LAS VEGAS — There is no university, no community college and no trade school that could have given Billy what he needed to move to the head of his class. There are no courses in Vigorish 101 or Wiseguy Money 203 or How to Catch a Middle 300. For all their credentials, the Harvards, Yales, Dukes and Stanfords couldn’t have provided a scintilla of the education he got in the only classroom where you can get it.
And as the May 2 megafight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao draws near, the bookmakers will keep an eye on Billy (who has agreed to tell his story as long as we don’t use his full name), because he could drop a pile of bills on the fight and drastically move the line. This is his story:
His first classroom was the race track. Monmouth Park in Oceanport, N.J. is considered one of the most beautiful race tracks in America. Billy was seven years old. His dad didn’t take them for the summer breeze off the ocean. He was there to bet the daily double.
“By the time I was 11,” Billy says, “I was taking the bus from Middleton to Long Branch by myself. I knew how to bet and I had a little money that I made cutting pizza slices at a joint in Keansburg ? best pizza on the Jersey shore and my first betting stake.
“So, now I’m 15 or 16 and I’m working a basketball stand on the Boardwalk. You, know like three shots win a prize kind of thing. Well, the rims weren’t regulation size so you really couldn’t but let me explain right here I was a hustler ? not a con man. I have lived by that difference. I would throw basketballs at little kids and if they caught them I tell their dad, ‘Listen, the kid has talent. Buy him three shots and win or lose, he gets a prize.’
“That was a hustle ? not a con because the kid got something and walked away happy. I was getting seven bucks an hour, but after a month the owner says to keep on doing what I’m doing and I will (and did) get one-third of the take. That summer, I made more than my dad did. Then I got a dart stand. I put up Gadhafi’s picture and said, ‘Put two on his nose and win two front row tickets to Bon Jovi.’ Nobody could do it, so I told the tickets for $1,000 each.”
“Now I’m 17,” he says, “and I’m playing head-to-head blackjack for money in my garage and betting favorites and the ”over” on points with bookies, which now know made me a square.”
While gambling down in Atlantic City, he met an older guy from Philly and they went into partnership, making sports bets in Philadelphia and pretty often even catch a ”middle” (scoring both ends of the bet).
Now he had earned his degree from the educational but unforgiving streets. It was time to get his degree from the very best. Billy packed his bags and headed to Las Vegas. For his purposes, Vegas, was the Wharton School Finance and Oxford University rolled into one. He had visited at age 24. Now he was 37, with a hard times street degree in his pocket and the voice of experience whispering in his ear, Billy from Jersey was ready to assault the Camelot of all sports betting.
The House calls them whales. They are the heavy bettors with a wiseguy knowledge of when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em. They are the ones the House watches the closest and fears the most. They can, given the chance to bet enough, move the betting line. He will not bet again because, he says, the expected flood of Mayweather money on fight weekend will move the line in the wrong direction for him.
”Information is the key to successful sports betting,” he says. “I’m tied in with some of the sharpest people in the business. But they don’t know money management. If they made the bets themselves, they’d fail because they’d bet with their emotions.”
Last week, he wanted to bet the over on total runs in a Padres game, listed on the board at the Coast Casino as 7?, The clerk behind the counter said, ”Sure. Just a minute,” and picked up the phone. When he put it down he said, ”You got a bet, but the number is now 8.”
Billy moved the line.
And now he is committed to real action in this fight that has all of Vegas guessing as it moves closer. Mayweather opened at better than 2-1 Billy made three bets while watching the line to see where it moved. First he got Mayweather at -180 (you bet $180 to win $100). Then he bet him at -170 and then bet a third time when the odds went back to -180.
In all, he bet five figures. He will not bet again, he says, because the expected flood of Mayweather money on fight weekend will move the line in the wrong direction for him.
“Betting for real,” he explains, “is not about emotions. It’s about value.”
One other thing he explained in terms of the fight’s impact on Las Vegas: “The casinos are up against it,” he says. “They are pressured by the feds to find out where their 50K bettors get their money from.
“That’s the big difference. Years ago, people came in with bags of money and bet it all. That’s over now. I’m told that 60 percent of the hotel’s income now comes from the room rates, the meals, the shows and the nightclub profits.”
It’s a different world.
But not for the whales.
