When are we going to settle

How do you pay taxes from beating pph sites? When you beat a sportsbook you have winning and losing tickets but how does the IRS think about collecting cash from a local bookie?

if u had this out today would u go about it the same way?

1. You are well-known for eliciting information, who have you "played like a fiddle" the most in this forum?

2. Who are the top 3 sharpest posters in your opinion?

3. With the exception of my Hillary Clinton post, what do you think my shortcomings in thought processes are and how to correct them?

The agent claimed the bookie refused to pay out as I was “taking advantage” of his lines offered. This was after accepting all my action two days before. Don’t know who the guy behind the agent is (or if there really even is a guy behind him).

Has turned me off from looking at getting more accounts since the whole system is just so rigged against you if they can just not pay if you win a decent amount in a week.

Enjoying the thread so far.

Who is the strangest character you've encountered doing what you do? Tell us a bit about them

I'm confused about one thing. If they are using another site as a skin then why don't the lines update and why are you allowed to do correlated parlays?

Best thread in here in a whiiiiiile


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You mentioned getting stiffed, but any experience with deleted bets?

I was putting in sharp props and I realized the bookie was literally just deleting my winning bets, after they went.

I had screenshots, and called the site and they said "your agent deleted it, take it up with him"

Guy never admitted it and only paid me a fraction of what was owed.

Did you have anything like this ever happen?

Why do bookies pay a per-head monthly fee for skins when they can just hire a college kid to build a cheap website?

probably not but thinking about it now, I honestly probably did maximize the potential winnings. Nowadays Id very rarely do both sides of a CP of the same in the same book and I was doing that for every single game, plus 1H and quarters. If my pig level back then was a 10, id look to be at like an 8 now. I still think slashing and burning is usually the way to go And I didnt care about burning the bridge, they werent people that I was gonna work with

1) Ive definitely learned a lot here. I really dont think I "played" anyone really at all, was just kinda lucky to find this tiny little weird corner of the internet where expert sports bettors talk a lot about sports betting. I hope I can kinda pay it forward a little bit with this, sharing my own dumbed down unique way of making SB work for me.

2) hmmm, good question. "sharpest" doesnt mean "best" keep in mind. If I take all bias out completely... Id say...

1) Rsigley. Guy is just on a completely different level.
2) Thremp. Cant deny his knowledge
3) TomG. Even though hes fake nice now, he explains things in his head better than anyone else I think. He almost never makes a bad post.


3) I dont even know what post youre talking about but I think youre a nice addition to this forum so far. I read what you write.

ugh that sucks. Ive been positions like this many, many times. Tell what happened exactly, what were you betting, for how long, how did you guys meet, whats your history with him, etc... everything, and maybe I can help. Dont let it get you down though. Theres no 'system' and it isnt 'rigged' and theres no 'they.' Thats baby talk. Only winners get stiffed, remember that. If you got stiffed you were probably doing something right and you COULD be one account away from a whole new life

It seems to me that the real profits here are in being the PPH bookie, but actually know a *little* bit of what you are doing. Given your description of how clueless these local guys are, they must have a big enough quantity of even more clueless droolers that they absolutely kill in order to stay in business.

So, if the bookie had an inkling of what they were doing, they could tell after the first few bets if a new customer is betting off lines/CPs. Now, there must be a few of these guys that know at least some little basics, and have a big enough client base with a few whales in there to absolutely kill it. And you have no risk either, if your whale wants to bet 50-100k on this really off/juiced line you just quickly go online and arb off at pinny or wherever, so there’s no problems with ever needing to balance action with locals, just have access to funds that you can move around (and of course an offshore as well). So you make a profit and keep your whales seeking big action happy as well.

Anyway, given this, my question is a bit on the other side of the coin, i.e. from the bookie’s perspective.

Do you know of any such guys, that have a huge client base filled with whales that they fleece for huge amounts on the regular?

How hard is it to keep such an operation under wraps and not get audited/arrested/turned in by a disgruntled customer? I know you posted the thread on Action! so I’m assuming these guys look something like that incognito bookie that was shown there at the end who keeps up the façade and says nobody in his close circle even knows about it, he just looks like a regular joe working an office job. How hard is this to do, if you win say 200k-500k+ in additional net funds every year from this activity.

Also, given that you must have made a lot of connections in the local market by now, why don’t you become the PPH bookie in the above scenario instead of the bettor?

Theres one guy that always sticks out. He wasnt 'strange' per se, but a lot of weird stuff happened in this time and around this guy. Ill just tell the story...

After my las vegas adventure, I was back in MA and looking for new accounts. My pool hall friend had been betting through this guy and the skin had tons of props, so I had him set me up with a meeting. His name was Keno Bob and he ran Keno for a local restaurant. So Im already licking my chops walking in. I walk into this little, semi-run down Italian place right off the highway. The kind of place with popcorn in brown bowls and like 2 old arcade games for some reason that literally not one person has ever used. And I see this little old guy with slicked back gray hair, the King of the Keno room, hes talking to everyone, shaking hands and moving around like he owns the place. So we meet, talk for a bit and he gives me an account like its no big deal. The first few weeks go by and we settle with no problems and I get my credit bumped up. Then bumped up again. Lot of back and forth, we build trust and the account grows and grows. Then I have a brutal stretch of probably a month or 2 of just getting destroyed on his site. And I meet him and pay every week no problem.

One day Im meeting another guy I work with, a bookie and agent who was really sharp, and he mentions how he gives some players weekly rebates on losses. I was shocked. Ive never heard of such a thing! He says yea when a whale asks for it Ill usually give em 10% or something. So Im thinking, Keno Bob prob thinks im a whale! So my next big losing week I go into Keno Bobs Kingdom with my envelope and say Bob, I have another account and the guy is offering me 10% off losses every week. Id like to stay with you though, anyway you can beat that? And he goes yea sure, Ill give you '25 PERCENT OFF EVERY WEEK YOU LOSE'. 25% off of WEEKLY losses! I was expecting maybe hed match 10 or go nuts and offer 15 but 25!

So im like hey SURE bob that sounds good! And I just brutalize him over the next 6 months or so. I dont think I had a losing week. I couldnt believe how long they were letting me go for. I was using him as my personal ATM...it was like printing money for a while.

Finally one day after another huge week I try to log in and its closed. I call bob, no answer. ****. A few mins later I get a call from an unknown number...

I pick up and its this weird, feminine male voice with a lisp but hes kinda trying to be tough? He says hes Bobs boss and hes been away on vacation for the past month, and that he never would have allowed me stay on for so long, didnt know about the 25% etc. Then he starts talking about his mom?? I guess he lived with his mom and they were some sort of bookie operation together? I remember him saying "look, mom isnt happy" (lol). The whole thing was whacky.

So im like listen, i dont give a **** about any of this, where is Bob, he owes me for one more week then we never have to see each other again. And then he goes into how much make-up Bob is in because of me, and hes really worried about Bob, and Bob is such a nice guy and blah blah. And THEN, he goes "ya know back in the day if a guy won 10k in a week hed tip his agent a few hundred" all snide. Um excuse me buddy?? So Im like "hey PAL, when I was getting crushed week after week and bringing it all to him no problem, no one ever offered to "tip" me!". And he goes (I remember these exact words) "OK OK! Let us forget that and never bring it up again!" So I tell him I need to get paid what Im owed and we can be done. I think I might have even offered just to collect half of it if we can move on.

So we hang up. A minute later he calls me back. I pick up and he just starts talking, but I realize hes talking about me! He thinks he called bob and he starts saying "ok I talked to him, he still wants to get paid but..." and to this day I regret this, I dont know WHY, but I go "hey hey its me" And he goes oh sorry and hangs up. I dont know why I didnt just sit there and listen.

After that I never heard from or saw Keno Bob again. I went into his restaurant and he wasnt there. I even sent in some goons to talk to him but they never saw him either. I like to think of him in another country, running Keno for the locals and having a good time. I never heard anything about him or what happened or anything. He just vanished.

The lines do update of course but some are just slower than others, and some skins are slower in certain markets. The CP's are usually the agents fault. I think they have to select to not allow certain parlays and some just dont know

I was a PPH bookie before I started betting. Its a nightmare. If youre lucky enough to get it off the ground and to be big enough to make decent money you need a lot of players, like more than 20 (and thats just to get going with real money). And the typical sports bettor isnt like me and you. Picture the alone guys in horse racing tracks. Thats now your clientele.

You need agents who you have to really watch, you gotta chase dead beats around constantly, you gotta watch the screen all the time. And laying off isnt even close to as easy as you describe. You need a lot of liquid cash on you to cover everything and you can never be late paying anyone. So I dunno anyone that can carry a 6 figure balance online and have enough to cover a book. Plus noobs like to put in bets right before game time so you have to watch like a hawk just to arb. You get stiffed and free rolled constantly, youre always losing players and having to get more. People CRY to you. You have a small but constant fear of getting arressted 24/7. You like to think of a player as a 'whale' business man who can afford to dust off 50k a year betting cuz its fun, but those guys are few and far between. Its almost always a kid betting 50 bucks at a time or an old scummy guy firing and youre 50/50 on whether or not youre getting free rolled.


Ive met a few guys that seem really suited to it and do it well but almost everyone Ive known whos done it has burned out from it after a few years, at best. They usually go bust before that. Actually theres a guy who works at barstool now behind the scenes that used to take my action

Do any of these guys you know on the bookie side ever get pinched?

I dont think ive ever had winning bets just out right deleted. Thats pretty crazy. All you can do there is collect as much as possible, tell as many people as possible what happened and move on.

In all my years doing this, Ive never once heard of anyone having a run in with cops or anything violent actually happening.

watch me get beat to death by cops tomorrow now

I sort of downplayed the logistics which I know are huge, but what I mean is that once you have a reputation established, really getting to pick your clientele more, similar to how a recreational book limits sharp action. So I meant getting to drop a lot of these deadbeats along the way and just cater to the more serious guys who can afford to dust off larger amounts.

Then you sort of get to know their patterns/when they bet and can also ease off on the monitoring a little bit, as opposed to having a lot of smaller stakes degens betting randomly.

Are these guys really that rare/hard to find that you would need to have a constant supply of those dead beat types floating around?

Especially for guys who just do this as a side gig and don't need whatever action they can get in order to survive or pay their bills.

Also follow up for the future of the bookie in general, not just pph:

Did the legalization of sports betting in some states make the landscape much worse for them? I.e. losing a lot of players who may now prefer to bet legally.

Do you see a lot of them losing said action in the future, and being phased out due to legalization? Similar to how most breakeven poker grinders left the game once rakeback rewards dropped significantly.

Its not impossible, plenty of guys do it. But you really have to be a people person and you have to like collecting/paying out. Meeting people in bars and parking lots. Its a different skill set than that of a winning bettor.

I havent noticed legalization changing much of anything. If anything its helped as more people are aware of betting. And I dont think that will change much in the future either. Its all about credit...the PPHs give you credit and no one else really does. Until that changes I dont see PPHs going anywhere

What work do you do now? Why did you move on from betting?

I run a small business with about 16 employees. My dad started it but Ive been running day to day for a few years now. I always knew I would do this since I was little, and ive been working here off and on since I was like 13 and full time for a while before I got into sports. Im pretty good at it tbh...a lot of SB skills transfer nicely actually. Just being able to use excel is huge. I also think about problems as if I were making a model for it. For instance I wanted to know about the differences between drivers; are they all roughly the same or maybe there is a huge skill gap? Whats the difference between the best and worst driver? I think about what metrics would be important if I was betting...things like tons delivered per hour, or ideally money made per hour, etc. That kind of thinking, the kind that leads to successful models (if prop models) transfers very nicely into the business world IMO.

I never decided to 'move on' from betting but a year long break even stretch coupled with losing a ton of accounts all at once on top of it being time to **** or get off the pot with the business, it kinda just happened. At one point I actually had 0 accounts for the first time since probably 2008ish.

Then I realized I absolutely need it, even just a little bit. I just love advantage gambling. So I made a reddit AMA and got a couple accounts from it which got the juices flowing again a little. I reached out to an old partner who set me up with a few accounts off the bat, plus one other local guy and now I have more than a couple accounts and bet daily, just about. I think keeping it as a serious hobby is the best way to go. Unless youre a crusher, the life style isnt worth it IMO. Youre alone an insane amount of time. I remember thinking when I was full time, if I died in my condo literally no one would know for a while. Maybe its just me but thats how I felt.