Pushkin. Welcome back to Against the Rules, Everybody. Michael lewis here. Last episode we heard from Billy Walters, one of the great old school sports gambling sharps. He's someone who made the poker tables and saloons of Vegas more interesting. Characters like Billy are harder to find in today's Vegas. But there's another type of figure who's still around, and that's who we're going to meet today, the bookies.
I don't call us dinosaurs. I call his crocodiles, because dinosaurs are just saying we're crocodile. We've been around for eighty million years and we're still here.
Chris Andrews met with me and my producer Lydia Jean Kott at the South Point Casino, where Chris runs the sports book from a dingy little office beside the place where all the sports gamblers gathered to make their Chris has been in Vegas for a long time, and so of his associates, Jimmy Vacaro and Vinie Maiolo. They came of age at a time when if you wanted to gamble or become a bookie, Vegas is where you went. All roads led to it and all lines emanated from it.
Chris grew up in Pittsburgh, which was famous for generating Vegas bookies.
I think the geography, the topography had a lot to do with it. There's a lot of like all the Three rivers, of course, but there's other ones. And it created all these little valleys and this little valley, our little valley. We've had a lot of Greeks. Greek, I'm Greek. There's the next valley had, you know, Germans next, and Irish and Italians, a lot of it, you know. And in each of these little pockets was like its own little community, you know.
Create isolated population where you could make your own rules.
Yeah, you know, and you just take care of the right guys and you're okay.
Chris's colleague Jimmy Vacaro, also grew up near Pittsburgh. He started off as a blackjack dealer and had a hand and up wading sports books and a handful of Vegas casinos, including the MGM and the Golden Nugget. Matt Damon played his brother Sonny Vcaro in a movie called Air about how Sonny got Michael Jordan to sign with Nike. True story, Sonny's the one who got Jimmy started in gambling.
You'd have these little stand up places where they sold the magazines and a candy bar, and if you went in the back, you could bet the horses, you could bet the games, whatever, and you could have a drink, you could sit down whatever. I used to go to a place called the Common News was in Braddock, Pennsylvania. Remember the movie The Sting. Yeah, yeah, like the movie this thing at that little place where the book mean, that's exactly what the Common News looked like, huh exactly.
I was marveled. So anyway, so I used to go with my brother because I wasn't even eighteen years Sonny would go down, H'd bet fifteen hundred dollars whatever. Then when I got to be old enough, Joe Nigera who owned the Common News at the time, I remember I went in there with my friend and I want to make a bed on a baseball game then go to the pirate game. So I went inside and uh, I bet about three games. I bet him for all for like pretty good, like one hundred dollars each or two
hundred US. It was like five hundred dollars, which was a lot of money. We're talking about nineteen sixty five, eighteen sixty six. And here's here's one of my great statements. I said, Joe, I said, I'm gonna be able to pay you like mandyr Tuesday. He said, Jimmy, these aren't green stamps. In otherwords, I couldn't bet with no credit.
Get to bring cash.
And then the next time I came now, I was at eighteen nineteen twenty something like that, and I was okay. I had a two hundred dollars credit line at a common news to me that was like a million dollars. I finally made it. Joe Nagara thinks, I'm okay, and then that just started everything.
First someone went to the racetrack. I thought. I thought I was going to the zoom.
That's Vinnie Miolo, the third in our trio of That Gets Bookies.
My uncle Tony says, hey, you want to go see some animals, and I wanted to get out of the house. I'm thinking we're going to go up to the Bronx, you know, and go to the zoo. So we were out there and I'm looking around. I said, to come, the only animals here they're horses. He says, it's a very special zoo. And so I learned very early on
that horse racing was ingrained in my family. And it was ingrained because my uncle Tony and several other relatives probably paid for several renovations on the backstretch at Belmont and Aqueduct. And at the same time, I'm going to Catholic school. The thing about Catholic school is that there's quite a bit of fundraising Bingo Vegas Knights raffles.
How does the Catholic Church feel about gambling. Does it have a position.
I think it's got a pretty solid position. I think it supports it when you consider every fundraiser is gambling related. So, you know, people say to me, Vinnie, you do this. You must have been a really good math student. I said, well, I was average in math, but I aced fundraising. So you know, in growing up, you know, in between the New York Post and the daily News, all the horse racing, you know, the cards for that day, the odds were always presented and talked about quite a bit. So it
just kind of true in my mind. I knew that, Wow, this is this is this is intriguing too. It's intriguing, you know. I was around card games you know, with with relatives and friends. So it just was something that really attracted me and I gravitated to and I had a mind for it.
When you thought about getting in the gambling business when you're fourteen, what did that mean? Like, are you going to be a professional?
Better?
Are you going to I learned very early that it was far better to be on the house side of the counter. I mean, look, there's a reason that hotels kept getting built, and you know, racetracks were still in business and things like that. So I told about the sixty nine World Series.
I go to.
School and in the playground and there's a big deal about the Orioles being a prohibited favorite. Sister Thomas, the principal, she you know, they're out the nuns who attended an a vitiate outside of Baltimore. Well, they're you know, talking about they're talking about how the Mets are going to get killed. So I said, you know, sister, you know, I think, you know, we could probably make a little
deal here. She says, what do you mean. I said, I tell you what, if the Orioles win the World Series, I will stay for a month month's worth of fridays for detention and clean the blackboards, but you have to clap out the erasers and wash them and everything, which was like the worst thing because not only did you have to do it, but then you had to go home and listen to your mom who could never get
the chalk out of your clothes. So I volunteer. She said, well, what happens, what if a miracle occurs in the Mets win? I said, well, I get free lunch for with free milk for for that month. She said, this sounds like a gambling I said, it's not a dance, it's a deal. I'm making a deal system. She says, okay, mister Miyuelo, you're on. So of course you know we go game one Orioles win game one four to one. I get
to school the next day. I'm in the playground getting ready to go to class, and the principal she's out there, well, mister Miyula, looks like it's going to be a long fall for you, young man. She's just talking trash talking smack to maps. So I said, and I did the only thing I could. I said, would you like to press it? She says, what language? Where do you learn this vernacular? This is terrible sister, You're you're you're really coming.
You know you're pressing me here. Well, Michael, needless to say, young Vinnie Mayulo drank a lot of milk and got a lot of free lunch and in nineteen sixty nine, but I still got detention for two months for gambling on.
Campus after the break. How these three future bookies got their starts in Vegas and back at the South Point Casino in Las Vegas hearing about the world. That was after Vinniemiolo graduated with a degree in illicit gambling from Catholic School. Vegas is, of course where he wanted to go. Lucky for him, he had an uncle who played music in Vegas.
So my uncle introduced me to Michael Gone, and I went Michael Gone and his partner, Frank Tody. They had a dealing school where you learned how to be a casino dealer. Because books were very not a lot of books at the time, you're a lot to learn.
How hard is it to be a casino dealer?
It depends on what you what you want to learn. If you learned I learned dice because it's the hardest game. So once you'll learn dice, you can learn all the games. But you can be dealing blackjack in if you've got a good mind and you know good hands, you can be dealing it in less than two weeks. Now it's easier because there's automatic shufflers on the roulette table. You need to just have that, you.
Know, get a lower scale.
It's there's a There was a lot. Frankly, there was a lot more art when I when I was doing it. So I got hired. You hired me as a as a as a dice dealer, and Michael Gone, I still say to this day he had the first cross training program in Las Vegas, and it didn't have manuals, It did not have meetings, it didn't have a whole lot of fanfare. It was this, make sure you're good at what I hired you for, then go learn what you want. Well,
where was Vinnie hanging out on his brakes? You know, you worked an hour on and you got a to minute. I was in a book, hanging out with Jimmy. That's where I met Jimmy. So about I'm dealing for about three months and the pit boss gets a phone call and it's Michael Gone. He says, send Vinnie up. So I go upstairs and I'm thinking, oh man, this is not Loo.
Could this be? I'm like this scamping.
I'm thinking, God, what did I screw up?
A pay up?
What am I doing wrong? So he calls me. He says, Minny, how's your game? I said, well, sir, I think it's pretty good. I'm working every day I learned something, and every time I learned something, I go back to school after work and work on it and you know, put it to you know, keep trying to refine my game. He says, well, good, because you're going to go to the Barbary Coast. And the Barbary Coast opened in March
of nineteen seventy nine. The building is still there. It's the Cromwell all right, from on the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard in Flamingo. And I was there and I'm working in the pit. But I'm also in the book Every every Break, and it's where Christy too, So Chris, Jimmy and I will or work together at the Barbary Coast.
So that's Vinny's story of how he found his place in Vegas. For his part, Jimmy Vacaro came west from Pittsburgh around nineteen sixty four.
I knew I had to create some money real quick. I knew everybody started with my brother yea, so now here I am. I'm in, And I said, I gotta think of some way to make some money, you know whatever. So to what you would consider a small time bookmaking what they booked a two hundred game, three hundred game. I called both of them back and I said, I'll be your openers. In other words, I'll call you with the with the with the bedding lines from the Churchill
Downs and the other place whatever. And I charged them three hundred a week, and they all paid because they wanted to know what the pointspreaders were in Las Vegas on these games.
Whatever.
Where were these guys? You were sending the lines to Pittsburgh, So you're sending the lines from Vegas back to Pittsburgh. And they were just getting early lines.
They needed openers, right they What the hell was going on?
And who in Vegas was set was setting?
Churchill Downs was like the first place that was independent that was no twenty one tables, just race and sports book. That's what it was before you couldn't get on sports. I knew that the Gaune family it's a guy that owns this cassino. Now I knew that they were like spoken highly of. I mean, everybody's the Gawne family. Jackie Gone that this picture on the wall out here, it's right on the wall. So I said, you know, what do I got to lose if I just go down
there and say I want a job? And his first cassino was a little place called the Royal in Cassino. It was just six twenty one tables, barboot and roulette, will, no sportsbook. I went to his office and I said to his secretary's name was Anne Coffin. I said, can I say, mister Gone places, who are you? I said, Jimmy Vacaro. She says okay. She walked up and went in the back where Michael's office was, and he was there for about three minutes, and all of a sudden
he come out. Now this is hard to believe, it's just the truth.
I says, who are you? I said?
Jimmy Vacery says, what do you want? I said, well, I'd like to get a job. I said, but I want to go to the dealer school too.
He said, what do you do?
Where do you deal?
I said, no, I said, I just got to town. He said, you just got the town a couple of days ago. I said yes, I said, and I want to get a job in the casino. If I lived there be a million. He went in his a little office.
He took me with him.
So he picked up the phone. He called, you know, the dealer school downtown, and he said, I got a kid. What's your name of guy said Jimmy Vacaro. He says, I got a kid named Vacaro here. He wants to go to dealer school. And he said, okay, you know. I said, how much is it, mister Gone? He said two hundred and fifty dollars. I said, mister Gone, I don't have any money. He says, what I said, you can't you don't have any money. I said, no, sir, I don't have any money. He picked the phone back up.
He called the dealer school downtown. He said, this kid named Jimmy, he's coming down. He doesn't have any money. He'll pay you when he gets the money. So I took about, you know, six weeks to pay him fifty fifty with whatever it was. And then within seventeen days he gave me a job dealing twenty one at this little casino. A year and a half later, we opened up the sports book at the rural end casino, which is always allowed if you did it correctly. And he
threw me the keys. He says, go open the sports book, cup.
But when you started the first sports book, where you this first sports book you create, what the kind of bets are you willing to take.
Maybe maybe three or four thousand dollars on an NFL game. I was smart enough to understand, don't think you're smarter than these guys out there coming in now, and I brought. I'll tell you what, I got a lot of credibility. Big reason I got credibility is everybody knew the Gone family and that was Michael's little casino, and I guess their thought process.
So all the old wise guys was.
If Michael Gone hired the kid, he must know a little bit right, And that's what happened.
I spoke with Jimmy's fellow bookie, Chris Andrews, in front of all these busy and noisy monitors at South Point. Chris got a start at the Stardust Casino back in nineteen seventy nine. At the time, it was Vegas's biggest sports book.
So I started the Stardust.
So give me a few give me a sense of how that would have felt if I had walked into that place, then how it would feel different. And they're walking into here now.
Well, boy, in some ways, probably the characters. There's a lot of similarities and character wise. The difference is in like the the actual like betting menu and experience. Like back then, we booked you know the game, the points spread, Yep, that was about it.
Was anybody was there money lines too? No?
Almost never money lines? And then I remember I wanted to build Dark's del Mar Sports book. And I remember this is probably before I moved out here permanently. What's that thirty five on the board? I remember it's next to the Steelers. What's that thirty five? Well, that's the over and under points score in the game. You can bet on that. Are you serious? When did this? And he, as far as I know, he's the one that came
up with that. You know, maybe somebody would tell you something different, But this was like late seventies, so.
There are so between then and now. The one thing that changes is in the number of things you can bet on and it's exploded.
Oh, I mean, how do you do I didn't even know what the exponential value would be. But monstrous.
But also how you can beat because it used to be just point spread. It was just points spread, and who invents the money line?
Well, actually the money line had been around before the point spread. It kind of gotten like maybe forgotten a little bit for a while. When with the advent of the point spread that came back into play. Probably i'd say, like, you know, real, you know, early eighties or mid eighties, something like that. So then and at the time, so teasers were a big you know, so you had point spread with the.
Teasers right then the total started you know what explained teaserback because we'd be nice to have your explanation.
Okay, teaser bit, you had six and a half or seven points to your advantage, and there's some other teasers. The six pointer is the most common, right, So a six point teaser was even money. So if your team was minus seven, you had them in a six point teaser. Now they're minus one, right, essentially asking them to win the game, you know. Or if there were plus seven, you could tease it up to thirteen. You know, now you're getting almost two four touchdowns.
You're just changing the odds and the thing.
Yeah, and then from there we just started figuring out, you know, and you know it's my cousin heart Man Terris who came up with the William the refrigerator, Perry scoring a touchdown and then nineteen eighty five Super Bowl was.
That that was a novel.
That was he was the first one and it was one of those and you know he'd tell you the story. Where was he when he goes at Caesar's Palace? I think he put it up, you know, twenty to one or something like that. Anyway, they lost like a quarter of a million dollars. Perry another Super Bowl rerecord, the first refrigerator to score.
The biggest push in the first forty years of forty nine years that I've been involved is when is when Perry scored the touchdown.
That's Jimmy Vacaro again. Both he and Chris were present at the birth of the prop bed in sports.
As soon as he scored the touchdown, we all licked our wounds. Caesar's lost to most. I think they lost one hundred and forty five. I did real good. I only lost about fifty thousand, So I thought, I thought I did really good. So what had happened right after that? So the next day, this is about every book in town, your phone line, the light of from every big city in the country. They heard about Perry scoring a touchdown, so that it just promoted like if we do more of those type of things.
So that's what they just got a price of better. I mean, they lost a fortune. I'm saying a quarter million, probably more than that. And Terry Lanny was the president of Caesar's this time, comes into the office called Terry Lanny. Jesus calls Terry Lanney. Yes, sir, he figures, I'm getting fired. That's the best thing you've ever done. We have had so much publicity over that. That was whatever we lost,
it was well worth it. Well like shit, Okay. Now he went from filling his boxes on pack and everything, and you know, and then we started doing more props, and the props grew.
So this is it's interesting, like it's it has become it's become the center of the market, these prop bets.
We wrote more on the props than we did on the on the game.
In the game, and but it it wasn't obvious to the casinos that this was going to be that popular. What do you think is going on? Why do people like the prop bets?
Now? I can't even keep track of who these guys are playing for from you know, So it's like you attach yourself not to a player rather than more so than a team. And I think that that's certainly a part of it. So these things come from somewhere, right, you.
Know, and someone thinks to do it and then the market responds to it. Yeah, if someone came up and wanted a line on something that there was no line on like that, like wind totals, season wind totals, would you.
All do it?
Depending how long, how far, how much you want to bet? Well, here's the answer to that on everything the nineteen seventy nine Super Bowl with the Steelers and the Cowboys, Big, big game, monster game. But here's how many times you could bet to Gaby Ready, you can bet the side, you bet the total, or you bet the halftime. Three different ways to bet on the Super Bowl. Now, everybody averages at least two hundred and fifty props on each game.
On the Super Bowl.
Game, We're going to take a short break when we return, I asked Chris Andrews and Jimmy Vacaro about limits, when and how they might limit the bets of edge players. I'm back in Vegas with bookies Chris Andrews and Jimmy Vacaro. When was the first time, if ever, you rejected a bet because of who was making the bet.
Well, I've rejected bets on limits, right. Guys will come in and say I want this or that. But you know, for I said, well that's more than we take, right, But rejecting a bet that's on the board never really really. I mean, like I said, for sure, I would cut guys and guys, Oh, you shouldn't have limits, that's really. So if Elon Musk comes in, he says, I blew forty billion on the Twitter, I'm going to get it back on the Dodger game tonight, and I'm supposed to take that bet.
Right.
No, it's not gonna happen, right, So you have to have some limits.
But you the in the old days that when you first started out, if a guy came in and he was known to be smart, yeah, did you just the limits on him because he was smart? We're smart? We're a smart bet is treated in any way worse.
Well, here's the rule I've always had when I post like the limits, that's for anybody that walks in right now. I can go higher than the limits on certain guys, but I don't lower them because you're who you are. I don't lower them because but I'll raise them if I take the guy's a dead square right right?
So what is a typical limit online? And a prop better?
And it talks a couple thousand?
What about just a game? An NFL game?
NFL game, I think most guys take a hundred?
Which the is that? Where that be the biggest?
Oh I've had. I've taken a couple of million dollar bets.
You have, Yeah, on NFL games, the Super Bowls, a super Bowl? Okay, gotcha?
Now?
The biggest bet I took was Carlikahon. He got two point four million dollars on a money line bet. And he's a panty ass. I had some big decisions.
But you took the bet.
Yeah, how did it work out?
He won? But we won.
I actually ended up needing his side because when I changed the line. It was a year. When San Diego is in the Super Bowl, It's only a four hour drive from San diego to here.
How much of like football betting? For example? Are people just betting on the teams they love?
Well, yeah, most people. Most people were betting their uniform. They want to see their team win, and they got bigger and bigger and bigger. We just accommodated everybody.
How's the legalization around the country changed your business?
It hasn't affected me so much here as fortunately I work for an old school guy Michael gone right. But I think it's affected the business in a in a broader scale. I think a lot of these guys came in from Europe. They were very corporate British corporate workstreams. This is the legal, this is the marketing, this is the HR, this is blah blah blah. I was head of the bookmaking workstream. They call their bookmakers traders. We all hate that word. There are traders, were bookmakers. What's
this trader stuff? But that's like infiltrated the whole language.
If I'm actually gambling, uh, and I go into William Hill or one of.
These are you winning? Are you winning player?
I'm a winning player. I'm an edge plan.
You're going to be out?
Is that right?
Yeah?
They can't wait to throw out. They can't wait the throw out now that the term sack them, sack them, that's what they sack them. Said, why don't we just let them at the limits.
And then move the market?
Yeah?
I said, wait, why don't they respond? What what's under? Is it that they are uncomfortable?
That's the way they've always done it over there, and they don't want to adapt to American wagering, so they do things the way we do some things differently, So we are not going to be throwing people out. We want as much traffic as we can now. Of course, we have to manage our money properly, right and that sort of thing. So it's not just freewheeling.
Why is the European gambler put up with this? Like, why didn't someone emerge to compete with this model?
Michael go to England and start interviewing their players, right, because I know a few of them, you know, and I don't know why they do, but they're always trying to circumvent everything. Yeah, you know, always, you know you might you know next week, you know, your your wife or your cousin or your your brother in laws, and you know they're using phony names and all that kind of stuff, always trying to circumvent it. But as soon as you win a couple of bets, they're thrown out too.
You know, you got to start all over again.
Give me an example of something that would have been kind of common get behavior forty years ago.
And then well, parlays, like with the total if you bet a big favorite, but a big favorite, like just figure out the math. Don't don't buy stupid half points when you don't need to, don't don't, you know, parlays, you know, be careful like parlays and teasers and all.
That, and and but then also there's been this infusion of bookmakers who whose business model is kind of different from your business model. It's like, let's just take dumb beats.
The Brits, Oh yeah, oh those guys.
Yeah, but it's like fan duels and DraftKings, doesn't just.
Take just take the dummies.
That's all we want, right, And it's a diff it's kind of a different business, yeah, right, is it more? Is it a more profitable business?
So far? Yeah? But as a matter of fact, I was just talking to somebody the other day, little different subject, asking me essentially the same question, and I think a lot of these places. They think this is just like the golden goose. I think they're going to kill the golden goose at some point, you know, And I think there will be a shakeout in the industry. And what's it. The nature abhors a vacuum. You know, it's going to fill avoid and I think right now, I think we're
on the right side of it. Somebody told me, what thing is your business model is not sustainable. If I've been doing this for six decades, you know, if it's not sustainable, once it's going to come home to roost.
It's gonna be it's gonna sound like a dumb question. Yeah, you finish the year with the profit of X. Okay, what percentage of those profits are coming from? You're on the right side of the risk that you took risk on games versus just being middleman.
Probably most of it comes from being the middleman most, but there's you know, when you look at like your your board, particularly in football, you want to be on the right side of games. If you see the wise guys on one side, you want to go in with their their their side. If you can't you see the public on one side. Yeah, you generally don't want to be on that side.
You see that line up that way often. Oh yeah, smart money one. Oh god, yeah that's really interesting.
Oh yeah, yeah, it.
Comes really clear. Oh it doesn't come to clear every game, No, okay, there sometimes there's arguments within the smart money.
I always say it depends on the number, right, you know if a game opened six then went to seven, Yeah, the smart guy's laid six, and then the other smart guys took seven. Right, So I'll say, who are the wise guys on one? I don't know what's the number.
I love talking to these old bookies, and here's one thing I took away from it. The old school bookie isn't someone who does predictive analytics to set the odds. He watches the gamblers as much as he watches the games themselves. The smart gamblers just tell them where to set the lines. It's a different way of thinking. Or, as Vinnie Mayolo puts.
It, people call us old school.
Yeah.
Well I take that as a compliment because the fact that here we are, you know, combined one hundred and fifty, so we're in this business doing this for all this time. If we didn't make adjustments, then we would be gone.
Where do you think it's going? Where you think sports do you think it's a sports game? Is going to look like in thirty.
Years, there'll be no human beings running it.
It'll be all computerized.
It's getting there now. I would say in five years, what you'll get is like you'll go to a sports book, you'll make your bet, but there might be three human beings because you need someone like, you know whatever. But the other thing is everything else will be you bet it on a kiosk or have a phone account.
Right, it's all done by.
I think there's gonna be another big, big rush if the world don't end by the next couple of years. Is that okay? Kids seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old right now? So let's say we give him three to five years where he's liable, noise to go make a bet without any no parents behind them. So there's a whole new wave coming. It's an all new ballgame, right. I think it's gonna be crazy.
Thank you again, Jimmy Vaccaro, Chris Andrews, and Vinnie Mayolo for talking with me. You can find these guys any given day, still laying odds and booking Bets at South Point in Vegas. Against the Rules is written and hosted by me Michael Lewis and produced by Lydia gene Kott, Catherine Gerardeau, and Ariella Markowitz. Our editor is Julia Barton. Our engineer is Sarah Bruguer. Against the Rules is a
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