Gaming the Game

by Sean Patrick Griffin

  “Because I used runners, most casinos didn’t know who I was or what I looked like. Certain casinos knew me because I had clout with them, and they’d comp me and my family with rooms, and tickets to shows and stuff. Down in Atlantic City, I’d usually stay at the Trop or at Caesar’s, and they took care of me. I played some blackjack, too, but not much. They knew who I was and that I was a good customer, but still, most places wouldn’t let me place big bets so I’d let suckers go in and place bets for me. Why would I go in there, have them say, ‘The Sheep is here,’ and be limited to a three thousand dollar bet when I could send someone in who looks like Elmer Fudd and they’re gonna give him twenty thousand a game? The less seen, the better. Paying someone a hundred bucks to get ten grand more on a game was simple math and good business. Besides, if I was placing bets myself I couldn’t be in front of a computer orchestrating other bets.

  “There were times I saw things I wanted to bet on my own, but that was rare. I was content with what I was doing. I enjoyed the rush of getting the best numbers, not necessarily of gambling. I didn’t get into the sports betting business because I liked gambling. It was just a great opportunity for me since I never finished college. I was always a worker and I didn’t care if I had to work fourteen or sixteen hours a day. I also had decent social skills that would help me get to the next step, from clerk to runner to mover. By the time I was working with the sharpest guys in the business, I was taking inside information and saturating the market to move the numbers the wrong way. Millions of squares would follow what I bet, and when it was all over I was on the opposite side.

  “I didn’t make numbers like the guys I worked with, and for, did. I couldn’t come close to what they did if I tried. I’d lose every penny I had, these guys were that good. But, I did have good enough common sense that if I saw someone winning sixty-two percent, I was gonna get as close to them as possible. Did I consider myself a ‘professional gambler? Yes, I did. I claimed it for a living. Why fuck with Uncle Sam? I paid taxes. I stated I was a professional gambler for the better part of twenty years. But, compared to The Chinaman, Zorba, The Computer, and The Englishman, I didn’t even go into the same closet to get changed as they did. Of course, if you sit with them as long as I did, I got a great education. I went to the Harvard or the Penn of the sports gambling world. Th at’s how you got sharper.”

  Footnote

  According to wisegeek.com, “sim” stands for subscriber identity module, and “is a portable memory chip used in some models of cellular telephones. The SIM card makes it easy to switch to a new phone by simply sliding the SIM out of the old phone and into the new one. The SIM holds personal identity information, cell phone number, phone book, text messages and other data. It can be thought of as a mini hard disk that automatically activates the phone into which it is inserted.”

  The Sharps

  THE BIG THREE (PLUS ONE)

  ACCORDING TO PRO gamblers, the triumvirate of The Chinaman, Zorba the Greek, and The Computer sat atop the sports betting mountain. In fact, in a business which considers a demonstrated success rate of fifty-four to fifty-six percent impressive, Jimmy Battista estimates this heavy-hitting three-some won between sixty-two and sixty-four percent of their wagers. The Sheep also moved games (bets) for The Englishman, who was widely considered the world’s most consequential soccer bettor. Battista found each man impressive in distinguishable ways, and reflects with pride on his business relationships with them.

  THE CHINAMAN

  The Chinaman, who was actually Vietnamese, was the bettor with whom Battista worked the most beginning in 2003. A medical doctor and world-class poker player, the pro gambler was known throughout the world for his NBA and MLB wagering prowess. According to Battista, about the only thing his primary client couldn’t bet was college sports, because there was such a difference between handicapping pro and college athletes.

  “The Chinaman started betting when he was in med school as a way of paying his tuition,” Battista says. “He made so much money that even after he started his doctor practice, he decided to just stay with gambling full-time. Besides being mathematically smarter than the other guys, he was driven. His knack for watching and evaluating talent in a game was unmatched. Game-by-game sports, he was the best handicap-per in the world. He watched so much sports it was unbelievable, and had day-to-day analysis like I had never seen. He was so confident about his analysis and his bets that he wouldn’t even worry about what the other bettors were doing. He knew what the number should be, and wasn’t influenced by the line moves and stuff like that. He was meticulous and would work around the clock like me. Whereas The Computer had around sixteen handicappers working for him, The Chinaman was by himself. He was married, but never had time for his wife.

  “The Chinaman was the best in baseball. Period. They used to talk about the Kosher Kids, the Jewish guys from New York who started back in the 1970s and 1980s. He would have ripped them a new asshole. The Koshers only worked for six or seven weeks, and then took their money and ran, whereas The Chinaman got better after the All-Star break. He got sharper and stronger. Baseball and basketball were his best two sports. When baseball ended in October, he bet pro football and even there he was no slouch. In my twenty-five years of gambling, I saw a lot of people who could analyze a game, watch it, and then bet quarters and halves. After The Chinaman watched a first half of a football game, he was the best second-half football gambler I’ve ever seen. They’d put up a number at halftime and he would just destroy it. He wasn’t chasing the money, he was following the game. Whether it was him watching the line of scrimmage or whatever, he was unreal at gauging what would happen in the second half. He watched day-to-day sports like nobody did, and his head was like a calculator. The Computer couldn’t come close to betting The Chinaman on second halves, because The Computer’s handicappers couldn’t process the information quickly enough. We bet twenty-seven second-half bets and lost two or three of them. I’ve always believed nobody else could do that. On Sundays there were several games at one o’clock and several at four, but there was only one on Sunday and Monday nights. Sunday and Monday nights he was scary. I knew we would be winning on Sunday and Monday nights because he could devote his time to one game halftime. Over the course of an NFL season, people like The Computer and The Chinaman would win in the high fifties to low sixties. For NFL night games, The Chinaman would win in the mid to high sixties.

  “We controlled the markets and we were everywhere— Taiwan, Asia, and offshore. When I first started dealing with him, the Asian markets alone owed him between ten and fifteen balloons, and were paying him off a hundred thousand per week. He would bet them and knock the numbers into line and then the rest of the market would look over there because the Asian market comes up so much earlier than ours does. That market would be closed by eight-thirty in the morning eastern time, which is when the American markets would start to open. Originally, the Asian markets didn’t think someone could go that long and keep beating them, which is how they got so in the hole to him. After a while, they realized how good he was and would let him get his numbers but then try and get those numbers for themselves when the U.S. markets opened up. They sort of became partners with him because he was essentially setting their lines and giving them the right numbers.

  “What an education it was working with that guy. People used to pay him just to sit next to him and to talk to him. He didn’t really have a life. He had a wife, but we would work fourteen to sixteen hours a day, every day of the week. We would do two sports at the same time and it was just incredible. You could barely keep up with everything.”

  ZORBA THE GREEK

  “Zorba was a bookmaker based offshore, who was a ‘people-person’ and a great businessman,” says Battista. “He was very easygoing, soft-spoken, and a hard worker who would put in seventy hours a week like it was nothing. He got busted in the U.S. years ago and moved down there and developed a great business. He got hooked up booking these big, sharp guys for hundre
ds of thousands a game. He could then go get the sucker money to pay the bills. As we always said, ‘Th e suckers weren’t invited to the party; they were paying for the party.’

  “His Web site had such an international clientele. He put his number up first. He wasn’t afraid to take a bet because he knew what he was doing. In pro football, he had The Computer in his back pocket and knew better than anybody else what the lines should have been. I developed such a good relationship with Zorba that I used to call him up and tell him what numbers to put up on the screen so we could go bet everyone else. You need to understand that people around the world were looking to him for his numbers. He ran one of the three or four most significant sportsbooks in the world. I would ask him not to move the lines so I could go around the world picking up the right numbers. He was smart. He’d leave the number up on the board as a favor to me, but wouldn’t let people bet it. Meanwhile, we’d be out killing the game! He needed me and he helped me. Zorba had the world’s best information, which was like what we saw when we were in Curacao. His customer base wasn’t anywhere near as big as Paramount’s, which was the world’s biggest by far, but it was significant.

  “Zorba and I got along really well. The first time I met him was in Boston, back when The Animals used to bet him. Whereas The Chinaman dressed nicely and didn’t look like most gamblers, Zorba—this multimillionaire—showed up in sweatpants to the meeting. He was like most gamblers when it came down to how he dressed. He might be carrying big money in that suitcase, but he’d be dressed in shorts or sweatpants. Unlike a lot of people, he wasn’t afraid to take bets from us. Originally, I’d send checks down to his offshore sportsbook to open accounts. Over time, though, he realized how much we were going to bet and that we were good for the money, so he’d let us bet just like if we were betting with a local out, without the cash in the accounts beforehand. He knew we were betting multiple times a day every day. I had a great relationship with him over the years. He always paid. We didn’t really know he was working with The Computer until the early 2000s.

  “When I was in Curacao, Zorba was in Jamaica when I really started dealing with him a lot. At one point, Zorba sent over one of his clerks from his sportsbook down supposedly to help Ronnie run All-Star Sports. What Zorba was really doing was sending the clerk down to spy on Ronnie’s operation. He was a mole in Ronnie’s company, and Zorba later explained the whole thing to me after I left All-Star Sports. That was when Zorba approached me to come down to Jamaica and start working for him. I told him I appreciated the offer but that I was looking forward to getting back to my family and that I’d be working with Tiger and Bull again. He said to keep him in mind if I ever reconsidered. Even though I turned him down, he knew that if he continued to take care of The Animals by letting us bet with him that he could get into some of our outs in the Philadelphia area. He needed us and we needed him. Turning down the offer to work with Zorba was the best thing I ever did, because it allowed me to hook up with The Chinaman.”

  THE COMPUTER

  Of all the sharps with whom Battista has had a relationship through the years, none compared to The Computer when it came to his standing in the sports betting universe. Commonly discussed throughout the gambling and Las Vegas media, the man with a hard Southern drawl was universally regarded as the most consequential bettor in the U.S., and likely in the world. None of Battista’s other former clients or partners engenders anywhere near the excitement in The Sheep. “The Computer was a fucking monster!” Battista says. “He was the greatest. From what I heard, he was dead broke at several times in his life and then got heavy into real estate, where he was successful. Well, he applied his business savvy to gambling, got hooked up with a bunch of computer guys years ago, and brought technology into betting before anybody else. All around, he was just the best .

  “The Computer was the Keyser Söze of the sports gambling community.1 He would do anything in his power to get what we wanted. He had some of the top handicappers in the country working for him. As good as he was as a gambler, he was a better businessman than everybody else. He was ruthless and cunning. He’d spend a lot of money just to get somebody out of the game. I was just one person who moved for him and I was probably one of twenty. He’d use thirteen on the right side and the other seven on the wrong side just to keep everybody guessing or just to fuck with them. He had the best handicappers and the best information. He had ex-FBI guys and ex-cops working security for him. The Chinaman would have beat him head-to-head betting, but The Computer’s operation was so much bigger and influential than anybody in the world.

  “He didn’t have many friends in the gambling industry. He fucked over so many people to get to where he was that nobody wanted to deal with him. Part of the reason The Computer didn’t have friends, too, is that when he got so big a lot of people were trying to get into him to make money. People wanted to know what he was betting all the time, and he would put people on Queer Street to try and stop people from doing that. Well, if you put that many people on Queer Street and cost them money, those people aren’t going to like you—even though they’re the ones trying to make money off of your work!

  “I first met The Computer in the late 1990s out in Las Vegas when he wanted The Animals to move games for him and he wanted to meet us. We actually met him, this multi-multi-millionaire, in a Burger King. I was supposed to meet him again years later in Panama with Zorba, but I was too busy. The Computer used to take his jet and fly from Las Vegas to Panama or Curacao to meet with his friend and business partner, Zorba.”

  THE ENGLISHMAN

  Unlike The Chinaman, Zorba, and The Computer, who are interrelated in various ways, The Englishman was essentially his own story and had very little to do with the other three sharp heavies. Compared to the other three bettors, Battista had relatively infrequent dealings with The Englishman, who nevertheless was a fascinating character. He was better known as a World Series of Poker player, online sportsbook owner, and soccer club owner. Battista’s only concern was betting, of course, where, he says, “The Englishman just dominated international soccer.”

  * * *

  “Years ago, before I ever got hooked up with them, Zorba and The Computer were stepping on each other’s toes because Zorba had his own incredible handicappers and was fighting with The Computer for the best numbers,” Battista says. “After a while they decided to work together and it was lights out! They were pro football, college football, and college basketball. Zorba was a fantastic bookmaker and was always the first person to put up his lines. He had balls, and wasn’t afraid to take a bet. Of course, because of his handicappers and because of his relationship with The Computer, he knew what the right side was. So, even though he was betting, he was booking, also. He was just cashing the check. When I worked for them, my job was to get them the best numbers with my outs, and I was paid a percentage on the volume and would get a bonus at the end of the year based on their winnings. Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays during football season, you practically didn’t sleep. At eight o’clock in the morning, we started betting college totals and it went on all day long. We’d bet, maybe, thirty-five college sides, forty-seven totals, and then half-times. We were constantly moving the market and if they ever went down on a game together, it was over. The only problem was getting the money down. We’d split up the distribution as to who would get hit with the money: ‘You hit the offshore markets, I’ll take Asia and Taiwan, you get Vegas . . .’ One of the keys was who was in the seat at the right time to go get the games.

  “If you had put The Computer and The Chinaman in a room, locked them in with a million dollars and had them bet against each other, The Chinaman would have walked away twelve hours later with all the money. The Chinaman was a better gambler, and he’d have taken every penny. But, The Computer was just fucking business savvy, he was sharp, he was a control freak, and the more money and power he got the more he worked it to his advantage. He partnered, and fucked, and played, with everyone in his way. That’s what it takes
sometimes to be number one. In Godfather II , they say there should be a statue of Bugsy Siegel in Las Vegas because of his role in building the place. Well, there should be a statue of The Computer somewhere for what he did in sports betting. He brought it to another level, a level the average person can’t comprehend. He had something like fifteen handicappers working for him full-time.

  “The Chinaman could take any of The Computer’s handicappers out, one-on-one, but he couldn’t do battle with what was essentially ‘The Gambling Association of America’! No one person could, no matter how sharp they were. The Computer was God.” Perhaps the only opportunity to beat The Computer’s apparatus was to bet hoops, which was not one of his specialties. “There was one time when The Computer was working with a guy who bet on pro basketball and,” Battista says, “he wanted to go head-to-head with The Chinaman. Zorba stepped in and said, ‘Don’t do that. You love your money too much.’ ”