I finished the Konick book myself and was disappointed. It was an interesting read at times but as mentioned very repetitive. If the character Rick Mathews is supposed to be Walters, it is more credible. But why not refer to him by name? The author mentioned the "Poker Player" group by name and certainly Walters is well known. Anyway, I wouldn't bust my balls to go out and find a copy. I already mailed mine to a friend.
New book out on high-stakes sports betting
- Thread starter Terryray
- Start date
The Odds was a much more interesting read.
I don't think that Konik was "long winded", really, just that it was the same sentence over and over!
Really......how many times can you write:
I waited by the phone for Big Daddy's call. He gave me the day's plays, and I made them. The casino gave me some heat, because these were the same plays as the Brain Trust. At the end of the day we made money.
I guess I expected to find out a little bit more about the actual workings of their outfit.
Trying to figure out time lines and the players involved, etc, kept me interested, though. Like when he mentions the Brain Trust getting inside information on Brett Favre being out for a game before anyone else. Well, we all know Favre has never missed a start, so he was alluding to another super-star or sport.
Or when he talks about a certain bulletin board, "The Sports Cure" that we all are familiar with, and calls the guy "Doc".........I don't think it takes a "shrink" to figure out who he was talking about there.
I don't think that Konik was "long winded", really, just that it was the same sentence over and over!
Really......how many times can you write:
I waited by the phone for Big Daddy's call. He gave me the day's plays, and I made them. The casino gave me some heat, because these were the same plays as the Brain Trust. At the end of the day we made money.
I guess I expected to find out a little bit more about the actual workings of their outfit.
Trying to figure out time lines and the players involved, etc, kept me interested, though. Like when he mentions the Brain Trust getting inside information on Brett Favre being out for a game before anyone else. Well, we all know Favre has never missed a start, so he was alluding to another super-star or sport.
Or when he talks about a certain bulletin board, "The Sports Cure" that we all are familiar with, and calls the guy "Doc".........I don't think it takes a "shrink" to figure out who he was talking about there.
YYZ..............I guess I meant long winded as what you describe.........the same sentence, scenario over and over, just think he coulda've condensed some it.........also, Konik likes to pump himself up a bit in the book, which I can understand, but I laughed when he freaked about the car parked outside his house. BTW: I believe one of the Movie "Stars" he is talking about is Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevaz..............
Got a copy for Xmas....haven't started it yet, but I'm going to Tahoe for New Years and I expect to get snowed in.......should be a great time to read and :142hump:
Okay, I see what you meant now. As for the pumipng up? Do you think? I mean once the guy's chick left him, he cried for three chapters about how his life had no meaning without her, how food tasted bland, etc. He just kept dropping that in over and over. To me, it seemed like she was supposed to read that when she got her paws on a copy of this rag, and come running back to him!
:mj07:
Nice try, jackass........hope it worked. :142smilie
DITTOS GUYS! A topic and situation that had alot of potential to be a great read and this guy dropped the ball. Oh well, I have pissed away time doing worse things. NOTE: The public library can save you a few bucks. I didn't get it for Xmas. Nobody thinks I can read.
I was fascinated by the book and enjoyed it a great deal agreeing mostly with the following review by Michael Schwartz:
Michael Konik might have been best known for two previous books related to gambling--The man With the $100,000 Breasts and Telling Lies and Getting Paid. He could have been recognized more for the fact that he was the first to do a live TV commentary on poker. Some folks recognized him as a musical talent. But now that he has written an interesting memoir titled The Smart Money: How The World's Best Sports Bettors Beat the Bookies Out of Millions, he's sure to be known as the man who wrote about the kind of life that dreams are made of.
Wannabe world-famous sports bettors with visions of betting games, sleeping until noon, then riding massive adrenalin rushes will stagger with delight as Konik describes a roller coaster ride of action by a team of big plungers that wagered big and won bigger beginning at the latter part of the 1900s and ending in 2000.
Readers who are ?in the know? might get a little frustrated because they must guess who Konik is dealing with as a betting team partner or a sportsbook persona, because with few exceptions, he's changed the names of virtually everyone the betting group dealt with or placed bets with. My hunch is the publisher's lawyers got nervous and moved wary fingers side to side with some fears of lawsuits. However, the New York Times did get Las Vegan Billy Walters to admit he is one of the main characters (identified as ?Big Daddy? Rick Matthews) and took away some guess work. Perhaps the decision to change names had implications since the book was delayed about a year from its first announcement in Publishers Weekly magazine. Back then, the author was identified only as the mysterious number 44. Come to find out, that was a nickname from Konik's past.
Of course most of the people who are outside and now looking in probably wouldn't know the principle characters anyway so the name changing won't be that much of a bother to them.
Now Matthews (Walters) is clearly a power to deal with in Las Vegas. In another book titled Gambling Wizards, he let it all hang out in a question-answer format on how he has operated and what made him the success he is in virtually everything he's ventured into--;and that's too much to bring forth here.
?To the gambling cognoscenti, Rick Mathews is no rumor. He's credited as the emperor of an operation that inspires fear in bookies and jealousy in aspiring professional punters,? Konik says. ?He's the Michael Jordan of the wagering business, a man to whom the clich? 'living legend' may be applied without embarrassment. One man moves the Vegas line. One man influences the way millions of people bet on sports. One man is a celebrity in a milieu otherwise devoid of stars,?
Konik describes how he met the man and how he gained his trust, how he learned the rules (including being allowed to bet some of his money with the man's picks), and how the ?Brain Trust? (the group's nickname) functioned. Along the way he introduces guys like Eric ?Jox? Brijox, ?the man who creates the Las Vegas line?and former statistician with a major aerospace concern? who doesn't like Matthews and explains why. We're guessing that Brijox was a mover and shaker in Las Vegas Sports Consultants. But again, that kind of information matters only to those close to the story.
Konik begins surfing with big bucks on the highest waves he can find, wondering if he can get $30,000 (or more) down in sportsbooks. (If memory serves me correctly this must have been the last of the Golden Days of sports betting, when the biggest sportsbooks still allowed big wagers. For the most part, those days are gone, with offshore operations taking the bigger action.)
The book has some smart and appropriate comments about how the Las Vegas sportsbooks have actually chased the big action to the Caribbean and Central America, and it provides some fascinating insight about how the big boys bet (football and basketball)and why.
Konik has a fantastic memory and I'm sure he kept a remarkably detailed diary, as most good writers do, because the detail here is tightly woven and intricately laced together. I like the way he describes the action, but he frustrates me on who's who. He is visiting ?the boss man at Bally's? who he called Jay Muccio, and at the MGM Grand he's introduced by the host to ?Lenny Dip, the sportsbook manager.? Later there's mention of?John Trotter, the sports book manager at the Mirage? and ?Super Moe? from the Hilton. Repeating the line from the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid seems appropriate here: ?Who are those guys?? As I said, this is a personal frustration and it probably won't even cross the minds of readers who wouldn't necessarily recognize the real names anyway.
This book provides a rare glimpse inside a unique, sometimes strange world of new generation pleasure-seekers and it deserves to be read by today's players.
LINK to the review
Michael Konik might have been best known for two previous books related to gambling--The man With the $100,000 Breasts and Telling Lies and Getting Paid. He could have been recognized more for the fact that he was the first to do a live TV commentary on poker. Some folks recognized him as a musical talent. But now that he has written an interesting memoir titled The Smart Money: How The World's Best Sports Bettors Beat the Bookies Out of Millions, he's sure to be known as the man who wrote about the kind of life that dreams are made of.
Wannabe world-famous sports bettors with visions of betting games, sleeping until noon, then riding massive adrenalin rushes will stagger with delight as Konik describes a roller coaster ride of action by a team of big plungers that wagered big and won bigger beginning at the latter part of the 1900s and ending in 2000.
Readers who are ?in the know? might get a little frustrated because they must guess who Konik is dealing with as a betting team partner or a sportsbook persona, because with few exceptions, he's changed the names of virtually everyone the betting group dealt with or placed bets with. My hunch is the publisher's lawyers got nervous and moved wary fingers side to side with some fears of lawsuits. However, the New York Times did get Las Vegan Billy Walters to admit he is one of the main characters (identified as ?Big Daddy? Rick Matthews) and took away some guess work. Perhaps the decision to change names had implications since the book was delayed about a year from its first announcement in Publishers Weekly magazine. Back then, the author was identified only as the mysterious number 44. Come to find out, that was a nickname from Konik's past.
Of course most of the people who are outside and now looking in probably wouldn't know the principle characters anyway so the name changing won't be that much of a bother to them.
Now Matthews (Walters) is clearly a power to deal with in Las Vegas. In another book titled Gambling Wizards, he let it all hang out in a question-answer format on how he has operated and what made him the success he is in virtually everything he's ventured into--;and that's too much to bring forth here.
?To the gambling cognoscenti, Rick Mathews is no rumor. He's credited as the emperor of an operation that inspires fear in bookies and jealousy in aspiring professional punters,? Konik says. ?He's the Michael Jordan of the wagering business, a man to whom the clich? 'living legend' may be applied without embarrassment. One man moves the Vegas line. One man influences the way millions of people bet on sports. One man is a celebrity in a milieu otherwise devoid of stars,?
Konik describes how he met the man and how he gained his trust, how he learned the rules (including being allowed to bet some of his money with the man's picks), and how the ?Brain Trust? (the group's nickname) functioned. Along the way he introduces guys like Eric ?Jox? Brijox, ?the man who creates the Las Vegas line?and former statistician with a major aerospace concern? who doesn't like Matthews and explains why. We're guessing that Brijox was a mover and shaker in Las Vegas Sports Consultants. But again, that kind of information matters only to those close to the story.
Konik begins surfing with big bucks on the highest waves he can find, wondering if he can get $30,000 (or more) down in sportsbooks. (If memory serves me correctly this must have been the last of the Golden Days of sports betting, when the biggest sportsbooks still allowed big wagers. For the most part, those days are gone, with offshore operations taking the bigger action.)
The book has some smart and appropriate comments about how the Las Vegas sportsbooks have actually chased the big action to the Caribbean and Central America, and it provides some fascinating insight about how the big boys bet (football and basketball)and why.
Konik has a fantastic memory and I'm sure he kept a remarkably detailed diary, as most good writers do, because the detail here is tightly woven and intricately laced together. I like the way he describes the action, but he frustrates me on who's who. He is visiting ?the boss man at Bally's? who he called Jay Muccio, and at the MGM Grand he's introduced by the host to ?Lenny Dip, the sportsbook manager.? Later there's mention of?John Trotter, the sports book manager at the Mirage? and ?Super Moe? from the Hilton. Repeating the line from the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid seems appropriate here: ?Who are those guys?? As I said, this is a personal frustration and it probably won't even cross the minds of readers who wouldn't necessarily recognize the real names anyway.
This book provides a rare glimpse inside a unique, sometimes strange world of new generation pleasure-seekers and it deserves to be read by today's players.
LINK to the review
The following is an excerpt from Konick's book:
Rick "Big Daddy" Matthews and I are playing golf at the Sherwood Country Club, not far from his summer home near Santa Barbara, California. Founded by David Murdock, the gentleman who owns Dole and much of the island of Lanai, the club is a rarefied playground where some of the most privileged people in America dig up the sod. The clubhouse is the size of a respectable basketball arena, albeit one outfitted with leather furniture and a staff of full-time shoe-shiners. Tiger Woods has his annual postseason invitational here. This Sherwood isn't the kind of place where ordinary Robin Hoods might enjoy a game of golf. Initiation fees are reportedly more than $250,000, an impost that ensures that the first tee remains accessible to the celebrity membership, which allegedly includes Jack Nicholson, Kenny G., and Janet Jackson?although discretion prevents the club from commenting on such delicate matters.
Rick Matthews moves comfortably in these elite circles. A millionaire many times over, he's built a four-state empire of "casual gourmet" restaurants, where patrons pay premium prices for a fine dining experience uncomplicated by menus written in French. He has all the trappings of extraordinary financial success: a private jet, a fleet of luxury cars, and a stable of mansions (some of them with actual stables). Big Daddy gives generously to charities, to institutions of higher learning?which courteously rename academic buildings in his honor?and to politicians who are sympathetic to his concerns. The man is a vital member of society.
And he got where he is by taking a gamble.
Actually, thousands of them.
The restaurants, the mansions, the ear of the senator?the whole towering monument to the American dream is built on a foundation of bet making. Not wagering on the stock market or an obscure foreign currency, but the kind of gambling most citizens of the United States can vaguely understand from firsthand experience. Big Daddy Matthews made his fortune betting on sports.
The man has always had a penchant for games of chance. For taking a risk, even a foolish one. Before becoming the kingpin of American sports betting, he won and lost millions of dollars on roulette, blackjack, and other negative-expectation casino games. At one time Rick Matthews, son of a church deacon father and a schoolteacher mother, was one of the most valued customers in Las Vegas, a certified sucker with a drinking problem who was prone to blow $1 million or more per visit. The Golden Nugget, in downtown Las Vegas, kept a suite on permanent hold for Matthews and would dispatch the casino's airplane whenever Mr. Rick got the itch to do a little gambling. He had a profitable fast-food chain called the Fryer back home in the deep-South Arkansas-Mississippi-Alabama region, where customers unafraid of the ravages of bad cholesterol could get all manner of oil-drenched comestibles, including battered Snickers bars. Whenever the betting bug bit, Rick would siphon off money from his own company, leaving it on the brink of bankruptcy. Fortified with greasy cash, Rick Matthews would lose every penny of his quarterly earnings during his forays to Sin City. But as long as the lard kept bubbling he could count on a steady stream of money to donate. It wasn't that he didn't want to win?he tried every spurious betting system and useless angle he could find. Matthews just didn't know how to beat the house.
And then, after years of fruitless exploration, the lifelong action junkie finally discovered the key to the casino vaults. Rick Matthews figured out which football teams to bet on. The rumor going around Las Vegas was that Matthews had some sort of supercomputer tended to by a coterie of experts known as the Brains.
It wasn't precisely a license to print money. But when you win three and lose two over and over, day after day, season after season, your fortune starts to stack skyward, like a pyramid in the desert. Unlike many sick gamblers, whose compulsions prohibit them from holding on to their winnings, Rick Matthews conquered his alcoholism, invested wisely, avoided leaks (bad decisions that inexorably erode a gambler's bankroll), and continued to raise his bets while he was ahead. Which is a smart play when you're on a twenty-three-year winning streak.
His name isn't well known, but Rick's prowess at prognosticating football games is famous. Even the hacks at my golf club in Los Angeles, who participate in a weekly pool, know that there are supposedly a few guys who can beat the point spreads consistently. My golf buddies have never met any of these wizards and couldn't tell you what they look like. But the boys like to repeat the rumor that there's a genius in Las Vegas who's built his multimillion-dollar restaurant empire with capital earned from his sports betting exploits.
To the gambling cognoscenti, Rick Matthews is no rumor. He's credited as the emperor of an operation that inspires fear in bookies and jealousy in aspiring professional punters. He's the Michael Jordan of the wagering business, a man to whom the clich? "living legend" may be applied without embarrassment. One man moves the Vegas line. One man influences the way millions of people bet on sports. One man is a celebrity in a milieu otherwise devoid of stars.
Knowing I was eager to meet the legend for an interview I hoped to publish in a national magazine, a friend of a friend, another member of the secretive fraternity of professional gamblers, introduced me to Rick Matthews. Before I shook Rick's hand and proposed that he allow me to include his tale in a book I was researching, my friend warned me about Rick Matthews. "The guy is totally charming. A real sweetheart. But don't let the southern gentleman deal fool you. When it comes to getting the best of it, the guy's a stone-cold killer. You've heard of ice water in the veins? Rick Matthews has liquid nitrogen."
On the sixth tee, I watch Matthews hit a towering drive, an elegant parabola that rockets out to the right and slowly curls back to the left, coming to rest three hundred yards in the distance, bisecting the fairway. It's the kind of golf shot I hit regularly?in my fantasies. I'm envious of Rick's prowess, but not surprised. Before Big Daddy Matthews hit upon the secret to beating sports, he earned the bulk of his gambling winnings on the golf course. Rick, in fact, is one of the greatest golf hustlers of all time. Major champions like Lee Trevino and Fuzzy Zoeller have played with him, and they don't look forward to wagering against him again anytime soon. Rick's the rare bird who can shoot just about any score he needs to. When he was a bit younger, the talk around Sherwood Country Club was that Rick ought to take a crack at the Champions Tour when he turned fifty. But then everyone came to his senses and realized Big Daddy Matthews could earn a lot more money at golf staying at home playing against oil barons and telecom CEOs.
Now nearing sixty, Rick can still shoot in the seventies. And since there's almost no amount of money he won't play for, it's impossible to make him nervous. When you're dealing with a fellow who regularly wagers a million dollars on a football game, detecting a racing heartbeat during a friendly golf match is awfully difficult. So I've got no chance of winning today. Not a prayer.
Even against me, a nine-handicap with a piddling bankroll, the old hustler is loath to give away even the slightest edge. To make a fair match, I know I should be getting at least three shots a side. Rick insists on only giving me two?"and that's too generous!" he complains.
We're playing for twenty dollars.
I wonder: Does Big Daddy love to win? Or is he pathologically afraid of losing?
I've been eagerly anticipating my day on the greens with the legendary bettor. Since our introduction six months ago, we've spent several cordial and productive evenings together in Las Vegas. I've crafted excerpts from our chats into a story about sports betting, hoping to publish it in one of the slick periodicals during the heart of football season. It's a good article, even if some of the choicest anecdotes were delivered off the record. Big Daddy has a habit of starting a fascinating story and then stopping in mid-sentence, smiling sheepishly, and declaring, "Naw, I don't think we should talk about that." But I can tell he likes me. Although I'm not officially part of his world?I don't win and lose the average American's yearly salary in one feverish night of action?I'm fluent with the vocabulary of people who look at life as a series of risk-versus-reward decisions. Most regular folks outside the surreal subculture of professional gambling see the high-rolling inhabitants of this parallel universe, where a "dime" means $1,000, as maladjusted freaks who could use a healthy dose of psychological counseling. The regular folks may be right. But there's also something seductive and oddly respectable about men who are willing to back their convictions with a large portion of their net worth.
Ever since age five, when my great-grandma taught me how to play gin rummy, I've enjoyed card and board games: Scrabble, Stratego, Mastermind, Monopoly, hearts, poker?the excitement of an athletic contest and the intellectual challenge of problem solving have always appealed to me, a nerd with a competitive streak. But growing up with a healthy respect for money?my family never seemed to have quite enough of it?I viewed gambling with the cultivated skepticism of a striver inculcated in the twin virtues of Work and Study. Casino games fascinated me, since they were games after all. But losing hundreds of dollars at roulette and craps and slot machines, "recreational pursuits" that seemed as rigged as a carnival barker's ring toss, was anathema to my stolid constitution. Part of me wanted to be a big winner. I wanted to take the risk. I wanted to overcome the odds with my wits and my guile. But I didn't have the heart for it. Perhaps that's why I was attracted to the rare fellows who did.
When I meet Rick Matthews in the summer of 1997, I'm thirty-two, moderately successful by the standards of "normal" American life but an inconsequential piker compared with the people I profile in the world of professional gambling. As a freelance writer, I contribute articles to a wide array of magazines, including several men's publications that like to publish stories about wagering and Las Vegas, about big scores and big characters who heroically do what all of us working stiffs haven't the heart for, men and women who play by a set of rules different from the ones we good citizens assiduously follow on our road to the pension and retirement home. These journalist assignments require monthly jaunts to Nevada, which remind me how much I like games, winning at games, and also how blas? and predictable my middle-class life is, how devoid of risk and its fraternal twin, reward. My biggest gamble involves appearing on a televised game show (and losing). My average blackjack bet is ten dollars. The poker tables I sit at produce wins and losses in the hundreds, not hundreds of thousands. I'm tickled when a casino pit boss offers me a comp dinner at the coffee shop (drinks not included). I pay the mortgage, I save for the future, I buy clothes and cars and concert tickets?and it all amounts to a rather ordinary variation on the theme of American triumph: You work hard, you endure the countless indignities of the unprivileged plebian, and then you go quietly.
The excitement in my life revolves around Vivian, my girlfriend of a year, a woman who is decidedly, willfully not average, not the usual middle-class gal obsessed with marriage and children. Vivian is what moralists would call a "bad girl," a libertine who refuses to subscribe to the code of feminine conduct prescribed by church and state. She's a pagan, a voracious reader of philosophy and science, and an omnisexual hedonist. To Vivian, Las Vegas is an adult playground, where every day is Mardi Gras and even the nicest people can be corrupted by temptations of the flesh. In Los Angeles, where we live together, Viv is an executive at a hotel company, a competent and presentable corporate achiever in a proper pantsuit. But when I've got a story assignment in the desert she likes to let down her hair (literally) and sate her carnal appetites. We gamble and flirt and go to underground adult sex clubs to play, and I feel at those fantastic, extravagant moments that I'm not just another anonymous young man hoping to find his way in the world. I'm doing something extraordinary.
Rick "Big Daddy" Matthews and I are playing golf at the Sherwood Country Club, not far from his summer home near Santa Barbara, California. Founded by David Murdock, the gentleman who owns Dole and much of the island of Lanai, the club is a rarefied playground where some of the most privileged people in America dig up the sod. The clubhouse is the size of a respectable basketball arena, albeit one outfitted with leather furniture and a staff of full-time shoe-shiners. Tiger Woods has his annual postseason invitational here. This Sherwood isn't the kind of place where ordinary Robin Hoods might enjoy a game of golf. Initiation fees are reportedly more than $250,000, an impost that ensures that the first tee remains accessible to the celebrity membership, which allegedly includes Jack Nicholson, Kenny G., and Janet Jackson?although discretion prevents the club from commenting on such delicate matters.
Rick Matthews moves comfortably in these elite circles. A millionaire many times over, he's built a four-state empire of "casual gourmet" restaurants, where patrons pay premium prices for a fine dining experience uncomplicated by menus written in French. He has all the trappings of extraordinary financial success: a private jet, a fleet of luxury cars, and a stable of mansions (some of them with actual stables). Big Daddy gives generously to charities, to institutions of higher learning?which courteously rename academic buildings in his honor?and to politicians who are sympathetic to his concerns. The man is a vital member of society.
And he got where he is by taking a gamble.
Actually, thousands of them.
The restaurants, the mansions, the ear of the senator?the whole towering monument to the American dream is built on a foundation of bet making. Not wagering on the stock market or an obscure foreign currency, but the kind of gambling most citizens of the United States can vaguely understand from firsthand experience. Big Daddy Matthews made his fortune betting on sports.
The man has always had a penchant for games of chance. For taking a risk, even a foolish one. Before becoming the kingpin of American sports betting, he won and lost millions of dollars on roulette, blackjack, and other negative-expectation casino games. At one time Rick Matthews, son of a church deacon father and a schoolteacher mother, was one of the most valued customers in Las Vegas, a certified sucker with a drinking problem who was prone to blow $1 million or more per visit. The Golden Nugget, in downtown Las Vegas, kept a suite on permanent hold for Matthews and would dispatch the casino's airplane whenever Mr. Rick got the itch to do a little gambling. He had a profitable fast-food chain called the Fryer back home in the deep-South Arkansas-Mississippi-Alabama region, where customers unafraid of the ravages of bad cholesterol could get all manner of oil-drenched comestibles, including battered Snickers bars. Whenever the betting bug bit, Rick would siphon off money from his own company, leaving it on the brink of bankruptcy. Fortified with greasy cash, Rick Matthews would lose every penny of his quarterly earnings during his forays to Sin City. But as long as the lard kept bubbling he could count on a steady stream of money to donate. It wasn't that he didn't want to win?he tried every spurious betting system and useless angle he could find. Matthews just didn't know how to beat the house.
And then, after years of fruitless exploration, the lifelong action junkie finally discovered the key to the casino vaults. Rick Matthews figured out which football teams to bet on. The rumor going around Las Vegas was that Matthews had some sort of supercomputer tended to by a coterie of experts known as the Brains.
It wasn't precisely a license to print money. But when you win three and lose two over and over, day after day, season after season, your fortune starts to stack skyward, like a pyramid in the desert. Unlike many sick gamblers, whose compulsions prohibit them from holding on to their winnings, Rick Matthews conquered his alcoholism, invested wisely, avoided leaks (bad decisions that inexorably erode a gambler's bankroll), and continued to raise his bets while he was ahead. Which is a smart play when you're on a twenty-three-year winning streak.
His name isn't well known, but Rick's prowess at prognosticating football games is famous. Even the hacks at my golf club in Los Angeles, who participate in a weekly pool, know that there are supposedly a few guys who can beat the point spreads consistently. My golf buddies have never met any of these wizards and couldn't tell you what they look like. But the boys like to repeat the rumor that there's a genius in Las Vegas who's built his multimillion-dollar restaurant empire with capital earned from his sports betting exploits.
To the gambling cognoscenti, Rick Matthews is no rumor. He's credited as the emperor of an operation that inspires fear in bookies and jealousy in aspiring professional punters. He's the Michael Jordan of the wagering business, a man to whom the clich? "living legend" may be applied without embarrassment. One man moves the Vegas line. One man influences the way millions of people bet on sports. One man is a celebrity in a milieu otherwise devoid of stars.
Knowing I was eager to meet the legend for an interview I hoped to publish in a national magazine, a friend of a friend, another member of the secretive fraternity of professional gamblers, introduced me to Rick Matthews. Before I shook Rick's hand and proposed that he allow me to include his tale in a book I was researching, my friend warned me about Rick Matthews. "The guy is totally charming. A real sweetheart. But don't let the southern gentleman deal fool you. When it comes to getting the best of it, the guy's a stone-cold killer. You've heard of ice water in the veins? Rick Matthews has liquid nitrogen."
On the sixth tee, I watch Matthews hit a towering drive, an elegant parabola that rockets out to the right and slowly curls back to the left, coming to rest three hundred yards in the distance, bisecting the fairway. It's the kind of golf shot I hit regularly?in my fantasies. I'm envious of Rick's prowess, but not surprised. Before Big Daddy Matthews hit upon the secret to beating sports, he earned the bulk of his gambling winnings on the golf course. Rick, in fact, is one of the greatest golf hustlers of all time. Major champions like Lee Trevino and Fuzzy Zoeller have played with him, and they don't look forward to wagering against him again anytime soon. Rick's the rare bird who can shoot just about any score he needs to. When he was a bit younger, the talk around Sherwood Country Club was that Rick ought to take a crack at the Champions Tour when he turned fifty. But then everyone came to his senses and realized Big Daddy Matthews could earn a lot more money at golf staying at home playing against oil barons and telecom CEOs.
Now nearing sixty, Rick can still shoot in the seventies. And since there's almost no amount of money he won't play for, it's impossible to make him nervous. When you're dealing with a fellow who regularly wagers a million dollars on a football game, detecting a racing heartbeat during a friendly golf match is awfully difficult. So I've got no chance of winning today. Not a prayer.
Even against me, a nine-handicap with a piddling bankroll, the old hustler is loath to give away even the slightest edge. To make a fair match, I know I should be getting at least three shots a side. Rick insists on only giving me two?"and that's too generous!" he complains.
We're playing for twenty dollars.
I wonder: Does Big Daddy love to win? Or is he pathologically afraid of losing?
I've been eagerly anticipating my day on the greens with the legendary bettor. Since our introduction six months ago, we've spent several cordial and productive evenings together in Las Vegas. I've crafted excerpts from our chats into a story about sports betting, hoping to publish it in one of the slick periodicals during the heart of football season. It's a good article, even if some of the choicest anecdotes were delivered off the record. Big Daddy has a habit of starting a fascinating story and then stopping in mid-sentence, smiling sheepishly, and declaring, "Naw, I don't think we should talk about that." But I can tell he likes me. Although I'm not officially part of his world?I don't win and lose the average American's yearly salary in one feverish night of action?I'm fluent with the vocabulary of people who look at life as a series of risk-versus-reward decisions. Most regular folks outside the surreal subculture of professional gambling see the high-rolling inhabitants of this parallel universe, where a "dime" means $1,000, as maladjusted freaks who could use a healthy dose of psychological counseling. The regular folks may be right. But there's also something seductive and oddly respectable about men who are willing to back their convictions with a large portion of their net worth.
Ever since age five, when my great-grandma taught me how to play gin rummy, I've enjoyed card and board games: Scrabble, Stratego, Mastermind, Monopoly, hearts, poker?the excitement of an athletic contest and the intellectual challenge of problem solving have always appealed to me, a nerd with a competitive streak. But growing up with a healthy respect for money?my family never seemed to have quite enough of it?I viewed gambling with the cultivated skepticism of a striver inculcated in the twin virtues of Work and Study. Casino games fascinated me, since they were games after all. But losing hundreds of dollars at roulette and craps and slot machines, "recreational pursuits" that seemed as rigged as a carnival barker's ring toss, was anathema to my stolid constitution. Part of me wanted to be a big winner. I wanted to take the risk. I wanted to overcome the odds with my wits and my guile. But I didn't have the heart for it. Perhaps that's why I was attracted to the rare fellows who did.
When I meet Rick Matthews in the summer of 1997, I'm thirty-two, moderately successful by the standards of "normal" American life but an inconsequential piker compared with the people I profile in the world of professional gambling. As a freelance writer, I contribute articles to a wide array of magazines, including several men's publications that like to publish stories about wagering and Las Vegas, about big scores and big characters who heroically do what all of us working stiffs haven't the heart for, men and women who play by a set of rules different from the ones we good citizens assiduously follow on our road to the pension and retirement home. These journalist assignments require monthly jaunts to Nevada, which remind me how much I like games, winning at games, and also how blas? and predictable my middle-class life is, how devoid of risk and its fraternal twin, reward. My biggest gamble involves appearing on a televised game show (and losing). My average blackjack bet is ten dollars. The poker tables I sit at produce wins and losses in the hundreds, not hundreds of thousands. I'm tickled when a casino pit boss offers me a comp dinner at the coffee shop (drinks not included). I pay the mortgage, I save for the future, I buy clothes and cars and concert tickets?and it all amounts to a rather ordinary variation on the theme of American triumph: You work hard, you endure the countless indignities of the unprivileged plebian, and then you go quietly.
The excitement in my life revolves around Vivian, my girlfriend of a year, a woman who is decidedly, willfully not average, not the usual middle-class gal obsessed with marriage and children. Vivian is what moralists would call a "bad girl," a libertine who refuses to subscribe to the code of feminine conduct prescribed by church and state. She's a pagan, a voracious reader of philosophy and science, and an omnisexual hedonist. To Vivian, Las Vegas is an adult playground, where every day is Mardi Gras and even the nicest people can be corrupted by temptations of the flesh. In Los Angeles, where we live together, Viv is an executive at a hotel company, a competent and presentable corporate achiever in a proper pantsuit. But when I've got a story assignment in the desert she likes to let down her hair (literally) and sate her carnal appetites. We gamble and flirt and go to underground adult sex clubs to play, and I feel at those fantastic, extravagant moments that I'm not just another anonymous young man hoping to find his way in the world. I'm doing something extraordinary.
I'm really intrigued now by the responses since my last post:scared Two of MY respected MJackers' love it and the rest(not that they are not:142smilie ) are wondering why they wasted their time:SIB .............
I will have to read it I suppose, but the other book, "The Odds" sounds like a first choice, HONEY!?!#&$#&$,call Amazon:com:
Thanks for the replies
Franky
I will have to read it I suppose, but the other book, "The Odds" sounds like a first choice, HONEY!?!#&$#&$,call Amazon:com:
Thanks for the replies
Franky
Check out You Can Bet On It by Larry Grossman. Lots of information from several inside sources. Some of the info is fairly hokey but much of it is valuable.
As far as Konick's book, I can only imaine that those who found it boring and repetetive were expecting some kind of secret formula for successful sports beting. The book tells a story of one man's involment in the world of high stakes sports betting which is seldom exciting and certainly the book offers no recipe for getting rich.
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I'm really intrigued now by the responses since my last post:scared Two of MY respected MJackers' love it and the rest(not that they are not:142smilie ) are wondering why they wasted their time:SIB .............
I will have to read it I suppose, but the other book, "The Odds" sounds like a first choice, HONEY!?!#&$#&$,call Amazon:com:
Thanks for the replies
Franky
The Odds may seem a little dated now (the Stardust is gone and the offshores have been the leaders in setting the line for a while now), but it remains a fascinating read. I highly recommend it.
Not necessarily.
I wasn't expecting to learn how to mint money, but I thought it would be more than a repeat of the same boring assed day over and over!
The Odds was pretty captivating, IMO. Maybe Koniks not the author he thinks he is? :shrug:
...............................................
had to fix up the spelling some, but hammer on the head on that one.
I wouldn't call it boring, nor did I pick it up to make a million. That is a bit presumptuous :shrug: I would recommend it to any sportsgambler, as it is interesting, but I came away with more questions than I had expected. IMO, the book has a hard time hitting its mark with true emotion, as it really isn't Koniks money on the line........true, he trys to emulate Walters by his "Hollywood" Boys and his attempt to develop his own computer system..........but I never felt the true emotions a sports gambler feels.............I feel like Konik never really knew Walters..........and while the whole book seems to be pointing us to this "magic computer" that was infamous..............We never did hear anything of substance, just postulating by Konik. He is living off of Walters notoriety, while trying to make himself come off "the bigshot"........
"The Odds" was written in 2001 and looks at the industry from several different perspectives. It is not only a historical piece, but document players and bookmakers that the reader "who gambles" can much more closely relate to. In addition, the writer has no problem naming names, dates, specific games/pointspreads, etc. A look into a wiseguys life can be a bit sobering.............
Excerpt:
One is a guy named Alan (Bettor/Wiseguy)........Excerpt: "The one game that crushed his spirit was on Jan 22, when St. John's played Ohio State in New York. The game opened at St. John's minus 4 and Alan ran all over town the night before laying the points. The next morning, the game was still St. John's -4, so Billy and Alan decided to take advantage. As if in passing, one of them says to the other, "I think we should take a shot at St. John's. Things are going well there." A torrent of bets follows.
Five Dimes
Three Dimes
Ten Dimes at St. John's -3.5
The game moves down to St. John's -3 and Allan bets Five Dimes more. Then another Three Dimes.
Then Two Dimes
Then Five Dimes
They're gorging themselves on bets, intoxicated by the potential. Like a couple laying down an illicit affair, they don't think about the damage they'll do, just about how good it feels right now. No matter what it costs.
Alan's eyes widen as he sees on the screen the game goes back to -3.5. Some schmuck is betting Ohio State. Big. Alan starts betting again, trying to reel the line in with more and more cash.
Five Dimes at -3.5
Three Dimes at 3.5
"My God," he says. "This is crazy"
Then its over, and Alan and Billy settle in as though they just braved a wicked storm. They're too scared to survey the damage. There's no doubt it's their biggest bet of the year but even they won't tally up the total. "It had been a tough week and we weren't going to bet a lot today," says Alan. "But we went overboard on the St. John's game. My theory was this: Ohio State beat St. John's in the tourney last year. Then they beat Michigan State earlier in the week. They should be out of gas and thinking about the Big Ten season right now, not some team they've already proven they can beat. They're out of gas, that's it. But, what the f_ck, overbetting is part of the fun of it."
Alan has the television on mute and a Sammy Davis, Jr., greatest hits CD in the stereo. Mr. Bojangles is playing softly, battling the wind clock for sound supremacy in the house. It's nearing 3:15 in the afternoon, about the time the St. John's game should be ending. Up until now, Alan hasn't checked the score since breakfast at Jamms with Artie. At the time it was 17-9 Ohio State. "I'm glad they're running out of gas," Alan muttered sarcastically between bites of his egg whites.
When he turns on the game, St. John's senior Bootsie Thornton hits a three-pointer to put the Red Storm up by 10 with 2:49 seconds left. Essentially, that's a six-point lead for Alan and Billy. For a top-twenty team playing at home with an All-American point guard-which St. John's has-there's no reason to think they can't control the tempo and the ball down the stretch. Unless of course you've "bet your balls like we did," Alan says. As if on cue, St. John's starts crumbling like three-day-old cake. A lay-up by Ohio State cuts the lead to nine. No biggie, if St. John's can bring the ball up, take some time off the clock and--"Motherf__cker!" Billy screams into the phone as Erick Barkley, the St. John's All-American point guard, turns the ball over and Ohio State converts another lay-up. Suddenly the lead in the game is seven, the lead on the spread is three. The biggest bet of the season is on verge of becoming the biggest loss of the season.
"Christ all _______ing mighty J_sus fing Christ," Billy yells. "It's the miracle of all fing miracles." St. John's does not score for the 2:49 seconds of the game, blowing a ten point lead at home. Yet, the players taciturn looks walking off the court pale when compared to the sickly look in Alan's eyes. Normally he'd be defiant after losing a game like this, but now he just looks defeated. If he can't win this game, what can he win? What is he doing? This isn't just a financial crisis. This is something existential. It's not about a game, but the game.
"I should not be doing this for a living," Alan says, gently dropping his ticket on the desk and turning off Sammy. "This is a waste of life, it really is. I f_cking hate myself for what I've done." His head in his hands as he tally's up the figures for all the other games he's bet so far today. Up until the St. John's game they were 5-5 on the day, with a little more lost than won. "$13,000 lost on UIC," he says, while humming "Mr. Bojangles." "Oh yeah, another loss, This is a very bad day." By day's end, they will have won ten bets, lost fourteen, and pushed on three. On a day when there are seventy-nine games on the board, betting only twenty-seven of them is an indication that their confidence and bankroll is dwindling. As Alan tallies up the wins and losses in his Don Best rotation book, he flips a page and finds two more betting tickets for St. John's that he had completely forgotten about. Bets made the Friday before the game when optimism was high.
"Six more dimes on St. John's -4," he says, laughing. "What good customers we are."
Well worth the time and money (I believe you can order it used for $2.50 from Amazon
Stwoody
"The Odds" was written in 2001 and looks at the industry from several different perspectives. It is not only a historical piece, but document players and bookmakers that the reader "who gambles" can much more closely relate to. In addition, the writer has no problem naming names, dates, specific games/pointspreads, etc. A look into a wiseguys life can be a bit sobering.............
Excerpt:
One is a guy named Alan (Bettor/Wiseguy)........Excerpt: "The one game that crushed his spirit was on Jan 22, when St. John's played Ohio State in New York. The game opened at St. John's minus 4 and Alan ran all over town the night before laying the points. The next morning, the game was still St. John's -4, so Billy and Alan decided to take advantage. As if in passing, one of them says to the other, "I think we should take a shot at St. John's. Things are going well there." A torrent of bets follows.
Five Dimes
Three Dimes
Ten Dimes at St. John's -3.5
The game moves down to St. John's -3 and Allan bets Five Dimes more. Then another Three Dimes.
Then Two Dimes
Then Five Dimes
They're gorging themselves on bets, intoxicated by the potential. Like a couple laying down an illicit affair, they don't think about the damage they'll do, just about how good it feels right now. No matter what it costs.
Alan's eyes widen as he sees on the screen the game goes back to -3.5. Some schmuck is betting Ohio State. Big. Alan starts betting again, trying to reel the line in with more and more cash.
Five Dimes at -3.5
Three Dimes at 3.5
"My God," he says. "This is crazy"
Then its over, and Alan and Billy settle in as though they just braved a wicked storm. They're too scared to survey the damage. There's no doubt it's their biggest bet of the year but even they won't tally up the total. "It had been a tough week and we weren't going to bet a lot today," says Alan. "But we went overboard on the St. John's game. My theory was this: Ohio State beat St. John's in the tourney last year. Then they beat Michigan State earlier in the week. They should be out of gas and thinking about the Big Ten season right now, not some team they've already proven they can beat. They're out of gas, that's it. But, what the f_ck, overbetting is part of the fun of it."
Alan has the television on mute and a Sammy Davis, Jr., greatest hits CD in the stereo. Mr. Bojangles is playing softly, battling the wind clock for sound supremacy in the house. It's nearing 3:15 in the afternoon, about the time the St. John's game should be ending. Up until now, Alan hasn't checked the score since breakfast at Jamms with Artie. At the time it was 17-9 Ohio State. "I'm glad they're running out of gas," Alan muttered sarcastically between bites of his egg whites.
When he turns on the game, St. John's senior Bootsie Thornton hits a three-pointer to put the Red Storm up by 10 with 2:49 seconds left. Essentially, that's a six-point lead for Alan and Billy. For a top-twenty team playing at home with an All-American point guard-which St. John's has-there's no reason to think they can't control the tempo and the ball down the stretch. Unless of course you've "bet your balls like we did," Alan says. As if on cue, St. John's starts crumbling like three-day-old cake. A lay-up by Ohio State cuts the lead to nine. No biggie, if St. John's can bring the ball up, take some time off the clock and--"Motherf__cker!" Billy screams into the phone as Erick Barkley, the St. John's All-American point guard, turns the ball over and Ohio State converts another lay-up. Suddenly the lead in the game is seven, the lead on the spread is three. The biggest bet of the season is on verge of becoming the biggest loss of the season.
"Christ all _______ing mighty J_sus fing Christ," Billy yells. "It's the miracle of all fing miracles." St. John's does not score for the 2:49 seconds of the game, blowing a ten point lead at home. Yet, the players taciturn looks walking off the court pale when compared to the sickly look in Alan's eyes. Normally he'd be defiant after losing a game like this, but now he just looks defeated. If he can't win this game, what can he win? What is he doing? This isn't just a financial crisis. This is something existential. It's not about a game, but the game.
"I should not be doing this for a living," Alan says, gently dropping his ticket on the desk and turning off Sammy. "This is a waste of life, it really is. I f_cking hate myself for what I've done." His head in his hands as he tally's up the figures for all the other games he's bet so far today. Up until the St. John's game they were 5-5 on the day, with a little more lost than won. "$13,000 lost on UIC," he says, while humming "Mr. Bojangles." "Oh yeah, another loss, This is a very bad day." By day's end, they will have won ten bets, lost fourteen, and pushed on three. On a day when there are seventy-nine games on the board, betting only twenty-seven of them is an indication that their confidence and bankroll is dwindling. As Alan tallies up the wins and losses in his Don Best rotation book, he flips a page and finds two more betting tickets for St. John's that he had completely forgotten about. Bets made the Friday before the game when optimism was high.
"Six more dimes on St. John's -4," he says, laughing. "What good customers we are."
Well worth the time and money (I believe you can order it used for $2.50 from Amazon
Stwoody
Almost finished with it, so I can't coment on it just yet. But I can understand where some of the guys on the board find it very repitive, but I can say for sure that I like the book.
Anyway I just wanted to ask what woman did you guys have in your mind Viv(koniks bisexual stripper girlfriend) looks like. Everytime he mentions here I tend to pay closer attention lol.
Here is a pic of how I kinda picture her in my head
Monica Belluci(sp?)
Anyway I would like to see some pics of how you imagined her.
Anyway I just wanted to ask what woman did you guys have in your mind Viv(koniks bisexual stripper girlfriend) looks like. Everytime he mentions here I tend to pay closer attention lol.
Here is a pic of how I kinda picture her in my head
Monica Belluci(sp?)
Anyway I would like to see some pics of how you imagined her.
Almost finished with it, so I can't coment on it just yet. But I can understand where some of the guys on the board find it very repitive, but I can say for sure that I like the book.
Anyway I just wanted to ask what woman did you guys have in your mind Viv(koniks bisexual stripper girlfriend) looks like. Everytime he mentions here I tend to pay closer attention lol.
Here is a pic of how I kinda picture her in my head
Monica Belluci(sp?)
Anyway I would like to see some pics of how you imagined her.
that's pretty much exactly how I picture her :142smilie
I think you did not read this yet "The Smart Money: How the World's Best Sports Bettors Beat the Bookies Out of Millions" This book is also one of his best books according to me on gambling. You should read this
