The average bet he and his partners make on a game is $100,000, but that can go up to a million dollars if the numbers look right.
Story By Jack Sheehan
Illustration by Tim O'Brien Talk to Billy Walters about his favorite charity, Opportunity Village, the Las Vegas organization that helps seriously disabled and disadvantaged people, and his voice grows soft. He gets emotional instantly. Then change the subject to golf course proprietorship, a topic that as the owner of six area courses he knows better than anyone, and he'll alternate between humor and earnest evaluation as he discusses the challenge of developing and operating championship courses in economically uncertain times.
But bring up the subject of sports gambling , and how he finds the edge that will beat the odds makers more than six times out of ten, and his eyes grow colder than the shark in Jaws, just as it was about to bite into Captain Quint. This is dead-serious business for the man who is considered the biggest sports gambler in America.
Walters is so revered in the tight circle of front-line sports gamblers for his ability to choose the right team at the right time, that other prognosticators bow to the East when talking about him. He might be up a little bit in his career, but betting the huge money that Billy bets and moving the odds the way he does, just boggles the mind. In that arena, he is without question the Man.
When Walters is asked for a self-analysis of his sports betting prowess, he says, "We've done pretty good. And I do think it's probably true that my partners and I are the biggest sports bettors in the world. "
Perhaps because we've caught him in a benevolent mood, on a mid- summer morning in his tastefully decorated Las Vegas office sequestered behind Cili Restaurant in the Bali Hai clubhouse, Walters chooses to share a little information with us on how he determines his picks.
"If you compare me to someone in the stock market, I am a value investor," he says. "I'm like a Warren Buffett. I don't like ridiculous long shots. I look at two teams and determine what the projected outcome should be. If the line that's out there shows enough of a differential, then I'll bet on either side. I don't have favorite teams, and I don't care who wins."
Billy says the constraints of his golf course business keep him from being a totally consumed handicapper. "The research time to analyze a game is something I just don't have," he says. "But what I do have is a lot of different people that provide me with various forms of handicapping information. There are 10 or 12 different ones. These are people I've known for a long time. I know their strengths, I know their weaknesses , and when I do an evaluation it's just like a stock market advisor on Wall Street. The guys at these big funds rely on a lot of analysts to give them information, and they have to know the strengths and weaknesses of these evaluators. Many times I may have five guys on one side, and two on the other , and I will bet against the five. After evaluating everything you can, in the end you have to trust your gut."
Walters says that the public most often bets the favorites; the question he always ponders when the line first comes out is which way is it likely to move. Then he keeps a close eye on injuries and late developments before game time.
Billy bets mainly on college and pro football, as well as basketball. He feels if a game is worth betting on, it's worth betting big on. The average bet he and his partners make on a game is $100,000, but that can go up to a million dollars if the numbers look right. "Usually the biggest bets are made on the college bowl games at the end of the year or the Super Bowl," he says. "By the end of a season you have a great feel for what both teams can do, and can't do."
Walters acknowledges that his bets often move the line, but only because so many scouts are watching what he's doing. "There are people surveilling our people all the time," he says. "They are in the casinos sun up to sun down to see what we're betting. That's what causes the line to move, all these people watching us and betting the way we bet. And that includes the tout services, those guys who advertise guaranteed winners. If the guy could pick winners himself, he'd be betting on them, not running a tout service."
With that, Billy Walters wraps up our conversation and rushes out to check on the new greens that have just been installed at his Bali Hai course.
"These are the best greens in town right now," he says. "You can bet on it."
I decide not to ask him what the line is.
Billy Walters
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Originally Posted by jjgold
