Hooligans Sportsbook

Wanted: Winning gambler

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Maersk will you accept payment in pictures of my balls? Before you get angry, consider that I'm being very honest with my question.

Will you accept payment for your winning picks in pictures of my glorious ballsack?
 
Tomato
You mentioned that you were first interested because of a friend. What about him was interesting to you? How was he different from others? Was he your role model or just a partner in crime? This sounds like the influence towards your work.
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Actually, I barely knew him when he brought up the idea of a poker game. It was the game, not him, that interested me. We were both mildly obsessed with pinball, and that was the only environment I knew him from. He became a partner in crime. We talked a lot about poker in the following year. We shared books and took trips to the riverboat casinos. As he progressed with his phd work, he played less and I started playing full time. We lost touch for a long time, but somewhere along the line he far surpassed me.

As an interesting side-note, Chris was married, even as a grad student when I met him. He had to ask his wife if it was okay with her for him to play some poker with their money. She said that he could play with $20, and if he lost that, that was it. He never lost the $20 and never added any outside money. That original $20 has grown into his current gambling bankroll, which I'm sure is over a million.



Tomato
At what point did you transition from poker to sports and what prompted that transition? There was curiosity and Tomato is wondering where that developed.
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I transitioned out of poker several years before I began looking into sports. And I dabbled with modeling sports for a couple years before it became my main source of income. So, I'll treat it as two different questions.

After nine years, I was plenty sick of poker. I was lucky enough to be in a casino town that was really good place to be for some new types of banking slot machines, and I was lucky enough to notice them. They were a big bankroll booster and also a big eye-opener to the fact that there were many possibilities beyond poker. I spent the next few years playing various +EV machines and table games.

As far as sports goes, I had a friend who worked in the poker rooms who was good friends with a famous casino-security consultant. He was always talking about the various groups that were making a fortune doing this or that. He knew I liked to program, and had been telling me for a couple years that there was big money to be made modeling baseball.

Around this time, I ran into MrsX online. After a few months of writing and talking on the phone, I went to Detroit to visit her, and didn't leave. Being stuck in Detroit for awhile without much income potential, I decided to finally work on baseball. I only dabbled with it for a couple years before I got it right.

Tomato
You mention that you enjoy sports betting outside of the money, what about it interests you? The rush, the status (is there an ego associated with the profession?), the difficulty, what is enjoyable outside of seeing your account go up?
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Good question. I generally do enjoy the little rush I get from having money on a game, but the cumulative effect is usually negative and I end up not watching the games. But even when not watching the games, I still like the excitement when checking the results. I like having what most people consider to be an interesting profession, so I guess there's some ego there, although I have no interest in aspiring to be "the best" or even "one of the best". I like the actual programming. Not all of the time, but when there's a nice elegant solution, it can be pretty satisfying.


Tomato
Is there a point that you see yourself quitting from this?
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I do, but I'm less sure about that than I used to be. I originally figured that I'd continue growing aggressively and retire as early as possible. The last couple of years, I've made a big shift towards optimizing my current quality of life instead of bankroll growth. I took an entire season off to go hiking, made my bet-staking less aggressive, and farmed out some of the more stressful aspects of my work. My expected growth is way down, but I'm much happier. I could proceed like this for a long time and be content. If I see an opportunity for big cash-grab, though, I'll gladly take it and quit altogether if I find myself with enough money.

Tomato
You said "yes" to the question do you consider yourself "good at" this. How does a professional like yourself measure mastery at gambling? Wht was the point where you said "I'm good at this"?
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I don't know. I think the thing about gambling is, as soon as you know you're supporting yourself gambling, and still leading a happy lifestyle, you're good.
 
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