speaker 1: of the names came from. And back in those days,
Speaker 1: really the room was mostly dedicated to horse players. Um.
Speaker 1: You'd go in and the sports side was very small
Speaker 1: relative to the horse side, um, because that's that's really
Speaker 1: where the action was. And like I said, I mean
Speaker 1: it's hard to think of that now, but sports betting,
Speaker 1: I mean it was popular amongst you'd say, guys like us,
Speaker 1: you know, but you gotta remember back in you know,
Speaker 1: go back in the day, uh, you know, horse racing
Speaker 1: and it was like horse racing, baseball and boxing were
Speaker 1: the most popular sports in the country and that's what
Speaker 1: people bet on. And that's they really didn't watch you
Speaker 1: hanging around and watching the game. They wanted you to
Speaker 1: make your bet and get out of there. But the
Speaker 1: horse racing is a whole different thing. You were betting.
Speaker 1: And by the way, none of these races were on
Speaker 1: TV at the time. We all had they had the
Speaker 1: wire and if you ever watched them will be the sting.
Speaker 1: It was very similar to that. That's why we were
Speaker 1: getting horse results. But still you know the way the
Speaker 1: horses work. You're shipping now at the forum and you know,
Speaker 1: usually betting throughout the course of the day, so that
Speaker 1: that's the way those uh, those shops work. But the
Speaker 1: sports book didn't get into the casinos until I want
Speaker 1: to say seventy seven, maybe seventy eight, something like that.
Speaker 1: Probably seventy seven I think, but again somebody can look
Speaker 1: that up and I think I'm Rocks. He probably has
Speaker 1: that edit his fingertips. But yeah, right around there. So
Speaker 1: before the end, the only time you could bet sports,
Speaker 1: this was by Nevada regulation was in a standalone shop. Wow.
Speaker 1: We won't bore people with the details, but a lot
Speaker 1: of it had to do with uh prohibitive taxes on
Speaker 1: sports and then that got changed from tem percent. People
Speaker 1: don't even know that attacks exist today. That makes it
Speaker 1: a good deal for casinos to have sports books. Fascinating history,
Speaker 1: more adventures in bad book baking, and there's own many
Speaker 1: of them. Harris has its own wing. We'll get into
Speaker 1: some of that on a numbers game at Visa right
Speaker 1: here with Chris Andrews, um exclusively on a numbers game Visa,
Speaker 1: the Sports Betting Network story Time, Part three, right here
Speaker 1: at Visa. Welcome back to a numbers game with Jill Alexander.
Speaker 1: Back on the numbers game. As the man said, thank
Speaker 1: you on flatter It is Gial Alexander from San Francisco,
Speaker 1: our satellite office in San Francisco, California. Christie Andrews joining
Speaker 1: us once again. The name of the book then one Day,
Speaker 1: forty years in bookmaking in Nevada, and the reason it's
Speaker 1: called then one Day was when Chrissy would originally tell
Speaker 1: these stories on storytime during guessing lines on the Beating
Speaker 1: the Book podcast. Inevitably, invariably, every one of these stories
Speaker 1: would turn by Chrissie somewhere in the middle, giving some
Speaker 1: preamble and then say one day, uh and everything, Uh,
Speaker 1: today we're talking about bad bookmaking. We were talking off
Speaker 1: air about what this one is, and then you said
Speaker 1: a couple of things that I'm like, I don't even
Speaker 1: get even decipher what that is. So you go ahead
Speaker 1: and tell this real quickie. Okay, this was Roxy was
Speaker 1: coming to Reno quite a bit, and uh, you know
Speaker 1: he and I we're running buddies, and uh, a lot
Speaker 1: of times he'd come to Reno. I make fun of
Speaker 1: all he used to be so broken up to sleep
Speaker 1: on my couch. Let's just say rock Rocky's couch sleeping
Speaker 1: days are long gone, you know. But that was us.
Speaker 1: Was trying to hustle. Uh yeah, He's that all right
Speaker 1: for himself. But we would leave in the morning and
Speaker 1: you know, trying to get up to Lake Tahoe to
Speaker 1: make the first race in New York. And a lot
Speaker 1: of times, you know, we're you know, typical guys. We
Speaker 1: just you know, we were late. And uh so we
Speaker 1: would stop at Artichoke Joe's, which is this little place
Speaker 1: in Carson City along the way up to Lake Tahoe.
Speaker 1: So we'd stop in at a arti Choke Joe's, and
Speaker 1: we'd make our bets for like the first to New York,
Speaker 1: and then we you know, hustle on up to the
Speaker 1: lake and I'll finish our our daily business. Whatever we're
Speaker 1: gonna do well when we're going there. This is uh again,
Speaker 1: this is back in the early eighties, probably like eight two,
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit maybe at eighty three or so.
Speaker 1: And guys that were around that time though that call
Speaker 1: our NBA totals were moving like crazy. I mean, and
Speaker 1: it's not only moving like crazy. They were winning at
Speaker 1: an unbelievable clip. To say six is way underputting what
Speaker 1: they were winning. It had to be closer to like
Speaker 1: I mean, is there was like money in your pocket
Speaker 1: every day. These things were moving. Hey, We'd start at
Speaker 1: Artichokes and R. Choke had what he called the coconut
Speaker 1: line and what it was a total. Like let's say
Speaker 1: the total was two tens, you had the bet. But
Speaker 1: I'll explain what that means in the second. So let's
Speaker 1: say the number was to ten, so it's artichokes you
Speaker 1: had the bet over to fourteen or under two oh
Speaker 1: six We had an eight point and you're laying eleven
Speaker 1: and ten both ways. And that's what he said. You
Speaker 1: had to be coconuts to be betting into this number.
Speaker 1: Now it makes perfect Yeah, yeah, not make buri good.
Speaker 1: So Arti Choke and coconuts. I don't know if that
Speaker 1: goes together, but if you want together, good for me
Speaker 1: and roxy Uh so we got the coconut line. Now,
Speaker 1: like I said, some of these games would move seven,
Speaker 1: eight ten points. So even though you were taking four
Speaker 1: points kind of the worst bit off the opening number,
Speaker 1: it was still I mean, it puts four points two buckets,
Speaker 1: you know. So we were so we ranked down the
Speaker 1: artists so glad, and then on our way home we
Speaker 1: had games that were moving eight ten points. Well it's
Speaker 1: still worth it for us to go into Artichokes and
Speaker 1: bed into the coconut line. And he looked as, oh,
Speaker 1: you guys, are you guys know what you're doing. No, man,
Speaker 1: you know, he's just thinking, look at these two bums coming.
Speaker 1: You know, we would bet it and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously cut our presentage down a little bit, but not
Speaker 1: that much. We we still I mean, that was another
Speaker 1: gravy train that we had going for us. And we're
Speaker 1: up to the lake and had to the you know,
Speaker 1: running back home, running back down down the hill to
Speaker 1: get the harder jokes by post time to bed into
Speaker 1: these numbers that we knew we weren't going to move
Speaker 1: all day. He didn't move to the number. He just
Speaker 1: felt like, no, but I got an eight point metal
Speaker 1: working for me. Plus is used, I'll just go with that,
Speaker 1: which I'd say in this day and age w probably
Speaker 1: be pretty good. But that day and age n all
Speaker 1: that good. You knew what you were doing, and me
Speaker 1: and Rocks, he took pretty good advantage of it. That
Speaker 1: was a lot of fun. Geez. And And how quickly
Speaker 1: did it take you to realize, Like when you first
Speaker 1: saw that line, you must have been like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is terrible, but then you quickly figured out, oh,
Speaker 1: he never he never does anything with it. We could
Speaker 1: still get the best of this number, even because of
Speaker 1: the of the manner in which it moves all day long.
Speaker 1: Even though he thinks he's he's killing people with this, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't think as long, believe me. That's uh, maybe
Speaker 1: one or two trips to ARTI Chokes when we realize
Speaker 1: he doesn't moved the number. The number just sit there
Speaker 1: all dwyn. He would even tell you that, to tell
Speaker 1: you that himself. Yeah, I'm not going to the number.
Speaker 1: And the Art Chokes was kind of place. Like I said,
Speaker 1: we bet the first race in New York or whatever,
Speaker 1: and you know when we we'd go to the next
Speaker 1: there next next week to catch our ticket. He didn't
Speaker 1: ring up your ticket and says, okay, page you know
Speaker 1: two you have in an envelope in the drawer? Yea
Speaker 1: ARTI choke Joe's in the coconut line. I don't even
Speaker 1: remember that story. That's how That's how many of these
Speaker 1: there are adventures in bed. Coming back on a numbers
Speaker 1: game at Visa the Sports Betting Network, Welcome back to
Speaker 1: a numbers game with Jill Alexander. It is the numbers
Speaker 1: game once the game right here on Visa, the biggest
Speaker 1: Deess Information Network series Sex and Channel to OH four,
Speaker 1: Visa dot Com, the Visa app, foodbos linking game plus
Speaker 1: is Kill Alexander, San Francisco. Chris Andrew's the author, of course,
Speaker 1: of then one Day forty years of book making in
Speaker 1: Nevada with story time telling some of the stories from
Speaker 1: days going by, specifically what we used to call adventures
Speaker 1: in bad bookmaking, which again those of us who weren't
Speaker 1: around you can only dream of what that must have
Speaker 1: been like. But you were smart enough to take advantage
Speaker 1: of it. I mean, it wasn't like everybody figured out
Speaker 1: these things, and you have another example of that. No,
Speaker 1: it was. It was a hell of a great between
Speaker 1: right then, I gotta tell you. So here's another one.
Speaker 1: You know. So back in the day, um kids pay attention.
Speaker 1: We don't have cell phones or even beepers, nothing like that.
Speaker 1: So I was running from my uncle Jack. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: I was writing from uncle Jack. So he I stopped by,
Speaker 1: like on a Sunday morning. Let's say, you know, he
Speaker 1: give me, like he gave me quite a bit of money,
Speaker 1: and he'd say, okay, here's what I'm looking for, and
Speaker 1: he give me a list. He said, don't bother calling me.
Speaker 1: If you see these numbers, just go bet them and
Speaker 1: then call me later. Tell me what I got, okay,
Speaker 1: And I take like whatever, you know, whatever they take,
Speaker 1: whatever the limit is, you can bet it, okay. So
Speaker 1: this one day. Then one day I go, I'm on
Speaker 1: my journeys. I go to stand, I go to sam Town.
Speaker 1: Now on my list. That that that day, and I
Speaker 1: think it was the I think it was the Monday
Speaker 1: night game. I'm not sure if we had some day
Speaker 1: and I football then or I don't think we did. Anyways,
Speaker 1: Chargers are playing the Raiders. So he gave me Raiders
Speaker 1: minus two and a half or the Chargers plus four.
Speaker 1: So obviously the number was pretty much three tainted on everywhere. Wow.
Speaker 1: So I walk in. They got the Raiders minus two
Speaker 1: and alp. So I run up to the counter and
Speaker 1: you know, stand in the line everything else Sunday morning,
Speaker 1: and I think, give me the Chargers minus two and
Speaker 1: a half or five thousand. Okay, guy writes you taking
Speaker 1: this guy? I kind of knew a little bit, so
Speaker 1: I I I get you know, I go and look,
Speaker 1: they don't change the number. I got all my uncle Jack.
Speaker 1: I said, well, I got to the Chargers the Raiders
Speaker 1: minus two and a half for five thousands. Said well,
Speaker 1: they move it. No, we'll go bet him again. So
Speaker 1: I go to the same guy. I go to the
Speaker 1: same guy. I'll go up to the front. So you know,
Speaker 1: I already bet you Chargers my third Raiders Raiders two
Speaker 1: and alf for five thousands. You didn't move and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna bet it again. He says, Hey, they didn't move,
Speaker 1: but you're entitled to bet it again. I bet it again.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting there and they don't move it. They don't
Speaker 1: move it. They don't move it. I called my uncle
Speaker 1: Jack back. He says, did they move it? I say, no,
Speaker 1: as well, go bet him again. So I get back
Speaker 1: in line again. Go to the same guy laid the
Speaker 1: two and a half or five thousand, and you know what,
Speaker 1: I tell him, I'm gonna move. I'm just gonna keep that. He's, well,
Speaker 1: they'll probably move it now, but they haven't moved it,
Speaker 1: so you're not doing anything wrong. You're fine. Okay. So
Speaker 1: I go and I look back and uh about the
Speaker 1: mintial ayres They did move it, not the three, not
Speaker 1: even the three and a half. They moved with the four.
Speaker 1: Called Jack back, and yeah, they finally moved it. And
Speaker 1: he could tell by my voice what they do. Did
Speaker 1: they move with the three and a half? I don't know.
Speaker 1: They moved at the four. You're kidding, No, he says,
Speaker 1: We'll go take the four. Okay, what are you calling? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I run up. I just wanted to make sure, you know,
Speaker 1: I run up. I take the four again, like in
Speaker 1: the same window, same guy. You know, I take the
Speaker 1: four for fucking call my uncle Jack, I said, Because
Speaker 1: I'm good, go on to the next time. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: ready where I want to be on that game? Okay,
Speaker 1: And like I said in a book, I even have
Speaker 1: to tell you the final chargers one and later on
Speaker 1: I had one of those guys working for me, and
Speaker 1: and he told me about that game in particular. You know,
Speaker 1: the guy was like just the ticket writer at Champs
Speaker 1: not at the time, and like the boss uh called
Speaker 1: him back and says, say, I want you guys to
Speaker 1: look at this game. This is how your book a game.
Speaker 1: This is how your book a game. The show they
Speaker 1: had like, you know, a ton of action on both sides.
Speaker 1: You know, we can't lose that. We got ton action
Speaker 1: on both sides. Everything's perfect. My guy tells them not not.
Speaker 1: The Raiders win by three, because what are your talking? Love,
Speaker 1: The Raiders went by three and it ain't gonna be
Speaker 1: so good. But he puts in like the one if score,
Speaker 1: and oh my god, they were gonna lose a fortune
Speaker 1: because I was the only guy that you know. And
Speaker 1: naturally that's exactly what a game, of course you did.
Speaker 1: Of course, that's three, of course being the most common
Speaker 1: results in an NFL game, or landing on a margin three.
Speaker 1: But so again, with all of these, I'm curious, when
Speaker 1: did you realize, like how how do you remember the preamble?
Speaker 1: Do you remember the talk before we were like, hey,
Speaker 1: like when this guy moves something he didn't just move
Speaker 1: it like that. He moves it massively, Like do you
Speaker 1: remember that conversation? Like how was that figured out? Not
Speaker 1: at all, not at all. Because in my early days,
Speaker 1: my first move Flas Vegas. And now this I didn't
Speaker 1: even put this in the book, but I swear to
Speaker 1: God this is true. So I first moved to Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: So I mean I'm mustling around that. Yeah, I'm broke.
Speaker 1: I don't have any money, you know. So I run
Speaker 1: up to SAMs Times for the Monday night game and
Speaker 1: it's like about two or three in the afternoon. I
Speaker 1: didn't put this in the book. I absolutely should have
Speaker 1: I put it. I go up to Samstimes was my mother.
Speaker 1: I was staying with my mother. She lived kind of
Speaker 1: towards that that side of town. Run up to Samstun's
Speaker 1: like two two or training accident, I walk in. I
Speaker 1: go to be the Monday and I can have a
Speaker 1: number I like on the board and I go to bed.
Speaker 1: But Gil like, I think I was betting forty four
Speaker 1: and win forty that was my unit at the time.
Speaker 1: And he comes right this guy, this guy the boss,
Speaker 1: because no, no, no, we're not taking any more action
Speaker 1: on that game. We're booked perfectly. We're not taking any
Speaker 1: more action. Yeah, yeah, we're booked perfectly. I don't want
Speaker 1: to take any more action on that game. We're fun. Okay,
Speaker 1: point this is but this is the way the business
Speaker 1: was back then. You had some real some guys. How
Speaker 1: much time do we have left field? Cause I got
Speaker 1: another starving the same guy. Uh, we got ninety seconds left,
Speaker 1: so we may want to wait for this. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: he was explaining to me the horses one time to
Speaker 1: figure out the extension as well. The horse pays like,
Speaker 1: you know, twelve dollars, you know, and you take a bed,
Speaker 1: you know you have to. You know, it's this times two.
Speaker 1: It's a two dollar wages to practice too. You know,
Speaker 1: that's how you figure your extension. I said, why don't
Speaker 1: you take a bed amount times the odds times five?
Speaker 1: And he looked at me like I just taught him
Speaker 1: how to split the atom. He was like stun that.
Speaker 1: Oh this is the way you figure that out. Yeah
Speaker 1: that's yeah. He was not the brightest bulb. What year again?
Speaker 1: Was this just for context? Uh? You know, wow, man,
Speaker 1: a different different era. Can you can you tell the uh?
Speaker 1: The hard to explain Super Bowl parlay story next, Can
Speaker 1: you do that for us? Sure? Sure, yeah, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: this one will require a little bit of explanation, I believe,
Speaker 1: But super Bowl Parlat's adventures in bad bookmaking coming up again?
Speaker 1: The name of the book, uh, then one day forty
Speaker 1: years of bookmaking in Nevada. It is our friend Chris Andrews,
Speaker 1: who runs the South Going Hotel Casino sports book. That
Speaker 1: book available everywhere, including of course, at Amazon. Check that out.
Speaker 1: More stories coming up, bad bookmaking? Love that right here
Speaker 1: in the numbers game at Visa. You know, Alexander, It
Speaker 1: is Bill Alexander, and it is Chris Andrews kind enough
Speaker 1: to spend another couple of hours with us. Uh, this
Speaker 1: morning part three of stree Time The Cold the version
Speaker 1: of the back to back to back to back version
Speaker 1: of story Time, Christie. This one requires a bit of extavation,
Speaker 1: but we're we're all ears. Let's hear it. Super Bowl parlays,
Speaker 1: I believe, is what you call them. Okay, Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure exactly what year this was, but you know,
Speaker 1: whatever super Bowl was, the member was writing around pick
Speaker 1: them and I think the total was forty eight, So
Speaker 1: I'm not positive what year this was, but it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of a kind of a legendary story up in
Speaker 1: northern Novata. So this was Harris up at the Lake
Speaker 1: now between the Lake and Reno and the downtown Reno.
Speaker 1: They ran their books completely independent of one another, So
Speaker 1: what what you found that one would not necessarily be
Speaker 1: what you found with the other one anyway, So I'll
Speaker 1: put the lake. They put out a parlay card for
Speaker 1: the Super Bowl and on it so it was every
Speaker 1: every quarter was like pick them on this parlay cards.
Speaker 1: There is no no advantage. Everybody has slight but not
Speaker 1: really much. But they had the totals on every quarter,
Speaker 1: on both halves and for the game. So I'm not
Speaker 1: sure exactly what the totals were, but I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: I know close. So the first quarter total was ten,
Speaker 1: second quarter total was fourteen, third quarter total was ten,
Speaker 1: fourth quarter total was fourteen. First half total was twenty four,
Speaker 1: second half total was twenty four, and the game total
Speaker 1: was Now all those numbers individually are the right numbers.
Speaker 1: And that they put out that card like that, and
Speaker 1: they thought, well, you know, we got the right numbers
Speaker 1: on the parley card. We're fine. Now. After about a
Speaker 1: day or so after they put the card out. They
Speaker 1: started getting like just an inordinate amount of play on
Speaker 1: the card, and it just kept streaming and streaming and
Speaker 1: streaming in and finally somebody up there figured it out.
Speaker 1: If I bet over ten the first quarter, and I
Speaker 1: bet over ten over fourteen a second quarter, and I've
Speaker 1: bet over twenty four for the half, the first quarter
Speaker 1: comes over ten and the second quarter comes over fourteen,
Speaker 1: then that half is definitely gonna come over twenty four. Conversely,
Speaker 1: get bet the other way. If you go under ten,
Speaker 1: the one under fourteen in the second, the first half
Speaker 1: is going to go under twenty four. So what you
Speaker 1: were doing, and then that's about the lowest denometer you
Speaker 1: could bet a two team or essentially and get paid
Speaker 1: for a three teamer. So two teamer pays what to
Speaker 1: five and a three teamer pays six to one. So
Speaker 1: that was a hell of a bargain. That doesn't mean
Speaker 1: you have to win first first quarter, could go over,
Speaker 1: second quarter, could go under, and then you're gonna blow
Speaker 1: the party because it all has to line up. But
Speaker 1: you could do it for the game too. First half
Speaker 1: goes over twenty four, second half goes over twenty four.
Speaker 1: The game's gonna be over again. Conversely, the other way,
Speaker 1: you've got under twenty four for the first half, under
Speaker 1: twenty four for the second half. The game is going
Speaker 1: to be under forty eight. And they were taking just
Speaker 1: so much money on this and really had no idea
Speaker 1: what they were doing. They didn't realize what was going
Speaker 1: on because they were looking at each number individually, and
Speaker 1: each number individually, like I said, was pretty pretty much
Speaker 1: the right number within maybe half a point or something
Speaker 1: like that, each quarter cojuicing ball, each quarter number, both
Speaker 1: halfs numbers, and the game total number. They were all
Speaker 1: solid numbers. So I just gave you an example of
Speaker 1: a three teamer. But guys were betting, like, you know,
Speaker 1: up to a six teamer. He's bet first quarter over,
Speaker 1: second quarter over, third quarter of the fourth quarter over
Speaker 1: game over. You know what. That's a five team, you know,
Speaker 1: But I mean no, but okay, yeah, I'm sorry. They're
Speaker 1: throwing the halves too, you know, first quarter over, second
Speaker 1: quarter over half over. Yeah, so you could bet up
Speaker 1: to like an eight teamer. I guess that right at
Speaker 1: sixth team whatever it is, they were putting together every
Speaker 1: combinating teamer you could figure out, yea, So just to
Speaker 1: be clear. And just to be clear, this didn't have
Speaker 1: to be a super Bowl. This could have been any
Speaker 1: game and it would have been a terrible bet to offer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would have been a terrible bet under any circumstances
Speaker 1: that happened to be the Super Bowl. So they were
Speaker 1: under like the false um what's the word, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, like they thought everything was fine. There's a
Speaker 1: word I'm looking for. I can't think of it right now. Uh,
Speaker 1: they were under the false impression that everything was just
Speaker 1: hunky dory. They were just they hit on this thing
Speaker 1: that was going to create so much action, and it
Speaker 1: was just so popular. They really struck bold with this thing,
Speaker 1: and we're doing so much business. And finally somebody, somebody
Speaker 1: figured it out. And I remember that the guy guy
Speaker 1: who I don't think he's still alive. He was a
Speaker 1: very good writer. I wrote for the Reno Gazette Journal.
Speaker 1: Steve staid, And you know, Steve and I had a
Speaker 1: pretty good relationship. Remember Steve called me. He says, you know,
Speaker 1: he didn't understand. And it's one of those things where like,
Speaker 1: if you're not kind of in the business like we are,
Speaker 1: you could look at it and it's not it's not
Speaker 1: the easiest thing to understand unless you know. Probably most
Speaker 1: of our listeners, I would say, probably understand what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. But like, you know, Steve was a writer,
Speaker 1: you know, he wasn't really a better and like that,
Speaker 1: and he had me explained to him and then and
Speaker 1: again it was like like I explained them how to
Speaker 1: split the at him, like I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: he goes, you kid me data, and I he says,
Speaker 1: do you mind if I write that? I said, Steve,
Speaker 1: I don't mind if you write it. Don't you my name,
Speaker 1: you know, just you know you talked to you know
Speaker 1: whoever howeveryone identified me, just fine, but don't use my name,
Speaker 1: and don't tell them you know what position I mean
Speaker 1: at the time. And don't you know, I'm gonna say.
Speaker 1: I think in the line I put in the book
Speaker 1: was the old thing is God looks after drunks and fools,
Speaker 1: and I would never choose the hair as people are
Speaker 1: being drunks, and you know it's split out. It split
Speaker 1: out perfectly, you know, like first quarter went over, second
Speaker 1: quarter went under, so they blew that, you know, like
Speaker 1: first halfing. I'm just making this up, but I know
Speaker 1: it's split up. First half went over, second half went under,
Speaker 1: and you know the quarters nothing really aliged, you know,
Speaker 1: nothing really came in. So all these guys you had, way, way,
Speaker 1: way the best of it. And like I said, if
Speaker 1: you gave guys like that, uh, that kind of uh,
Speaker 1: that kind of bargain that I mean, just you know,
Speaker 1: the monetary value of something like that is astronomical. Especially
Speaker 1: they were taking big acts and it being the Super Bowl,
Speaker 1: and they got they got lucky, and things did not
Speaker 1: correlate and they wound up pulling the card once. Once
Speaker 1: they figured out what was going on, they would up
Speaker 1: taking the card off. But you know the other and
Speaker 1: it's kind of weird the way the lake was at
Speaker 1: the time up in Lake Tylo. And again it's a
Speaker 1: very different, yea, the whole industry is so much different.
Speaker 1: But there was like a pretty good wise guy community
Speaker 1: up at the lake and a lot of them were,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of make a limit of sports betting, um,
Speaker 1: you know, back in the day, you know, uh, Like
Speaker 1: you'll go over some of these stories here and see
Speaker 1: it was not a very well run operation. In the
Speaker 1: book the Adventures and Bad Bookmaking, Haris themselves have the
Speaker 1: whole chapter to themselves because of some of the stupid
Speaker 1: things that they did. This was way up there, and
Speaker 1: I said, they they skated on this one. They they
Speaker 1: danced around all the numbers. And next year obviously they
Speaker 1: didn't have But I talked to one of the guys
Speaker 1: who was in there, and uh, the powers that be,
Speaker 1: the board of directors, the box that said, oh my god,
Speaker 1: you guys did a great job. This, this is beautiful
Speaker 1: again next year, right, And they got no, no, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we decided no. And they didn't want to
Speaker 1: set up to how stupid they were they were all
Speaker 1: the boxes, how bright they were, how brilliant they were
Speaker 1: out that sort of thing. Yeah, Chris, because as you're
Speaker 1: telling this story, I did a little, just a little googling.
Speaker 1: Could this have been the Super Bowl in January of
Speaker 1: night two, so after the one season, because that was
Speaker 1: the first Niners Bengal super Bowl in Pontiac, Michigan, where
Speaker 1: the total was forty eight and I believe the Niners
Speaker 1: were favored by one. Could that have been it sounds
Speaker 1: like your numbers, It sounds like it. I think, actually, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that very well could be it. And I think
Speaker 1: the Niners were. And by the way, I took Michael
Speaker 1: Jack when he came up to visit me. We went
Speaker 1: up to the to the lake while he was there,
Speaker 1: and the Niners were pretty much one everywhere that would
Speaker 1: use googling right there. Well that was that was yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a que Yeah, and again everybody got it. Well,
Speaker 1: you know they we got this discussion yesterday talking about
Speaker 1: certain numbers and Nancy A Championship games. These numbers are
Speaker 1: not there's not a union, you know, it's not it's
Speaker 1: not one number. But I remember taking Michael Jack. We
Speaker 1: took a ride up to the lake, and you know
Speaker 1: that they didn't know him or anything like that. They
Speaker 1: put him on for a hundred thousand on the Bengal
Speaker 1: plus four plus four on a game there was one
Speaker 1: and of course he didn't dash. The Niners beat him,
Speaker 1: you know, but five by the way, they won by five.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, one of those. But but
Speaker 1: I would say, yeah, they probably were thinking we are
Speaker 1: the smartest bookmakers in the world, Jerry. You know, after
Speaker 1: between that parlay cards, putting my uncle on for a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand, probably the game if it were in fact,
Speaker 1: if it was in fact, that game the first quarter
Speaker 1: was nine or seven nothing. The Niners then outscored the
Speaker 1: Bengals thirteen to nothing in the second quarter for those
Speaker 1: who remember that game, so it was twenty to nothing
Speaker 1: at halftime. The Bengals outscored the nine Ers seven to
Speaker 1: nothing in the third quarter. But here was the here's
Speaker 1: probably what saved her as if it was in fact
Speaker 1: this game, fourth quarter Cincinnati fourteen, nine or six, So
Speaker 1: that would have completely destroyed any correlated if if you know,
Speaker 1: anything correlated if people had included the fourth quarter. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so what was the line? God protects drunk drugs and fools,
Speaker 1: And I would never accuse Airs of being drunks. It's great,
Speaker 1: just one of the great lives. By the way that
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that's the game, but it might be.
Speaker 1: It's right yet that it might be that, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: it's right there. Yeah, I couldn't swear to that with
Speaker 1: that be in that game. But that is what happened,
Speaker 1: and they got lucky. They skated, and I'm sure they
Speaker 1: were taking that they were the sharpest bookmakers as well.
Speaker 1: They I think they sold themselves to their bosses that
Speaker 1: they were the sharpest, but they knew that they screwed up. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna do this next year. We we thought
Speaker 1: about it. We're just not gonna do it to their bosses.
Speaker 1: Coming back. More adventures and bad bookmaking with the great
Speaker 1: Christie Andrews right here on a numbers game at Visa
Speaker 1: the Sports Betting Network. It's a numbers game with your host,
Speaker 1: Kill Alexander. You want those mutis to believe in our
Speaker 1: number two of the numbers game. Right here at Visa,
Speaker 1: the Vegas Stats and Information Network. Sorry to step on,
Speaker 1: Charles Barkley, It's Kill Alexander from San Francisco, California. Quarantining.
Speaker 1: I hope you're quarantining with your loved ones. Hope it's
Speaker 1: all going well, are you. I hope everyone's staying safe.
Speaker 1: We're trying to, uh just give you some great stories
Speaker 1: from days gone by, as told by one of the
Speaker 1: great storytellers. I think this is the underrated part about you, Chrissie.
Speaker 1: If I may just roast you for is I cannot
Speaker 1: really a roast but pay tribute to you. Um. Because
Speaker 1: a lot of people have good stories, a lot of
Speaker 1: people don't necessarily know how to tell those stories in
Speaker 1: an entertaining way that is your gift, sir, that is
Speaker 1: your talent. Yeah, thank you, I appreciate that. Yeah, thanks, thanks.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes you need to work on it. Some
Speaker 1: guys are natural. I think I had to work on
Speaker 1: it a little bit. You you darn good at and
Speaker 1: we look forward to whatever it is, whatever else you're
Speaker 1: going to produce book wise in the future. This is
Speaker 1: about then one day forty years of bookmaking in Nevada,
Speaker 1: which is available in all bookstores, and of course all
Speaker 1: from the old story time segments that we used to
Speaker 1: tell on the Beating the Book podcast that Chrissie used
Speaker 1: to come on and tell. After we would guess the
Speaker 1: line and then to sort of wrap it up, Chrissie
Speaker 1: would tell a story. Um, this of course is about
Speaker 1: it bookmaking. You were up in Lake Tahoe. You wanted
Speaker 1: to stay at Lake Tahoe for the next one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was really my first foray into understanding this. I'll
Speaker 1: screwed up. Harras was particularly up at the lake. I
Speaker 1: shouldn't just pick on them. The other one. The other
Speaker 1: the Reno side was pretty bad too. But anyway, you know,
Speaker 1: Haros really back in those days, So this is like
Speaker 1: one really promoted themselves as being like in the papers
Speaker 1: and came out throughout the country because they had very
Speaker 1: good connections with the media. That Harris Reno Tahoe opened
Speaker 1: the NFL line, I remember, like taking saw Bob Martin
Speaker 1: opened the line. Was my uncle Jack lying to me
Speaker 1: about this stuff. You know, remember asking Jack, what about anyway?
Speaker 1: See you out of your mind? Nobody cares what Harris
Speaker 1: opened the line and Bob opened the line. They're just
Speaker 1: get their names in the paper, okay, but yeah, they
Speaker 1: certainly thought of themselves as big shots, you know. So anyway,
Speaker 1: I go up, you know, and I was living at Reno,
Speaker 1: so Jack made sure I had some money with me,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, I to him one going to
Speaker 1: take drive up to like just you know, kind of
Speaker 1: get the landscape. And that's where I think, Okay, so
Speaker 1: it's calling when you get up there, give me the line,
Speaker 1: but call him. And so with the Tuesday, so I
Speaker 1: got reading down the line opens you know, one Sunday
Speaker 1: night or Monday for most books, and by Tuesday there's
Speaker 1: not really that much booth and it's really pretty pretty
Speaker 1: solid line. So I go into Harris right down the
Speaker 1: line and I call him up. He says, yeah, because
Speaker 1: I really don't see anything. But anyway, when I first
Speaker 1: went in there, you know, as I'm writing down the line,
Speaker 1: I go up to the guy and as far as
Speaker 1: I know, that guy was still there up until like
Speaker 1: even last year or so I go where I asked them.
Speaker 1: I said, well, what do you what do you take
Speaker 1: in the football? And he looks at me goes fifty. Okay,
Speaker 1: you know, so I called him uncle Jack. I give
Speaker 1: him the numbers because yeah, and I remember the game.
Speaker 1: It was Baylor and it was taking things. They were
Speaker 1: like a like a thirteen point dog everywhere and they
Speaker 1: had fourteen and a half and uh and I you
Speaker 1: know some reason, he just really they got you know,
Speaker 1: you could take fourteen and AFL on Baylor. Yeah, he says,
Speaker 1: well go ben on Bailey. He says, yeah. He said,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't need fifty thousand, but don't take twenty.
Speaker 1: Give me twenty thousand on bailer. Okay. So I go
Speaker 1: into the bathroom, you know, going to a stall, but
Speaker 1: I have money like in my you know, I'm more
Speaker 1: in a sport code. I got money in my pockets.
Speaker 1: I was wearing at the time. I'd wear two pair
Speaker 1: of pants, like shorts under my jeans, you know, and
Speaker 1: then my shorts. I had money in my g you know,
Speaker 1: I just if I got robbed, and I hand them one,
Speaker 1: you know, five thousand dollar bundle. I mean, they're gonna
Speaker 1: be happiest can be. And then I, you know, I
Speaker 1: get to I need to lose all the rest, you know,
Speaker 1: So I got anyway, I got money, and its under
Speaker 1: the long pants. Chris always a good look strategic though.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, a real babe magnet. Let me tell you. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were calling all of them that way. Yeah. So anyway,
Speaker 1: you know, I count out two and you stick at
Speaker 1: my jacket pocket and I so, you know, I go
Speaker 1: up to the counter and you know, I tell the guy,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever number is given me, you know number
Speaker 1: you know, one oh three was it's Gil Alexander Christie Andrews.
Speaker 1: Is a numbers game right here at Visa. Go ahead.
Speaker 1: So I go up to the counter and I said,
Speaker 1: you know, give me one oh three Baylor h plus
Speaker 1: the fourteen an effort for twenty two thousand. Guy comes
Speaker 1: running out. The same guy just thought he said, whoa, well,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? What I said, Well, I'm making
Speaker 1: a bad, so we don't take that kind of money.
Speaker 1: Will you tell me? I just asked you five minutes ago,
Speaker 1: will you take He told me to take fifty thousand.
Speaker 1: I'm only bet you twenty. I just didn't know you
Speaker 1: were gonna bet that much. I said, why don't you
Speaker 1: just give me an answer? What do you think I'll
Speaker 1: take two thousand? I said, you know you told me fifty.
Speaker 1: I'm betting you. You know twenty, So that's what you
Speaker 1: just told me. And you're taking only ten percent of
Speaker 1: that because well, you know you want it or not,
Speaker 1: it's two thousand. If you don't want to bet it,
Speaker 1: don't bet it. But it's two thousand. That's just your bet.
Speaker 1: And I said, you know you're making me look like
Speaker 1: a fool here because I said, I got twenty two
Speaker 1: thousand sitting on the counter, and uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: rooms full of people and they see me pull out
Speaker 1: this money. I'm want to pull out this kind of money.
Speaker 1: If I didn't think you were gonna take the bet,
Speaker 1: and he told me you would take fifty thousand. Now
Speaker 1: you only take it too, because listen, I'm only taking
Speaker 1: to do you want an esport to your crist No,
Speaker 1: I don't want an esport to my call. I just
Speaker 1: want you to take the bet that you told me
Speaker 1: five minutes ago that you would take. That's what I want,
Speaker 1: is well, I'm not taking that. I didn't know you
Speaker 1: wanted to bet that much. Why why did you give
Speaker 1: me that answer? You know? I mean, I didn't you know,
Speaker 1: I said it certainly wasn't a babe magnet or anything
Speaker 1: like that, you know, but I was dressed in a
Speaker 1: sport coat and you know thosen't you know I showered
Speaker 1: that morning. Whatever, I didn't exactly look like a bump,
Speaker 1: you know. And it just tell me what you want
Speaker 1: to be, what you wanted to take. And you had
Speaker 1: two thousands of fine bits, but but two thousands, but fine,
Speaker 1: when you told me you would take fifty, well yeah,
Speaker 1: and like I said, I'd go up there periodically. And
Speaker 1: even the last time I was up there, that guy
Speaker 1: is still running the joint. So that's you know, that's
Speaker 1: the way Harris does things. And I always said he
Speaker 1: found a perfect place, he found the first perfect place
Speaker 1: to have a career in this industry, because uh, you know,
Speaker 1: last I looked and I don't know what the status was.
Speaker 1: But when I wrote the book. I think they were
Speaker 1: twenty two billion in the minus column, and you know,
Speaker 1: declaring bankruptcy and everything else. And I mean this was
Speaker 1: a one time one of the great great companies into
Speaker 1: VAT and really throughout the world, and they just it was,
Speaker 1: you know, mismanaged, and uh, you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: that much about the entire industry that I can even
Speaker 1: comment on, but I do know how badly they mismanaged
Speaker 1: the sports book, and I would imagine that they missmanaged
Speaker 1: quite a few other things throughout the company. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they were in uh you know, and they in Caesar's
Speaker 1: and uh you know, and I you know, the Eldorado
Speaker 1: wounded up my uh you know, big chunk of Caesar's
Speaker 1: and those those are my friends. I know the Corono
Speaker 1: families fairly well. So I hope they do well because
Speaker 1: I like the Crono family. I really do you know,
Speaker 1: of all the stories, yeah, of all the stories you tell,
Speaker 1: that one is the most relatable. Two betters today who
Speaker 1: I don't know about post legalization and and and all
Speaker 1: those stories. And I don't even know if if the
Speaker 1: companies post legalization even claim Some of the European companies
Speaker 1: that have come into the country claim to take those
Speaker 1: kinds of bets, but at least pre legalization in the
Speaker 1: state of Nevada accepting you know, not not not the
Speaker 1: South Point, not the West Gate. But I'm talking about
Speaker 1: the CG technologies of the world, the William Hills of
Speaker 1: the world. There have been numerous occasions, um where and
Speaker 1: I've talked about them on a numbers game. Other people
Speaker 1: have talked about their experiences where the claim is. And
Speaker 1: remember when CG came in to Las Vegas. At the
Speaker 1: time they were they were candid gaming. They have the claims, Oh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take anything, anything you want. You come in,
Speaker 1: you take the bet, and then you realize that it
Speaker 1: was all a bunch of nonsense, that that wasn't the
Speaker 1: case at all. Um. And there's you know, I told
Speaker 1: the story about Major League Baseball season win totals from
Speaker 1: a few years back. Oh yeah, we're doing all this stuff,
Speaker 1: and they took, you know, a nickel and made me
Speaker 1: feel bad. You and and now you can't bet anymore.
Speaker 1: We'll take a nickel on two of these and then
Speaker 1: don't come back here. So I mean that of all
Speaker 1: the stories you tell, that's the one that rings the
Speaker 1: most true, I think for modern day Betters. So they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: this sounds familiar. So it's been going on forever basically, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you know, when you get Cracked Burger on
Speaker 1: your show, I'm sure he would tell stories about this
Speaker 1: that happened, you know, a couple of weeks ago. They
Speaker 1: were very similar to what this is, you know, but
Speaker 1: that was my first foray. But like I said, at
Speaker 1: the time, you know, Harris painted themselves like they were
Speaker 1: the leaders of the industry, and that's what the newspapers
Speaker 1: throughout the country had this profile of Hairs that they
Speaker 1: were this fantastic bookmaking an outfit that would take anything,
Speaker 1: and they were the biggest money you know, the biggest
Speaker 1: money outfit in the world. And it was just so
Speaker 1: far from the truth. It was ridiculous though. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: that was it. So we have we still have some
Speaker 1: more time before the break, Mike, Yeah, play it. Play
Speaker 1: it's up, go ahead, Okay, Okay. So some of the
Speaker 1: other ones, you know, this is uh you know the uh.
Speaker 1: I got one that I want to tell, but that's
Speaker 1: gonna take more than just a few minutes. But you know, Harris,
Speaker 1: they just they you know, their future book was legendarily bad.
Speaker 1: So this was by the late eighties, you know, in
Speaker 1: the forty nine ers for winning Super Bowl after Super
Speaker 1: and they believe what the Niners killed us during the eighties.
Speaker 1: Joe Montana and that team was just so great. I
Speaker 1: think I wrote that the guys are the guys leave
Speaker 1: in the Bay Area. They say, Okay, I'm in a
Speaker 1: bet like a dime on the Niners, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have a two parley Niners and over and that will
Speaker 1: pretty much pay for my trip. And then anything else
Speaker 1: I do is great. And you know what, they cast
Speaker 1: an awful lot of those bets. You know, So who
Speaker 1: killed you more Niners in the eighties or Patriots modern day?
Speaker 1: Oh no, not even close, even close, not even close,
Speaker 1: not even close. Yeah, not even in the same breath, Yeah,
Speaker 1: not even close. They murder us, you know, because you
Speaker 1: gotta remember where we were. You know that San Francisco
Speaker 1: was just you know, right down the road, and yeah,
Speaker 1: and yeah, there's regional proximity. Plus you know, the world
Speaker 1: was just a lot different back then. We didn't have
Speaker 1: we had a pretty good wise guy group up in Reno.
Speaker 1: But you know, the liquidity of the market, it's you know,
Speaker 1: there's only x amount of money that could be in
Speaker 1: the market at any one time, and these guys were
Speaker 1: pouring in from the Bay Area, you know, a pretty
Speaker 1: wealthy part of the country and like that, and why
Speaker 1: wouldn't they just keep betting them? They just bet it
Speaker 1: like crazy and win most of the time because we
Speaker 1: have wise guys playing back the other way. But uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it wasn't enough to overcome the just you know,
Speaker 1: the general public that was you know, on the forty
Speaker 1: nine ers and usually on the over and like they
Speaker 1: usually cast you know. But but don't cry too much
Speaker 1: for the bookmakers. He only wound up okay. But like
Speaker 1: I said, they had the legendary they had the legendary
Speaker 1: dad uh future book the one year I went and
Speaker 1: I just looked at the Future book. So they had,
Speaker 1: you know, the Niners like to win the Super Bowl.
Speaker 1: I think they were like honestly, like even money or
Speaker 1: something like. This is before the season started there, like
Speaker 1: even money or something like something ridiculous. And not only
Speaker 1: did they have them, they had them minus four and
Speaker 1: a half in the Super Bowl, which super bowls matters
Speaker 1: won the Super Bowl. Uh, this would be like by
Speaker 1: then the late eighties, when you know Joe was really
Speaker 1: Joe was I still, for my money, the greatest quarterback
Speaker 1: that ever played. Uhoe was just tearing it up. They
Speaker 1: were minus they were even this and before the season.
Speaker 1: Like I said, we weren't halfway through and they were
Speaker 1: tearing it up before the season. There were even money
Speaker 1: and minus moren't half in the Super Bowl. So if
Speaker 1: you're stupid enough to take them and even money and
Speaker 1: you had the latest four and a half in the
Speaker 1: Super Bowl. So that's just of anywhere. But my favorite,
Speaker 1: my favorite futures book story with Harris is the year
Speaker 1: a Rod left the Mariners and went to the Texas Rangers.
Speaker 1: Uh there's a huge flood of money went in on
Speaker 1: the Rangers to win the World Series, win the pen.
Speaker 1: Remember the Mariners kill. I think he told me they
Speaker 1: win a hundred and sixteen games they without eight run
Speaker 1: I think that's correct. Or it was the year two
Speaker 1: thousand they won a hundred and sixteen games or two
Speaker 1: thousand or two the two thousand one Mariners a hundred
Speaker 1: sixteen games. Okay, so they're the Rangers are in the
Speaker 1: same division. Mariners won a hundred sixteen games. Whatever. The
Speaker 1: Rangers did I think they're right around five hundred day
Speaker 1: or whatever. It was probably less than that. So so
Speaker 1: one point the Rangers, and I swear to God these
Speaker 1: numbers are true, because I look, they were fifty games
Speaker 1: fifty five, fifty games out of first, out of the
Speaker 1: first place Marriners behind the first place Marine. They had
Speaker 1: the Rangers three No. One to win the World Series.
Speaker 1: There fifty games out of first. And I finally went
Speaker 1: to you know, and I usually didn't because I think
Speaker 1: I'm not a paid consultant. I'm not going to tell
Speaker 1: them what to do, but this one was so ridiculous.
Speaker 1: I finally had to say something, the guys, they're fifty
Speaker 1: games at the first play game through ead On, Well,
Speaker 1: we have a lot of money. If you have a
Speaker 1: lot of money on them, So what you kidding me?
Speaker 1: Three to one? Three when there's three millions of one
Speaker 1: to make the to win the World Series? Are you
Speaker 1: guys out of your mind? Long the last time you
Speaker 1: wrote abound them at three to one, I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, you guys are so ridiculous. This is
Speaker 1: such a joke, and they were. They were the biggest joke.
Speaker 1: And how they ever got that sort of publicity. Uh,
Speaker 1: it just shows you what the media can do for
Speaker 1: right connection, because they did they had good media connections
Speaker 1: in In Harra's defense, the Rangers only finished forty three out,
Speaker 1: so you never know, they trimmed that lead, they made
Speaker 1: a run, right you never know? Um you, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you wanted to tell this here, but did
Speaker 1: you want to tell the coin flip thing? Because I
Speaker 1: think that just gives an indication. It's sort of a
Speaker 1: good segue from what you just talked about of just
Speaker 1: how people are willing to bet anything, period. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was one that's you know. I had this as a
Speaker 1: separate section, but my editor put it in as bad bookmaking.
Speaker 1: I guess, not that I looked back, it really does
Speaker 1: belong to But guys, for years during the Super Bowl
Speaker 1: they would ask me, uh, we got the coin flip?
Speaker 1: Could we got the coin from? And I would say, know,
Speaker 1: why would you bet me the coin flix? That's the
Speaker 1: stupidest thing I ever heard in my life. Is that
Speaker 1: the absolute definition of a random outcome? Why would you
Speaker 1: go bet your buddy? Go take a corner out of
Speaker 1: your pocket and flip it and uh, you know, heads
Speaker 1: one guy wins, tails, the other guy wins. Why you know,
Speaker 1: if I start booking, I'm not gonna book at it
Speaker 1: even money, I'm gonna make you pay juice. We want
Speaker 1: to bet the coin flip one. So finally, after a
Speaker 1: couple of years, I relented, I said, Okay, if people
Speaker 1: are that stupid to bet the point flip and calmiva,
Speaker 1: and even at this out point, we always pride ourselves
Speaker 1: we have the tightest grattles on any lines. I want
Speaker 1: to give the biggest break to the better as we can.
Speaker 1: But forget if you're that stupid to betting coin to them.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna use a forty line minus twenty on heads,
Speaker 1: minus twenty on tails. And the people that stupid to
Speaker 1: bet it let him bet it. Well, don't you know?
Speaker 1: I did so much business like and I remember one
Speaker 1: guy even betting me five thousand, and of course he won,
Speaker 1: but even at the tightest I think he was five
Speaker 1: thousand on heads. And I remember the one guy working.
Speaker 1: Should I move it? No, ri No, don't move you
Speaker 1: out of your mind? Should I move it? Should I
Speaker 1: move it? No? Cheez? You know my god? Yeah. So anyway,
Speaker 1: obviously after that I started booking a corn flip. But
Speaker 1: I think I used like minus. I don't know, I'm
Speaker 1: might have started a minus one oh five each way
Speaker 1: mine and I think last year at the south point
Speaker 1: of minus one oh two each way, something like that.
Speaker 1: But I mean that to me show and I think
Speaker 1: I quote h Mankin, did you never go broke? Underestimating
Speaker 1: the I can't quote him exactly. The something of the
Speaker 1: American public. It's not a complimentary, it's you know, it
Speaker 1: leaps to mind, and this is nothing intelligent, Yes, of
Speaker 1: the of the American public? Was it at the time?
Speaker 1: I believe, Uh, this has nothing to do with your stories.
Speaker 1: But this just sort of jogs in my head now.
Speaker 1: I mentioned last week. I think I mentioned it to Rufus.
Speaker 1: I may have mentioned it to you also, Bookmaker Offshore. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is not poker. This doesn't include poker, this
Speaker 1: doesn't include other sites like Chris. I'm just talking about
Speaker 1: the Bookmaker site on non poker. So we're talking table
Speaker 1: tennis and you know, e sports and random stuff, random
Speaker 1: soccer from corners of the Earth, random horse racing, I mean,
Speaker 1: the most obscure things. And I mentioned last week. I
Speaker 1: it I misspoke. Last week I said they were doing
Speaker 1: a hundred twenty five thousand. This is two Saturdays ago,
Speaker 1: so nine days ago they did I was wrong. They
Speaker 1: did two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in handle on
Speaker 1: all of those random sports on the one day on
Speaker 1: that website, not including poker. So if you if you
Speaker 1: think about like, people will bet like news flash breaking
Speaker 1: news here spoiler alert on the show, people given a
Speaker 1: chance to bet, will bet on anything. This weekend now,
Speaker 1: this past weekend, Chrissy, just to sort of play on
Speaker 1: the coin flip thing, they were running, uh, simulations of
Speaker 1: Madden Football games. So we're talking about Madden NFL. They
Speaker 1: all grew up on. They were running simulations. They would
Speaker 1: just give a Twitch account to people, you know, to
Speaker 1: log in and they would run these simulations of games.
Speaker 1: Do you know how much they were doing on on
Speaker 1: each one of those games that they ran on average
Speaker 1: thirty thousand dollars handle thirty thousand and a hand doll
Speaker 1: which you know isn't a lot of money in the
Speaker 1: world of football, but on fake football, you know, just
Speaker 1: so people are just betting. I mean, if you don't,
Speaker 1: if you think that the world has betting, it's just
Speaker 1: not and that you know the oh no, these books
Speaker 1: are gonna, you know, reports of their demise or premature,
Speaker 1: let's put it that way. Um. I don't know what
Speaker 1: it was about your coin flip that made me think
Speaker 1: about these things, but it's just that people will bet
Speaker 1: on anything. It's incredible. It is incredible. I talked to
Speaker 1: Nick Bogdanovich and uh, I don't I'm not going to
Speaker 1: repeat the numbers, you know. And but they're betting pretty
Speaker 1: strong on Russian and Ukrainian ping pong ping pong, you know,
Speaker 1: and I actual is this from America? Yeah? This is
Speaker 1: the America that I mean, come on, really only cow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people are betting world what the world? We live in?
Speaker 1: Ten player ping pong parlays. I think they had a
Speaker 1: fifty dollar ping pong parlay where someone been all the
Speaker 1: favorites that cashed for almost ten k. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just incredible. Um, but uh yeah, I mean those those
Speaker 1: Harris stories are legendary. And again they all appear in
Speaker 1: the book. Uh then one day, forty years of bookmaking
Speaker 1: in Nevada, it's told by Chrissie Andrews. Of course we
Speaker 1: actually got to sit down and write it, so it
Speaker 1: was obviously not an audio form, but he actually got
Speaker 1: to do it at a different medium. There are pictures
Speaker 1: were running some of those on the screen a Visa
Speaker 1: dot Com and the Visa app. There's a picture of
Speaker 1: you with the late great Uh, your late great uncle Jack.
Speaker 1: That's probably featured in the montages that were showing. But
Speaker 1: like Roxy, pictures of Roxy looking like he's in Bachman
Speaker 1: Turner Overdrive. Uh. In the middle of the book obviously
Speaker 1: pictures of you full beard uh and mustaches your younger days. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's a great book and I hope folks picking up
Speaker 1: at Amazon and wherever books are sold. We got more
Speaker 1: stories coming up, and yes, we may even have Chris's
Speaker 1: famous horse racing story maybe here by the end of
Speaker 1: the show. More adventures in bad book making coming up.
Speaker 1: I leave. We have some strike game stories scap games
Speaker 1: on a numbers game at Visa on the way, Welcome
Speaker 1: back to a numbers game with Jill, Alexander back on
Speaker 1: a numbers game here at Visa, Kill Alexander and San
Speaker 1: Francisco Chris Andrews at his home in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Speaker 1: It's all brought to you by the bet MGMP uh.
Speaker 1: Telling stories from back in the day. More adventures in
Speaker 1: bed bookmaking. Is this still the hair is edition, Chrissie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've got a few more hairs that we get throughout there.
Speaker 1: These are a little shorter, but uh, you know, one
Speaker 1: I'm not sure an exact year. This was in the
Speaker 1: nineties at some point, but they always had their book
Speaker 1: in the main floor of the casino and they were
Speaker 1: moving it downstairs. And you know, we've heard because a
Speaker 1: lot of the construction guys who were building it out,
Speaker 1: they would come over the COLTIV afterwards and you know,
Speaker 1: make their bets and you know, have a beer or whatever.
Speaker 1: So a lot of us were telling a lot of
Speaker 1: them were telling us, Uh, it really looks good. They've
Speaker 1: been a great ab it's beautiful bar in there with
Speaker 1: all sorts of micro bruise and imported beers and have
Speaker 1: a great snack bar. And they really did a terrific job.
Speaker 1: It's just a well designed, beautiful sports book. And I
Speaker 1: don't know why they abandoned that. I mean, who knows,
Speaker 1: It's just another one of those uh decisions a company
Speaker 1: like that would make, you know. But anyway, they had
Speaker 1: it there and I remember they had like the opening
Speaker 1: day and you know, a big party or derves you know,
Speaker 1: free drinks, all that other stuff. The media is invited.
Speaker 1: It's not like they invited me. But I was going anyway,
Speaker 1: you know. So uh so there was like an escalator
Speaker 1: down into that portion of the casino. Like I said,
Speaker 1: it was like kind of like the basement. But they
Speaker 1: you know, their their overall business the time is going
Speaker 1: pretty good. But they wanted to make as much room
Speaker 1: in the casino floor as they could, and they made
Speaker 1: this downstairs. So you go down the escalator and like
Speaker 1: I said, all we've been hearing was how beautiful was
Speaker 1: and it really was beautiful. You're good. I'm the escalator.
Speaker 1: The banner across the sports book my right hand to God.
Speaker 1: This is the truth. The banner across the sports book,
Speaker 1: as you come in, not welcome. The hair is not
Speaker 1: welcome to our new sports book. Come and enjoy nothing
Speaker 1: like that the banner. We reserve the right to refuse
Speaker 1: any wager. They're grand opening and they're welcome. Awesome. What
Speaker 1: do you say to that? That's great? Oh, this sunds
Speaker 1: like a friendly place. Of course, you have the right
Speaker 1: that you mean, if Warren Bucker comes in and anyone's
Speaker 1: ten knowing on the Dogger game, that I you're not
Speaker 1: gonna take that kind of joining it that that's the
Speaker 1: thing they have across the top. We reserve their hate
Speaker 1: to refuse any ways, just shows the management of that.
Speaker 1: But that didn't last long. After a few days, finally
Speaker 1: somebody says, no, you gotta take that thing down. That's
Speaker 1: just ridiculous. You know. It's where where was that against specific?
Speaker 1: Where was that Chris those in Harris Reno. Uh, like
Speaker 1: I said, they had their Yeah, they had their sports
Speaker 1: book on the main floor for many years, and and
Speaker 1: their business was born pretty good at the time, and
Speaker 1: they wanted to create more casinos based on the main force,
Speaker 1: so they moved that down stairs. Yeah. So one more
Speaker 1: quick hairs story. I know, we don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of time, but they'd come in every
Speaker 1: day and copy the lines off of me at the Caldeia.
Speaker 1: I mean just they sit there right there, the guy
Speaker 1: that hair and uniform on and you know, right down
Speaker 1: when I put on my board. Yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: was every day. We would laugh about it. You know. Anyway,
Speaker 1: this was you know, in the eighties and the Montreal
Speaker 1: Canadiens at the time, we're the best team in hockey
Speaker 1: and uh, and I tell people today, you know, games
Speaker 1: were and we had ties back in the NHL at
Speaker 1: the time, So he's a game a half that was
Speaker 1: very legitimate line because there's a lot of there's a
Speaker 1: lot of games that did ended up and tie, so
Speaker 1: the half of it, it was a real number. So anyway,
Speaker 1: you know, hockey betting still wasn't all that popular. We're
Speaker 1: putting them all up, and I remember so like we'd
Speaker 1: open up and I, you know, we've had like a
Speaker 1: little flurry in the beginning, and this and that, and
Speaker 1: usually taking me about half an hour to get through
Speaker 1: that first little flurry. And then I'd go out with
Speaker 1: my chart and check the board and make sure the
Speaker 1: lines were all right. So I remember going out and
Speaker 1: I told my guys and hey, you know, you got
Speaker 1: the wrong line on the Canadians game. It's supposed to
Speaker 1: be minus one and a half minus of dollar sixty five,
Speaker 1: and that's a pretty big savor. Minus one and a
Speaker 1: half minus one sixty five, I said, he got, but
Speaker 1: he had it a half sixty five, which even then
Speaker 1: is pretty decent sized faith at all. And he says, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I screwed up because I wrote it down right. I guess,
Speaker 1: but I just put it down on the board wrong.
Speaker 1: It was okay because you know we had you know,
Speaker 1: our boards were kind of weird. So anyway, runs up
Speaker 1: makes it one up. So anyway, now it's about maybe
Speaker 1: eleven so and you know, the busy part of the
Speaker 1: mornings over, so I'm gonna go over hair is just
Speaker 1: to see what they got and maybe make a bet
Speaker 1: or two, you know. So I walk in and the
Speaker 1: guy I could still remember, I don't want to say
Speaker 1: his name, but he looked at me, like with this
Speaker 1: venomous look in his eye, and he runs up to
Speaker 1: like he's got the Canadians lineup and your rape is
Speaker 1: it real fact? And like looks at me like you
Speaker 1: scum back holding on for every day all the rest
Speaker 1: of this we'll get back to it on a numbers
Speaker 1: game at Visa story time with Chris Andrews. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to a numbers game with Jill Alexander. You were so
Speaker 1: rudely interrupted at the end of this last story. So
Speaker 1: you go into the hair. You go into the hairs,
Speaker 1: and the guy's mad at you. Yeah, just I can
Speaker 1: just I can still see him just glaring at me, like,
Speaker 1: oh you know, I mean I had no interest in
Speaker 1: betting the Canadians and probably would have been still I
Speaker 1: have six five, But that wasn't my intention that I know.
Speaker 1: And I just looked, what are you in there copying
Speaker 1: my line for every day? Go get your own line service,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm getting them from my uncle Jack and Roxy.
Speaker 1: I had to pay those guys. Are you're gonna pay
Speaker 1: your guys? You know? So he copies your lines? That
Speaker 1: is mad at you because you bed into his lines
Speaker 1: basically that we're missing that, we're miss copy that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he copied it wrong, and obviously a lot of guys
Speaker 1: in town went in and bet him. You know, he
Speaker 1: thought like I was setting him up, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know I should I should have done in a
Speaker 1: way more than I did, But I did, you know,
Speaker 1: all right? Chrisy nineteen eight seven. I actually referenced this
Speaker 1: year with Brent the other day when Brent was kind
Speaker 1: enough to come on the show. For those who don't remember,
Speaker 1: it was a year where the NFL went on strike,
Speaker 1: but the owners drew a hard line and they said
Speaker 1: we're bringing in we're bringing in scab teams, we're bringing
Speaker 1: in replacement airs. And for three weeks, three weeks that counted. Um,
Speaker 1: the National Football League played on mid season and then
Speaker 1: teams started to cross the picket line. The Cowboys, Dandy
Speaker 1: White played until the door set played and Randy White
Speaker 1: I think even and then the Redskins did as a
Speaker 1: as a group after the third week. So then the
Speaker 1: strike kind of ended at that point. But all those
Speaker 1: games counted in the standings. But you have a story
Speaker 1: about booking those games. What must that have been like, Well,
Speaker 1: there was, uh, you know, when again you gotta go
Speaker 1: back in there's no internet, you know, no cell phones
Speaker 1: might have just been getting started at that time, you know,
Speaker 1: so there was the communication in the world was completely different.
Speaker 1: Guys that they wouldn't understand that, but there was no nothing,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean you had to go buy newspapers
Speaker 1: and we had a U p I wire in our book,
Speaker 1: but but even that, it was just wasn't anywhere near
Speaker 1: the same thing anyway. So the scab games, you know,
Speaker 1: they're gonna play scab games like you know this Sunday, Okay,
Speaker 1: So now, uh, you know, we're gonna want to take
Speaker 1: the action on it, but we don't know what the
Speaker 1: hell we're doing, you know. So my one friend and
Speaker 1: he's the guy that helped me design the pleaser card.
Speaker 1: Remember he invented the pleaser I've been at the Pleaser
Speaker 1: card and he helped me design it. So guys, anybody
Speaker 1: listening arena know exactly what it is. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to mention his name. He's kind of disappeared, and I
Speaker 1: think he would prefer to remain anonymous. But I'd love
Speaker 1: to give him the credit if he ever wanted it.
Speaker 1: He was really one of my good guy and super
Speaker 1: super sharp. Anyway, he came in and he comes running
Speaker 1: over to me, you know, because we were pretty good friends.
Speaker 1: We've been at dinner and all that other stuff. You know, Chris, Chris,
Speaker 1: look at these bets I got, and he's showing me
Speaker 1: from Harra's he got. You know, I'm just making this up.
Speaker 1: You know the you know, the Saints plus seven, the
Speaker 1: Seahawks plus four and a half, you know, the Packers
Speaker 1: plus eight, And I'm looking, said, where the hell did
Speaker 1: you get these? Karen's has things on the board right now,
Speaker 1: and I mean, Gil, I mean, there's there's nothing I
Speaker 1: could say about this except they completely pulled it out
Speaker 1: of their butt completely. They just thick and made it
Speaker 1: up from deep inside. Yeah, and figured, hey, we're Harrah's.
Speaker 1: We could do whatever we want. I mean, the rest
Speaker 1: of the world will follow us and copy us. Well,
Speaker 1: I run over and they're taking like a dime a game,
Speaker 1: and I got he gave me all his plays, and
Speaker 1: and I bet, like everyone of what's there? You know?
Speaker 1: Back now, I don't know if there's fourteen or fifteen games.
Speaker 1: And there was fourteen, and I must made like ten plays, Okay,
Speaker 1: I must made like ten or eleven play something like that.
Speaker 1: And and I go over and I call my friend
Speaker 1: Johnny Felinski, who is uh, you know, really like a
Speaker 1: double sharp guy analyzing football, particularly players like he knew
Speaker 1: the valueable player. That goes back to my USFL days.
Speaker 1: We murdered him also because of Johnny knew how to
Speaker 1: valuate players. Make a number. So I called Johnny up
Speaker 1: and I said, Johnny, if I gave you these games,
Speaker 1: these strike games, what do you make the number? He says, well,
Speaker 1: you can't make a number. Nobody knows who playing. I said, okay,
Speaker 1: gun of your head have to make a number. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know home team too. I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would make the exact same thing. So I didn't
Speaker 1: read off like every bet that I had. And he says,
Speaker 1: you're kidding me. Where did you get these? I says,
Speaker 1: all Paris put him on the board. I said, not that,
Speaker 1: the Harris put him on the board. And I'm telling
Speaker 1: you what I but I didn't even get the best
Speaker 1: of the number. This under guy got the best of it.
Speaker 1: I'm in after him, because oh my god, you gotta
Speaker 1: be kidding me. Now, this was like his day's off.
Speaker 1: This was like Monday. I think John was off like
Speaker 1: Monday and Tuesday. He said. I said, Johnny, get to work,
Speaker 1: find all you can on rosters, and let's try to
Speaker 1: find you know, what kind of numbers we could put
Speaker 1: out about, you know, about these games. So Hay went
Speaker 1: to work and it took him a couple of days
Speaker 1: to find all these rosters. But eventually you could. And
Speaker 1: again we didn't have the internet. You had to you know,
Speaker 1: we had the U p I machine in our in
Speaker 1: our office, and we could get some out of town
Speaker 1: newspapers and whatever. And remember that first week, you're John,
Speaker 1: You're the nineteen parlay. That's how bad these numbers were.
Speaker 1: They like ten beads and I think that might have
Speaker 1: been nine and one, and John Mann's did not bet
Speaker 1: one loser I had, you know, he had, and I
Speaker 1: gave him a piece of everything that I had, you know,
Speaker 1: and we just murdered. And it was one of those
Speaker 1: deals where you know, they just decided and there was
Speaker 1: no rhyme or reason for any number they put on
Speaker 1: the board. They just totally made them up and threw
Speaker 1: them up there. I mean, really, it would be like
Speaker 1: you and I make the numbers on Ukrainian ping pong,
Speaker 1: you know, we have no idea, and they put them
Speaker 1: up until cashing on him and vable. But that was this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was even worse than say, trying to book the
Speaker 1: XFL this year. The XFL. You even had some idea
Speaker 1: of who these players were, but these guys were off
Speaker 1: the street in seven. By the way, when you asked
Speaker 1: fourteen or fifteen, I thought you meant the number of
Speaker 1: games played in the season, which was fifteen. You were
Speaker 1: referring to the number of games per week. Did they
Speaker 1: do this for all three weeks of the of the
Speaker 1: scab games, of the replacement player games? Oh no, they
Speaker 1: got murdered at first. That was the end of that.
Speaker 1: They were having, Like, yeah, week one was it? You know?
Speaker 1: That was it? That was that gravy train didn't last long,
Speaker 1: especially with me and the sudden one of the other
Speaker 1: guy in particular, it's like just so sharp, you know
Speaker 1: after he bet him that I bet him. I mean
Speaker 1: once again, cooler heads prevailed, but mad until we took
Speaker 1: I'm pretty serious to me. You had a nine team
Speaker 1: or that first week? Jeez, yeah, this was this was
Speaker 1: not Land three Jones playing quarterback or Cardale Jones that
Speaker 1: you didn't know these guys names at all. Uh, we'll
Speaker 1: come back. Could you tell the horse racing story? There's
Speaker 1: nothing to do with Harris. This is one of the classics,
Speaker 1: Chrissie's horse racing story and tribute to one of the
Speaker 1: few sports that's still going on these days. Um, this
Speaker 1: is a legendary story, uh, which has twists and turns,
Speaker 1: just phenomenal on the way story time for Chrissie on
Speaker 1: a numbers game right here, bigestativation, Welcome back to a
Speaker 1: numbers game with Jill Alexander. It is a numbers game
Speaker 1: in this time of very few sports, let's put it
Speaker 1: that way that are going on these days. Always nice
Speaker 1: to hear these stories which are just and we were
Speaker 1: just talking about this off air. It's just so hard
Speaker 1: do believe that these stories all happened. But yet Chrissie,
Speaker 1: you were there for all of them. Uh, and you've
Speaker 1: got a great one here, yeah, yeah, yeah, you were there.
Speaker 1: Nothing to do it here is I'm sorry? Good No,
Speaker 1: I was saying, and we were also saying, how you know,
Speaker 1: maybe not enough is made of the fact, which is
Speaker 1: you you said it earlier, which is it's because it
Speaker 1: was a burgeoning industry at the time. It was new,
Speaker 1: it was fledgling, and it just wasn't the and I
Speaker 1: used the word science affair, but it's not a science.
Speaker 1: But but it wasn't as tried and true as it
Speaker 1: is today. You didn't have thirty forty years under your belt,
Speaker 1: or the industry didn't. And many times people, just as
Speaker 1: they are in many industries, arrogant, right, Oh we know
Speaker 1: how to do this. This can't be that difficult until
Speaker 1: they lose their shirts. And it's just fascinating, you know,
Speaker 1: the microcosm of many under this industries as well reflection
Speaker 1: of many other fledgling industries in this country. That's what
Speaker 1: it was like then. Yeah, and even you know, you
Speaker 1: go up to the uh, the board ruler, upper management.
Speaker 1: Oh this is easy, isn't the piece of cake? You know,
Speaker 1: it would be just like goy we put out slot
Speaker 1: machines a deal twenty one and you know, no, it's
Speaker 1: a whole different thing in our racket, a whole different thing.
Speaker 1: So anyway, let me tell the horror racing story. So
Speaker 1: I had a guy who was a good friend of
Speaker 1: mine and uh, and we we got to be pretty close,
Speaker 1: and he was hate been a little bit of sports,
Speaker 1: but he was mostly a horse guy, and he was
Speaker 1: one of those guys he wasn't really all that concerned
Speaker 1: about reading the racing form, but he had a lot
Speaker 1: of information from the track, and he had the information
Speaker 1: from tracks all over the country, but he was particularly
Speaker 1: strong in northern California, and he owned he owned a
Speaker 1: couple of horses. He bred some horses, and so he
Speaker 1: had great information, great juice at the track, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So anyway, we were getting these horror says occasionally, and
Speaker 1: he had he called him the kids, because the kids
Speaker 1: give me these two horses today, kids gave me and
Speaker 1: the kids were like the assist top assistant to one
Speaker 1: of the leading trainers in Northern California. Again, I don't
Speaker 1: want to mention the guy's name, but not the leading trainer,
Speaker 1: but you know in the top like two or three,
Speaker 1: four maybe trainers in northern California. And when they would
Speaker 1: give us a horse, I mean it was you know,
Speaker 1: it was gold. And you know they weren't giving us
Speaker 1: eight to five shots or anything like. Yeah, they'd give
Speaker 1: us some pretty live things. So anyway, I'm sitting at
Speaker 1: home one day and he calls me up. I'm in
Speaker 1: a reno and he calls me up. He says, listen,
Speaker 1: I think we've got something going tomorrow. Can you make
Speaker 1: it down to Bay Meadows? And right away I said, well, yeah, sure.
Speaker 1: You know, before I can't even ask him what is
Speaker 1: it we got going? What is it? And I knew
Speaker 1: if he told me that he was you know, I
Speaker 1: knew it was something he's I said, oh yeah, sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: what is it? He says, well, there's half a million
Speaker 1: dollar carry over on the Pick six And the kids
Speaker 1: told me the favorites in five of the six races
Speaker 1: can't win. Your kid makes it. No, that's what they
Speaker 1: called they can't win. Well, okay, you know, he says,
Speaker 1: can you meet me eleven o'clock at this one restaurant,
Speaker 1: and I knew I had actually been there before. It
Speaker 1: was like kind of like a kind of like a
Speaker 1: wise guy hang out on Camino Real in uh In
Speaker 1: Saint Matteo. Can you meet me there at eleven o'clock. Well,
Speaker 1: that means I had to at least like really early
Speaker 1: in the morning. So I left early in the morning. Uh.
Speaker 1: This was in I think July of eighty four might
Speaker 1: have been. It might have been August of eighty four.
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you in the second how I know
Speaker 1: that exact date. So anyway, I had my wife and
Speaker 1: my young son, my infant son, and my wife. She
Speaker 1: wants to come with me, which is fine because her
Speaker 1: mother lived in uh in San Jose and so you know,
Speaker 1: and and her her her father, her stepfather, so like
Speaker 1: my father in law, he was another horse player too.
Speaker 1: So I asked this friend, that's just kind I bring him.
Speaker 1: He said, yeah, yeah, because we're gonna look to make
Speaker 1: as big a ticket as we can make. We want
Speaker 1: to try to, you know, nail down this pick six. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we all meet at this restaurant. You know, my
Speaker 1: wife and my son go off with her mother and
Speaker 1: my father in lost days with me. So like, you know, Gil,
Speaker 1: I'm twenty eight years old. I put in a thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: That an absolute fortune to me, you know. But I
Speaker 1: knew this guy if he told us we had something,
Speaker 1: I knew what it was. I think my father in
Speaker 1: law put in you know, five dred or a thousand,
Speaker 1: and I knew another guy put in a thousand. Anyway,
Speaker 1: there's a couple, there's a couple of his friends there too. Altogether,
Speaker 1: we put in a ten thousand dollar ticket to play
Speaker 1: this pick six. And we're sitting there and you know,
Speaker 1: and we've got the two kids with us, and we're
Speaker 1: going through the racing for him, you know, raced by racing,
Speaker 1: and I'm looking, Oh my god, this horse can't win.
Speaker 1: He said, no, I'm coming. You just can't win. He's cripple.
Speaker 1: We can't win. And some of these horses were gonna
Speaker 1: be eight to five even money, you know, maybe even
Speaker 1: odds on. And I'm looking at these can you know
Speaker 1: I'm coming. We're not even gonna put them on the
Speaker 1: pick six. They can't win, okay, you know, so we
Speaker 1: wind up we put together this ticket, you know, a
Speaker 1: ten thousand dollar ticket, we put it in, you know,
Speaker 1: they give us a couple other horses, and you know, anyway,
Speaker 1: so now they get started, you know, and it was
Speaker 1: one of those days and having like pretty good day
Speaker 1: even without this. So get to the first race of
Speaker 1: the pick six and race those off. It's like, I
Speaker 1: think the first race was like a thirty dollar horse,
Speaker 1: we have them. Next race, twenty horse. We got him.
Speaker 1: Third like another twenty dollar horse we got fourth race
Speaker 1: was like a ten dollar horse. We got him. Fifth
Speaker 1: race like another ten or twenty whatever it was. I mean,
Speaker 1: all big numbers. We have every one of them, like
Speaker 1: I said it. And the reason I remember it was well,
Speaker 1: I'll get back to that in a second. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so now now you know we got them. Now this
Speaker 1: was back in the day. They didn't give you like
Speaker 1: the will pays and all that other stuff. They didn't
Speaker 1: tell you anything like that, you know. But since this
Speaker 1: guy had juice at the track, you know, he had
Speaker 1: owner and breeder privileges, he calls up to the office
Speaker 1: and finds out, well, you know, what are we looking
Speaker 1: at for this ticket. Well, now with a carry over
Speaker 1: and everything, it was up to seven hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand and there's one ticket live. It's ours one ticket line.
Speaker 1: So we're going into this last race. Now, this was
Speaker 1: the one race where the kids told us the favorite
Speaker 1: is probably gonna win. Now, for horse racing fans out there,
Speaker 1: it's a kind of race you never see in America
Speaker 1: and North America at this time, and you you almost
Speaker 1: never saw it back in nine four. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: it's a mile in a quarter on the dirt. Claimers
Speaker 1: really cheap horses one a mile a quarter. So anyway,
Speaker 1: so he made a couple a couple of like wind
Speaker 1: bets and exact as you know, bending against this horse,
Speaker 1: just to kind of heads our bests a little bit.
Speaker 1: And so we go down. He says, come with me,
Speaker 1: let's go down to the paddocks. Like I said, he
Speaker 1: had paddock privilege isn't in it. So we go into
Speaker 1: the paddock. We put together, we we we each pitched
Speaker 1: in a couple of bucks. We've got to take a
Speaker 1: five to win on our horse. On our horse, he's
Speaker 1: gonna go give it to the jockey. I don't want
Speaker 1: them to seeing me, but go give this to the jockey.
Speaker 1: And I forget the guy's name. I wish I could remember.
Speaker 1: I go and he looks at me after heir, this
Speaker 1: is for you. He takes the ticket. He looked something,
Speaker 1: and I said, yeah, this is for you. We need
Speaker 1: you to win, and he like tucks it in his pants. Okay,
Speaker 1: I mean five months, and that's that's pretty big scorn
Speaker 1: for those jobs. You know, they're singing for their suffer
Speaker 1: every day. You know that's that, you know. So besides
Speaker 1: winning the race, he would get this extra nickel in
Speaker 1: a win. My horse goes off seven or five total
Speaker 1: pieces of crap in this race, like I said, going
Speaker 1: Tom on a corner and I forget the exact fractions,
Speaker 1: but he busts this horse out of the gate, and
Speaker 1: I think the first quarter they go like twenty three
Speaker 1: and something. I think at the half he's like he's
Speaker 1: like going about in about forty maybe forty six, you
Speaker 1: know something like that. Like I look over to my
Speaker 1: body and I said, he's gone faster than Swell in
Speaker 1: the derby. Now that's how I know it was four
Speaker 1: because my money on Swale I made four. Kentucky They're
Speaker 1: had a big swell. Probably this guy gave it to me,
Speaker 1: uh to win the Kentry Derby. And I and I
Speaker 1: look over and I mean he's like white, It's like
Speaker 1: a piece of paper. I mean he is, he's what
Speaker 1: like he knows and like that. He knows that, uh,
Speaker 1: he knows the horses as good as anybody. And he
Speaker 1: knows right there we're dead. You can't get a horse
Speaker 1: to keep those kind of practice. A friend of ours
Speaker 1: is texting us, we got he just can't keep those
Speaker 1: kind of practice. And so he goes to half and
Speaker 1: like I think it's like forty six and something, you know,
Speaker 1: and they're, oh my god, and I like, sit back
Speaker 1: in my seat. Now by this time, my what now?
Speaker 1: My ex wife she's coming. She's like jumping up and
Speaker 1: scream and jumping up and screaming, and I'm you know,
Speaker 1: and she looks at me. Would you quit? Would you
Speaker 1: quit being such a downer and we're gonna win. I'm no, no,
Speaker 1: we aren't. No quit being like that quick, being like that.
Speaker 1: Well you know, yeah, okay, well believe what it tes.
Speaker 1: And my guy he hasn't moved. He knows we're dead.
Speaker 1: But I mean, these are other pieces of crap. And
Speaker 1: I mean this works about like ten links on the field.
Speaker 1: So they around the turn and turn for home. He's
Speaker 1: shortened and stride so bad. It's unbelievable that here comes
Speaker 1: mart and you gotta marry every other horse in this
Speaker 1: race is a total piece of crap too. So now
Speaker 1: we get to about the sixteen full and now I
Speaker 1: can't resist it because he's still winning, and I jump up,
Speaker 1: come on, come on, come on, and don't you know
Speaker 1: we're getting nailed in the final. And I just sit
Speaker 1: back and oh my god, I blew. I kept in
Speaker 1: my head, I was thinking it was a hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: but it was more like seventy five thousand. Once I
Speaker 1: went back and looked, I blew. Seventy five thousand and
Speaker 1: twenty eight years old would have been in caps flute
Speaker 1: force with me. But like I said, I looked back,
Speaker 1: you know, we got divorced like that long a you
Speaker 1: don't wind up with all the money anyway. Up anyway,
Speaker 1: I don't know what my favorite part of that is.
Speaker 1: That might have been the punch line. But the other
Speaker 1: but that I love is at the very beginning, when
Speaker 1: you're like, I'm all in, oh, what are we doing?
Speaker 1: That's the other parts going up. Chrissie, We love you,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Story Time with Chris and then
Speaker 1: one day, forty years of the book making, I ment
Speaker 1: that I hope you will enjoyous