Are Pick Sellers And Touts Legit?
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The answer is almost certainly, no. The only long term, real winner who sells picks that I know of is Right Angle Sports. Their fees are very high and when they release their picks, you have only seconds to make your bet before the line moves.
So the first question is, if tout X is also a winner, why are neither of these things the case with him?
Here is a deep takedown of RJ Bell and all the touts associated with pregame.
http://deadspin.com/how-america-s-favorite-sports-betting-expert-turned-a-s-1782438574
"Bell loves to say that every pick ever sold on Pregame is archived and available for review. This is ostensibly true, but to access results older than 30 days requires clicking through a calendar, day by day, and entering CAPTCHA codes for each one. Before long you find yourself in an infinite CAPTCHA loop, unable to continue, blocked from any attempts to tabulate the hard evidence.
Until now. Two real-world bettors, one of whom is a former financial analyst in his late 20s who is highly regarded by oddsmakers, developed a script to scrape Pregame.com URLs for daily selections and results going back to Jan. 1 2011, and their findings speak for themselves.
Based on Pregame’s own record-keeping—which leans kindly toward its touts—all of the picks sold from Jan. 1, 2011 through the end of May 2016 add up to a loss of nearly $310,000."
Also, I thought this was funny.
There are degrees. Some touts set out to be con artists from day one. Others might work pretty hard on their picks, but just can't beat widely available lines.
There are people who give away free picks, or commentary, who are pretty legitimate. But even that is hard to do.
For some reason, he is obsessed with discrediting touts. He is a somewhat abrasive character, and many in the anti-tout community are far more abrasive.
He also shares some pretty good info, often in the process of discrediting a tout by pointing out mathematical errors and so forth.
https://twitter.com/groovinmahoovin
I should tout
than no advice. I think any kind of advice is bad if not given a reason they came upon a choice, so the tip receiver can evaluate the pick. Plus the cost of the tips must pay for itself. Even $10 you would have to bet so much just to pay for the advice, assuming the advice is sound. I guess I can not agree necessarily such advice is always fraudulent, but tend to consider the advice overvalued, overpriced.
*He's actually really good, I've followed some of his picks.
I know people who have purchased his picks and as well as I can tell he does post all of his past choices on the website. Obviously, when he advertises on the site he focuses on his better records but I think everything is there for people to check out. As best as I can tell, he is mildly profitable.
There was about a 10 year timeframe (the aughts) where I picked about eight to ten college football games a week and posted them on a Missouri fan site. I was just trying to challenge myself, I never wanted to sell the picks as that is too much pressure. I only had one year below 52.3%, hit over 60% twice and was usually in the high 50s.
Over the last few years though I'm probably lucky to be at 50%. I cannot explain why I ever did so well except a couple of those years Missouri dramatically overachieved and I'm a homer so I tend to pick Missouri a lot! Still, that was a pretty nice run, I also used to pick every Big 12 game and I was pretty locked into those teams before MU left the conference. Since the SEC move I'm completely inconsistent, or consistently bad!
I think as far as free picks go, favorite, second favorite, third favorite, anybody can do that. Even if these picks were good, by giving the picks, you destroy the value when people play them. I like getting information with explanation. If I chose to not buy the explanation, it's still possibly good advice, because then I can move to counter the advice and play against it.
I watch tvg and really like Catan Bradar.
She knows her stuff, and when I've made bets based on her advice, I've done well. I do not take it every time, but I listen closely.The nice thing about her picks is they're not always the favorites, and people don't flood to her picks betting them down. Her advice isn't just the looks of the horse, but also has her handicapping and experience involved. You just have to know how to judge what she says, balance her advice against input from other commenters, decide if she really believes it and decide if she is right or not. I could be fooling myself, that's possible, but really feel when I decide to bet on her advice, I do better than knowing nothing and betting randomly.
I like Matt Carouthers as well, he's good. The late night guys, they're terrible though on tvg. Half the time I'm sitting there wondering if they're trying to move people on bad horses. They're so bad I sometimes have to pay attention to who they're avoiding talking about or what they're trying to avoid talking about. I remember once a man mentioned he wondered if man b's pick would stay higher, wondering if 3/1 would stick. I could tell man b did not want to talk about it, as if taboo to discuss it. When it was glossed over, I knew it was my bet to make and it won. Even though I've lost with my betting, it's attributable to betting all the time and making my own bets, which sometimes is just betting randomly. I dont really bet much more when I feel confident, possibility something I should be doing. I think being more selective with a bigger bet range might help, but I'm not really wanting money tied up or shouldn't have it tied up, because I might need it sooner than I can get it out.
Plus, you have to be able to make the bets that the person you are following makes, assuming the even bet. This is hard even when following someone for free, especially if the are making good bets.
Quote: onenickelmiracleI can see a case if their advice is better than randomly picking bets. If you know nothing, some bad advice could be better
than no advice. I think any kind of advice is bad if not given a reason they came upon a choice, so the tip receiver can evaluate the pick. Plus the cost of the tips must pay for itself. Even $10 you would have to bet so much just to pay for the advice, assuming the advice is sound. I guess I can not agree necessarily such advice is always fraudulent, but tend to consider the advice overvalued, overpriced.
Well thats a big key. If you are paying just to lose more slowly you now have a lot more juice to overcome. If they are 1% better than random and charge 10 a pick now you gotta bet a g a game to break even on the purchase.
This assumes you have some way of knowing they are 1% better, which you don't.
Plenty of people give picks for free and some of them are pretty smart. Just go with them.
You heard it here first.
Quote: lilredroosterIt's impossible to assign a true probability to a sports event. It can only be estimated.
The question then becomes how accurate can we make our estimates? The less accurate we are in our probabilities, the more susceptible the sportsbooks are to getting beat. The difficulty in beating the sportsbooks is what illustrates so well how good the estimates really are.
There are between 5,000 and 6,000 college basketball games available to bet every year. That's over 20,000 possible choices on side, total, moneyline, game and first half. If someone has won two years in a row, and been beating the closing lines, we can use that information to estimate what their edge is on each bet.
Correction: Irish War Cry was 15-1 morning line and won the race, approximately 4-1. The site I was looking at must have malfunctioned showing the wrong track or something. It paid $10.80, $4, $2.20.
Some people object to giving away picks for free with affiliate links, since you often only make money with an affiliate if your customers lose. I've done that myself, but I can see their argument. Gambling is kind of a dirty business so I think you're rarely going to pass the WWJD test if you are involved in it
I know at least two people who have tried to be honest touts. They offered all of their picks for a fairly modest monthly fee. In theory, this could be helpful to someone who bets pretty big.
In practice, you still have no real way of knowing if the tout is good. You'll also struggle to get the same bets as them, either because lines have moved or because they have 25 outs and you have 4. Also, I think if they care about winning for clients, it messes with their heads.
I think your strategy of listening to them and judging their reasoning for free is fine. It seems very unlikely to hurt. I listen to some guys, like Fezik, occasionally. I tailed one of his SB props this year. But I would not have if I didn't get a good price.
Quote: onenickelmiracleI can see a case if their advice is better than randomly picking bets.
On second thought, maybe just go with random picks.
Quote: BozNothing like the old days of Mike (Lasky) Warren, Jim Feist, Stu Feiner and former Vice Presidential Candidate Wayne Allan Root. Somehow Root has made himself seem legitimate writing for the Review Journal and distancing himself from his time as a scamdicapper back in the days of 1-900 numbers.
College bball Saturdays with root are a fade fest. He goes 1-4 nearly every time I've seen his picks.
Genius.
Quote: lilredroosterThe fascinating thing about sports betting is that it's so mysterious. You might have won betting NCAAB 2 seasons in a row and you might think you have an edge. But you might have made only a hundred or so bets so you can't really know if you had an edge. Your ego tells you that you have an edge but who knows. Things change. Trends reverse themselves. You lose confidence. You become less sharp. It's impossible to assign a true probability to a sports event. It can only be estimated. One time a book had a tout who sent me a newspaper with a giant front page headline saying Oregon was going to crush Oregon State in football many years ago. Oregon State beat Oregon by 48 points if I remember correctly.
you are right on lil red
now though computers and models are so tight, long term they are on it, but even they have to be tweaked
What the real pros or syndicates do is get high volume and early lines, which increases their ROI by 2-5%
With enough and high amount bets this is how they win long term because they move the lines
But even they have wash or slightly down months.
Quote: TomGThe question then becomes how accurate can we make our estimates? The less accurate we are in our probabilities, the more susceptible the sportsbooks are to getting beat. The difficulty in beating the sportsbooks is what illustrates so well how good the estimates really are.
There are between 5,000 and 6,000 college basketball games available to bet every year. That's over 20,000 possible choices on side, total, moneyline, game and first half. If someone has won two years in a row, and been beating the closing lines, we can use that information to estimate what their edge is on each bet.
Tom proving my point that the models are real good, or that at least they make it really hard to beat a 10% vig (maybe the most important fact).
Correcting the above, the models are good enough to have an error margin in 10% vig
Throw emotion and recreational play and the books always win, unless they are exposed in inefficient markets. It happens, but rarely. And they limit greatly.
I always said, the biggest myth is that "Vegas knows blah blah blah"
No they don't. They know quickly how off their early lines are, which means a lot their original numbers aren't very good. The market knows. They know the sharp bets and trends and adjust. Betting into closing lines is tough long term. Very tough. Vegas doesn't know, the market does.
That's true. You'd think in horse racing, you're against real people betting, but there are massive organizations with computer programs betting millions based on their analysis and it's all set up with the tracks. The tracks still get their cut, so they don't really care.Quote: Landoyou are right on lil red
now though computers and models are so tight, long term they are on it, but even they have to be tweaked
What the real pros or syndicates do is get high volume and early lines, which increases their ROI by 2-5%
With enough and high amount bets this is how they win long term because they move the lines
But even they have wash or slightly down months.
Quote: onenickelmiracleThat's true. You'd think in horse racing, you're against real people betting, but there are massive organizations with computer programs betting millions based on their analysis and it's all set up with the tracks. The tracks still get their cut, so they don't really care.
From the link:
"Initially, track management knew very little about these gamblers who created algorithms to identify betting opportunities and cover far more wagering combinations than a human ever could."
What I don't understand about this bot betting is that if you bet a great many combinations in the exotics, unless your combination that hits scores with 2 shots in the exacta, tri and fecta I can't see how you're going to win. And that doesn't happen that often. Obviously if you bet in the exacta pool with lots of different combinations and low odds horses win, which happens very often, then you may have won a bet or 2 but overall your play will lose money. Same with the tri and fecta. The only way I can see this strategy working is with the shots. So why not limit it to just the shots? Or just to plays with 2 shots in the tri and fecta. But I might very well be missing something.
http://www.paulickreport.com/news/ray-s-paddock/i-robot-the-future-of-horse-race-wagering/
In 1970's he had so many customers, phone lines would get jammed on Saturday mornings. You had to wait 3 to 5 minutes in Pikesvilee to get dial tone. Sometimes sports sections of TV news would lead off with score on Mike's hot game, teams might not be in top 10 rankings.
Back then Jimmy the Greek on TV would give pix as winning by a field goal or a touchdown. NFL did not want points on picks.
Mike has a new website, don't go there, says his NEW system is picking 80% winners HAHAHA
Now he works as a Walmart door greeter 40 hours a week because he's bored of retirement and wants something to do.
I'm gonna have to try this @vegasdave guy. Seems legit!
"Welcome to Wal*Mart, you've got to take New England and lay the points."
Thinks to himself, 'This is great, one of those customers will think I made the right call!'
Meanwhile, he keeps welcoming people to Wal*Mart and ends up with $0.00 in actual action on the game.
Quote: RigondeauxHere is a good Twitter follow on the subject. Groovin is, to the best of my knowledge, a very successful bettor.
For some reason, he is obsessed with discrediting touts. He is a somewhat abrasive character, and many in the anti-tout community are far more abrasive.
He also shares some pretty good info, often in the process of discrediting a tout by pointing out mathematical errors and so forth.
https://twitter.com/groovinmahoovin
So, you share a link to a twitter user who links his site which is also a forum that allows sports picks with no arguments from a person who is argumentative on the subject? The hypocrisy is strong in this one....
I guess this is what someone could call indirect advertising or perhaps it should be called redirect advertising.
Quote: lilredroosterI grew up in MD too. Pimlico, Laurel, Rosecroft. I quickly learned the great racetrack tradition of throwing your losing tickets on the floor.
For me it was Belair, Havre De Grass , Marlboro, Cumberland, Timonium, Pimlico Laurel & Bowie. Only 1/2 mile left is Timonium and
only 7 days. Real advantage play back in 50's and 60's. Took 5 or 6 seconds after horse left the gate until mechanical tkt machines shut down. One guy with binoculars shouting # of horse who broke on top, his partner at $100 window. Not guaranteed winner, but at 4 and 1/2 furlongs definetly AP
Quote: ErnestoFor me it was Belair, Havre De Grass , Marlboro, Cumberland, Timonium, Pimlico Laurel & Bowie. Only 1/2 mile left is Timonium and
only 7 days. Real advantage play back in 50's and 60's. Took 5 or 6 seconds after horse left the gate until mechanical tkt machines shut down. One guy with binoculars shouting # of horse who broke on top, his partner at $100 window. Not guaranteed winner, but at 4 and 1/2 furlongs definetly AP
Great story. Remember the signers? The track janitors who for $50 would sign paperwork for your win over $600. I didn't do that. Not guilty. But I knew about it.
What a racket ! Best thing about Timonium was , and still is, just not 30 days anymore, betting a race and watching it from the ferris wheel at Maryland State Fair. Nibbling on hot buttered cob of corn that cost $1 back then.
And of course on Preakness day charging people $5 to park on front lawn of a house on Roger's Avenue. Home owner not too happy when he got home... HaHa
Quote: ErnestoPimlico is down to 28 days. Only a share of casino profits keeps the owners from selling the land and " THE PREAKNESS "
What a racket ! Best thing about Timonium was , and still is, just not 30 days anymore, betting a race and watching it from the ferris wheel at Maryland State Fair. Nibbling on hot buttered cob of corn that cost $1 back then.
And of course on Preakness day charging people $5 to park on front lawn of a house on Roger's Avenue. Home owner not too happy when he got home... HaHa
Maryland racing is so crooked and everybody knows it. I capped a race at Laurel many years ago.. A claimer lost the last race by 30 lengths, the previous race by 32 lengths and he did not finish the race before that. He was just claimed by Scott Lake one of the notorious drug pushers and they bet him down to 7/2. What a joke.When I was like 10 years old I used to play pinball in a joint in Baltimore and the Manager paid you CASH if you took the machine to a certain level. That place was always rockin'. He had all the little kids hooked. Remember Marvin Mandel the Governor who along with his wife took a bunch of silverware and furniture out of the Governor's mansion when they left it?
No exotics back then so when first time started for example went off even money, I would bet the 2k to place. Not unusual then with big fields for first time starter to pay $4.00 to win $ 3.60 to place. Henry could lose $40 or win $360.
Watching the Pope of Greenwich village I wondered why Mickey Rourke did not bet the horse to place ? ( which he did ) Mickey looked like guys I hung out with at the diner, which later became a movie. Mickey had an Oscar nomination as lead actor in " The Wrestler ".
Great quote in Pope movie. Guys I grew up with said same thing in different ways. HAHA
Charlie: Honest work. Let me tell ya somethin' about 'honest work'. When somebody says they got 'honest work', you know what they got? They got a shit job, that's what they got.
Baltimore Sun reported records show owner profits over 250K. Actually was 500k each for a million plus.
Yes, they keep record, Makes Fed and State happy when you pay taxes. Say the win that week was $400, machine man and bar owner both put $100 each in the books. Assholes in Glen Burnie would each put down $5 a week for slots, Feds busted them all for good, DUMB
Want to open a restaurant, pool hall, bar back then. Need money? Interest free loan from machine man. He just kept all of the win until loan was paid. A good deal for all. Maybe with VP today, but I doubt it. Once State gets in gambling, they don't allow competition. On 1990 when Colorado when legal, you would get jail time if caught running your own card room. Before that, just a fine. Greedy bastards.
Quote: JoelDezeSo, you share a link to a twitter user who links his site which is also a forum that allows sports picks with no arguments from a person who is argumentative on the subject? The hypocrisy is strong in this one....
I guess this is what someone could call indirect advertising or perhaps it should be called redirect advertising.
Lol. You actually try to pedal losing picks.
Grooven has or posts on a forum similar to this one. Haven't spent much time there but im pretty sure it's not a front for touting.
It doesn't even have gambling affiliate links.
It's hardly why i linked to his twitter.
So go ahead and specify the hypocrisy.
Quote: JoelDezeSo, you share a link to a twitter user who links his site which is also a forum that allows sports picks with no arguments from a person who is argumentative on the subject? The hypocrisy is strong in this one....
Neither his twitter account, nor the other site is monetized in any way. Arguments are not only allowed, they are often encouraged on almost all of the platforms he participates in. It's good that there is one place where arguments aren't allowed.
There is no hypocrisy.
Quote: ErnestoGrew up with Mike Warren in Pikesville. MD. Got his start selling a horse pick system, bet till you win $100 that day, then go home.
In 1970's he had so many customers, phone lines would get jammed on Saturday mornings. You had to wait 3 to 5 minutes in Pikesvilee to get dial tone. Sometimes sports sections of TV news would lead off with score on Mike's hot game, teams might not be in top 10 rankings.
Back then Jimmy the Greek on TV would give pix as winning by a field goal or a touchdown. NFL did not want points on picks.
Mike has a new website, don't go there, says his NEW system is picking 80% winners HAHAHA
I believe he also was in on the psychic friends network scam with Dionne Warwick at one point.
He also had ex Redskins QB Billy Kilmer on his roster to use his name for picks. But others has tried that as well. Oilers QB Dan Pasterini got into trouble with noted scamdicapper Jeff Allen from Henderson LV.
Quote: ErnestoPInball machines. All paid off in 50's thru 90's and today it's vp in bars and diners. Mike probably know this place, I forget the name, bar a block from Social Security Bldg in Woodlawn. 4 machines, had to be emptied several times a week. I worked midnight to eight am . Me and a coworker would each lock up a machine playing a nickle at a time. Machine man would ask us to wait while he emptied, reset registers, etc. About 10 minutes. Then he would put 100 or 200 credits up for out trouble. Sometimes play to try and hit big, or just cash out. Place got busted one years, hey cops gotta do something if a loser's wife files a complaint.
Baltimore Sun reported records show owner profits over 250K. Actually was 500k each for a million plus.
Yes, they keep record, Makes Fed and State happy when you pay taxes. Say the win that week was $400, machine man and bar owner both put $100 each in the books. Assholes in Glen Burnie would each put down $5 a week for slots, Feds busted them all for good, DUMB
Want to open a restaurant, pool hall, bar back then. Need money? Interest free loan from machine man. He just kept all of the win until loan was paid. A good deal for all. Maybe with VP today, but I doubt it. Once State gets in gambling, they don't allow competition. On 1990 when Colorado when legal, you would get jail time if caught running your own card room. Before that, just a fine. Greedy bastards.
Great stories. You should write a book. Title: "Crooked Maryland" Maryland is up there in crookedness with New Orleans. And New Orleans is really, really, really crooked. I read most of a long bio of James Cain the great mystery writer who was from Maryland. The author wrote about Cain carousing at "the block." He said the strippers were screwing customers in the bars there. AND THIS WAS IN THE 1940s!!! All kinds of monkey business on the Block. I could almost throw a stone from a bar there to the Baltimore Police Headquarters. Ha Ha
Quote: RigondeauxLol. You actually try to pedal losing picks.
Grooven has or posts on a forum similar to this one. Haven't spent much time there but im pretty sure it's not a front for touting.
It doesn't even have gambling affiliate links.
Correct. RTP isn't my site, it's run by "Jon in Oakland." We were posters on Fezzik's old forum and Jon created RTP after Fezzik's shut down in 2009. RTP is low traffic and the only ads it's ever had were some Google and Amazon ones that didn't even make enough money to cover the hosting bills; Jon runs it as a hobby, not as a profit venture. Bizarrely, quite a few of the touts & their defenders have accused me of being a "competitor" to the touts because I link to a low traffic forum my friend runs; one tout claimed on his radio show I run RTP to collect email addresses to spam people.
"No Arguments" is the name of RTP's picks forum and I posted picks there for years, but stopped when Fezzik started copying my picks to sell as his own. As I basically never argue with people who post picks for free (I can only think of one recent example, someone who claimed he picks 65% winners) and only argue with touts and people who promote touts, I don't think there's any hypocrisy.
https://www.blackjacktheforum.com/showthread.php?38402-RIP-Dan-Gordon
Love it when an enterprise in this little subculture is acquired in a public stock transaction. Sometimes giving a peek into the reality of their business model as described to potential equity investors, even if it is among outfits traded in the notorious Canadian "pink sheets." This one was bought for a total of $2mil just about 8 months ago, by a kinda-sorta-almost-maybe-quasi-legal web-bookie operation, not long after a few guys cooked up a plan that sounds semi-brilliant when starting 'Dyslexics-Untie' in a little internet venture incubator in Boulder. The plan was to market themselves as a kinda grassrootsie almost counter-culturey sounding "crowd sourcing" concept for the purpose of presenting themselves in a "new-different" way to the pool of (relatively passive & not so inquisitive) sports gamblers.Quote: bazooooka...However a site called [EDIT: I'll call it DYSLEXICS-UNTIE since I don't like to create free traffic for suchlike] tracks amateur cappers. There are some guys...
And in so doing, simultaneously take advantage of the million monkeys concept. It is a concept in physics that if an infinite number of monkeys are seated at an infinite number of pianos, it becomes a certainty that some of them will happen to compose Beethoven's 5th Symphony. And given enough blind monkeys, some proportion of them will randomly happen to be a "hot shooter" for a while at a dice table, or pick a lot of winners among their cohort of furry banana-chomping coin-flipping sports handicappers.
And, they can monetize their monkey symphony by milking some of the psychological traits of gambling degenerates, who have a stronger than average emotional need to "see" mystical patterns, to impose the comfort of a meaning upon random noise (See for example: Gamblers are more impulsive and 'see patterns' where there are none - Science Daily 4/29/2015). So the "free" site sells "premium" memberships to them to get full access to all the *ahem* really good stuff, in-effect selling the monkeys more complete access to themselves. 'Cause some of them are "hot" and they've seen the "patterns" and "trends" to "prove" it!
Finally, the entire simian symphony gets big enough to become a more valuable place to mine for gambling degens, of course. A source of referrals of fish for bookies being the basic part of the baseline of everything in that world. Hence, the Vancouver boys modestly cashing out in their stock transaction last September. I think they shoulda got more later, but maybe they are also shooting up the products too, and needed quick moolah yesterday. Still, I think these kids have a future. Perhaps selling newer better virtual-ice to Eskimos.
However if a monkey can hit 60% on 1000 picks. Especially when there are less than a few hundred monkeys typing away trying to reproduce Shakespeare then maybe one of them monkeys isn't just hitting random keys? And it doesn't matter either? If you find a monkey writing Shakespeare and its earlier in the book maybe stick around for awhile and see what else happens. Or maybe not?
But if this is not immediately intuitively obvious to some, which tends to be especially true of some guys & gals born with a special kind of mental & emotional makeup who REALLY like gamblin' it up and doing what looks, sounds, and feels good to them, then I personally don't believe in saving people from themselves. I think it is probably just as well for those poor folks to puke the money away on "picks" or in whatever direction feels/sounds/looks good at the moment, 'cause none of that or any other moolah will ever be hanging around long enough to feel attached to that poor sap, ever, in their lifetime, 'till the day they die.
Like I said if a monkey hits 55-60% ATS over 1000 picks it likely isn't random. And even if it was I'd tail it after a few hundred picks. Maybe if you saw 60% over 10000 picks you'd jump on board. Calculate the stats and ask yourself "maybe this isn't a monkey". Billy Walters must have been very lucky in your view of the world?
And you cite an excellent example. Besides of a lot of deliberate PR (and stay outta jail) work by the subject, it comes from a little echo chamber of some spectacularly gullible gamblers eager to "see" and "know" what they believe. Because "everybody" knows that. And that true-believer echo chamber repeats it endlessly among themselves with religious zeal, proving that it is true because everybody they know "knows" the story he peddles about himself must be true.
Uhh, not exactly, since Billy Walters' money hasn't got a damn thing to do with making sports picks. This is how Billy Walters got one of the big chunks of money he's laundered through his supposed "sports bettor" bullshit, in case you're really interested:Quote: bazooookaBilly Walters must have been very lucky in your view of the world?
http://www.americanmafia.com/Inside_Vegas/5-23-16_Inside_Vegas.html
http://www.stevemiller4lasvegas.com/TravelGolfarticleonWalters1a.pdf
http://www.stevemiller4lasvegas.com/TravelGolfarticleonWalters2a.pdf
http://www.stevemiller4lasvegas.com/TravelGolfArticleonWalters3a.pdf
Walters' thieving scams have been well known locally for decades, since they aren't really any too subtle, and the number and length of his payoffs within the local political machine and the amounts stolen are truly massive. Steve Miller has done an excellent job of following Walters' ACTUAL business for a long time. This description of one example (among many) is copyrighted by Miller, but he does encourage distribution, with attribution as per the link above:
Quote: Steve Miller...<SNIP>...
In 1999, when Walters bought the city land, "Councilman" McDonald's only income was his $33,000 per year council salary, and he lived in a tiny bungalow valued at $46,140 by the Clark County Assessor.
Today, Michael McDonald is Chairman of the Nevada Republican Party, and lives in Billy Walters' luxurious 2520 Pinto Lane house.
The house is valued at over one million dollars, features a twelve car garage, and sits on an acre in one of Las Vegas' most plush neighborhoods near Rancho and Alta Drives. McDonald's salary as chairman of the state GOP barely covers the estate's utility bills, and he has no other known income.
McDonald purchased the home in 2005, but was about to lose it in a 2009 bankruptcy when Walters stepped in to buy the property while allowing McDonald to remain its sole resident. Its not currently known whether McDonald pays Walters rent for living in the rescued house.
In 1999, Michael McDonald. as a LV Councilman, fought for Walters' ability to purchase the 160 taxpayer-owned acres for only $894,000 ($5,600 per acre) when adjacent land was selling for $30,000 - $40,000 per acre according to county records. McDonald did so based on the promise that Walters would charge low green fees for locals, and accept a permanent deed restriction to limit the land's use to golf course only. McDonald argued vehemently that the $894,000 was desperately needed for parks. He and then-Mayor Jan Jones scoffed at protesters including a certified land appraiser who testified that multiple parks could be built if the city would sell the 160 acres at fair market value.
After the land appraiser told the council that the land was worth more than $40,000 per acre at the time of the hearing, Jones angrily held up a front page article I authored, and said, 'I know what ex-councilman Steve Miller thinks is true, and I take exception. Land is worth what land is worth. You can speculate. Maybe someday this will be worth a lot of money. Maybe it won't."
Soon thereafter, Walters was charging everyone, including locals, $200 - $260 in green fees. Then to add insult to injury, he began selling "golf course frontage" for $130,000 per acre, and later on was accused of letting the fairways and other facilities deteriorate, claiming the golf course was a failure and he needed to have the deed restriction removed so he could redevelop the land into a higher and better use.
In 2005, after many more Bali Hai political fund raisers, Bill Walters was allowed to sell the once-city-owned land for $54 million, the same year Michael McDonald moved into his Pinto Lane estate.
...<SNIP>...
Agreed; Billy ain't a Saint. And I'm sure he lost his sports betting edge many years ago as the quants have taken over this game.
But I do believe, that he did at one time - beat the book for many years and 10000s of picks.
