Speaker 1: Check it down, Man, Now Down Now. It is the
Speaker 1: Leading the Book podcast, Bill Alexander's Strange, Strange Times we
Speaker 1: are living in, That's for sure. Expect a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of podcast content coming your way, most of which will
Speaker 1: be brand new material, some of which, admittedly in the
Speaker 1: coming weeks, will be previously aired contents that still hopefully
Speaker 1: will have some applicable nature to them as we move forward.
Speaker 1: Some baseball season win totals, for instance, from Roxy and
Speaker 1: Jason Weingarten Roxy Roxboro that is perhaps scaled back to
Speaker 1: whatever length of a season will get that kind of
Speaker 1: thing today, something brand new. This is from my interview
Speaker 1: last week with Alan Boston, had never aired on Visa
Speaker 1: until just this week we put it in podcast form.
Speaker 1: Allen Boston, his origin, how he became the man and
Speaker 1: the better that he is today, The arc of his
Speaker 1: life is a better exclusively right here on the Beating
Speaker 1: the Book podcast. Enjoy It is a numbers game right
Speaker 1: here at Visa in the Vegas Stats and Information Network,
Speaker 1: the Sports Betting netwhere Gil Alexander um, this is a
Speaker 1: privilege today It's actually an honor. And I really mean that,
Speaker 1: and I know that kind of makes uh my guest
Speaker 1: here today feel a little uncomfortable perhaps, but it really is,
Speaker 1: uh a profile of one of the great iconic betters
Speaker 1: in the United States has been for many decades. And
Speaker 1: just happy to have a chance to sit down and
Speaker 1: talk to him, the great Alan Boston. What's happening, man?
Speaker 1: Thank you for coming in. That's the that's w Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I appreciate you coming in. That intro doesn't make you
Speaker 1: feel uncomfortable, doesn't that you're that I consider you iconic
Speaker 1: in this field? Uh, it does, but it probably shouldn't.
Speaker 1: And reflecting upon what's out there today, we'll get we'll
Speaker 1: get to that. Can I start at the beginning, I
Speaker 1: think wherever you want, I think, I think people some
Speaker 1: people are very familiar with you, most perhaps in this
Speaker 1: day and age, are not, and I want to remedy that.
Speaker 1: Can we start the beginning, like, just tell us where
Speaker 1: you grew up, how you grew up, and how it
Speaker 1: is that you first gravitated towards betting in general. Uh So,
Speaker 1: having always been a very uh self reflective person, I
Speaker 1: grew up in Brighton, mass which is a suburb of
Speaker 1: Boston which is now the High Rent District. But when
Speaker 1: I lived there, certainly wasn't. My parents got married young
Speaker 1: nineteen and twenty, that had me nine months later. Uh,
Speaker 1: best friend growing up with Howie, and we saw each
Speaker 1: other my mother and his mother literally walked us in strollers,
Speaker 1: so I literally have known him my whole life. He's
Speaker 1: two months older than me, and his mother became like
Speaker 1: my second mother. But my mother was twenty when she
Speaker 1: had me, and Ray was I think forty five when
Speaker 1: she had Howie, and how he was a lonely child
Speaker 1: with with with older parents and the dynamic was difficult
Speaker 1: for him. And Uh, anyway, my father got a job
Speaker 1: in uh Framingham, which is uh it might have been
Speaker 1: Worster first Worcester, which is sixty miles west of Boston.
Speaker 1: We moved to Framingham and what they would now call
Speaker 1: the hood, but we called it limited income housing back then. Uh,
Speaker 1: and uh that move probably uh was I mean, even
Speaker 1: though I'm only seven years old, it was a very
Speaker 1: very uncomfortable dynamic for a very very long time. And
Speaker 1: probably it's probably the start of I mean, it sounds strange,
Speaker 1: but probably the start of how I ended up, uh
Speaker 1: choosing to be in a field that that that's more
Speaker 1: woner driven than than something normal for lack of a
Speaker 1: better word, Uh there, Yeah, there is a a social
Speaker 1: aspect to what we do. Perhaps, yeah, not not not
Speaker 1: the way I do it. Uh So yeah, loan are driven,
Speaker 1: That's that's definitely. Uh do you remember the first time
Speaker 1: that you, oh, right, go ahead? And I'm sorry I don't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we're not even close to the betting part yet. Uh.
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm just, I'm really I I know I
Speaker 1: get a long winded and wind bom but I really
Speaker 1: try to explain thoroughly like where I'm coming from least,
Speaker 1: and the only way to do it is to really
Speaker 1: try to give a picture of of me the person.
Speaker 1: So here, I am feeling alone without my best friend
Speaker 1: in in in a in a new place. And I
Speaker 1: remember someone called me one day and I did break
Speaker 1: his nose. So that was the last time he used
Speaker 1: that word. But how old were you then? Eight? Wow? Yeah?
Speaker 1: But all this was foreign to me. I didn't know,
Speaker 1: you know, like Alan Boston kind of to join us
Speaker 1: here on a Numbers Game special best of edition of
Speaker 1: a Numbers Game right here at Visa the Sports Betting Network. Alan,
Speaker 1: the idea of racism to me is is bizarre. We're
Speaker 1: all human beings, Like what does what does anyone think
Speaker 1: they're better than them? Or it's it's uh. And like
Speaker 1: I said, I lived in a very mixed bad community.
Speaker 1: So when you're young, you're you're you know my my
Speaker 1: my best friend had a mixed mixed parent and one
Speaker 1: of my friends in from him. Dad was white and
Speaker 1: his mother was African American. I guess the best way
Speaker 1: to say it, big deal. You know, it didn't matter,
Speaker 1: so you know, uh so that yeah, that that was
Speaker 1: that that word was hurtful, but but he didn't say
Speaker 1: it again after that. But it did kind of, like,
Speaker 1: you know, set me more towards a shell. So, uh,
Speaker 1: what people wouldn't know about me? It was I probably
Speaker 1: was more athletic than it was smart, which is probably
Speaker 1: a big surprise. Uh And and really had a great
Speaker 1: knack for playing baseball. And so there's the uh, the
Speaker 1: rub is I love baseball. But at five years old,
Speaker 1: I had my mother had me take when I now
Speaker 1: know was an i Q test, and I know I
Speaker 1: did very well with because I remember one of the
Speaker 1: I remember there was a question that that got her.
Speaker 1: You know, I was rattling the answers off and her
Speaker 1: jaw dropped and like, uh, so my young parents know
Speaker 1: they have a smart kid. What they don't know is
Speaker 1: the smart kid wanted to play baseball. And now I
Speaker 1: come to an area I don't know anybody, and I
Speaker 1: don't really have opportunities to to you know, like you know,
Speaker 1: play a pickup game or or or do anything like that.
Speaker 1: So I was already driven into a small circle there
Speaker 1: and I and I'm doing all this for a reason.
Speaker 1: At eight years old, my father took me to Hinsdale Raceway,
Speaker 1: which is in New Hampshire, quite a long ride. His
Speaker 1: had a horse racing. The name of the horse was
Speaker 1: Beth Dexter. I don't know I remember that, but I do.
Speaker 1: Wayne Colby drove I think for Gordon Corey, who still
Speaker 1: trained and ultimately trained a horse for me, uh fifty
Speaker 1: years later, so uh, Gordon Cory's from Manizo awesome old
Speaker 1: school naturally harness trainer. The horse did win by a nose,
Speaker 1: and uh that's probably kind of the start of my
Speaker 1: love of Gambly eight years old watching a horse went
Speaker 1: by the thinnest of margins. It was a finished print.
Speaker 1: And uh, back then it took a while. They had
Speaker 1: actually wait for the photograph to finished. To see you one, Uh,
Speaker 1: several trips to hornors tracks later and uh a rough marriage.
Speaker 1: And you know what I talked about earlier, the too
Speaker 1: early knowing that we're mortal really drove me into this
Speaker 1: uh inner inward, bitter in a coal human who found
Speaker 1: uh solace and peace of mind at the race track.
Speaker 1: So now baseball is out. In fact, everything's out. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to see anybody. What was the point? And
Speaker 1: uh so now I've got a pen, which I shouldn't
Speaker 1: have gone to. Uh. I wasn't ready for college because
Speaker 1: I hadn't allowed myself to get out there at all.
Speaker 1: You know. Ah, but you're obviously super smart enough to
Speaker 1: get into pen. It was easier to get into back then.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I'm not denying my intelligence. I definitely have
Speaker 1: a probably higher IQ than most. Uh can I can?
Speaker 1: I let me just interrube one thing you said there.
Speaker 1: I just want to clarify for people you said, uh
Speaker 1: that you knew mortality? You knew that? Did I miss
Speaker 1: what you were talking about specifically there when we were
Speaker 1: had that interview? And I think I went through a
Speaker 1: very painful segment. I could I could redo it. Uh,
Speaker 1: when you understand that you're gonna die at the age
Speaker 1: of thirteen, it's it's young, it's too young. And when
Speaker 1: it coincides with your parents breakup. Uh, then what's the
Speaker 1: point of falling in love? Right? It's it's number one,
Speaker 1: you're gonna die anyway. And number two, look what look
Speaker 1: at it might end up anyway. So at the time
Speaker 1: that I should have been interested in girls, I was
Speaker 1: interested in hanging out in the closet in a room,
Speaker 1: I mean, just by myself. I didn't want to, uh
Speaker 1: interact with anybody. For those who don't remember that, what
Speaker 1: was the part where you thought you were gonna buy thirteen,
Speaker 1: that you might not be with us anymore? That wasn't no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you missed you missing it. I understood that that everything
Speaker 1: does end. You don't understand that at thirteen. Typically. In fact,
Speaker 1: in the movie Boyhood, the kid asked, uh, Ethan Hawk,
Speaker 1: you know, what's the point of all this? And and
Speaker 1: Ethan Hawk brilliantly answered, I don't know. We're all just
Speaker 1: winging it. But he was eighteen in that film, and
Speaker 1: this kid was a very evolved human, and and and
Speaker 1: the movie and the movie in some ways mirrored his
Speaker 1: his uh, his his life. So you know, if if
Speaker 1: it dawned on him around seventeen eighteen, imagine thirteen is
Speaker 1: a little on the light side. Sure be understanding that.
Speaker 1: And then that thought could be, you know how I have.
Speaker 1: I don't know if other you know, I'm young, I'm
Speaker 1: a kid. I'm thirteen years old. I don't know anything.
Speaker 1: You don't know if other people even understand that, And
Speaker 1: and so you really don't want to bring it up
Speaker 1: because you don't want to make other people what if
Speaker 1: they don't understand, you know, and and so you just
Speaker 1: don't bring it up. I always picture the world like
Speaker 1: just saying, all right, if someone out there, we're gonna
Speaker 1: stop living, which we're about to do here, by the way,
Speaker 1: Uh all right, everybody was stopping, So tell us what
Speaker 1: this is all about. You know, we're recording this during
Speaker 1: the coronavirus pandemic. That's why Alan makes that comment. So
Speaker 1: with all that background, then as you say, you're probably
Speaker 1: not prepared to go to college, but yet you're at Penn,
Speaker 1: then yeah, I'm at Penn and now I go to
Speaker 1: the Plus tra and I watched with Salin Duquine the
Speaker 1: City schools played their games at the plusure then because
Speaker 1: it was before. It's when people played for the love
Speaker 1: of the game and not because it was big money involved. Uh.
Speaker 1: I dare say more kids enter sports because of the
Speaker 1: big paycheck now than because they love to play. Right,
Speaker 1: the kids used to play you know, like, uh, football
Speaker 1: in the fall, hockey to winter, and and baseball in
Speaker 1: the spring. And now they choose a sport and spin
Speaker 1: or sixty five days a year, so that whole dynamic
Speaker 1: has changed too. They have coaches when they're you know, six, seven,
Speaker 1: eight years old. The whole thing is just crazy, but
Speaker 1: it's understandable given the fact how much money these pros make.
Speaker 1: You know, when you're making way more than a doctor,
Speaker 1: you may as well spend time on sports then on academics.
Speaker 1: But you're right, it was totally normal to just switch
Speaker 1: sports every season. That and and fun. Uh So yeah,
Speaker 1: here I am at Pennon and uh I watched Duquesne
Speaker 1: and LaSalle and I like, wow, that point guard for
Speaker 1: Duchane is really good. It turned out it was normal Nixon,
Speaker 1: so yeah, he was pretty good. Uh. And I used
Speaker 1: to buy the New York uh Daily News and in
Speaker 1: the New Art Daily News there was a little calumn
Speaker 1: called the Latest Line. The Latest Line was by a
Speaker 1: gentleman named Jim McCarthy might have been Jim McCarthy Jr.
Speaker 1: But he wrote all these a little alliterated blurbs that
Speaker 1: are often kind of clever. Take Manhattan to SINC. Navy.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, so it's a little cliche Sinc. Navy,
Speaker 1: but it he had better stuff than that. And you
Speaker 1: know he listed the lines. And this is nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: You know, this is the Dark Ages. You could barely
Speaker 1: get a score in a game. That's what people now
Speaker 1: couldn't possibly understand how much different it is now than then.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's like even seventies to eighties was different,
Speaker 1: and the eighties is a Dark Ages compared to now.
Speaker 1: So you're lucky if you can get a score in
Speaker 1: a game. Sometimes it took a day or two to
Speaker 1: get a West Coast score. In the East Coast. Uh
Speaker 1: to get updates, you used to have to fiddle with
Speaker 1: the radio to try to get W and S New York.
Speaker 1: At quarter past the hour, they would update all the scores. Uh.
Speaker 1: So if we're still in the bottom of the fifth inning,
Speaker 1: you knew you were rallying like for two consecutive updates.
Speaker 1: You something good with that? That's how did it? Uh?
Speaker 1: So I'll try to get I'll try to fast forward
Speaker 1: this a little bit. So I I was aware of
Speaker 1: what the lines were because they were in New York
Speaker 1: Dale News. I was also aware that people could pick
Speaker 1: winners in this game. But I wondered, how, I mean,
Speaker 1: how do you get information on the crighton Missouri State
Speaker 1: game when you're southwest Missouri State at the time, when
Speaker 1: you're living you can barely get a score on it.
Speaker 1: How did these so called wise guys know who's gonna win?
Speaker 1: So I was intrigued. UH. Graduate college read a book
Speaker 1: called The Handicapper by Robert Kaylich. Page one and two
Speaker 1: of The Handicapper is this, uh handicapper the man that
Speaker 1: turns out and he gets this manic influx of phone
Speaker 1: calls UH with all this information because you could not
Speaker 1: get information back then. There was no Internet, there was
Speaker 1: no nothing. It was just they completely winged it. That's
Speaker 1: what it was so intriguing. UH. And he put all
Speaker 1: this information into his internal at a base and he
Speaker 1: just winged out the winners. And after reading the book,
Speaker 1: which was not the cheeriest of books. But uh, I said,
Speaker 1: you know, I would like to be that guy someday.
Speaker 1: And you know, I guess and in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways I I succeeded. Wasn't was it or failed? As
Speaker 1: my one of them might think. No, no, I'm sure
Speaker 1: she doesn't. But you know, I'm curious. Was it about,
Speaker 1: you know? Was it your love of sports? Maybe it was?
Speaker 1: Maybe it was all these things. Actually the only sport
Speaker 1: I didn't watch was basketball, So no, it wasn't that
Speaker 1: I love baseball. How interesting? But what was it? What
Speaker 1: was it about basketball handicapping? Then? Specifically, it's the it's
Speaker 1: the unknown. It's that how do these guys know? That's
Speaker 1: what was intriguing. How the hell do you know when
Speaker 1: you can't even get a score in a game? How
Speaker 1: do you know who's gonna win some game when you
Speaker 1: can't get a score? And and it was no information, nothing.
Speaker 1: It was nothing for us on the East coast too.
Speaker 1: It was normal for us if there was a late
Speaker 1: basketball game from the West coast, the next morning's paper
Speaker 1: would never have it. We'd have to wait another day
Speaker 1: to get that. Yeah, so do you remember acknowledging in
Speaker 1: your head? You didn't even have to verbalize this at
Speaker 1: the time. But you remember, do you ever? Do you
Speaker 1: remember and acknowledging that, in addition to being fascinated by
Speaker 1: the actual subject matter, that it would also afford you
Speaker 1: to not have to deal with other people, maybe like
Speaker 1: it was, Oh, here's this, here's a vocation, here's something
Speaker 1: I can do where I can actually just be by myself.
Speaker 1: And did you remember that speaking to you? Not? I
Speaker 1: don't really remember much because then the eighties was an
Speaker 1: attempt to hide from all these painful thoughts, and I
Speaker 1: did it. You know, Coke was very relevant. I certainly
Speaker 1: found it. I remember the first time I got a
Speaker 1: line of my friend and I were driving to Artford
Speaker 1: tele Theater about Yonkers Raceway. I'm a big Horness fan.
Speaker 1: Not anymore, they ru when that came too, But uh,
Speaker 1: at the time I was a honest nut and UH
Speaker 1: did very well betting horness races. Again, I I well,
Speaker 1: others looked at the obvious. I looked at what was
Speaker 1: going on at the back of the pack, and that's
Speaker 1: where you found the most information out at Hornors Race.
Speaker 1: So uh, I've always had that. My mind has always
Speaker 1: worked logically. I can't fall a TV show. I can't
Speaker 1: read directions and follow it. If you were directions on
Speaker 1: how to build uh this this phone, put together the phone,
Speaker 1: I couldn't do it. But logically, I'll solve your relationship
Speaker 1: problem in two seconds. You know. It's just just that
Speaker 1: part of my brain works in in a in a
Speaker 1: very good manner. Ah. So no, I I got myself
Speaker 1: in trouble betting. I ultimately worked for a bookmaker to
Speaker 1: work off my debt and did so for many years,
Speaker 1: and at some point the FBI, the state police raided
Speaker 1: my house. Uh why do they want me? I'm just
Speaker 1: a clerk, just the guy who worked for a bookmaker.
Speaker 1: Certainly they know that, you know. But it turns out
Speaker 1: that one of the guys I I met to help
Speaker 1: out as part of the game was exchanging information with
Speaker 1: the state cop. So by indirectly, I got put in
Speaker 1: with him, and they thought I was some big deal.
Speaker 1: But that was nothing. So when I raided my house,
Speaker 1: they didn't find anything because I'm nobody. Seriously, they had
Speaker 1: my heart. They had stacks of Hunter's programs with That's
Speaker 1: what they carried out of there, and they were piste
Speaker 1: and uh. It also helped that I knew they were coming,
Speaker 1: so I, you know, maybe get rid of some drugs
Speaker 1: that were there. And uh, it's just sorry, s uh
Speaker 1: statute of limitations has expired. Yeah, I was nobody. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't hurt a fly. Believe there's not a mean bone
Speaker 1: in my body. So so so yeah, yeah, this this, this,
Speaker 1: this has purpose to Uh so I'm in Vegas when
Speaker 1: I get a call your trials coming up, and and
Speaker 1: of course we beat the case. In fact, the judge
Speaker 1: in the case was Judge Zovel. He later did a
Speaker 1: very famous case, uh that shaking baby case with a nanny.
Speaker 1: He was the judge in that case. His wife was
Speaker 1: a judge to a brilliant guy. I remember when he
Speaker 1: first postponed it. He said, uh so we're gonna postpone
Speaker 1: this from June fourteenth Flag Day to the more ominous
Speaker 1: July fourteenth bast Steel Day. And I'm like, this guy
Speaker 1: is awesome. That's that's awesome, just bringing that out like that. Also,
Speaker 1: I remember when I was first pleading the kid beforehim,
Speaker 1: he was up for murder and now I'm up and
Speaker 1: he says, you know name, etcetera. You know, did you
Speaker 1: go to college? Said yes, would you go as a
Speaker 1: University of Pennsylvania. Did you graduate? Yes, degree biological basis behavior.
Speaker 1: And the judge like looking like, what the hell are
Speaker 1: you doing here? Like this is the first kid. This
Speaker 1: kid was up for burder and I'm up for that's
Speaker 1: over telephone or something, you know, some nonsense. Anyway, the
Speaker 1: judge ended up yelling at the d A and said,
Speaker 1: don't ever bring a case like this in front of
Speaker 1: me again, because they had nothing on me, because I
Speaker 1: was nobody, literally have nobody. I'm just a kid who
Speaker 1: was answering telephones working up at debt. Now you clossed
Speaker 1: over something. What was your major? Biological basis behavior? What
Speaker 1: is what? Like premed it's FREMD, it's it is, it's
Speaker 1: I just interviewed a kid who's who's uh majoring in
Speaker 1: it too. I said, you know what, I was a
Speaker 1: guinea pig for that. They it was an experiment. They
Speaker 1: were trying. They were they were they were teaching to
Speaker 1: sciences in a typically different order. They taught physics before
Speaker 1: uh biology. I think, I don't know. They just had
Speaker 1: some set thing. But it also allowed a lot of
Speaker 1: freedom of choosing classes. So I took some anthropology, I
Speaker 1: took a lot of psychology. Uh, but I had no
Speaker 1: idea what I wanted to do. I I wanted to
Speaker 1: teach school. But school teachers don't make any money. You
Speaker 1: had no idea, but you kind of knew. I kind
Speaker 1: of want to be a school teacher. School make money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if they got paid? You would you be a school
Speaker 1: teacher today? What do you think you would teach with English?
Speaker 1: I have the whole I have the whole thing scheduled.
Speaker 1: In fact, I was gonna do it anyway. I told
Speaker 1: Chad when we were doing the book that you know,
Speaker 1: if I have another good year, I'm done, referring to
Speaker 1: the odds the book that yeah, the year before we
Speaker 1: had killed it. The year before the odds we had
Speaker 1: absolutely killed it. We will want so much money. It
Speaker 1: was nuts, Like the I R S is very happy
Speaker 1: with me that year. Uh. And the next year I
Speaker 1: did pretty good. But then I maybe, you know, I
Speaker 1: maybe I didn't know my head. I built a really
Speaker 1: expensive house and I tried to keep the mortgage down.
Speaker 1: And you know, I never had planning. I just did
Speaker 1: everything by day. I know, worried about anything. That's why
Speaker 1: this whole coronavirus thing, it doesn't even phaze me. It
Speaker 1: is what it is. It's just life. You know, it happens.
Speaker 1: It's let's go back to your court your court date
Speaker 1: there how from that point forward. All right, So I'm
Speaker 1: found innocent, and now I'm told you gotta get out
Speaker 1: of town, Allen, because they'll plant evidence that they have to.
Speaker 1: Really okay, I had met someone, uh during the Wild
Speaker 1: Series of Poker, which I came out for every year
Speaker 1: since eighty three, and Jeff Star was his name. He
Speaker 1: passed away a couple of years ago. I'll probably visit
Speaker 1: his wife while him out here. Uh yeah, Caro'll be pistove,
Speaker 1: don't visitor. And he said, you know you can always
Speaker 1: come out here. Will make money. Now I had no
Speaker 1: idea what he meant by will make money. And I
Speaker 1: didn't know him that well. I knew he had money.
Speaker 1: Uh he kind of lived uh very freely, and and
Speaker 1: we got along great. So I thought I thought it
Speaker 1: would be a good thing. But I wasn't gonna go
Speaker 1: out there cold. And this is probably the only one
Speaker 1: of the more until it was one of the smarter
Speaker 1: things I did. So that summer I bought a uh
Speaker 1: a college a college football book, and I really was
Speaker 1: very wrong on how I created my power ratings. I
Speaker 1: think I looked at some final scores and started with
Speaker 1: a final score, and then from there looked at the
Speaker 1: final scores and jotted down a bunch of numbers. Right,
Speaker 1: based on final scores. You based on the result, not
Speaker 1: what actually happened. Right, But I had no way of
Speaker 1: finding out what happened, because this is nineteen eight or
Speaker 1: eight seven eight eight somewhere on there. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: I bought the Sporting News and and found out who
Speaker 1: was coming back, and then changed my ratings again not
Speaker 1: really properly. But the first week, I said, listen, the
Speaker 1: STARTUS puts the line up at six o'clock on Sunday night.
Speaker 1: Here's what I made the eight game this week. Do
Speaker 1: what you want. And sure enough, I remember the first
Speaker 1: one he bet was Washington State plus six against Illinois
Speaker 1: at home, and I made it pick and a closed
Speaker 1: pick in Washington State one we had plus six. There
Speaker 1: were bigger moves back then. The lines weren't as strong
Speaker 1: because it was you know, it was less information. It
Speaker 1: wasn't a computer ages. There was a bunch of guys
Speaker 1: trying to figure out a line, and and and you
Speaker 1: know they did a good job. They really did. And
Speaker 1: in retrospect, you know, Scotty had guys who knew what
Speaker 1: they were doing. But like, even if I put up
Speaker 1: a line today, let's say some guy, random guy on
Speaker 1: the street who knows something about college basketball, if I
Speaker 1: put the line up to him, he's gonna beat me
Speaker 1: because he has a choice of finding where I made
Speaker 1: a mistake. Now, maybe he's not gonna beat me for
Speaker 1: as much as I beat him, I would gather that's
Speaker 1: the truth because I've just better at it and I've
Speaker 1: had more experience. But uh, and where he think I
Speaker 1: might have made a mistake, I might actually have not
Speaker 1: might not have made a mistake, right, So uh, referring
Speaker 1: to the fact that the bookmaker has to put up
Speaker 1: a line for everything, but choose so even on my
Speaker 1: eleven of ten, if you know what you're doing, you
Speaker 1: have the edge. That's the whole point of being a
Speaker 1: sports better. Uh. Well, you can be like some of
Speaker 1: the people today and just get out there and claim
Speaker 1: you do everything and why about it and hope something
Speaker 1: good happens. That's that's the other approach. We're gonna get
Speaker 1: to that anyway. So, was that late eighties early nineties.
Speaker 1: We're talking, we're talking late eighties. I'm at I got.
Speaker 1: I went to the HIGHERT Regency in Cambridge every night.
Speaker 1: Al Wnch was the bartender. I had no money. I
Speaker 1: remember I used to nurse and amstell light. It was
Speaker 1: two dollars. I left the dollar for her tip. He
Speaker 1: had uh free nuts there, so I got to munch
Speaker 1: on the Monday night football. They had free hot dogs
Speaker 1: and popcorn back then. Remember Richie Schwartz was also a
Speaker 1: very famous USh Thoroughbred handicapper who recently passed away. But
Speaker 1: he would come in and visit me just for the
Speaker 1: free forgot dogs of popcorn. He was so cheap. Uh,
Speaker 1: but it was a beautiful hotel I met. I met
Speaker 1: Hulk Hogan there and uh I met Christopher walking there.
Speaker 1: Where was the Cambridge exactly? It's right right border in
Speaker 1: the m I T campus, right on the Charles River.
Speaker 1: So the Cambridge in in Cambridge, Mass right on the
Speaker 1: Charles River there, right, that's right I lived. I lived
Speaker 1: in Watertown at the time, which is I lived ten
Speaker 1: minutes away. So it was a very nice place to drink.
Speaker 1: And again I could be by myself. It wasn't a disco,
Speaker 1: which we're you know, a little more popular. Well they
Speaker 1: had phased out by them. But you know, I could
Speaker 1: bring my bullet and do my cocaine and drink, have
Speaker 1: a very nice night, and I'd work on my power ratings.
Speaker 1: So when the time came for me to leave, did
Speaker 1: the coke focus? You didn't help focus? You? You You think
Speaker 1: I just got high? It was good back then. The
Speaker 1: coke today sucks, but back then it was really good. Sorry, yes,
Speaker 1: so what I mean, you know if that, if that
Speaker 1: bothers somebody too, it's just it's just ru I mean,
Speaker 1: drugs are drugs are drugs? What do you think? What
Speaker 1: do you think? Mentally real people get So when people
Speaker 1: are depressed, a people who can't sleep, they get drugs.
Speaker 1: So vegas then permanently. How did that happen? So I
Speaker 1: told my friend these are the games I made. It
Speaker 1: turns out that every game moved the way I thought
Speaker 1: it would move. My lines were good. So he said,
Speaker 1: all right, I'll give a couple of hundred of game,
Speaker 1: and and he got me a place to say. My job, ironically,
Speaker 1: was to take care of some dogs. So the dogs
Speaker 1: got well cared for naturally, and uh, and you know,
Speaker 1: I remember at two games I've had and now you know,
Speaker 1: he was betting. He bet eight games to start, and
Speaker 1: now we were betting five thousand a game. Uh. And
Speaker 1: he would do what he want with the rest of it,
Speaker 1: and I would have my two hundred. He was a
Speaker 1: little uh, he was a little uh tight. Uh. Maybe
Speaker 1: he was a sweetheart. He wouldn't he wouldn't. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: he was a sweetheart. He had a good heart, but
Speaker 1: with money, he was a little uh, a little rough
Speaker 1: around the edges. Uh And and ultimately that's what made
Speaker 1: it very difficult for me to work with him. So
Speaker 1: when basketball starts, I found I found a book of
Speaker 1: power writings. I have no idea who they were, and
Speaker 1: I started with them and created my own and just
Speaker 1: worked that season just on you know, just on my
Speaker 1: own pretty much. Ultimately, my friend Howard Letter and his crew,
Speaker 1: he knew, he knew, I knew what I was doing
Speaker 1: with uh football, and I think it was or so
Speaker 1: and I was kind of laying dormant, and he asked me,
Speaker 1: do you want a handicap as a sure And he
Speaker 1: gave me like five as a game, which is nothing,
Speaker 1: but it's better than nothing. And we're killing it. And
Speaker 1: now at seven o'clock one morning, and I never did
Speaker 1: ask him about this, I get a call, read, yes,
Speaker 1: Bill Walters here, Huh. I think I might have something
Speaker 1: that's good for both of us. Can you meet me
Speaker 1: at the country club? But h I said, I'm not
Speaker 1: a country cover, Mr Walters, we do you want to meet?
Speaker 1: And so now I I had met him once. We
Speaker 1: didn't get along. Uh. He was a bit condescending and
Speaker 1: I was young, and it wasn't a good match. He
Speaker 1: was very professional and I was very new and he
Speaker 1: didn't realize how new I was, and just the whole
Speaker 1: talk didn't go well, the whole That's kind of irrelevant
Speaker 1: because now he has called me, and so we meet
Speaker 1: at Ellis Island. That's where I chose. Now, Ellis Island
Speaker 1: at the time was the biggest die bar in Vegas.
Speaker 1: Maybe that in the dispensary. I don't know. I can't
Speaker 1: remember the old die bars, but Ellis Island was one
Speaker 1: of them, same location as it is today, Cold lull Layne. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I assume it's still there, real sleeves bar. So I
Speaker 1: try to pick the place so he would hate most
Speaker 1: but I loved, I loved I loved I love Dallis
Speaker 1: Island and read is what you went by? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: had red hair, lots of it, well, not lots of it.
Speaker 1: That was the problem, my good feature. That's why I
Speaker 1: lost it. Red hair and hazel eyes. Yeah not not
Speaker 1: not your typical jew combination. Not really, not right out
Speaker 1: any any I was a mutant basically. Some would definitely
Speaker 1: agree with that too. So he starts telling me why
Speaker 1: I should work with him, and I said, well, I said,
Speaker 1: all right, is it my turn? He said yeah. I said, well,
Speaker 1: last time we talked, you were condescendle. So I don't
Speaker 1: see why I should work with you. Like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I want to deal with you. Uh. I appreciate your honesty,
Speaker 1: rid you know, he had the right rebuttal as usual,
Speaker 1: long story. Show up my buddy Oscar, who again is
Speaker 1: no longer with us. Uh. I talked to him and
Speaker 1: he said, no, he couldn't stand Mr Walters, but that
Speaker 1: that's that's for another day. He said, ask him twenty
Speaker 1: dollars a game now. I probably had twenty dollars in
Speaker 1: my pocket. Ask the game now, that's ridiculous, he said,
Speaker 1: you're you're you're an idiot. Then He's like, he's calling
Speaker 1: me an idiot for not asking that. So all right, well,
Speaker 1: I guess I'll ask for a lot like I don't know, like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm getting five hundred dollars a game I
Speaker 1: had so between ultimately I we met at the Sterling Brunch.
Speaker 1: It was the first brunch in Vegas that was really,
Speaker 1: really fancy. It was at Bally's. Loreo was the maitre
Speaker 1: d and they ran him out at some point. I
Speaker 1: really I wish I could say goodbye to him or
Speaker 1: aload to him. I remember I ran into one of
Speaker 1: the waiters there years later at the gym and he
Speaker 1: told me Areo had just been railroaded out of there,
Speaker 1: and but he was. He was still doing fine. But
Speaker 1: this was six years ago now. But he was one
Speaker 1: of those old school Vegas matre d's who just knew
Speaker 1: how to make you feel welcome. It's it was just
Speaker 1: an incredible talent to have, uh. And the Sterling Brunch
Speaker 1: was this gorgeous array of food where fresh squeezed orange
Speaker 1: juice and fresh brewed coffee at the table, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's like seventy dollars in the nineties, it was just insane.
Speaker 1: But that's where I met Mr Watson and I said,
Speaker 1: all right, I want I want twelve thousand dollars pay
Speaker 1: to live on and I want up to twelve thousand
Speaker 1: game And he said, uh, well what about ten? I said,
Speaker 1: this is when out here to bargain and she asked
Speaker 1: no question, and he's all right, we gotta deal. Well,
Speaker 1: he must have known you were good, though, But the
Speaker 1: question is how did he know it was me that
Speaker 1: that That's what I have to ask him because when
Speaker 1: I was betting with with with Howard and and his crew,
Speaker 1: he had a bunch of handicap as. It wasn't just me.
Speaker 1: So how do they know it was me that that
Speaker 1: they we started really you know, bombing Monday mornings with
Speaker 1: They went out on Monday morning just started you know, betting,
Speaker 1: and you still do you still don't know? Answer? What
Speaker 1: if you get a chance to ask him? All yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm going to if he ever gets out of jail.
Speaker 1: This is a real sin but uh yeah, I wan't.
Speaker 1: Well we'll skip that topic. That's that's a real sore
Speaker 1: source subject because he definitely he definitely didn't do what
Speaker 1: they claim he did. Like there's just no chance the
Speaker 1: guy spent a half a million dollars one day. I
Speaker 1: called him up on day Well, Red, I spent a
Speaker 1: half million dollars to make sure what we're doing is legal.
Speaker 1: Spent a half a million dollars to make sure what
Speaker 1: we're doing is illegal. That guy, the guy who spent
Speaker 1: the half million dollars to make sure what we're doing
Speaker 1: is legal, is not going to pick up a phone
Speaker 1: from some known scumbag who's going to tell him to
Speaker 1: buy this stock, and he's gonna put that phone down
Speaker 1: and pick up the other phone or buy me options. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know the April fifties on this. You know it's
Speaker 1: not gonna happen. Yeah, and didn't happen. Just referring to
Speaker 1: just to clarify, referring to Billy Walter's uh, the Dean
Speaker 1: Foods insider trading that it was, I just know what
Speaker 1: didn't happen that that he wouldn't do that. Number one,
Speaker 1: the money didn't matter that much, and number two, he
Speaker 1: was too careful. Walters was accused of and convicted for
Speaker 1: insider trading in that case Dean Foods. Um So he
Speaker 1: said yes, I said yes. So we worked and we
Speaker 1: worked successfully for many many years. I did the basketball
Speaker 1: on my own with uh again Howard, who I never
Speaker 1: I never actually asked him. I feel bad about this,
Speaker 1: actually I never asked him. By the way, his what
Speaker 1: Mr Walters offer, but do you want to match it?
Speaker 1: I just didn't think that five would become twelve thousand,
Speaker 1: you know. But but he he should have been asked.
Speaker 1: Howard's last name Letterer, later famous for full tilt poker
Speaker 1: hated actually for no reason at all. Again, people, you know,
Speaker 1: make assumptions and then have mass hysteria like a day
Speaker 1: of the Locust kind of thing, like what's going on
Speaker 1: now again with this coronavirus where it's it's I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's I'm sure it's evil, but I'm sure it's not
Speaker 1: as bad as uh, you know, they're making it seem
Speaker 1: or they're not telling us something like it's not a
Speaker 1: deadly virus. It's very contagious, but from what I've read,
Speaker 1: it is not deadly unless you're old like me, And
Speaker 1: all right, well, I'll be a guinea pig. I don't care.
Speaker 1: I mean, something's gotta wipe this, point it out, because
Speaker 1: almost every single creatures in danger besides humans, and that
Speaker 1: that can't be nature has to get even somehow, So
Speaker 1: hopefully I wish there was some disease that just pinpointed, uh,
Speaker 1: those people who want to kill elephants, that's that would
Speaker 1: That was my goal at eight years old, by the way,
Speaker 1: I wanted to be uh, making enough money to hire
Speaker 1: mercenaries to go down to Africa and just kill anyone
Speaker 1: that even looked at an elephant the wrong way? Eight
Speaker 1: years old? You had eight years old? That was my dream, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it might have been nine. Were you aware throughout all
Speaker 1: this arc like you you correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: You're very introspective. You're very analytical, Like are you even
Speaker 1: at eight? Were you aware, keenly aware of every little
Speaker 1: thought that you had? And did you think to yourself,
Speaker 1: this is not normal this age, that's what job? No,
Speaker 1: because I'm a kid, What do I know? I just
Speaker 1: assume everyone knows everything. You know, you don't, you don't
Speaker 1: the mortality thing I knew was was probably hovering, like
Speaker 1: you know, because how can everyone be so happy knowing
Speaker 1: all this? Like you know, all that raw raw? High
Speaker 1: schools really would offend me because here I am thinking
Speaker 1: total opposite they were. They're thinking how wonderful everything is?
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking how horrible everything is. You know, it's
Speaker 1: where the where the drugs escape, or where the drugs
Speaker 1: just definitely escape. They were definitely a band aid. Uh
Speaker 1: and still are. Yeah. But I'm you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: a rehab I'm not. I'm not. I'm not struggling with
Speaker 1: a drug addiction. I enjoy it on occasion, and sometimes
Speaker 1: it's more than on occasion. But yeah, I think I
Speaker 1: had my my best basketball season was I was whacked
Speaker 1: out of my mind every single day. It's interesting. So
Speaker 1: so with Billy, now, are you just doing college hoops
Speaker 1: or you doing other sports? I'm just doing college football,
Speaker 1: college football only a football in college hoops? Are doing
Speaker 1: on my own again, Howard and uh my partner Billy
Speaker 1: a different Billy. They put a hundred and fifty each other.
Speaker 1: And uh so with three way partners, you do the
Speaker 1: work and you get a third and we won. Uh
Speaker 1: I think we want three that year. Uh And I said, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: screw you guys. I'm putting up my own hundred thousand.
Speaker 1: So I didn't want anyone put up money. Pol I
Speaker 1: don't think that's right. Uh, But without it, I would
Speaker 1: have had a start. So you know I did. I
Speaker 1: did get lucky in that regard that that Mr Walters
Speaker 1: came along and I still did my thing with Mr Walters,
Speaker 1: and I made money every year with him. I never
Speaker 1: had a losing year in football. And uh and and
Speaker 1: and and we we started to that pretty big with
Speaker 1: the basketball. I mean at some point we were pretty
Speaker 1: big Betters and you and you you smile when you
Speaker 1: say that, so pretty good. It was one day, I mean,
Speaker 1: so I'll tell this story. There's one day I Uh.
Speaker 1: I just told the story to Matt of the three
Speaker 1: m W crew that Herb Syndick was coaching, as he said,
Speaker 1: it was playing Bobby Kremen's. And this was back when
Speaker 1: second clocks and you know, being a good coach mattered
Speaker 1: more because you could control tempo and control the game
Speaker 1: a lot more than you can now. Uh So coaching
Speaker 1: matter a lot more back then, and and psychology matter
Speaker 1: a lot more. But but that that that's for another day.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to bet Ncy State. This was like,
Speaker 1: this was later in the year. Uh, they needed this
Speaker 1: game like blood they were they kind of would have
Speaker 1: been considered probably on the bubble. It would be bubble talk.
Speaker 1: Now there was no fraud naughty around there to torch
Speaker 1: Us with this, but uh, he's he's wow, Uh fraud
Speaker 1: Nardi reference Caches on the show. Yeah, Froddia. It's just
Speaker 1: talking about somebody who knows absolutely nothing about basketball, who's
Speaker 1: who seems to have relevance. What a shame? Uh this
Speaker 1: late eighties with Cremens early eighties later, we've moved up
Speaker 1: the ladder here where we've uh no, no, we've we've
Speaker 1: we've had some success. And you'll hear how much success
Speaker 1: in about a minute. This is Circer. So the lines
Speaker 1: wanted to happen two, and I made it three. I
Speaker 1: made Georgia Tech three, but I wanted to bet NC
Speaker 1: State plus three. Now I had to. You know, I
Speaker 1: have my own way of doing things that that you
Speaker 1: know right or wrong. It's how I did it. You know,
Speaker 1: there was no handbook on how to do it. So
Speaker 1: I just winged it and and I hope that it
Speaker 1: worked out. And and you know, for the most part,
Speaker 1: I did I I I only recently realized when I
Speaker 1: did a podcast with Jeffrey Barr and Rufus Peabody that
Speaker 1: I I what I what I've done is is is
Speaker 1: actually rather incredible so not bragging, but I never thought,
Speaker 1: I just I'm just the guy betting sports. What's the
Speaker 1: big deal? You know, I didn't realize that some of
Speaker 1: my thoughts were like, you know, ahead of so ahead
Speaker 1: of the game. It's crazy, But it was just it
Speaker 1: was just sheer luck or you know, just that part
Speaker 1: of my brain works well, and I think, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe a combination of both. So anyway, I started, I
Speaker 1: laid the one and a half, and I started laying
Speaker 1: all the twos on the screen. And typically you know,
Speaker 1: it was back then where it's not as ridiculous it
Speaker 1: is now where where these people see a line moving,
Speaker 1: they move without a bet, which is totally opposite what
Speaker 1: we should be doing. Uh So, a long story short,
Speaker 1: which is unusual for me. I end up with seventy
Speaker 1: two dollars on Georgia Tech, but I like NC State Now,
Speaker 1: seventies two thousand dollars is a large bet for us.
Speaker 1: Never mind I have it on the wrong side. Well,
Speaker 1: I call my buddy Oscar up, and I said, uh,
Speaker 1: see what you can get on NC State plus three
Speaker 1: and and and if you have to buy plus three
Speaker 1: minus twenty, that's okay too, because we're bending the law here.
Speaker 1: So he came back with a D seventeen thousand off
Speaker 1: screen and buy off screen. I mean the don best
Speaker 1: screen wasn't affected by it. All right, Well that's good.
Speaker 1: Now we have a pretty big bet on the right side.
Speaker 1: So now we can just go and you know, bet
Speaker 1: the rest of our hours we had someone who helped us.
Speaker 1: I told him go get you know, plus three three
Speaker 1: minus twenty and we finished it and we ended up
Speaker 1: with this you humongous been on NC State, which as
Speaker 1: soon as we were done, Betty, Mr Walter is about
Speaker 1: the same side. So now it's gone from one and
Speaker 1: a half Georgia Tech to three Georgia Tech to now
Speaker 1: one and a half Ency State, right, and they want
Speaker 1: by a hundred like but I had never gone out
Speaker 1: in a limb like that. And and my partner, who
Speaker 1: was a little conservative, was never never blanked. I gotta
Speaker 1: give him credit, like, you know, he let this lunatic
Speaker 1: just do whatever you wanted to do. And uh, anyway,
Speaker 1: that that was. That was one of my better moments.
Speaker 1: I I the reason I wanted to get three was
Speaker 1: if I made it three and I and and I thought,
Speaker 1: that's what the relative difference in strength of the two
Speaker 1: team is, but I had these other reasons besides what
Speaker 1: goes into that rating to make me think one team
Speaker 1: was going to beat the other. I wanted to be
Speaker 1: able to get what I made the number because I
Speaker 1: knew I had an edge at that number. I don't
Speaker 1: know how if I have an edge of two and
Speaker 1: a half, but I know at three. All these reasons
Speaker 1: that I have for betting NC State are gonna give
Speaker 1: me some advantage at the number three. In this instance,
Speaker 1: I cheated a little bit for poster re Mindus morning,
Speaker 1: but also because we had so much on the wrong
Speaker 1: side that didn't really matter. So the Pluster Mindus twenty
Speaker 1: would cover the wrong side and we'd actually have our
Speaker 1: bet at post three. If you if you recall that
Speaker 1: as being a highlight, do you recall a similar low
Speaker 1: light where you were like, oh this, Oh yeah, laid
Speaker 1: pick with Texas Tech against St. John's in the n
Speaker 1: I t it closed St. John's too, and St. John's
Speaker 1: got the last ten of the game to win by one. Geez. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's like that St. John's Georgetown game the other day
Speaker 1: where St. John's closed it to nothing. I lost that
Speaker 1: one too, Yeah, I lost both the Saint John Rodgtown
Speaker 1: game today. We were talking about that St. John's was
Speaker 1: twenty ahead in the first game lost and then twenty
Speaker 1: three otis in the in the second game when we
Speaker 1: had we lost both ends of it. And then I
Speaker 1: asked Matt, so, think about how many times we were
Speaker 1: twenty ahead and lost and how many times we were
Speaker 1: twenty behind in one and come back to me with
Speaker 1: what you come up with. And yeah, I got you.
Speaker 1: All right, you're right. So the eighties and mainly perhaps
Speaker 1: even more the nineties and then the early two thousand's
Speaker 1: were sort of the heyday for you. Yeah, i'd say
Speaker 1: the Yeah, the early two thousand's, uh, right around when
Speaker 1: the Odds was written. Actually, ironically he wrote it the
Speaker 1: year after that, the year after I did that NC
Speaker 1: State thing. But we we were actually that year we
Speaker 1: were head. I mean, I could, I'll spend it. Whatever
Speaker 1: is it make I'll spend you know, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: so long ago. We're at one point two million after
Speaker 1: a month. This is a three way partnership, which isn't
Speaker 1: insane amount of money like to one in a month,
Speaker 1: like we didn't bet that much big, but it's not
Speaker 1: that much and I remember when February hit, we we
Speaker 1: did the figures and we're stuck thousand, like, h this
Speaker 1: isn't good. And from then on in we won every
Speaker 1: single We won virtually every single game the rest of
Speaker 1: the year, like we just killed it. And part of
Speaker 1: that win was that NC State game where we're just
Speaker 1: on this big role. Uh. Yeah. That was a good year.
Speaker 1: And that year, our friend, a friend of of of
Speaker 1: my partner, uh was diagnosed with brain cancer, and we
Speaker 1: had agreed that we're going to give well, they they
Speaker 1: were giving tempers out of the profits to them. I
Speaker 1: only gave five. I didn't even know the guy, but
Speaker 1: I'll throw five percent. And I barely knew him. I
Speaker 1: I knew him to say hello, ah, And when he
Speaker 1: came to town, we happily said here. By the way,
Speaker 1: we did pretty good in those days, Alan, because if
Speaker 1: you could bet a lot, you could bet a lot,
Speaker 1: and and it was people knew bookmakers knew that you
Speaker 1: were this successful, and they moved. It's not like today,
Speaker 1: not at all. Well, I mean, maybe someone will come
Speaker 1: in and and maybe we'll maybe someone will actually hire
Speaker 1: a real bookmaker, which I'm hoping it happens in Vermont
Speaker 1: I'm a guy in Vermont speaking with me. They trying
Speaker 1: to legalize sports betting up there, and I'm trying to
Speaker 1: get a friend who we all know to go up
Speaker 1: there and do it. And and I'd love to help.
Speaker 1: If you have a real bookmaker, a real bookmaking operation
Speaker 1: instead of these uh be encounters are known absolutely nothing.
Speaker 1: Come in and and actually book bets. You see how
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be done and how the business is
Speaker 1: supposed to be run. Yeah, you want to know what
Speaker 1: smart guys are betting because it helps form your line.
Speaker 1: I mean, Mr McCarron knows that he used to open up.
Speaker 1: He used to get abuse for opening a stale line
Speaker 1: to somebody, but he had a reason for doing it.
Speaker 1: If you let's say so, let's say let's say this
Speaker 1: five games. Okay, let's just pick San Diego States, uh eleven,
Speaker 1: you and l these three and a half, Colorado States
Speaker 1: four and a half. This is the present line. Okay,
Speaker 1: we'll just do four games to make it less confusing.
Speaker 1: So Sandego States eleven, you l vast three three and
Speaker 1: a half, Colorado States four and a half, and uh
Speaker 1: New Mexico's uh pick with air force. Those four games
Speaker 1: and that's the present line. Now someone calls me and
Speaker 1: so right, we're opening and they opened me San Diego
Speaker 1: State nine and a half and the games eleven everywhere.
Speaker 1: Now you could be you could be saying, well, what's
Speaker 1: this guy doing? You know? But when I say pass,
Speaker 1: he knows that he can open this game nine and
Speaker 1: a half very very safely. And information from that. But
Speaker 1: with legalization, I'm sure you anticipated the worst of what
Speaker 1: could happen post legalization. And does any of this surprise
Speaker 1: you that books are now behaving as they do? Yeah,
Speaker 1: some of it does surprise you. Oh shocking. Really, you
Speaker 1: didn't expect it to go this bad. I thought that
Speaker 1: I thought someone would actually try to understand how to book.
Speaker 1: But they don't. They're all narrow minded, being counters. They don't.
Speaker 1: They don't look at big pictures. When Vinny was in here,
Speaker 1: I said, the idea, of course, is to get people
Speaker 1: in a casino. Right when they first put sports books
Speaker 1: in Vegas, they weren't here to make money lost leader.
Speaker 1: They were here to keep their big customers. Because when
Speaker 1: Caesar's where Viny was put their beautiful sports book in
Speaker 1: all the quote unquote whales were going there because they
Speaker 1: get got ten dollars on an NFL game, so they
Speaker 1: go play back rattle four in the morning, they'd make
Speaker 1: their NFL bets. They go to bed and they'd wake
Speaker 1: up and watch it on TV and they'd have their bet.
Speaker 1: No one else offered a sports book, so all the
Speaker 1: big customers were going to Caesar's because they had an
Speaker 1: opportunity to bet the NFL. So other places quickly through
Speaker 1: sports books up, but they had no there was no
Speaker 1: need to make money with him. They were there to
Speaker 1: keep customers. So the whole idea that the sports book
Speaker 1: bust make money is is a wrong and be if
Speaker 1: you're gonna make money, what's the best way to make money.
Speaker 1: And these people contend that it's staying in the market
Speaker 1: throwing people out, And I would contend it's no get
Speaker 1: everyone you can in your casino, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: this tertiary value to having x more number of people
Speaker 1: in a casino, right because they might get drunk and
Speaker 1: they might go and blow money, or they spend money
Speaker 1: in a restaurant and your waitresses to make more tips.
Speaker 1: Whatever it is, it's good to have people in a
Speaker 1: casino rather than out. So if I ran a casino.
Speaker 1: If I ran a sportsbook number one, we'd have a
Speaker 1: line way different than everybody else. We'd move that line
Speaker 1: as we took bets. Sometimes we move it the wrong
Speaker 1: way just to have fun. We do anything to get
Speaker 1: business in there. The late night game, I'd offer like
Speaker 1: a dollar five either way. If you're in the casino,
Speaker 1: you have to be live to get the dollar five.
Speaker 1: The app would have to have a dollar ten. You
Speaker 1: do anything you can to get people in there, have
Speaker 1: contests every hour, or do anything you can. Just who cares.
Speaker 1: If you give away something, you're gonna get it all back.
Speaker 1: And they don't understand that. They don't understand that at all.
Speaker 1: How do you lose as much money in a game? Well,
Speaker 1: it's a game. Well and in the case of the
Speaker 1: euro as we call them the Euros, the European influence
Speaker 1: that now exists in legalized jurisdictions in the US, maybe
Speaker 1: they do understand that alan and they just don't give
Speaker 1: a damn. And they realize that they can create whatever
Speaker 1: new bedding generation to conform to whatever it is they
Speaker 1: want to. They could do what they want, but I
Speaker 1: guarantee you they're minimizing their profit. No, I agree with you.
Speaker 1: It doesn't bother me Anymy I'm not gonna do this anymore.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is just it's not fun. You think
Speaker 1: this is the end for you, Yeah, there's no way,
Speaker 1: no more. College sucks that I had a really bad
Speaker 1: day the last day. Uh, someone made the mistake of
Speaker 1: asking me if I was getting another great day, and like,
Speaker 1: I completely broke down and had a really bad thinking day.
Speaker 1: I had winners, So I just didn't have the right
Speaker 1: amounts on it because I just my brain was just
Speaker 1: not and plus I had three days without sleep and
Speaker 1: then took an overnight flight. I was I was really
Speaker 1: I'm like centered. Now. It's a shame that, uh, the
Speaker 1: last day didn't happen. We had good bets the last day.
Speaker 1: A lot of people lost that last day of college
Speaker 1: basketball before all the cancelations. It was a weird day.
Speaker 1: Teams that teams were on bubble that had to win,
Speaker 1: just were that were nine and a half point favorites
Speaker 1: lost by double days. Just looks like the kids were
Speaker 1: distracted to the last day of the basketball season. Um,
Speaker 1: let me ask you about and and forgive me if
Speaker 1: you don't want to talk about this, because I didn't
Speaker 1: I didn't prep you. We didn't talk about this beforehand.
Speaker 1: I don't do props. There was uh an incident that
Speaker 1: most people are aware of here where you got mugged,
Speaker 1: you got jack Like, what was that story? Okay? Uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'll tell you the story about. I
Speaker 1: don't know why it happened to this day. So Mr
Speaker 1: McCarroll is putting on a Beat Boston contest and we're
Speaker 1: laying what year is this about? I was living in
Speaker 1: my new home and it wasn't far into the new home.
Speaker 1: So Alan Boston kind enough to join us here on
Speaker 1: a numbers game special best of edition of a numbers
Speaker 1: game right here at Visa the Sports Betting Network. Alan,
Speaker 1: two thousand seven or eight. I don't remember. I honestly
Speaker 1: don't remember, but I wasn't. Oh actually I can't. I
Speaker 1: can't tell you what it was because Matt Smiling mout
Speaker 1: was my trainer and I just moved. No, it was
Speaker 1: two thousand uh three or so? Okay, yeah, two thousand three,
Speaker 1: two thousand four, right, okay, what casinea Jimmy's Jimmys put
Speaker 1: on Beat Boston content and at the Rivierairo's property, right,
Speaker 1: and uh we laid thirty thousand and twenty thousand and
Speaker 1: we we id out, handicapped the other guy, and we
Speaker 1: picked five games on a Friday night. The problem was
Speaker 1: after week one where I went four and one and
Speaker 1: he went three and two. Was the following morning, when
Speaker 1: I was trying to bet the games I liked, people
Speaker 1: were like hammering him. There is a good story to
Speaker 1: all this, so I well up since it's the first
Speaker 1: conference game and Cincinnati was playing at Marquette. My memory sucks,
Speaker 1: by the way, but with this it's good. It's weird,
Speaker 1: really weird. So anyway, I'm trying to lay Cincinnati minus
Speaker 1: two minus twenty for a big bet, but someone keeps
Speaker 1: betting minus two and a half, so keeps going to
Speaker 1: three at Chris and I have to hold this line
Speaker 1: till eight am when Grande opened ground took a big bet,
Speaker 1: and we had one other place that opened the eight
Speaker 1: that took a big bet. So I had to get
Speaker 1: this game to back to two and a half by
Speaker 1: So I had a hit the plus three they took
Speaker 1: the time, I had to hit it four times, and
Speaker 1: the full time I timed it right and it was
Speaker 1: two and a half an out. It got set two
Speaker 1: and a half to the whole industry. And now we
Speaker 1: laid two minus twenty. And meanwhile we had this extra
Speaker 1: ten thousand a bed. And it turned out the game
Speaker 1: fell three, so I signed it for an extra ten thousand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a good That was a happy story. But
Speaker 1: I also told Jimmy the next week we were in trouble.
Speaker 1: I can't give these games out, you know, I can't
Speaker 1: give what I like out because so that didn't work
Speaker 1: out too good. That was another favorite did for somebody.
Speaker 1: That cost me, Uh cost me fifteen thousand. We're probably
Speaker 1: laying too much anyway. I probably couldn't leave three to
Speaker 1: two anyway. So one day while walking over there, I, uh,
Speaker 1: I'm walking across the street, and and and also I
Speaker 1: can tell you as I got up, and I said, wow,
Speaker 1: what's a bump on my head? You know? And and
Speaker 1: I walked in there and Jimmy said, uh, hey, what's up.
Speaker 1: I said, well, I'm here to do a show. He says,
Speaker 1: you're not doing a show. I said, what do you mean,
Speaker 1: I'm doing a show? I had no idea what happened.
Speaker 1: This happened out doors, right, this happened just outside the
Speaker 1: Revere was supposedly there were cameras. There was one girl
Speaker 1: that was witnessed to it. So there were two people,
Speaker 1: one of them at UH some iron and a cracked
Speaker 1: man ahead with it. I didn't see him. Obviously I
Speaker 1: would stopped him. Sorry. I was as strong as an
Speaker 1: ox and uh and in very good shape. And that's
Speaker 1: probably would save my life, by the way, that's what.
Speaker 1: That's what. But it's not like any money was stolen
Speaker 1: or five thousands in my pocket that didn't take it. Uh.
Speaker 1: The only thing I came up with was I was
Speaker 1: wearing a full tilt hoodie and a beanie. And the
Speaker 1: only thing came up with this is is I was
Speaker 1: in a gang area and I had the wrong callers on.
Speaker 1: That's the only thing to come up with. Because I
Speaker 1: never screwed anybody. I never nobody ever caught any thanks
Speaker 1: someone's wife for or robbed anybody, or cheated anybody. I
Speaker 1: do have honor. People don't like me, but I do
Speaker 1: have honor. And that's one thing they will most people
Speaker 1: will agree on is boss is not gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: trew you over h perpetrator was never caught. Now, even
Speaker 1: though there were cameras, the cameras weren't working. I could
Speaker 1: have sued the reviewer and and had an easy case,
Speaker 1: but that's not my style, you know. But I ended
Speaker 1: up in the trauma center and and and the guy
Speaker 1: there said, you know you have a separate There was
Speaker 1: actually an an e m T guy, retired m T guy,
Speaker 1: and he told me to lie down and he diagnosed
Speaker 1: me immediately with a concussion and a separated shoulder. And
Speaker 1: uh remember the security guard one of my I d
Speaker 1: and I told me to go left himself and the
Speaker 1: m T guy says, well, you're He said, you're the
Speaker 1: toughest guy I ever scene in my life. Like me
Speaker 1: not really said no. He said you took you took
Speaker 1: a shellacking like like a few have ever. And I
Speaker 1: have no idea what it was about. My god, geez,
Speaker 1: you know, I hoped it wasn't because I thought Jerry
Speaker 1: Tarkani was an idiot. You know, I made that clear
Speaker 1: in the radio that I thought he was a terrible coach,
Speaker 1: but you know, he was revered around here. I hope
Speaker 1: someone wouldn't hit me over the half of that. But anyway, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I still got a little ump of my
Speaker 1: head for my trouble. Yeah, well it's here you felt. Uh.
Speaker 1: But both the the MT guy and UH and the
Speaker 1: physical therapist I went to UH told me that because
Speaker 1: I was so strong, my core was able to absorb
Speaker 1: more of it than my head did and it probably
Speaker 1: saved my life. He said. The best case you probably
Speaker 1: could have come out of this was a vegetable some sort.
Speaker 1: That's how hard a boy like. They really just they
Speaker 1: were trying to kill me. People would have probably preferred
Speaker 1: but UH, anyway, Yeah, I have no idea what was about?
Speaker 1: It sucks? I want to be game that week too,
Speaker 1: would would have got back into the contest. So when
Speaker 1: did when did uh? When did you leave Vegas? Why
Speaker 1: did you leave Vegas? And we'll wrap it up with
Speaker 1: how you feel about sports betting these days? And why
Speaker 1: you think you don't want to do this anymore? When
Speaker 1: did you leave? I wanted to do it for the
Speaker 1: years I wanted to quote. I wanted to be a
Speaker 1: school teacher. What Chad did the book in two thousand?
Speaker 1: Like I even talked to him about it, like you
Speaker 1: know he did the UH? I said, would you be
Speaker 1: willing to be uh, you know, a guest? Because he
Speaker 1: was a good writer before he before he completely lost
Speaker 1: his mind with this sports betting stuff. He was he
Speaker 1: was a very good writer. His first I said, note
Speaker 1: to that book originally by the way Chad Millman, who
Speaker 1: wrote The Odds in two thousand one, I believe it was.
Speaker 1: I don't know. We're the first show we watch. We
Speaker 1: we watched the episode one of Freaks and Geeks Together, Wow,
Speaker 1: which is my all time favorite TV show. Did you
Speaker 1: enjoy the experience of the Odds that you enjoy the
Speaker 1: experience of the Best of It, which you were featured
Speaker 1: in as well sports betting documentary? Uh uh, I don't know.
Speaker 1: To me, it's just it is what it is. It's
Speaker 1: just I don't know if joy is the right word.
Speaker 1: It was interesting. Interesting, So why did you leave Vegas? Finally,
Speaker 1: so I had planned I I so I built this
Speaker 1: house in Queensbridge, and I remember I put like six
Speaker 1: d thousand cash into it and took a mortgage for
Speaker 1: seven and thirty thousand. That's those were the exact numbers.
Speaker 1: So I built this place for one point three three
Speaker 1: and a year later on Zillo it was three million.
Speaker 1: This is the housing market, all right. I have a
Speaker 1: seven hundred thousand mortgage place things worth three million. I'm
Speaker 1: in good shape, and I had money. I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: all right. I'm gonna retire soon and go teach school.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what my plan was. Uh. However, I'm not
Speaker 1: one who's very good with money, and I always assumed
Speaker 1: I'd be able to make it. And and by making,
Speaker 1: I mean make like make a lot. Uh. And when
Speaker 1: I started running out of money, and I they had
Speaker 1: these loans that they were the government loans that you
Speaker 1: could apply for. I had a list my expenses, and
Speaker 1: when I listed my expenses for the month, I realized that,
Speaker 1: you know, it's okay, two make two thousand year, which
Speaker 1: is quite a good salary. But if you're spending four
Speaker 1: matt's not good plush. Your house is losing value every year.
Speaker 1: And ultimately, you know, I had a couple of years
Speaker 1: that weren't so good. One year I lost a little, actually,
Speaker 1: and one year was a peanut win, which you know,
Speaker 1: that's my whole salary. I have no salary except that
Speaker 1: in college basketball. I had quit college football by then, right,
Speaker 1: I I told Mr Walters when I called him up
Speaker 1: when I I had I was up in Maine and
Speaker 1: I had dinner with a uh mindy, A lady and
Speaker 1: I had dinner up in Maine and uh I set
Speaker 1: up boy him dreading this college football season was Old
Speaker 1: Orchard Beach Man. I love it up there. Chad went
Speaker 1: up there to do an article to for ESPN the magazine,
Speaker 1: which I I that one I did, like, I thought
Speaker 1: that was very good. Uh. It was also in good shape,
Speaker 1: so a good picture when I was in good shape.
Speaker 1: He said, that was your biggest regret, regret about the
Speaker 1: best of it, that you weren't fat pig in the
Speaker 1: best of it. Yeah, that's terrible. The only that the
Speaker 1: only thing I'll get back that in a second. So
Speaker 1: I told her I really am not looking forward to
Speaker 1: college football. She said, well, do you need the money?
Speaker 1: I said yes, but no, you know I really don't.
Speaker 1: She said, well, life is short. So the next morning
Speaker 1: I called up Mr Walters. I said, you know what,
Speaker 1: I've had a lot of fun. You've been very fair
Speaker 1: with me. I've honored to have worked with you, and
Speaker 1: I just don't think I can put enough effort into
Speaker 1: this too warrant getting what you're giving me for this.
Speaker 1: So thanks. He respected that. I'm sure, of course, like
Speaker 1: I could have sent him a list every week and
Speaker 1: taken the free role. And I even could have called
Speaker 1: my partner and asked h what he liked to just
Speaker 1: send his list in every week and made money. But
Speaker 1: that's not the right thing to do. That's that's you know,
Speaker 1: that's deceitful, and I'm not going to do that. So
Speaker 1: the last time you spoke to Billy, no, No, I've
Speaker 1: I've spoken him several times, several times after I stopped
Speaker 1: with him, and written several letters in jail and wrote
Speaker 1: a letter in his behalf that that I thought was
Speaker 1: very good, but obviously it wasn't good enough. Uh, and
Speaker 1: still write letters to him and his wife told me
Speaker 1: he was gonna call me from jail, but that that
Speaker 1: didn't happen. So that's a little disappointing. Uh, what did
Speaker 1: you want to say about your weight and the best
Speaker 1: of it? You're gonna say something you said. We'll get
Speaker 1: back to that. Yeah. So anyway, that's when I ended.
Speaker 1: That's when I ended football. And I only came back
Speaker 1: to do football when someone followed me on Twitter asked
Speaker 1: me if I'd be interested. So, uh, the wait thing, right,
Speaker 1: So two years ago I called back to the best,
Speaker 1: back to the Beat Boston contest. The final show, I
Speaker 1: brought in a physio ball, which is one of these
Speaker 1: big round balls, and my trainer at the time was
Speaker 1: Matt smiling Matt, I called him, uh, and he we
Speaker 1: had just done an exercise recently where I kneel on
Speaker 1: the physio ball. So I'm kneeling on top of the
Speaker 1: physio ball. I eventually learned how to stand and on
Speaker 1: a physio ball and do squats on. Yeah, I was.
Speaker 1: I was a really good athlete. Uh, but it's not
Speaker 1: that hard. But doing weighted squats while standing on a
Speaker 1: physio ball is a little tricky. But that was fun.
Speaker 1: That's fun, by the way to me. And this will
Speaker 1: all make sense of the second because obviously I wanted
Speaker 1: to be a baseball player and that never transpired. I
Speaker 1: quit it at all too young an age and really talented.
Speaker 1: Ah so that's my regret. Like when I read the
Speaker 1: book The Bottom of the Bottom of which is an
Speaker 1: amazing read, I completely broke down, like just it was
Speaker 1: just hit it every regret in life. Uh. So athletics
Speaker 1: can be a little tricky with me. But so we
Speaker 1: have this big physio ball and I'm kneeling on it.
Speaker 1: And he takes a foam roller, which we're kind of
Speaker 1: new back then, and he said, all right, I've gotta
Speaker 1: whack you and your and the abs with this foam roller,
Speaker 1: so get ready. And during in the eight thirty commercial break,
Speaker 1: I said, all right, this is Matt Anthony and he's
Speaker 1: the reason I'm still alive now because he's the one
Speaker 1: that got me in such good shape that I was
Speaker 1: able to withstand that blow to the head. I said,
Speaker 1: And if anything ever comes to this and we go
Speaker 1: on tour with the Beat Boston contest, I have come
Speaker 1: up with a commercial. So I brought the physio ball
Speaker 1: and he had the foam roller and I got up
Speaker 1: on it was a little tricky as the floor wasn't even,
Speaker 1: but eventually got kneeling on top of the thing and
Speaker 1: he takes them the phone roll and waxed me and
Speaker 1: the gut with it. I said, there we go. We
Speaker 1: got a Beat Boston commercial. Uh. So back to the
Speaker 1: fat pig thing. So when I came to Vegas, I
Speaker 1: was five eight, probably to fifteen, and not because I
Speaker 1: worked out. I drank a lot, did a lot of coke.
Speaker 1: Wasn't healthy. Uh. One day a doctor said I don't
Speaker 1: know what you're doing, but you better stop. And I
Speaker 1: always had low self esteem. You know, I thought I
Speaker 1: was ugly to what, you know, what girl would have
Speaker 1: looked at me, and you know thoughts that probably a
Speaker 1: lot of people have battled in their lives, but I
Speaker 1: really battled them. Uh So, I thought that getting into
Speaker 1: the jim would be helpful for both the self esteem
Speaker 1: which eliminates clutter of the brain. I thought it would
Speaker 1: help my thinking. That was my my thought that getting
Speaker 1: to the gym would help my thinking. So I started
Speaker 1: working out. My roommate actually was a was a personal trainer,
Speaker 1: and uh so we worked out together and eventually, uh
Speaker 1: when twenty four hour Fitness opened and someone they gave
Speaker 1: me six free training sessions. That's how I found Matt.
Speaker 1: Matt's from Maine. Like I refused him, but they said,
Speaker 1: this kid's from Maine. So interested. So Matt Matt opened
Speaker 1: my eyes to what what the possibilities of working out are?
Speaker 1: He would We didn't do the same workout. In three
Speaker 1: and a half years, I worked out with him five
Speaker 1: days a week, not the same never never had the
Speaker 1: same workout. He was wildly creative and I respected him
Speaker 1: to no end. And and in fact, I'm gonna call
Speaker 1: him when I get off. When I get out of here,
Speaker 1: I gotta call him. Uh so he he, He made
Speaker 1: me understand what a workout really was. And from there
Speaker 1: it just got crazier and crazier. Two the point where uh,
Speaker 1: Brian who was my last trainer and I worked out
Speaker 1: with him over nine years. He's now a detective in
Speaker 1: uh Las Vegas Police department. Uh and I'm having dinner
Speaker 1: with him Sunday. I told him, when you're leaving, and said,
Speaker 1: when I've done it with you, I'm leaving. So uh.
Speaker 1: I called him up two years ago, I said, you know,
Speaker 1: the proudest moment of my life. You might think some
Speaker 1: people might think, you know, graduating in ibilly school, or
Speaker 1: you know, being a part of the odds or the
Speaker 1: best of it, or being on outside the lines or whatever,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever nonsense that people think it is. Uh No,
Speaker 1: the proudest moment of my life is I walk into
Speaker 1: a workout and the workouts were being amped up, for sure,
Speaker 1: but I was in good shape. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm training five days a week. I never eat a
Speaker 1: wrong thing. I look good, like really good. This is
Speaker 1: someone who hates the way he looks, but I was
Speaker 1: ripped h and we do this four exercise superset with
Speaker 1: chest just crazy. I think we did like heavy chin
Speaker 1: incline and uh peck deck and push ups. Those are
Speaker 1: probably the four exercises back to back to back to back.
Speaker 1: Then I rested for a minute or so when we
Speaker 1: did them again, and we did four sets of this.
Speaker 1: We've never done four exercise superset before. And I am
Speaker 1: just destroyed, like I'm like crawling to the next thing.
Speaker 1: And he's already over there, you know, all grinning, and
Speaker 1: I'm on the bench, knowe, with my head between my legs,
Speaker 1: you know that look when you've had enough. And he said, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do a Burbie, which if you don't know
Speaker 1: to burbie is looking up. We're gonna do a burbe
Speaker 1: and explode to a pulp four sets of eight and
Speaker 1: I can't even stand out of my chair. And I
Speaker 1: looked at him and said, you are you at f
Speaker 1: and mind? And he says he You're just gonna be
Speaker 1: uh whatever, your whole life. And I said, f you,
Speaker 1: and I got up. But I did four sets of
Speaker 1: eated at exercise like it was absolutely nothing, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I called him away to that day. I said, you
Speaker 1: know what, I've copped out my whole life. Thanks, I
Speaker 1: learned a lot today. And and two years ago I
Speaker 1: called him and said, you know, that was the proudest
Speaker 1: moment of life. That day I did that for exercise
Speaker 1: four sets of eight burpe exploded to pull up and
Speaker 1: I couldn't even stand. Did you say you were on
Speaker 1: outside the lines? Did you mentioned what were you on
Speaker 1: outside the lines for? Oh boy? They don't like me either.
Speaker 1: I gave them probably the best interview I've ever given anybody,
Speaker 1: three hours of of of stuff. Uh. They it was
Speaker 1: when the nc AT tournament was starting to get big.
Speaker 1: They wanted to compare an amateur to a pro, and
Speaker 1: Chad had the ready made pro because he had done
Speaker 1: the odds and had me. And despite what anyone thinks,
Speaker 1: there's not many of these around who do their own
Speaker 1: work and and you know, and and don't follow anyone
Speaker 1: at all. I want to just get this because you
Speaker 1: you say, this is, you know this is. You don't
Speaker 1: want to bet anymore, you don't want to do this anymore.
Speaker 1: Explain what the factors are that are going on in
Speaker 1: the market today. That leads you to that number one.
Speaker 1: I'm sixty two this year. Number number one, I'm six
Speaker 1: two year number two I planned on retiring years ago.
Speaker 1: Number three, The joy of living in a multimillion dollar
Speaker 1: home with your you know, high ceilings and big TV
Speaker 1: and berber rug and your great Dane lying around and
Speaker 1: the desk. That's exactly what you wanted it. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: something to be said for that. Uh. And and going
Speaker 1: to the gym every day, five days a week and
Speaker 1: just getting a living crap, beating Audia and loving every
Speaker 1: minute of it. Uh that that's that's fine. The beginning
Speaker 1: was fun because it was all fresh and new and
Speaker 1: I was trying to figure it out. The middle was
Speaker 1: good because I made a lot of money and I
Speaker 1: lived the life a lot lived the life of Riley.
Speaker 1: And my yearbook. My yearbook quote, by the way, it's
Speaker 1: from an old show called Maverick with James Garner, and
Speaker 1: he said, as my pappy used to say, and my quote,
Speaker 1: here's my quote, how presciate to buy with this quote,
Speaker 1: By the way, work is a good way to while
Speaker 1: away the time, but a bad way to make a living.
Speaker 1: That was my yearbook quote. So I always thrived to
Speaker 1: be independent. That was my dream in life. So and
Speaker 1: in that regard I succeeded. But the joy of winning
Speaker 1: money isn't enough anymore. And and trying to bet is
Speaker 1: just it's just a nightmare. You can't get down. It's
Speaker 1: just they look at you like you're like you have
Speaker 1: a gun in your hands. Uh if you try to
Speaker 1: make a bet. Uh. And and there are people who
Speaker 1: are now betting as soon as the line opens or
Speaker 1: before there is any before there was enough market. You
Speaker 1: have to be able to bet X number of dollars
Speaker 1: or in a living like what's your edge on a game?
Speaker 1: Two percent? So what are you earning on a thousand dollar?
Speaker 1: About twenty dollars? Maybe I don't know. I'm not a
Speaker 1: math guy, so that's a good guess. Yeah. So you know,
Speaker 1: so you're talking earning twenty dollars on a game and
Speaker 1: you bet a million dollars? What's that? What have you
Speaker 1: made that's not going to get through the year? You know?
Speaker 1: So are you talking about people who are not originators
Speaker 1: like yourself? They might be originators. They they certainly know
Speaker 1: what they're doing because they bet, they bet all the
Speaker 1: right sides, but they are betting before there is market,
Speaker 1: and they are influencing the line. And to start the
Speaker 1: day off, there's you know, five or six games that
Speaker 1: are no longer a bettable, and you know more more
Speaker 1: more of those are gonna win and lose, and and
Speaker 1: now you're you know, now you have to find other
Speaker 1: ways to win. And and luckily you know, like like
Speaker 1: I'm not, I'm not I'm not bragging when I'm saying
Speaker 1: I'm good at this, I am like I I have
Speaker 1: ideas that that I was told her just like so
Speaker 1: far ahead of the game. It's nuts. Like when I
Speaker 1: did that Jeffrey Maher podcast, those guys talked after like
Speaker 1: I was a genius and one of them went down
Speaker 1: my tea and when them went to Yale, like that's
Speaker 1: the first time I even consider myself to be smart
Speaker 1: when they talked about it. So obviously I have a
Speaker 1: knack for this that that's very very profound in a
Speaker 1: simple kind of way. I really do keep it very simple,
Speaker 1: but it's also very profound. When I'm thinking about my
Speaker 1: adjusting a team, Obviously a lot goes in my head
Speaker 1: that that I could never teach anybody, but I tried it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, well, no. And we've had you on the
Speaker 1: show and you've you've done a pretty good job of
Speaker 1: breaking that down. I find it interesting though that you
Speaker 1: needed others to tell you, others with a pedigree to
Speaker 1: tell you that you were genius like about this, but
Speaker 1: you never really acknowledge that. It's just it was just
Speaker 1: a way to make money, That's all it was. It
Speaker 1: was an escape from me. Remember if you remember the
Speaker 1: the original reason I became a gambler, it was to
Speaker 1: escape evil thoughts. It was to escape life. Really, I
Speaker 1: just uh so that that that was the purpose of it.
Speaker 1: It wasn't anything at all. I and and you know
Speaker 1: I what I do is very very simple. I never
Speaker 1: even thought about I just did it and and and
Speaker 1: and ultimately that is the highest level, right when you
Speaker 1: just react to something as highest level. And I always
Speaker 1: encourage people, you know, do spend money on a toute,
Speaker 1: because if I was a tout, they couldn't win. If
Speaker 1: I charged them, they couldn't win because you're already stuck
Speaker 1: the money of paying me. And now, if I'm any good,
Speaker 1: the line that I give them to bed Ad is
Speaker 1: gonna fly like hey, you know, I fly like uh crazy,
Speaker 1: So that you know, unless you can give it out
Speaker 1: where people can all do it at the same time.
Speaker 1: I'm sure the way to do it, but you can't
Speaker 1: win with it tout. You're better off just picking some
Speaker 1: sport or league or conference or anything that you feel
Speaker 1: like you have some knowledge at and just winging it.
Speaker 1: Just that lines to WHW, that lines too low or
Speaker 1: and that, and that's it. That's your simple thought. Don't
Speaker 1: overthink it at all. React to that line. That's how
Speaker 1: you should bet. If you're an amateur you happy today?
Speaker 1: Do you consider yourself happy guy? I've never been a
Speaker 1: happy guy, so still not. So it's still not no,
Speaker 1: not even close content though, because I know you and
Speaker 1: I when we talk off line, we talk about how
Speaker 1: you interview prospective candidates for the University of Pennsylvania. You
Speaker 1: enjoy that. I do enjoy that. Yeah, I enjoy that
Speaker 1: whole There's a show on called The h Do I
Speaker 1: think there's a reason for that. I obviously my teen
Speaker 1: years were not your typical teen years, and and that's
Speaker 1: not a typical, which, by the way, is the best
Speaker 1: show on Netflix. A typical is mandatory viewing. It's an incredible,
Speaker 1: incredible show, probably will be in my top five. Just yeah.
Speaker 1: In sex Education is the other one. They're both very
Speaker 1: high level, genius TV shows. But there was something about
Speaker 1: helping kids in their teen years two guide them a
Speaker 1: little bit. There's something about that that resonates with me,
Speaker 1: and I think because I was so lost in those
Speaker 1: years that it would have been nice to have me
Speaker 1: help me guide my way through it. Back then, I
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't end up a sports better I might have
Speaker 1: had a more normal existence. But you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm not complaining. I'm not complaining. Believe me, I do
Speaker 1: the good end of the stick. How many people get
Speaker 1: to build their own home and and and live on
Speaker 1: you know, in Queen's Ridge North and spend in summers
Speaker 1: in Maine. But at all, I man, I I did great.
Speaker 1: I'm not complaining. If if I don't, if I'm broke,
Speaker 1: the rest of my life I want. Well. This is
Speaker 1: why a conversation like this is so interesting, because it
Speaker 1: all makes sense. It all makes sense when you lay
Speaker 1: it out like you have. Hopefully it did a lot
Speaker 1: of it makes sense. And I hope listen. I know
Speaker 1: you say you're not gonna bet college basketball anymore. I
Speaker 1: take you at your word. If you change your mind.
Speaker 1: It's not fun. It's not fun. And I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's beatable. We wont this year,
Speaker 1: but it was just it's just I don't know. I'm
Speaker 1: working with different people and and you know, and and
Speaker 1: the reason I I I brought on the I I
Speaker 1: explained this last time. I brought in the kids from
Speaker 1: three Man. We've because I hope, like I said, I'm
Speaker 1: never going to be that guy who who's on there
Speaker 1: evaluating why plus seven is a good bet, even though
Speaker 1: there's no one more. There is no one in this
Speaker 1: world that's more intuitive as you. There's no one more qualified.
Speaker 1: I beat the game my whole life. You know, you
Speaker 1: can have people on here and they can say they
Speaker 1: did this and did that, or they bet this and
Speaker 1: they about that. But they're all most of them a
Speaker 1: full of it. Okay they are. You can't if once
Speaker 1: you devote your entire to betting college basketball, uh, you're
Speaker 1: not beating it. So all these people who claim they
Speaker 1: do this, this and this this, they wouldn't even have
Speaker 1: time to do this. Well, this is this is why
Speaker 1: I wanted to do this, Alan, because I gotta tell
Speaker 1: you something years from now, when I look back on
Speaker 1: this just how you were looking back on stuff. I
Speaker 1: will point honestly, this is this is a highlight for
Speaker 1: me because the privilege of being able to sit with
Speaker 1: you for a long period of time and really find
Speaker 1: out about what made the man, what made the better
Speaker 1: that you are. Uh, this is a complete privilege. And
Speaker 1: I speak on behalf of the listeners as well. I'm
Speaker 1: sure like doubt, but no, no, no, totally like this
Speaker 1: is you are not you are You're an original. You're
Speaker 1: an originator. You are somebody doesn't exist today. And I
Speaker 1: know and you correct me wrong. I know that when
Speaker 1: you see and now with legalization sports betting, media is
Speaker 1: a thing now and about of it, if not a hundred,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but a huge percentage of it must
Speaker 1: really know at you. I don't read it. I don't
Speaker 1: read it at all. But the three man we've kids
Speaker 1: do do know what they're talking about, and they do
Speaker 1: have an old school feel to their modern approach. They
Speaker 1: write in a very modern way with a reference ken
Speaker 1: palm and all these other things that I don't even
Speaker 1: know what they are. But when I explained to them
Speaker 1: why it might not be the right way to talk
Speaker 1: about it they understand. They don't just automatically refute me
Speaker 1: like you're an old dinosaur who don't know the hell
Speaker 1: you're talking about. That would not be accurate. I'm still
Speaker 1: smarter than than they are, so and I have evolved
Speaker 1: with the times I've eliminated. Like the way handicapped now
Speaker 1: is compared a way to handicapped back in the early
Speaker 1: days isn't even It's not even the same. It was
Speaker 1: all psychology back then. I talked to chat about how
Speaker 1: I got inside each team and tried to feel the
Speaker 1: ebb and floll of that team, knowing when they might
Speaker 1: play well, annoying when it might not. That's all gone
Speaker 1: by the wayside when it became a big money game,
Speaker 1: these teams playing, they all asked road games, you know,
Speaker 1: Like I really laid into Spiker for Drexel. I write
Speaker 1: for the Always a Dragon ball, and the last thing
Speaker 1: I wrote on there by the way, I'm very proud
Speaker 1: of I really, I really am proud of it. It's
Speaker 1: on Always a Dragon. I really I really liked what
Speaker 1: I wrote there. Uh, but Spiker played as can Winter
Speaker 1: for forty minutes, some lame duck game, Like yeah, there's
Speaker 1: no point like these guys trying to win these games
Speaker 1: instead of just playing possum. If I coached a one
Speaker 1: bid league, I might dump the whole year and get
Speaker 1: ready for conference tournament. I might play a completely different
Speaker 1: game during the year and then pull out all the
Speaker 1: tricks for the conference tournament. Because the idea is to
Speaker 1: get an n ci A tournament, and you're still not
Speaker 1: interested in betting in game. It's not your thing, because
Speaker 1: I think you'd be spectacular at it, given the fact
Speaker 1: that you love the EBB and flow of how a
Speaker 1: team ends up with the final score that they get to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's it's it's a different kind of
Speaker 1: it's a different kind of thinking. I could do it
Speaker 1: if I didn't have a bet on the front end,
Speaker 1: like I did have some good halftime bets on, like
Speaker 1: I was pretty sure St. Mary's was gonna win at
Speaker 1: the half. And it's interesting though that you're pretty sure
Speaker 1: Nother Kentucky was gonna be Wisconsin Green Bay by a hundred.
Speaker 1: Your pre flop bet might influence you, is what you're saying,
Speaker 1: or might I can't watching him objectively when I bet
Speaker 1: on it. Interesting, I cannot, and I know it the
Speaker 1: good news. I know it, and you know it. That's
Speaker 1: that is a good Yeah, No, it's it's it's number one,
Speaker 1: us have fun anymore. Number two, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: might not be able to earn a living any other way,
Speaker 1: so I might not have any other choice. But I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get poker a shot, even though it's kind of
Speaker 1: a dead thing. But I I've always been ahead of
Speaker 1: the game with that. By the way, to my ideas
Speaker 1: about poker have always been different. But the people that
Speaker 1: laughed at me now are now finding out that my
Speaker 1: ideas are what the computers are telling him to do.
Speaker 1: So once again, I I've for some reason, my brain
Speaker 1: just logically gets at it in a good way. I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's awesome. I I listen, whether you choose
Speaker 1: to do college basketball, whether it's all poker, either way,
Speaker 1: I hope you will be willing to come back on
Speaker 1: when you want to. You're always welcome to come back
Speaker 1: on the show. Well, thank You have to have some
Speaker 1: honesty on here, right, Yeah, what I want to have
Speaker 1: it as honest as humanly possible throughout Well, I don't so.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's one thing I can say is is
Speaker 1: is not one word of bullet that I've said on
Speaker 1: any show at any time. I know that I don't
Speaker 1: have to go back and think about what I said,
Speaker 1: because what I said as the truth. That's right. So
Speaker 1: I don't have to talk about some future but I
Speaker 1: made that actually didn't make, you know, etcetera, etcetera. Alan,
Speaker 1: thank you man, You're welcome. I appreciate it so much.
Speaker 1: Alan Boston kind enough to join us for an extended
Speaker 1: period of time. Um, and I I think I speak
Speaker 1: on behalf of everybody that helps us understand where you
Speaker 1: came from and and uh become the better. But oh
Speaker 1: they care, they care. Um, American icon in the betting world,
Speaker 1: Alan Boston right here exclusively on a numbers game at Bason,
Speaker 1: the Sports Betting Network