Faldo’s Birthday Advice – Don’t Bet Alot to Win a Little

From the great book by Barry Greenstein, “Ace on the River”, are three stories of successful poker players going astray in other types of gambling.

1. A poker player who often bet on horses inherited $250,000. Another poker player proposed that he would book the other player’s horse betting and give him better odds than the casino or bookmakers. The Inheritor agreed.

After a month of betting the poker bookie had all the money. He invested the money in a business and retired from the poker scene.

The “poker bookie” later confided in a friend that the first bet his “customer” placed was on a 12 to 1 shot. If that horse would have won, he would not of had enough money to pay the guy and his scheme would have come to an abrupt end.

2. A high stakes poker player was shooting pool for money against a local hustler. A friend wandered in, saw what was happening, and whispered to the poker player, “Man, don’t play this guy. He don’t have $200 to his name.

The poker player said, “Yes I can. He has $40,200 now.”

3. A wealthy poker player shot pool with a dice player, who had borrowed a couple thousand dollars to stake himself in the pool match. They started at $500 a game and the stakes grew to $20,000 a game.

The dice player won $300,000 in the session. They played several more sessions, increasing the stakes even higher, and by the end of the matches the dice player had amassed $2,000,000.

The dice player – flush with cash – headed to the dice tables at Binion’s Horseshoe Casino. The dice player got hot and ran that $2 million up to $30 million, acquiring nearly every $5000 chip in the casino.

But within a few months, the dice player was broke again. – Barry Greenstein

Amazing stuff, eh? Very White Whale’ish. Search “White Whale” on this site to understand what I mean. - Faldo