In the Beginning
I've been betting for over 40 years -- longer than most -- but I am not a gambler, and I have never been a gambler.  I consider the word "bet" to be synonymous with the word "invest."  I bet very big money, but only on things that provide me with the edge.  I use the word "bet" when sports wagering, and I use the word "bet" when talking about an investment in the stock market.  I am no more a bettor than Bally, Trump or Steve Wynn.  It's all a business at which I have the edge.  

You won't find me playing big money at slot machines and casino table games.  I strongly believe that gambling is strictly entertainment, and therefore should be practiced in amounts that are strictly entertaining.  There's nothing entertaining about giving away big money in a negative expectation game.  I would no more play $500 per card at baccarat than I would spend $500 on a roller coaster ride at the amusement park.  

If you see me anywhere in a casino other than the sports book, the blackjack tables, or the poker tables, I'm the guy playing $10 worth of quarters, one at a time, in the video poker machine, or the guy at the lowest minimum bet roulette wheel or craps table.

For at least half of my 40 betting years, I've been a professional.  That means that for the last 20 years, my main source of income has come from betting on games of skill, including sporting events, horse racing, blackjack, poker, and the financial markets.  I've often thought of attempting to conquer chess, but I never spent the time necessary to become good enough.   

I would invest in my own performance in sporting events, but I have never been good enough at playing any sport to rely on my own skill.  It is important to know your own skills, preferences, and time limitations, and if you cant rely on your skills then you must rely on the skill of others.  My skill lies not in being the athlete, but in my ability to handicap.  I successfully handicap athletes, the economy, businesses and businessmen.   

My First Betting Experience - Blackjack
I was first introduced to blackjack by Edward O. Thorpe's book, Beat the Dealer.  Thorpe is the computer engineer and mathematician who is credited with doing the original research that became blackjack card counting.  

After high school graduation, a friend and I drove cross-country.  When we hit Vegas, I managed to sneak into the Golden Nugget on Fremont Street at the age of just 17.  Those were the days when much of Vegas was still owned by gangsters, and the Golden Nugget was a small gambling hall and hotel with swinging saloon doors.  Even back then, they spotted us as card counters after only an hour or so, and gave us a warning.  Amazingly they never checked my age.

Before that, I never gambled, and it was my first experience with the success that could be mine by investing in positive expectation situations.   

 I was young, I lived in New York, and the nearest blackjack games I knew of were all the way across the country in Las Vegas.  Aqueduct Racetrack, however, was just a 10-minute city bus ride away.  I theorized that an advantage could be had through handicapping.  I went to the library and took out a few books on horse handicapping.  

Some of the books had good information, but it wasn't sufficient.  I thought I knew enough to win, but I didn't.  I was an inadvertent gambler for almost six years until I was lucky enough to meet a well-known horse trainer. The things he taught me filled in the gaps and I became an expert race handicapper.

Learning to Handicap Sports
Around the same time, I met friends who were betting sports.  I was not a sports fan then, and I'm still not a sports fan.  If I don't bet on a game, I have absolutely no interest in it.  I like to watch and participate in individual sports such as tennis, skiing, racquetball, and handball.  I also like to play baseball and football.  I'd love to go to the Olympics and watch the pole vault, and the gymnastics competitions.  Watching team sports being played, however, holds no interest for me.  

As it turns out, the fact that I am not a fan is a good thing.  Nothing is more damaging to a sports handicapper than the lack of objectivity that comes from being a fan.  I am a rabid fan of any team I bet on, but only until the game is over.

Despite my not being a sports fan, it seemed to me that betting sports could give a skilled handicapper an edge that was even better than the edges to be had in cards and race handicapping.   In an attempt to learn as much as possible about sports handicapping, I  studied a myriad of books on the subject .  None of them was worth the paper it was written on.   I had to learn on my own by trial and error, mathematical reasoning, and the use of logic.  

For instance, logic told me that passing teams, when matched up against poor pass defenses, should have a high number of passing of plays and plenty of passing yardage.  I also knew that passing made a game much longer because the clock stopped every time the pass was incomplete or the receiver was near the sideline and stepped out.  I noted from published statistics that the average yardage gained on a pass play was greater than the average yardage gained on a running play.   A longer game meant more plays, and more passing plays meant not only longer games but more yardage per play.  Thus, such games were likely to be higher scoring than games in which the teams handicapped to have more running plays.

I spent many years learning and trying theories, becoming better and better every season.  I bet small entertainment amounts while learning my trade.  After almost 8 years as a $15 - $25 bettor, I finally felt I was good enough to step up the action.   I was already playing blackjack every night, however, and there are just so many jobs one can do at once, so I spent only two hours a day handicapping and I bet only a few hundred per game.  I was playing blackjack and the financial markets for thousands.     

Trading the Financial Markets
Several years later I was employed in the financial industry.  There is much more good information available about stocky analysis than about sports betting.  I quickly learned that Wall Street was the biggest casino in the world and easy pickings for a good financial handicapper with good information sources.  The only difference between Wall Street and the Atlantic City casinos was that there were more games at which the players could get a positive expectation.  Eventually I became an independent floor trader on the NYFE (New York Futures Exchange).  At the time, the financial markets were my main source of income.   

Back to BJ in Atlantic City
When gambling came to Atlantic City, I began to play blackjack again.  For many years, I would work all day on Wall Street, and then race to LaGuardia Airport to catch a free junket flight to Atlantic City at 6:30 PM.  I had finally learned how to hide the fact that I was counting cards, and the casinos simply thought I was a high roller.  They were willing to fly me in for free every night so I could take their money.  I almost felt guilty - note, I said ALMOST.    

The flying time was just one-half hour, and the plane would leave Atlantic City again at midnight.  I'd be back home in bed by 1:30 AM and begin again the next day.  I'd manage to handicap a few games over lunch, and a few more while traveling in a cab to the airport and on the plane.  Sometimes I'd ask for a dinner comp and do another hour in the restaurant while eating.  I couldn't handicap every game, and my main source of income was not yet sports betting.  I was betting thousands at blackjack and thousands in the financial markets, and only a few hundred at sports.  I had stopped race betting all together.  

The casinos were getting smarter and smarter, however, and counting cards was becoming harder and harder to do without getting caught.  Eventually, I got an offer to join a well-known counting team.   The teams made big money, but they burned players out quickly.  In a few months I had been discovered at all but one casino and it became impossible for me to play.

Poker had not yet been approved in Atlantic City and was illegal in New York.  Horse race betting was full time job involving watching the odds all day.  I didn't want to play poker with friends, and I didn't want to dedicate my working life to the racetrack, so, I decided to get more heavily into sports betting while continuing my financial market activities.   

The Crowne Club Begins
When I was in my 20s and 30s, like most fledgling handicappers, I thought I knew it all.  I see young touts like that all the time on the Internet.  They are 25 years old, claim they began handicapping sporting events at the age of 3, and are great experts.  Just a few questions usually reveals that they dont even have enough experience to know what they dont know.  I am still learning.  Every time I learn something new, I am amazed at how much I have learned since I thought I knew it all.  

When I stopped playing in Atlantic City, I was in my 40s, and after years of teaching myself to handicap sports, I had learned enough and had a consistent enough win percentage to feel secure about making bets large enough to create a good income.  

I learned the value of good information sources from my work in the financial markets.  Even though I was earning good money investing in sporting events, I decided to attempt to improve those results by getting good sources of information.

I began by taking out small classified ads in college newspapers and newspapers in team cities and towns.  I was seeking students or faculty on college campuses that had close contact with players, or local residents who lived close enough to stadiums to have accurate late weather, or bar tenders who worked in the bars where players hung out.  Campus and local reporters made great unpaid scouts.  Of course, all the informants had to be sports bettors.  The trade off was information for information.

The network built slowly at first, but after the first few people, those people knew other people.  The network grew geometrically.  I set up voice mail lines to take in the information, then Id listen to it, pick out what I believed to be important, and Id read it into another line that everyone could call.  

It worked like a charm.  After awhile, the gathering of information began to take hours.  I had to make a choice.  Stop gathering the information, or stop trading the markets.  I decided to try to get some money for the information in addition to the winnings from wagering.  I began to advertise an information club.  If you had information to exchange you were a free member.  If you wanted the information but had nothing to trade, you could pay a fee for access.  

After awhile I had a number of sports services as clients.  I learned a lot from them about handicapping; even those who couldnt win would often have something of value to teach.  The trick was to separate the good ideas from the nonsense.

As the Club grew, the members who were not professional handicappers began to ask what I was betting based on the information.  I began putting up betting recommendations with the information.   A short time later I was a sports service.

The Wall Street Syndicate entered the picture shortly after I started the information network.   I was still working down on Wall Street.  One day, as I was leaving work, I ran into a bookmaker who used to have some very big clients in the financial industry.  Wall Street traders gamble for a living, and they dont just bet the markets.  They are huge sports bettors.     

I hadnt seen the book in about a year.  We went for drink and he told me he had become a working partner in a professional betting group.  Some top investment banking executives and wealthy traders had pooled their money, and hired handicappers, runners and others. He said they were very successful.   He had stopped working as the result of an arrest.  I had done him a favor in that regard, which I am not at liberty to discuss, and he offered to give me some of the racing selections from the syndicate as a thank you.  A few of the partners were thoroughbred owners, and they concentrated at least half their assets on racing.  The success of their racing picks that week was nothing short of spectacular.  Over 54% of their top picks won at average prices of about 4-1.  It was incredible.  

When the week was over, I asked about getting their racing and sports selections.   The ex-bookmaker said he couldnt spend the time calling me, but offered to talk to his bodyguard.  I made a deal with the bodyguard to pay him to call me every time his boss got a pick.  I started to put the information out on my lines along with everything else.  The Crowne Club was born.  

After a few years, for business reasons I began to give picks from myself and from the syndicate and less and less information.  People couldnt keep up with betting the horsed everyday, nor could I, and I stopped paying for those picks except on special day such as the Triple Crown and the Breeders Cup.

The Crowne Club still networks information, and is a one-of-a-kind service with unusual success.   I have done limited advertising, but I have a large word of mouth.  RJ Bell has now arranged to provide Crowne Club selections on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.  Click here if you are interested.  

By the way, based on my background in financial handicapping, I can say unequivocally, that RJ Bell is one of the best, hardest working, and most creative chief executives I have ever come across.  If he ever decides to become really, really rich by taking Pregame public, be sure to buy in for a piece of the action.