On Sunday, October 22, 2023 at 8:29:55 PM UTC-7, Mossingen wrote:
I finished this book on Audible (I used to read books the normal way, but now for some reason I much prefer to have a professional narrator read it to me). I first heard of Walters when 60 Minutes Australia did a piece on him as the world's most successful sports bettor. This part seems to be true.
Walters is a folksy Vegas rounder of the Doyle/Chip/Dewey/Puggy Slim generation who dabbled in poker a little, but his main thing was sports betting and golf. I like stories like his, rough poor childhood in
Kentucky, compulsive gambler and alcoholic, functioning in the real world but really living in the margins.
These guys always seem to gloss over what shitty fathers and husbands they must be, but Walters owns it in at least a plausible way and doesn't make excuses. Like most everyone, he realizes the importance of these things
much later in life.
He was targeted for years by the law, escaping 5 or 6 indictments and charges of various sorts until an insider trading charge landed him in federal prison for a few years. He kind of blames golfer Phil Mickelson
(who also seems to be a compulsive gambler) for this, talks about having to deal with Tony Spilotro, and explains his complicated method of being a successful sports bettor (which seems to simply involve acquiring as much information about the players/game as possibe and assigning number values to those things).
Not a whole lot of surprises in the book, and for the crowd here I doubt there is anything new, but still it’s worth a listen. One caution is that he narrates himself in that old man raspy-Biden voice, so if you don't like listening to that then you should just get the hardcopy.
It'd improve your experience of the book, but doing internet searches and connecting billy walters to people and then connecting those people to others and try to corroborate things I'm left thinking he's not telling the whole truth about his money.
For example, he claimed he had to leave vegas after Tony Spilotro sent Fast Eddie Deleo, he alleges a mob enforcer to get computer sports picks for Spilotro. But, in researching Spilotro's gang, there is no mention of an enforcer by this name. However,
I did make a connection with Fast Eddie DeLeo and Richard Sklar, a gambling degen who hustles rich people at golf...and much more notoriously paid jockeys to rig over 1000 horse races and did time for it. We all know Billy's connection to golf....and
his claim of a connection to Fast Eddie, who is only known to be connected to Richard Sklar, the golfer, horse race rigger. So, I'm left wondering...did Billy embellish the story to give himself credibility for this sports computer program when in
actuality this computer sports picking thing was really just a cover for Billy betting on rigged horse races for big money....1000x? Seems all the connections are there....and very convenient to give yourself and this "program" some street credit by
connecting it to Spilotro. I'll also point out that Spilotro had long been banned from casinos by 1986 when Billy Claims Spilotro tried to muscle him for computer picks...How did Billy manage to go 4 years in vegas without Spilotro already coming at
him? Seems a little odd that Spilotro in 1986 would be coming after Billy Waters when Cullotta had already testified against Spilotro who went to trial for murder late in 1983....seems his hole in the wall game would have been broken up by then with
Cullotta turning states and Spilotro hiding low for a while before he got killed. I'm left thinking Billy Walters maybe faded his sports/gambling addictions by fleecing rich guys at the golf course and betting on rigged horse races perhaps and name
dropping whenever he got the chance as a form of marketing to his marks. Just a theory, but the connections are there....then again, everyone in that entire group seems shady.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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