Tennis, Anyone?

I have a pro client who's only been betting sports six months. After dot-com he left his analyst job (he failed some certification exam, but I'm told that's Neither-Here-Nor-There) to trade his own account. He survived 08-09, and claims the Flash Crash was the most profitable day of his life. But he gave up last summer.
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I have a pro client who's only been betting sports six months. After dot-com he left his analyst job (he failed some certification exam, but I'm told that's Neither-Here-Nor-There) to trade his own account. He survived 08-09, and claims the Flash Crash was the most profitable day of his life. But he gave up last summer.

He was doing OK, he says, but Greece told him it was time to move on. His kids are still young enough that they think their Dad is cool. He planned to spend their summer vacation with them. But he said this tear-gas-in-Europe stuff “left him only vaguely aware of two short people sharing his home” as he stared at screens at 4 a.m. So he's moved to the slow lane, betting sports, which takes much less time.

I take Pro Client's action because he's honest, he wins, and whatever he bets me I can push out the back door three to five times. Pro Client called asking for a moment of my time. For him, always.

Pro Client wanted to know why we don't take Tennis. Well, that's an easy question:

...there's little steady interest and we don't like getting beat on stuff we can't get rid of. Injury info is hard to get and that's crucial in an individual sport. And then there was that match-fixing thing two years ago. Surely he understood risk vs. reward?

Of course he did. And he's the guy who, given five minutes, could talk Rush Limbaugh into championing Obamacare. To make a long story short, we're offering tennis as of Thursday, he's making the numbers, and it's a 50/50 split.

I'm happy for a few reasons. First, as it sits, I basically open July and August as a service to customers. I don't make money. Half my regulars are out of town and the other half only have baseball to bet on. Tennis is going to be on ESPN so we might get some bets.

Second, I want to see what he can do with the bookie's vig on his side. He knows I'll be looking over his shoulder to make sure his prices aren't so far out of market that we're setting ourselves up as an easy arb. But he's got opinions and he knows numbers. It's going to be peanuts for starters, but who knows where it ends.

Last, when it comes to the NBA, Pro Client is my hero. Never mind tennis being fixed. Not so long ago, an NBA ref got to bring his whistle to Club Fed 3-on-3 tournaments because he was there as a guest of the Government. I sweat NBA results each and every night: I swear that this player isn't trying, that coach is insane, or this or that.

Woe is me—but not Pro Client. Pro Client went 3-for-4 on Christmas Day and is 56% on the NBA with me for the season. He bets me two grand, I bet out five or ten.

I just blindly follow his bets, like some Gambling Zombie. To beat the standard bookie's vig, a bettor needs to win 52.4% of his games against the spread. Pro Client's mercurial brain is better than that, and that's what a Gambling Zombie like me feeds on.

Many bookies kick their winners out. I've no idea why. Winners you can blindly follow are better than losers. The losers might stiff you. The winners just win, and let you win beside them.

And that's business I cannot afford to lose. A majority of my clients bet $100 or $200 a night. I don't make a lot of money off them. But Pro Client's a winner and my profit potential is limited only by the size of my 'nads.

Don't get me wrong—I want his tennis to win. I'm on for half. But if it's only small bets here and there, Pro Client has now become a business partner, and I'll keep getting some of his basketball bets. He's probably playing at ten different places; now I'm sure to stay in the mix.

I'm not sure how we're going to do this tennis. Bets to win the tournament, individual matches, etc. I know they measure serve speed. Do they measure who grunts the loudest? I guess I'm going to find out.

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(I've never done anything more sophisticated than buy a put spread when I was afraid of a downturn. Go ahead, laugh.) 30's a lot. So I let him have it at 6-to-5. He was only expecting even money or slightly worse, so he was pleased. Ten minutes later I was using this episode as an object lesson for my Faithful Assistant, a guy who is muddling through an MBA while living in his parents' basement. Garage loft, I stand corrected. Anyway, good customers need to be kept happy, good customers lose, and happy customers pay. The Hollywood-movie days of kneecapping customers who stiff you were over before I was born, if they ever even existed, and—and the phone rang again. Ocean again, wanting an over/under number on where Apple would be in a couple months' time. Oh, and Facebook. I told him I would have to call him back. I started throwing coffee cups and in between my screams my Faithful Assistant told me he'd just pretend I have Tourette's. He's cold. Then he asked me what was going on. 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