A great scam that died a quick death

[cyhugogreen]

I was living in Vegas and became friends with this sports gambler who would win one day and be borrowing and gambling with casino coupons the next. He was a very bright guy who, it seemed to me, never recovered from a brilliantand legal scam he put togehter that was outlawed out of existence.

The guy grew up in Miami and he really knew about the Dog tracks. If you check out the handle at these places you'll discover that like 80% of the money is bet on the exotics like exactas, trifectas, etc. That means it would take very little money to jack up the nearly infentesimal show pools and if the dog getting the action run out of the money the prices on the dogs in the money would be huge. Since beting at the Vegas hotels hadn't been incorporated into the pari mutual pool in those days whatever you bet in the sports book didn't affect the track payout. Now this guy really knew the dogs. He knew them well enough to have a friend at the dog tracks themselves put a chunk (all it took was a few hundred) on dogs that were sure to run out of the money and then he in Vegas would load up on odds on favorite dogs who were sure to run in the money. He showed me the newspaper clips where these dogs were winning races pay like 2.40 to win and 80.00 or 100.00 or amounts like that to SHOW. Since he was putting hundreds on these dogs in vegas, his bets didn't figure in the track odds which was how the sports books based their payoffs and he made close to a million bucks in three weeks before first the books placed a 20.00 limit on show payoffs and later just threw in with the pari mutual pool. He ended up losing all this dough back but for a moment he was King. This is a true story and one of the best gambling tales where a player out manuvered 'em legally and for lots of bucks.

[cyhugogreen]

So when you wise guys talk derisively about all the "squares" out there, remember this story about one of the greatest anti-squares and a blaze of glory most will never know.

[cyhugogreen]

I should have posted this in response the other day to greatest gambling wins or something like that Thread.

[cyhugogreen]

I'm very surprised, shocked actually, that no one has a comment on this. At least a tip of the hat to a guy who was clever enough and savy enough to have out manuvered the hotels for a brief spell with ingenuity and panache. Sure a lot more imaginative than the best you can come up with is "middling" which is boring, boring, boring, and bascially a waste of time. As Paul Newman tells Tom Cruise in The Color of Money, "It takes two things to be a great pool hustler. Balls and brains and you got too much of one and not enough of the other." Well this guy had plenty of both.

[guzzi]

cy wolf...thankz fur da read...watch out fur da sheep...rocka rolla...