Ribs Interview

Welcome everyone to Be Better Betters. I'm the host, Spanky. Thanks for listening. My guest this week is not only a good friend of mine, but my mentor. Whenever I had a math question or any question, he was always there to help. He has taught me so much over the last 20 years. He's a book maker's book maker, a better's better, and I'm so honored to have him on. Please welcome ribs. Ribs, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. So ribs, I always like to store it off with how is life throwing up? Basically, I grew up in Long Island in a pretty nice area. And it was kind of like led me into what I ended up getting involved in. In the early years, I had a grandmother who actually ended up living to 107 that had me playing cards at a very early age. I learned how to play Jin Rami, three, four years old, non-gambling Jin Rami for fun with my grandmother. And then at some point, I guess it was around the same age. My parents had bought these multiplication flashcards where they would show me 12 times 7. And then I learned through memory the answers because they basically hit me with like an hour of those a day for, let's say, a two month period. So by around four, I knew the answers, but not why it wasn't like a system. It was more of just seeing the answers over time. My memory was very good. So by late four year old area, I could know the answers to anything 20 times 20 or any combination of numbers below that. And of course, in the wealthy area that I lived in in Long Island, I had parents that kind of spoiled me and gave me whatever I wanted. So my father would always buy me lots of like baseball cards and things like that. And even I remember in kindergarten, like at four and a half, five, that was the early years of having that feeling of winning and losing kind of like gambling style. We had other kids with cards. They, you know, this was back in the days of flipping cards or scaling cards. And then it became this game called Colors because the cards had a color on the bottom. I don't even remember exactly how you won and lost. But I remember days coming home from school with more cards than I started and coming home with with less cards than I started. And that winning and losing, you know, kind of was a little bit of the pre limb to having the winning and losing in the gambling business. Wow, that's unbelievable. That's great. So you just just from four and a half, five years old, you pretty much were gambling. In early elementary school, I'm going to say like seven, eight, somehow I learned this through I guess either with either my father or somebody. There was something about, and this was like kind of like a 1950s and 60s thing where you could pick three MLB guys that were playing. It was called three guys to get six hits. And I forget what the odds were you gave the player like two to one or something like that. They had to select three guys to get six hits. So basically in elementary school, I remember being like the bookmaker for that guys would, you know, bet quarters dollars, whatever. And that was like another little thing that was like a gambling thing that that went on. I think that went on all the way to like fifth or sixth grade, but I'm not sure. Wow, that's so cool. One of the one of the interesting things was that my math career was real strong at an early age, even at like five or six, I remember one time the teachers bringing in a large jar of jelly beans. It was Easter time and it was some kind of like to pick what you thought how many jelly beans were in there. And I gave, they asked me first for some reason and I gave what I, you know, I didn't have the depth thing down to a science. So I gave an answer that was extremely low without realizing it because I was kind of counting the outside of the jar and then not realizing of the depth inside the jar. But all the other kids knowing that I was smart and math, all guests within, like, let's see, I'm doing this from memory. If I guess 3000 jelly beans, they would all guess like between 2500 and 3500 and then it turned out to be like 34,000 ridiculous like that. So as you. And the other interesting thing is when algebra started and then geometry and all those other myths, I was horrible. I never learned any of them. My skills in school kind of ended with math around 56 grade. Once it went to the tricky mess, algebra I handled it okay, but I wasn't that good and all the other mess completely struggled only past because teachers like me, you know, I couldn't do geometry, trigonometry and all those other things. And I was never good at any of the other subjects. I was always poor at reading and comprehension. Never, never tested that well. As far as getting involved in sports, my career, you know, I mean, one of the instrumental things was that my father always had season tickets to the Metz, the Metz moved to Queens in 1964 when I was six and we always went to a lot of games. And my father also as a Metz fan, when the games were a night, which most of the games were a night, it would have his radio on loud so I could hear all the way from his room because my mother didn't allow me to stay up past a certain time. So my father was always kind of enabling me to hear the games till the end, which ended like 10 or 11 o'clock. So I was always a Metz fan growing up and that was one of the reasons I got, you know, maybe more into the sports. So baseball, you know, I have baseball cards being a Metz fan, is it safe to say that baseball was a first love when it comes to sports? Yeah, I was more involved in baseball than anything else. I mean, we used to watch, you know, track and field on TV and fake wrestling and all these other things. But I was never that not as interested in like basketball, football, things like that. I mean, I would go to maybe one game a year as a kid like to either a Jets or a Giants football game and, you know, maybe like a Nick's basketball game, maybe a Ranger's hockey game, you know, once in a while it was more of a Metz baseball thing. And obviously baseball was a big part of the year. So that kept me, kept me going. So your first encounter with gambling was, you know, booking these kids in elementary school about the six hits thing. The first two players, the six hits, when does sports gambling now start to even take more of a seed being set? When I was in eighth grade, the health teacher, Bobby Baker, I wonder if he's still around. He got me involved where I could start making straight bets on sports. I thought I was real great at that time. Basically what I did was on Wednesday, every Wednesday morning, I would leave, you were allowed to leave school for lunch or whatever, but I would go to the station every store and buy all the Tau cheats would be there for the football games and baseball. Usually was football when it was Tau cheats. So it was like, let's say Wednesday mornings, I'd buy the New York Post, which, you know, had seven or eight guys selecting the pro football games for Sunday and things like that. And all these Tau cheats that, you know, would have, you know, Oklahoma 55 to nothing and you'd look good up and you'd see in the paper, they were favored by only 20 or whatever. And, you know, that started with me making some like 50 and $100 bets, you know, through this teacher that helped me get down. I don't remember doing poorly, but I don't know how I could have come out other than losing, but I don't kind of remember losing during that area, but maybe I held my own. And then I'm just trying to think from that, there was a lot of poker, you know, growing up where I did, there was a lot, there was a Jewish area, a lot of the kids got born, Mitzvah did 13 and a lot of us played poker after school. And we basically used the born Mitzvah bonds as the money. And it was kind of interesting dynamic because the parents didn't really know about it because they just, they didn't mature for seven years. So we all had our born Mitzvah bonds like in a shoe box, basically in a closet, you know, waiting for them to mature over a seven year period where we could, you know, use them as money when we were 20. But we were able to kind of use them. We just had to establish what they're really worth because a $50 bond, you only paid like $30 for. It was something like that and they matured over the seven years to the 50 so I don't exactly remember how we did it But I remember that that was a good because I toured a lot of these kids had had a play poker I ended up having a very big edge in those days This was back when it was five car stud seven car stud and draw poker only is Sports now what when does the sports part get a sports sports? I started I met a guy he was known as Gary Fox and He was betting for a group and he he took me on Around when I was 15 the way I got to meet him was Around 15 I started working with a guy that Was a you know Brooklyn bookmaker kind of a famous guy He's you know, he passed away about 10 years ago, but I I used to bet with him small amounts and I used to meet him I would say once a week when the figure got to a few thousand or more and I met him at the same diner in On cross people of art first, you know, whatever 40 weeks out of the year for so you know several years and he He I don't know how it started, but he got me introduced to some other people and one of them was this guy Gary who was a part of a betting group and very short by the way, so I was putting bets in for them with By then I had four or five places I was betting with and And I you know and I guess they like using guys that were more than 18 because for the legal situation if Something got a bit happened. I was you know less than 18 and not that much bad could happen I was struggling with my mother in the house who kind of didn't want you know, she kind of knew it was going on and You know kind of led to some battles with her she kind of blame my father for enabling me to Continue doing the betting you know from the house and stuff like that But anyways, that was that was that but um So you were you were moving for you were moving betting money moving for a sharp group at That's amazing Yeah, they were basically guys that were betting like you know NBA totals and things like that They they they were ahead of the you know head of the curve. I don't even know who they were following or whatever But they they were pretty much like in the 55 to 58 percent winter category and and I was usually collecting And what kind of did they free roll you did you take a piece for yourself? I don't even remember except that I think That I remember a situation where I was turning in less than I was really getting and they knew about it So I guess I was betting with them and I don't think I was getting a free world that time It might have been before they created that aspect of it Perfect so wow so you read from an early age you just find out that you actually could be you know win betting sports Where you know a lot of people don't realize that until they're well into their 20 some 30 some never so you knew that at 15 I didn't know what for sure, you know There'd be times when I'd lose two three four days in a row and I would start to doubt everything but in general uh, you know in looking back on it I was doing pretty good during that era, but I wasn't accumulating large sums of money or anything But I was grinding out it was also like an ego thing to be dealing with people 30 and 40 years older than me And picking up and dropping with money and stuff like that It wasn't the you know the greatest thing for me to be doing but at the time it was feeding an ego, I guess Well, that's just that's just amazing uh and were there other Kids your age that were involved or you were one of a There's a couple of put a couple from my neighborhood were involved a little bit But I was kind of like the ringleader of of all the uh the mischief or whatever you want to call it All right, so let's talk about how you graduate from that then so you know When does that end and once the next step? Right well what happened was I started to play poker in like poker rooms in like queens In the basement of the Montiacelture in some of these places And I learned that a pretty fast amount of time the competition was was much tougher So besides struggling to win. I was probably a losing player I also Learned that he didn't I didn't like my eyes burning from people smoking cigarettes That was a nearer where everybody was smoking cigarettes in these card rooms and and that kind of turned me off From poker and I never really went back to the poker Because by then the sports started to you know build a little bit. So the poker career kind of ended I'm going to say around when I was 16 16 and a half Okay, so so the poker thing ends and now you're still moving to Gary Fox Yeah, then we got then we got kind of I kind of got tossed By my mother from the house in a nice way So I actually moved I graduated where I went to high school in poor Washington They had something called modular scheduling and I was able to graduate in 11 years instead of 12 Because I just took like a few extra classes and you could finish You know in 11th grade So I moved out of a incentive going away to college I moved out of the house into a new apartment building and I actually I just got a one bedroom place on the 32nd floor of a nice place with a five bridge view and I just turned I'm going to say it was like 17 and a half I it was an 18-year for sure and And that was a whole other experience. I got to you know, I was Living with you know, obviously most of the people in the building were much older than me I remember actually going to visit my sister in San Francisco and that was like the year they came out With drawstring pants. That was like a big deal and I remember bringing a whole suitcase of them Back to give as gifts to people and I kept some for myself And then somebody kind of said to me. I should get like the v-neck Doctors type shirts and the people in the building will think I'm like a doctor there was Before the doogie house or program But anyways, I was walking around This building you know, basically as a small time bookmaker um and and you know drawstring pants and I kind of looked like a doctor people were giving me all kinds of Looks like maybe this guy's a doctor That's why I was there That's funny So were you were booking right out of the apartment? Oh yeah, and and it led I you know, I got at first I was it was still in the in the era of You know no computers run down on the phone Basically, we had two sessions a day. I would roll out a bed at 11.59 a.m. Every day And it was one session was from 12 to 2 and then you didn't do anything from two to six and then you know This is Eastern time, obviously and then the second session was from six to eight some guys were six to seven thirty and um Basically, yeah, I was booking uh, mostly pro guys, you know pro-betters and some I was moving for but it was mostly like high-volume low-profit margin type stuff um Which which uh, you know, maybe I was only dealing with 20 something people This was back in the day where there was only like seven or eight guys booking in the New York area And I wasn't playing with guys like on the west coast and Vegas or anything like that and you know, this was more like 1976-77 Uh until about 1983 Wow, so now the business when do you start seeing the business grow where you start, you know People are saying wow this kid, you know, he's he's honorable. He pays off his debts and you know He gives a good line. He gives a good price when do when does your reputation now start to rise in the New York area? Well, I don't you know a lot of it's fuzzy the memory, but basically One of the things that this was back in the era when they started to change the hockey From the old-style lines one and a half to like that, you know, where he was even might you were laying two goals are taking one and a half Even money to like what we call now I guess was like the Canadian line one and a half, you know, favored money and plus one and a plus use um, so I don't know uh, I was one of the first guys that was dealing with everything Hockey line and then because I was very involved in the baseball moving for people I created something where I let a sharp guys bet me into a three-cent line But it was force bet they had to bet the whole card for equal amounts So I had guys basically betting the entire card. I would be 19 come back 16 21 come back 18 And then when they were done betting I would move the line either one or two cents And then I had somebody else doing the same thing was kind of like a one at a time Situation and I would grind that pretty good money over the course of a year But it started you know some bigger numbers and let's say one or two times a year I would get stiff by somebody or shorted or slow paid so my profit margin was extremely small But I didn't realize it because on paper I was doing really well So a three-cent line back then unheard of or? - Yeah, we were dealing like the 20,000 of game. As long as you bet the same amount in every game, you know, the amounts that were being bet back then from the pros were a lot higher than they get from any single bookmaker now. There was a lot more, I mean, I remember in 1981, when it just started to spin into computers and ending in '82, that my volume for that year was almost $2 billion with only 26 or 27 guys. There was some serious betting going on. I had a lot of guys asking me to move games from 100 K, 150. I had a lot of outs by then. - And a small out would take how much and a big out would take how much? - I would say that the bigger guys were all taking, you know, 10 or 20,000, and you know, some were taking 100,000 in pro football. And there were a lot of smaller guys that were, let's say only three to five thousand, but because you were afraid to win too much, you might only bet them 2000 so that you could stay alive with them. And you know, if you got ahead 20,000 for the week, you kind of slow played them for the rest of the week. - Amazing, it's a small guys back then, were three in five thousand, were today a guy booking five thousand of games like a monster. - Right, yeah. The bit, in my mind, the business has gotten harder on both sides of the fence for the last, you know, I mean, it kind of peaked around when computers started. So you're talking about 1980, like 38 years of the business getting at least 1% worse every year on a lot of aspects, including, you know, getting paid and things like that. There's not a lot of honor in the business like there was back then. - Yeah, well said. So let's talk about some of the sharp groups you encountered because back then, there were just so many of them, you know, late 70s, early 80s, any come to mind? - Well, the guys that, you know, ended up owning pinnacle, were, they came on the scene in 1980 and they quickly, you know, they were like an office in New York and basically, you know, it became very, it took a little time, but I started to realize that they were dealing different numbers than everybody else. So pre-computers, you'd call six guys for rundowns and everybody would have formed the game and they might have three and a half dog 15. And I started to realize I was bringing them money every week so I knew they were ahead of the curve. Later on, like a year or so later, I started to move for them and I started to understand that they had a computer program and, you know, they made this game nine and everybody's dealing it one and they had a lot of plays and they had, you know, way the best of it. And, you know, I probably paid them a couple of million dollars but I was making money with them 'cause whatever I was playing for them, I was playing for myself also, although I was turning in most, you know, 95% to them. They were way ahead of the curve. - No. - And they were the ones that got pinnacle going and I think, you know, they did very well there. - So other groups, any other besides the computer group, that's probably the most famous. - Well, there was the kosher guys on baseball that were extremely good on baseball and there was also another guy, I guess, I don't want to really mention his name, but there was another guy out of Long Beach that was extremely sharp in baseball and I was moving for him. It was the Curtis Brothers. They were extremely sharp in baseball. They were like the buyback guys. They waited for everybody to over move the game and they stepped in. All the guys that I was moving for in baseball were winning and basically the bookmakers back then were smarter than they are now but over the course of these 38 years where the business got worse, 1% every year. One of the things that's happened is that the quality of the intelligence of the booking, including these Vegas places and whatever, is so poor that it's too easy for the players and it just makes for a much harder situation when you know when you're playing with offices that are just copying, you know, Chris and pinnacle that they're getting dragged all over the map and everybody's really betting and you know the stuff involving the manipulation kind of, I'm too old now at 62 to really be super involved in the betting side but I still see all the stuff that goes on and the new owners of pinnacle where I have positions where I need them to beat customers. They make plenty of mistakes and they're not, they can't beat a middle of the road guy because basically you can play them in the morning when their limit is 500 or 1000 and drag them 18 or 19 cents and waste a thousand dollars in juice and then make your bet for 100,000 the other way when everybody's copied them and Chris or whatever when the lines plus 30 when the game started at 18. So I mean there's just so much of that and you know I'm kind of not, I was always kind of a true guy that only bet what I really liked. I never bet opposite but after a while it became so obvious that that's what everybody else is doing that I had to kind of join the party or I was gonna really suffer. - Yeah, I'd love to get into that a little bit later but that's, you know, the manipulation today is a big part of how you just earn it just because like you said, everybody's just copying. You're writing high in the early 80s, betting and booking. How long did it a good times last? - Basically I had a good run from about then till February of '83. Basically back in the very early 80, 81 era was right when computers were coming in and my edges because we weren't, we were just giving lines on the phone, run downs. That was an easier way for bookmakers to make business and profitable business than generally when the computer started and everybody could look and see the same lines and have the same information. But basically I did very well in '80, 81 and leading up, 82 was actually a very good year but then it all kind of fell apart quickly in the beginning of '83. My business model in that early 80s period, pre-computers, was basically dealing with pros only. I had very few people that I was dealing with but high volume and we did a lot of cross booking. At that time, cross booking was, you know, kind of something that would be made up where you were kind of betting without juice against somebody else. There were different ways of doing it but it led to me eventually deciding because some of the guys were even, you know, I considered sharper than I was. I ended up in a situation where we deal dealt. It started with baseball. We would deal with three-cent line like 29, come back 26 but it was four-sped and you had to bet an equal amount in every game for the day. So if there was 11 games, I would make a three-cent line deal with one guy, he could bet 20,000, 30,000 as long as you bet an equal amount in every game and then I would move the line of one or two cents depending on who it was for the next guy. And I had six or seven guys that I was cross booking with. So most of my decisions were basically based on that. Unbeknownst to me because I was very young at that time, there wasn't enough margin in there to cover the bad things that happened in this business which is like somebody goes bad and doesn't pay and all these other things. So on paper, I was squeezing out, you know, one and a half, 1.6, 1.7 million a year on a zillion dollars volume but at the end of the year, there would have been already two or three guys that went bad and disappeared or needed long-term payment plans. So there wasn't really a lot of profit in there. But by the end of '82, I had built up a pretty good bankroll for somebody, 23, 24. I had like three put away and I was doing pretty good. What happened in the beginning of '83 is I got caught in this new football league that came out the Herschel Walker one. I guess Troy was the Trump, Trump was a thick the owner of the league or whatever. What was that, the USFL or something like that? - It's sick so yeah. - Yeah, anyways. So what happened was I was, you know, on the ground floor of that league, but unaware of the problems with the league. There was a lot of, you know, players that were making that much money and, you know, later on, I realized that I should not have been taking so I in that league. And one of the other problems was that I had big players that liked to bet, let's say, for example, one of the players liked to bet 15 team if reverses like an around Robin style. And what I would do is I would chart all those bets at 1.5 like I thought you were supposed to, but one day the guy went one in 14, one winner 14 losers. And I had written so much business against him to squeeze out against him. my charts of 1.5 that I ended up losing like 300,000 on the day with the guy going 1 in 14. So there was a lot of things that you know like you always think you know better than everybody else and that's how everybody is in this business. I had a big ego and I and I let things kind of get out of hand and then I did make a lot of money on the Super Bowl that that 83 was a red skins Miami Super Bowl but sooner after that the U.S. that football league and everything I got carried out over like a two to three month period and it became so depressing and stressful for me that I decided to take off for a few years and go into some other ventures. Wow amazing so okay so you know you're riding high you hit rock bottom and then I go into other ventures what other ventures did you go into and when did you come back to gambling? Okay well basically I never completely dropped the gambling but I basically dropped the the the having to be doing it every day. What had happened was there I guess when the computers came at the end of 81 there was a lot of new guys on the scene one of which eventually became the owner pinnacle at that time and I got involved in doing some moving for some people so I was still making some money from it but what had happened was the family had had a food distributor business and in order to get my head back on straight and and and kind of build up my mental again I started helping family in that food business for it was pretty much all the way until about 88 I think but I was still dabbling in the in the sports and earning a little bit of money from it but I didn't have you know a clear picture of what I really want to do going forward and and you know during that period I had gotten divorced the first time and and you know all these other things that basically took place from 88 to like 99 I had a very you know kind of grindy type of life and sports stuff and and and and the food business actually had gotten sold in 93 and I had made some income from that and there was there was a few things that I did but there was nothing exciting that it's even worth talking about I decided to go to Curacao in 2000 let's see 99 I was back and in 99 I was moving big volume for some guys especially in baseball and then I decided to go to Curacao to get a legal license and open up like a kind of like a betting office and and you know I went there I guess it was the end of 2000 or maybe the very beginning of 2001 yeah this is this is the first time you and I met ribs when okay I'll never forget it um I was I was meeting you and you pull up an limousine right in midtown Manhattan and um we wind up going or some I think it was at the caches deli or some jett deli had a hapa strome on rye and you know and I was like wow this is great and you were telling me all your ideas about going to Curacao opening up a big shop that you're only going to be taking you know super sharp action and I was just a young young guy back then 2000 2001 just getting my feet wet in the business and I saw you as a large in life figure and I still do I still admire you so much but you know you had such a foresight to be able to do something because that's when the internet was kind of still young and people were starting to go off shore and stuff um what made you decide to do that that anybody convinced you did you what happened was I was friendly with the with the owner pinnacle they were in Curacao and I had helped them with some of their statistical stuff involving money lines I was always like a money lines guy and and not really a point spread guy you know uh in football and basketball things like that so I I did some helping helping him or whatever and then I kind of like Curacao um at that time there was the start of having problems with marriage number two but basically I ended up with an office in Curacao that was like more betting than anything but we also booked like a small amount of customers then I decided to acquire another small book that was not doing well and had some financial problems um and ended up kind of growing the booking part but I kept the betting part going and unfortunately I did really well there on paper but the the way that the monies work you had to use people from that country to do the banking and and and and also I made the mistake of hiring uh somebody involving you know involving the paying collect side that turned out to get involved with that NBA ref guy and he kind of embezzled some funds so there was a lot of things that happened and I saw the handwriting on the wall because I was winning every week I thought I was ahead three four million and then all of a sudden they tell me I don't have enough money to pay this guy and that guy and I was always a bad businessman and good at gambling but anyway so what I did is I called Chris and I talked to Mickey and Mickey said to meet him in Miami and then we worked a deal and I brought the business to their place in that was the beginning of 2003 at that time I had kind of a handshake deal with them and and we were kind of splitting 50-50 what I brought and those days were good for me you know mentally whatever they paid off some minor league debt that I had and we were doing really well on paper and and worked with the the the guys in Savannah with the with the big sports place it was a little bit of a struggle because I had a strong personality with a lot of opinions my opinions were more on the gambling side and their opinions were more on the results side and there was a little bit of an incident once where we had 129 days in a row and then there was a day where an NBA game fell one and the line in the game had been one in a half and I needed the favorite on the spread and the dog on the money line and we lost like 97k to the game I remember to this day and I got an aggravating phone call from the old man the next morning not acknowledging the 28-9-day winning streak because I hadn't talked to him probably more than once in the whole 29 days but he acknowledged the the minus 97k on that game and that led to the separation of that business because I was I was a hothead also and and you know whatever but you know we're very good friends to this day he's a he's a great guy he's he's he's melored out a lot and I've melored out a lot and so the bottom line is you know that was just that led to that situation breaking up and then I basically was in Costa Rica kind of loving life here you know being separated from the second wife and whatever and I just kind of built the life here and I've been here ever since in Costa Rica you know for 17 years and I've enjoyed it when you split up from that office now and things you know you do you wind up going on your own again how was that you know did you build up enough of a bankroll now what you know what I did is I started with kind of like an agent status type business where I had certain sportsbooks that I represented and I got certain players to play there and I was guaranteeing the money both sides but I was making a small amount of commission money sometimes the commission money was done like pinnacle did it on volume where you would get like 0.4 of 1% on the volume that's bet and sometimes it was done sheet style where you got a 25 or 50% or somewhere's in between a red black sheet where if the players lost you won if the players won there was a makeup figure and you know so that business was good because it didn't have a lot of risk involved but of course the risk was involved in the settling and hoping that everybody paid so I did okay with it but I didn't I didn't get rich from it because I was always the first guy people would decide not to pay if they went bad because I was a pacifist and I wasn't gonna ever bother anybody for the money so in this business every single person has their sheet of how many people that they you know we're all owed money in a once you get to a certain level I honestly of all the people I've ever talked to when I just hear the numbers of the people that owe you money it's just unbelievable how you know what I mean you're able to overcome it because it's it's just incredible how you know on paper you have a $1.000 on paper that these guys why how I've never I've never been able to deal with it in other words it's one of my biggest problems I'm mentally like numb and shock from having all these people owe me and some of them still you know call me and occasionally make a small payment or whatever but it's the number one thing that wants me to kind of get closer to you know I'm really close to retiring now is that it's just it's so painful to recall some of the situations I mean there were guys that you know had like emergencies and I lent the money on top of what they owed me and and and just you know to get you know to get kind of screwed every which way from various things. Some of it was dealable, not so much the amounts, but I had made money off the people over years. But I've had ones where the guy won 300,000, got paid. The next week you lost 300,000 and he didn't pay. And the person guaranteeing the money is worth 10 million, and decides not to pay. I mean, it's just incredible. It's incredible. And you know what? Honestly, in this business reputation is everything, and you hold one of the best reputations of everybody that I deal with. So high on that list. And despite how many people have treated you wrong, you've always been so honorable, and you've always done the right thing. And that's a big credit given how many people have done you wrong for you to still be able to continue and just be honorable, because that's all you have at the end of the day is your name. It's easy to be honorable when you're making money and you have money to pay people. So I don't put myself in such a high thing. The people that have money and that make money in the business are very good at paying. The problem is that right now you have a situation where it gets kind of worse every year. I would say most of the money is on the player side. And there's a lot of offices that are on the weak side or open up with very little bank rolls. And then you have a situation where I think it's in more advantage to be a player than a book. So there's a lot of math involved, but a player can play or pass. And the bookmaker's stuck taking what comes in. So my feeling is this, I see it as a situation where the industry is getting much, much harder every year. There's a lot of desparados, a lot of them are out of the Vegas area or whatever. There's not that many honorable people that are the pros, that the ones that are recreational but have a lot of money and pay, they're few and far between. And it's kind of like a big fight over all those customers because there's not that many left. And those are the ones that you really need to make sure that your bottom line is a plus. But I see it as a situation where my chances of making money become harder every year. But I still have edges where I make some money. But it's much harder to maintain making the same money that you made the year before. Yeah, 100%. I can't disagree with you on that. I think one of the biggest things that you stand out ribs more than anybody else is that you were always a betting bookmaker. You always bet. And I think that that just gives you an edge, historically, the guys that were always betting bookmakers that I've seen have always been so successful because you kind of understood both sides of the counter. Would you agree to that? Well, my edge was always in the arbitrating side. I wasn't the guy that really, in most cases, that was really doing the work to be like a handicap or what would happen is I knew that if an NFL game went from 6 to 7, I knew that the first half line wasn't supposed to stay at 3. And I knew kind of where to put the smaller pools to get bets. I basically set up traps and get bets on the money lines in first halves. And I was always trying to kind of break even in the main pool on the things that were flying around. Because I didn't-- especially college sports, even though I got numbers from a couple of guys that I respect, I never really trusted. I felt that it was players advantage. It was too hard for line makers. They got to make-- before the pandemic, there's 80 games in college basketball on a Saturday. How the hell they going to know if somebody makes a line 14 that really should be four in some extra game conference or middle Tennessee state or something like that? So my deal was I played defense on the things that didn't really know. But I knew that based on where the games were ending up, where to put the money lines and the first half to try to get a bet that I wanted to end up on the right side at a value number. I remember you explaining this to me on team totals, probably 15 years ago when they were in their infancy stages. And I remember you-- it was such a big edge with these team totals. Do you still see that today or the team totals in efficient market? I'm not-- I kind of dropped all that alternate lines and team total stuff. I became too old to work that hard. But the edges were severe because any big move on a game in any sport should affect every other pool that's involved. And those kind of pools were all set up on auto-move by the offices because they can't-- you can't have enough line guys. Your overhead would be too high to watch every component of every situation. So the idea was at that time, let's say, baseball team totals. If a total on a game was going from 9 to 9 1/2 over and the team totals were four under or something like that, there was always-- you could get value because they hadn't been touched as long as you move fairly fast when the thing is steamed. Technology-wise has advanced, obviously, over the last 10, 20 years. Have you seen with respect to robot betting and respect to auto-moving and stuff like this? Has that-- have you seen that in the business? And is that the best technology always going to prevail or is the sharpest mind going to overcome that? I would say the sharpest mind has an edge over that. But let's put it this way. If I had an office that had hundreds of players and a lot of them were square players, I would love to use one of those bomb products or whatever that certain places have, that it's like an auto-mover to have some less people working. And I think that those machines wouldn't set up right. And having one smart guy oversee it in case it goes to A-Wire. A lot of the people that listen to this podcast, it's called Be Better Betters. Some guys are up and coming in the business. Some guys are pro. And maybe semi-pro, want to turn pro. Or maybe they're pro. They want to just take their game to the next level. What advice would you give somebody that's either starting up or that just wants to-- that's been in the game for a while that wants to take it to the next level? I don't know. Like, part of me always tells people to find another thing to do because I kind of wish if I would have started all over again 40 plus years ago. It's been a rough, stressful existence. But if they think that they can emotionally handle the ups and downs and all the crap that comes with this business, then I would say that they just have to know that every year they're going to learn stuff. And they're going to look back and say, oh, I thought it was-- don't think that you know too much. You're going to learn things every year and kind of each year improve your chances of winning just based on natural things that happened, even just feel. I'm more of a feel guy. And this thing that I thought going way back. And now I kind of completely have gone come full circle. And of course, rules change in sports. There's so many things that you have to keep up with. But basically, it's a way to make money without having to work that hard if you get it set up the right way. It's always easier to let other people work for you. So people that get players and if they can figure out how to put them in a place and make a percentage of what they're going to lose, it's probably an easier way to go then to try to make money yourself. But everybody's different. And some guy, there's so much talent. Young guys with these math models and things like that, that's way over my head. But I understand why they would work. They have these simulators and things like that. I can understand why it would work, although in some cases, it throws out things that they might say is a play. And I would be able to tell them why it's not a play. But I don't have the time in my life to spend to stop guys from a few things. Sometimes, even though it'll come out a certain way, there's a reason for it. And I kind of picked up on that in a few cases. You mentioned the emotional ups and downs. How big is that? Because I know you've been up and down. And it's such an emotional roller coaster. How does one handle something like that in this business? Right. Well, let's put this way. I've always had this fear of going broke, because I've gotten broke. I went broke in February of '83. I mean, I had some money after that, but that feeling of having a lot and then having nothing is a difficult one. Since then, I've had two bad periods. They actually are always the years that ended in a three. '93, I had a bad year. And 2003 was the year that I got robbed in Curacao for a couple million and had to come to Costa Rica. But since 2003, I've had a really good run. And even like in 2013, I said, well, it would be four decades in a row that I've gone broke in a year or anything in a three. So I was thinking of sitting out 2013. But it turned out to be probably the best year I'd ever had. So there's so many addictive features to this gambling stuff that it's hard sometimes. I lose confidence very easily if I lose three or four days in a row, even though I've done this for the 40 years, I could lose confidence. Sometimes I take full days off now because I have people to do things. Because I just sometimes just can't deal with the long days and not having-- sometimes you blow a big lead in something and you're not ready the next morning. Or at least I'm not. You mentioned that you're closer to tiring. All the years I've known you, you're engulfed in this. I know you've taken a step back. But this is just part of your DNA. Can you really say that you'll just forget sports gambling altogether and be completely removed from this? Or can you never leave? No, I'm ready to leave in pretty soon. What we have now is after dealing with this pandemic, itching to get back to the states. Because I have a lot of relatives that are 75 plus. I want to-- there's a lot of these people haven't seen for years. So I want to kind of make the rounds and get reacquainted with-- I have a very big family kind of spread out, California, Colorado, New York, Florida. I want to spend more time in the states. And I have certain things that could maybe continue with me in the states. But I never really was doing the working in the states. There might be a few ways I can set up things to have some kind of an income while in the states. But I'm not going to be like on the phones or even doing stuff on the computer from the states. Because I have that fear back from the 1980s of having any kind of legal problems. I know I'm trying to set everything up. I've been going crazy paying big amounts of taxes and everything to get myself set up. But I would stay within the next six months to a year. I'm going to go into a semi-retirement mode. And maybe my key employee who's kind of helped make me a lot of money, I want to kind of leave it to him. And then he'll trim the business down. So it's manageable for him. And maybe with a few people, they'll keep some things going. And maybe I'll have a little bit of an earn from it. But I just don't want to have to deal with everything worrying about win loss and all the things that could happen. So in the United States in the last two years, sportsbooks have propagated all over the country. And they're just everywhere now. These regulated sportsbooks. And they're tolerance for any type of-- I don't even want to say sharp action. But just even a high limit-sending is just so far removed from what it was back in the even in the '70s and the '80s. And the '70s and '80s would be getting down and you were telling me you were booking guys 30 dimes without a flinch. Today to get down 30 dimes, that would be a monster. It's impossible. What has changed? Why do you think this is the way it is? And do you see this ever going back to what it was? Well, basically, the people that are making all the money in the business are mostly on the betting side. So what happens is everybody wants to be a bookmaker. And you have of 100 offices. There's like 80 of them where guys open up bookmaking offices with like a $200,000 bankroll. I mean, they could get knocked out the first week. They have no clue what they're getting themselves into. The reason that places take very little is because the betting side has gotten so sophisticated and the games move so much. Even though most lines are just kind of copied and cloning in vanilla, when there is a move on a game, they move a lot. Back in the early '80s, there was not that much movement on games. There was a lot of times where I was moving stuff for people where one guy was ordering a game minus 6 1/2. And another guy was ordering the other side plus 7. And I could just put both bets in my pocket and hope that it wouldn't fall. Now that never happens. It seems like a lot of stuff opens 40 and goes to 65 in baseball, where a college football game opens 11 and goes to 13 and 1/2, 14. So I'm just saying, and there's a lot of manipulation. And I just think it's embarrassing for the business that the amounts went down so much from my day. But I was also stupid to take so high because I created these situations with very big figures so that when you had a guy not pay or slow pay or whatever, it was a huge issue. So I was partially stupid. Probably should have been doing things for half the amount that I was, or maybe even less than half the amount. But then over the course of time, I realized that the amounts are now or so much less. Because back in those early '80s, there were five or six other guys in the New York area that were taken 10s and 20s, I mean, 10k and 20k on sports, including like college basketball and stuff, like it was nothing. I wasn't that out of the ordinary. No, no. I was just dealing a little thinner. But every year, as it got into the off-shore and everything like that, the style of the people that were opening up these offices, one was smaller than the next. And I guess they all would get hurt early and then start cutting down limits or whatever to survive the ones that did survive. Given inflation and you would think that limits would go up. And it's just kind of worse. I just-- It's insane. It's insane. Makes no sense to me. So with the rig, I know there's a lot of these illegal guys who are just opening up a little rinky, think these college kids didn't even have a 200-diamond back. Well, some of these kids have five dimes to their name and they're booking. How about these big European companies coming, like William and Hale and all these other guys coming from Europe and then just going and spreading out through the states where they're just kicking anybody out with a half a brain. Why is the tolerance so low? Do you make more money just dealing small to recreational guys? And is there a lack of talent to be able to pit sharps against each other? My feeling is that the employees that these places higher are not worthy of being-- the ones that are involved in moving lines of-- they don't have any talent at all. So they have to get rid of anybody's sharp. But the scary thing to me is that even like with the rules and vagus and stuff, that in Vegas, a game could go-- you could lay six. A game could go to six and a half. And later on, you need to take six and a half. And they're the only ones that have it. And they don't want you betting both sides of a game, even if-- I mean, it's like something that they used to get made about in 1977. I mean, they would take the plus six and a half bet from anybody in the world that didn't lay them six in the game. But they wouldn't take it from me because, you know, at half the time, I don't even remember-- I have guys playing in the apps and whatever. We don't even remember what we have because we're going all day long with hundreds of plays. And then every once in a while, our count gets turned all off at a place. And we're like, why? And then it turns out to be that we bet both sides of a game. It's the stupidest rule I've ever heard in my life. They'll take the bet from anybody in the world, except for somebody that bet the other side. That to me makes me want to get out of the business, because-- Yeah, it's-- It's so retarded. It doesn't make any sense. I'll even give you one better. There was a time we laid seven on a game and it was an injury. The line went down to six and a half. They wouldn't even let me take plus six and a half on a game I laid seven on. So it's crazy. I don't understand the need to. Yeah. I mean, I also don't like the places that put the sharper players with like a 10 or 15 second delay. The one thing I've done when I've booked is I said, look, I'll lower the limits of a guy that I know I'm not going to beat, or like if a group comes in, you know, one of these, you know, TOUTS services, whatever. If you're going to get 18 bets at once, so I'll lower everybody to a nickel or a dime, because I only take five times normally whatever. But I will never put a guy on a delay, because that irritates the hell out of me when I'm playing. I don't have time to play in a place. And then while I'm waiting to see if I get it or not, I've made four other plays. I mean, I'm nonstop. They slow you down. It's ridiculous. It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. The delays-- There's more and more places, even the big places now are putting in delays, especially, you know, on the line. It could be in between half-ending, like after a quarter or after a half-ending, like they need it. And it makes no sense. I mean, it's just the bigger the-- you know, they are, the less they should need to have-- they have-- all these guys have auto-move. So they're only going to get one bet at the price, and they can cancel the bet if it's a wrong price. And then it moves automatically. They can set it on whatever they want. they want for each customer. There's so much sophistication. But betting a game live, betting a game live other than a time like a timeout or a stoppage, you know, that's a cent the bookmakers didn't get any free roll on you with these delays. Yeah, not only you're not only especially like antennas, not only that, but I don't do that because of that. In other words, I have it what one of the things is I don't like to watch games because it makes my blood pressure grow up when I see the ref make a bad call. So I stopped watching sporting events about I'd say 15 years ago. I'll watch something if I know I have an unbelievably small decision, I might put something on to watch. But if I actually have like a need in the game for a decent amount of money, I can't watch. I watched the score board. And it got for bit the scoreboard puts up, you know, Dallas stores one nothing and then they take down the one because the goal was disallowed and then they all still they put up for the other side. They make mistakes on the scoreboard. That hurts me emotionally, but I can't watch a game on TV. Yeah, yeah, I love it. I love it. I love hearing that. Ribs, thank you so much for coming on. It really means a lot to me. You're a mentor of mine. I really, really admire you. I really appreciate it. I'm a busy guy. And I know you don't give interviews to anybody. And this is I really feel so privileged to have you share some of your knowledge and spend some time talking about your career and talking about the state of the industry. And I wish you the best of luck and retirement. And look forward to seeing you soon, but I enjoyed it very much. Thanks very much. Thank you, ribs. I hope you guys enjoyed that as much as I did. Ribs just knows so much in the business. And it was a real candid interview. You know, he doesn't hold anything back. Very honest about how emotional things get. You know, he's been at the peaks and valleys. He's seen it all. And it's tough. You know, going through losing days and you know, he talked about not wanting to watch certain games. If he has big positions on it. You know, he's been doing it for 40 years, but he still goes through stuff that all of us gamblers go through. And it's hard to be a robot and kind of disconnect from the emotional rollercoaster that this business provides. And you know, he's very honest about that. And the guy's been doing it for 40 years. So he's seen and done so much. And he's gone broke. And he's been on top where he is now. And he really like, you know, the old saying, you know, he's really has forgotten what most people ever learn. There's times where I would sit with him or I'd call him up. And he would just have to say one or two sentences. I would kind of tell him my problem and what I think, you know, a theory of mine or what this is about. And sometimes he'll just say things to me. There's one or two sentences that are just written. He knows that's all I need. You know, he knows how to light that bulb in my head. He has a great way of teaching the great way of kind of like sharing wisdom. He's just just unbelievable. Like he's such a great teacher and he just knows this business, you know, to be successful in this. Just like ribs, you have to be able to live, breathe and eat this business. He got to be able to do it all day every day. And you got to put the tens of thousands of hours in and watching him do it. Seeing his work ethic, you know, motivated me to work just as hard. And I hope it just motivates others, you know, hard work pays off. And I know it's like, you know, just regular, you know, what are old sayings or, you know, okay, I heard that one before. But it's a truth, especially in this game, you know, the more you work, the more you see things start becoming second nature. You just understand the business, understand how lines move, how book makers operate, you know, when something is good, when something isn't. You just you just learn and you just know things as you're doing it. And, and to actually see somebody like ribs in action is is unbelievable. It's an art, it's an art to see an artist paint. Like if you're, I, I've had the luxury of watching him sitting next to him on a stage, watching him work. And, and he's nonstop. I just doesn't stop it. You know, he's on a 100% caffeine high or whatever it is. And he just goes, goes, goes. There is no, you know, breaks. There's none of that. And, and that's why he's on top. And that's why, you know, he's had the success he's had. And that's why he's so well respected by everybody in the business. Again, these are the type of people that don't really give interviews. And obviously his name is our ribs. But, you know, I do these to kind of share with my audience and just share with you guys. And just because, you know, you know, you think that the best people are the guys on TV or the guys that do a lot of interviews or the guys are radio personalities TV personalities, social media personalities. But the real, real knowledge of this business are guys like ribs, guys that live, breathe and eat it. But that only the people that are in the midst of the business that are that are that are ingrained in this business, you know, that are part of it. No people like ribs. You see what I'm saying? So it's, and it's a treat because he don't do interviews. You know what I mean? And I asked him is I'm like, we're using alias, you know, and he was fine with it. And, you know, he's my friend. I know, you know, he wouldn't do it just for anybody. And, and I really, really, it's such a treat to have somebody like that. Just speak for an hour and kind of break things down. So I kind of long winded a conclusion, but I just, you know, it just deserves it. That's how much respect I have for the guy. Thanks so much for the time. Until next time.