Introduction, The Early Years

Introduction:
The Early Years before Offshore Gaming


I grew up on the embankment of the Mississippi River in the Midwest. It was a modest upbringing with freezing cold winters and steaming hot barefoot summers. My parents were together for their entire lives. I attended church every Sunday morning with the exception of football season. Instead I would bypass the Sunday services for standing room only football viewing at the Osco Drug Store to watch the games on their display televisions. I went to private schools up through college. Then, I got a decent education from the University of Arizona and The Ohio State University where I graduated with a BA in English. Along the way I have been around bookmaking and sports gambling for the past 20 years since my late teens.

I have won as much as $4000 betting on a single football game while traveling to Las Vegas right after my 21st birthday which had me hooked because the first three bets came in with relative ease. I got 15 points with the University of Washington against Southern California and Rodney Peete. After being down by 14 points after two possessions, Cary Conklin led the Huskies back to within a 2 point conversion of outright victory in the waning seconds but USC held on for a nail biting 21-20 victory. While partying in Caesar’s Palace I decided to lay another $2200 on “over 6 ½” for game one of the 1988 World Series and won the game three innings before Kirk Gibson limped to the plate and launched one of the greatest game ending home runs in MLB history off the great Oakland reliever, Dennis Eckersley. While bragging on the telephone inside of the old Dunes a man next to me suggested the Cleveland Browns minus 2 ½ points against the New York Jets and I jumped on that for $2200 before heading off to the airport as the original Dawgs stingy defense led by all-pro cornerbacks, Hanford Dixon and Frank Minnefield would go on to crush the Jets 19-3. When all was said and done I had cleared $8000 in winnings, averted an attempted mugging by two cowboys right about where the current MGM exists who had followed me from Caesar’s and lost my plane ticket back to Santa Barbara which was the least of my problems considering the sizable wad of cash I had just attained. That first trip to Vegas was heavenly but I would give everything back and then some over the course of the next 8 years. It’s just one of the expectations of gambling, the house is eventually going to win.

The early downside to gambling saw me going nearly $8000 in the hole to a local bookie if not for a beautiful 99 yard fumble return in the final minute of a late night University of Hawaii football game versus the Air Force Academy, so I am well educated on luck. Every time I see the commercial about the United States Air Force being heroes I think back to what that Falcon football player in white with blue trim uniform must have looked like returning money back to the personal bank account of yours truly along with a game winning touchdown in 1988. I thought I was down $8000 so I packed it in with Hawaii just about to go into the end zone and was on the elevator out of the hotel before a buddy chased me down in the lobby of the Santa Barbara Inn to tell me the mind boggling news. One minute I am about to throw up feeling the angst of losing and the next moment I am elated and celebrating. That’s sports gambling. It has highs and lows like nothing else I have ever experienced. The highs are incredible and addictive. The lows are a nightmare.

I have run parlay cards out of a sports bar I worked at in Huntington Beach, California. I even ran a sports book in college. I broke the nose of a wealthy young nephew (of an extremely prominent Los Angeles sports legend who was bookmaking) for hitting a girl I was with than pulling a knife one me while he was extremely drunk. After getting up from the KO, the nephew of the sports legend jumped the wall and ran from the neighborhood in Westminster, California back to Santa Monica and stiffed me for a about two grand. I got him back a few years later when I was betting through another guy that happened to be his partner. I got in the hole for about the same amount of money and just one time I happen to call in and caught the nephew filling in for his partner so that debt was repaid.

The verdict is still out on whether sports gambling has been good to me or bad. It allowed me to buy a sailboat and build an advertising firm based on working with the online gaming companies. Live in beautiful bachelor’s dream house on the sunny beaches in Los Angeles County. Travel to tropical paradises that include Aruba, Curacao and Costa Rica. Meet a lot of great people, including sports celebrities, major media executives, friends, and my future ex-wife. And write this book. The bad side has been: I lost that boat within 9 months, been heavy in debt numerous times for cash, lost some good friends, and met the wife. Along the way I also worked with one of the most unethical bookmakers the world knows today. So I have definitely seen sports gambling up close and personal well before I entered the world of online gambling.

The story you are about to hear is about the life in the online gaming industry. None of the online gaming identities are of actual people but based off of characters I have run across in the industry. Some events are true, others are fictional. That is for you to decide. The company BetOnSports was an actual company where the author has a documented history, but is no more and the use of this company is to show how a great company can go wrong.