Category Archives: Gambling

Editors note: In celebration of Golf Digest's 70th anniversary, were revisiting the best literature and journalism weve ever published. Catch up on earlier installments.

Damon Runyonno relation to the short-hitting, one-putting Paul Runyanwas an American newspaperman who wrote about colorful Prohibition Era characters with funny nicknames. One of his greatest lines was a warning: Son, no matter how far you travel, or how smart you get, always remember this: Some day, somewhere, a guy is going to come to you and show you a nice brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is never broken, and this guy is going to offer to bet you that the jack of spades will jump out of this deck and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do not bet him, for as soon as you do, you are going to get an ear full of cider.

The guy who Damon Runyon had in mind was probably Titanic Thompson. Sam Snead called him the greatest hustler ever. Minnesota Fats called him the greatest action man of all time. Its been said that Titanic was the model for Sky Masterson in the musical Guys and Dolls. We know Thompson was a gambler and a golfer in the long-ago days before Las Vegas became Ground Zero for sports wagering. In the 1920s and 30s, playing for money was a traveling roadshow, and Thompson mainly worked the backroads from Texas across the Deep South. Known for walnut throwing (weighted with lead) and guessing the combined weight of a diner waitress staff (he weighed them the night before), Titanic took up golf later in life and won big-money matches ambidextrously.

He died in 1974 at age 80, the stuff of legend, and was always a subject of intrigue for Golf Digest contributing editor Dave Kindred, who spent years researching this profile for the May 1996 issue.

They remembered Titanic Thompsons blue eyes. The hustler has been dead 20 years now, and the time of his fame is half a century past. But people who knew him, who played golf with him and drove down dusty roads with him, now talk about him as if he were still alive; not only alive but plotting a new hustle. You hear a thrill in their voices.

An old U.S. Open champion tells you Titanic Thompson could have been the best golf ever. One of todays great players tells you about Titanics beautiful hands, and another man tells you how those hands made cards fly through a transom and made dice sit up on a bedspread.

You track down one of the hustlers old road partners from the 1930s, and the man says, no, no, NO, he doesnt want to talk about that sumbitch Titanic Thompson. He calls him a thief and tells you he saw Titanic right before he died. And that man tells you he wanted to shoot the sumbitch on the spot.

You find Titanics last wife, a sweet woman, and she says her mans story is more phenomenal than all the legends written about him. She tells you he lived to gamble, that gambling meant more to him than food, sleep or love. You trust people who talk that way, people who were there and saw things happen. And all these people tell you the same story: The man could do things.

So before you write your Titanic Thompson tale, you arrive at a state of mind called the willing suspension of disbelief, which means you might not believe every word of a story, but you are willing to listen. Youve heard enough to think, maybe, some things did happen.

You know he never hit a golf shot into Babe Ruths beer. He never threw Amelia Earhart over the Brooklyn Bridge. He never bottom-dealt to the Queen of Sheba. He never married Gypsy Rose Lee, never shot J. Edgar Hoover, and never caused a one-eyed jack to squirt cider in a suckers ear.

But you get the feeling that if money talked, soft and sweet, Titanic Thompson could have and would have done it all. For when the money talked, however preposterous the proposition, Titanic Thompson always found a way to do it. He was Americas Robin Hood, sort of. He stole from the rich. And kept it.

Born to nothing in the Ozarks of Missouri, he came to wear diamonds before dying with nothing in a Texas nursing homenot that he didnt try to fleece his buddies out of their Social Security checks.

I could outsmart, outcheat, out-connive, and roll higher than em all in my day, he said. And thats no lie.

The son of a wandering gambler he never met, Titanic Thompson took gamblers money any way they wanted it taken.

One story is he threw a lemon onto a high roof to win $500 from Al Capone. Another insisted he sat at a dice table with Howard Hughes and walked away $10,000 ahead. Testimony under oath had him playing poker all night with the thief who fixed the World Series, and when the thief was shot dead, the prosecuting attorney, who smelled a rat, asked Thompson what he did for a living.

There in the witness-box with diamonds on his finger, handsome as daybreak and resplendent in a fine suit with a silk tie, the hustler who had put his hand on a Bible and promised to tell nothing but the truth, testified: I play a little golf for money.

Thompson married five women and killed five men, not because he heard money talking, but because he could do it and because, he said, sunshine in his smile: They needed it.

One day in the Arkansas of 1928, the seven of diamonds sailed through a transom-window space and fluttered to the floor, followed soon after by the deuce of hearts. Each card spun in the air as if controlled by an agency with supernatural powers.

Titanic Thompson was that agency. He sat in an easy chair halfway across the room. Thirty-five years old, a thin man with a delicate face and shining dark hair, he wore a white dress shirt and a silk tie. His last wife thought of him as a fern or a willow, a litheness to him.

He held the deck of cards in his right hand and with his left snapped cards across the room, over the transom and into the hallway.

What are you doing? said a man at the door.

Titanic Thompson said, You cant tell when some suckerll bet you $1,000 you cant sail 51 out of 52 cards through that transom.

Paul Runyan became one of professional golfs great players. That day in 1928 he was a kid invited into a big-money match. Two Little Rock businessmen bet $3,000 that Runyan and another club amateur could beat Titanic Thompson and an Arkansas teenager, Dutch Harrison. With side bets, the kitty came to about $4,000.

I was fortunate that match didnt ruin my career, Runyan said 66 years later. I was on the practice tee and Ty comes by and, in a voice loud enough to be heard by the 30 or 40 people standing right there, he tries to buy me. He says, Kid, if you dont win any holes this afternoon, Ill give you half the money.

No way would I be crooked with Titanic Thompson. But I was scared to death somebody heard him. I made five birdies that day, so nobody could say I was crooked. But I was so scared I played badly, and we broke even.

Runyan is one of the last men alive who teed it up with Thompson. He was crooked and unscrupulous, Runyan said. He also was the most fascinating human being Ive ever met, so skillful at what he didand I saw it with my own eyes.

Alvin Clarence Thomas became Titanic Thompson one night in a Joplin, Mo., poolroom. It was the spring of 1912, shortly after an iceberg interrupted the maiden voyage of the ocean liner Titanic.

Thomas won $500 from a local shark who compounded his mistake by accepting a further proposition: double or nothing, that Thomas could jump across the pool table without touching it.

Tall, lean and strong as a wild razorback hog I could jump farther than a herd of bullfrogs, Thomas took a running start, dived headfirst across the table and landed on the far side, never so much as brushing an edge. As the country boy collected the extra $500 and some side bets, a loser asked, Whats the strangers name?

Dont rightly know, the pool shark said. But it must be Titanic, the way he sinks everybody.

The backwoods-rogue Alvin C. Thomas liked the sound of that. And when a newspaper later jumbled with his name, he went along. The rest of his life, he strutted on a stage of his own in a persona of his making. He became Titanic Thompson.

He made himself such a master of odds that he knew which card was likely to show up at any seat around a poker table. Should he lose at poker, he offered to lose even more by betting he could hit a silver dollar with his .45 pistol eight out of 10 times from 10 feet away. He carried a bowling ball in his car trunk, there with his golf clubs, a rifle, pool cue and a throwing rock with a flat side and edges beveled to fit his fingers. As for dice, years of practice on hotel beds made him sure a six or ace would sit up only once in 10 rolls.

What he called his smooth propositions came to be the surest sign that Thompson had passed through a town and identified its sucker. He perpetrated an especially smooth proposition at age 14, barefoot in the Ozarks, a dog his accomplice.

He said, I used to watch these dudes come to fish in their elegant casting outfits, and I wanted one of those things. I had trained my spaniel to dive to the bottom of the fishing hole and bring back a rock I tossed in. So one day I told a dude my dog could do that and offered to bet the dog against his casting outfit.

The dude said, Mark it so I know its the same rock you throw in. I did, and the spaniel leaped into the water, swam out of sight and came up with the marked rock. What the dude didnt know, of course, was that the bottom of that pond was covered with marked rocks.

The famous road-sign proposition began outside Joplin when Ty saw workmen putting up new signs on the highway. His friend Hickory McCullough owned a fishing camp out that way, 30 miles from town. Tys story:

That night I dug up a sign that said JOPLIN 20 MILES and replanted it five miles closer to Joplin. Next day we were riding along, and I remarked to Hickory as we passed the sign, Those boys are crazy. Its not 20 miles to Joplin.

Hickory and Beanie [Benson] bet me $500 each the sign was right. Of course, I won the bet. Hickory and Beanie used that same sign to win plenty of bets later.

Biographer Jon Bradshaw wrote of Thompson: In the period between 1912 and the end of the First World War, Ty became famous in the netherworld of gamblers and confidence men for the success of his improbable propositions. By changing the common hustle into a pure and elegantly constructed con, Ty earned an envious respect among his fellow gamblers. Tales of his feats were recounted so often they acquired the legitimacy of legend.

Such as the walnut throw:

Thompson sat on the porch of the Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs, Ark., eating walnuts from a bag. A local merchant fell into conversation, and Titanic offered him a walnut, eventually giving him the entire bag and saying, casually enough:

Ive got an interesting proposition for you. What odds will you give that I cant throw one of these Danish walnuts over that hotel across the street?

The hotel was five stories. Ty, the merchant said, you are some thrower, but not even Ty Cobb could throw a walnut over that hotel.

Maybe not, Titanic said, but Im willin to bet I can. Shucks, Im willin to bet a hundred dollars if you could see your way to givin me odds of, uh, three-to-one.

One of these walnuts, Ty?

Yep. You can pick any walnut in this here bag.

Sure enough, a walnut flew from Titanics hand over that five-story hotel. And the muttering merchant reached for his wallet. He was neither the first nor the last who would fail to discover that Thompson, preparing to throw, had replaced the chosen walnut with the one he carried everywherethe one filled with lead. It was easily thrown over a hotel, tree or barn that begged for a proposition.

GOLF AS EASY AS BREATHING

And propositions werent even his best game. Thompson was almost 30 years old before he discovered golf. After all-night poker games at the Kingston Club in San Francisco in 1921, he sneaked out to the clubs practice range. In a few weeks, the master of hand-eye coordination could play. He played left-handed, with one exception. If he heard money whispering, he often started out right-handed, and when he heard the money talking, he would say, I tell you what. Ill play you double or nothingand Ill play left-handed.

He told Bradshaw, It was the easiest thing you ever saw. I played golf almost as well as I breathed.

Not that Titanic said as much to his poker buddies, one being the local pro Buddy Brent. To Brent, he denigrated golf. A childs game, he said. Probably pick it up in a morning. Shucks, he said, he could probably go out and now beat Brent.

The pro beat Thompson every hole in a nine-hole wager, $90 in damages. On the way home, Titanic moaned that his luck had been bad, the clubs were borrowed, his back ached from the all-night poker, hed have done better if he felt better.

At the next nights poker, Titanic fumed. When Brent dropped in again, he asked for a rematch, this time $1,000 a hole, but he had to get three shots a hole. The pro gave one shot. With side bets, $60,000 was at stake. As Titanic told it, gamblers by the first tee greeted him with sympathetic applauseuntil his tee shot went 275 yards down the middle. Brent blanched. A shot or two the winner, Titanic picked up $56,000.

I never shot more than a stroke or two bettern the opposition, he said. If a man shoots 89, I shoot 88. If a man shoots 68, I shoot 67. I never liked to add insult to injury.

Titanic Thompsons salad days were the Prohibition years of 1920-33. Declaring liquor illegal served best to add a sense of illicit adventure to finding a drink. That pleasure of guilt spilled over to gambling as well, with clandestine games of chance available to players in roadhouses and in secret back rooms of fancy hotels.

Gambling and sports were intertwined so casually that in the 20s the New York baseball manager, John J. McGraw, owned a pool hall with Arnold Rothstein, the gambler whose money bought the Chicago White Soxs cooperation in the 1919 World Series.

In the early part of the century, Jon Bradshaw wrote, the professional gambler was still a romantic figurea fallen man, perhaps, and evil, if the melodramas of the period are to be believed. He was a freebooter, a man who took the long chance at a time when the country still believed in dark horses. Titanic Thompson was at the heart of that belief.

WITH JUST A SCHEME IN HIS HEART

Alvin C. Thomas was born in Monett, Mo., on Nov. 30, 1892, and grew up in the Ozark Mountain woods near Rogers, Ark. His stepfather and a grandfather taught him to hunt, fish and play cards.

He left home at 16 and caught the train to Monett. There he worked as a shill and sharpshooter for a traveling medicine show operated by a Buffalo Bill look-alike who introduced the young schemer to a world filled with suckers.

For the next 25 years, Titanic Thompsons life was a blur of gambling frenzy that took him from his Arkansas roots to Chicago to San Francisco, from New York to New Mexico, from horse-racing tracks to ringside at the Jack Dempsey-Jess Willard fight. Resourceful and energetic, he once said, Ive been broke, but never for more than six hours at a time.

He was flush on Sept. 7, 1928, for a poker game on New Yorks West Side, attended by a rogues gallery of gamblers, bookmakers, horseplayers and organized-crime muscle. The game included Arnold Rothstein, who would lose $475,000$30,000 to Thompson.

But Rothstein didnt pay; he handed out IOUs. Six weeks later, he turned up murdered by a gunman. The New York newspapers had a time with it.

Of the poker players arrested as material witnesses, it was Titanic, then and later, who caught the publics fancy, the columnist John Lardner wrote in 1951. Maybe because he was said to be a Westerner, a lone wolf, a romantic and single-duke gambler of the old school.

Prosecutors believed Thompson and Rothstein had conspired to cheat George McManus out of $51,000, and that a vengeful McManus murdered Rothstein. At the trial, a prosecutor asked Thompson what he did for a living.

I run a cafe, Titanic said.

You have other means of income, do you not?

Titanic smiled. I play a little golf for money.

The prosecutor continued, Isnt it right that you are, in fact, a man who makes rather large sums of money by gambling at golf and that you bet on the horses and sell jewelry at racetracks and that you have played in a number of high-stake poker games ?

Titanic Thompson was a states witness, cooperating in exchange for reduced bail. Once under oath, though, his memory failed, and he told the prosecutor:

You see, I just dont remember things. If I bet on a horse today and won 10 grand, I probably would not be able to recall the horses name tomorrow.

To no ones shock, Titanics memory improved under cross-examination. He declared that George McManus, the accused, was really a swell guy, even a swell loser, never upset by anything at all, certainly not upset by losing only $51,000 to Rothstein, whose IOU, as all of New York knew, was as good as gold.

The next day, McManus was acquitted of Rothsteins murder.

BONNIE AND CLYDE TIME

After the trial, famous if not infamous, Titanic went back on the road and often found himself in the company of professional golfers. The tour in the 1930s was little more than an excuse to go gambling, if not on the course then in a hotel room rolling dice and dealing poker.

It was all gambling, said Jack Burke Jr., the 1956 Masters champion who learned the game during the Depression from his father, a prominent Texas pro. They had bookmakers at every tournament. Theyd make more gambling with each other than there was in the purse. Ben Hogan would play you $50 nassaus. Thompson wasnt alone gambling on golf. There were a lot of Titanic Thompsons loose out there. It was Bonnie and Clyde time.

The early years of the Depression left 30 million people with no income at all. They were desperate people whose tolerance of crime was the highest in American history. By robbing banks and shooting his way out, John Dillinger became a folk hero. People who had never seen a pistol, a historian wrote, spoke casually of the rod, the roscoe, the equalizer, or the heat.

Titanic Thompson carried a .45 with adhesive tape on the butt to make the grip surer.

He had killed his first man on a riverboat by hitting him in the head with a hammer and allowing him to fall overboard. The next four he did with the .45, each time dropping to one knee and firing up at the poor fellows who thought to rob him.

Sam Snead had heard the stories, not only of the sharpshooting but of Titanics golf game. He knew Thompson played left-handed with a baseball grip and was a good short-iron player who made every putt he needed. When Snead met him in 34, one hustler apprizing another, Sam asked, Just how good are you?

Play me and find out, Titanic said. Ill take four strokes a side.

Oh, no, Snead said. Not until I see your honest swing.

They should live so long. One of his traveling partners, Herman Keiser, who later beat Hogan to win the 1946 Masters, said Titanic seldom gave a sucker an even break.

Tyd get a Hungarian lock on em before they hit the first tee ball. Oh my, hed be moaning about his bad back and his stiff hands and how he hadnt played for so long. They didnt have a chance.

Hed even talk em into letting Tall Boythat was mehave two putts on every green. Well, hell. I didnt need but one most of the time.

Runyan calls Thompson the best left-handed player in the world until Bob Charles came along. He could really play. He was deft, is the word, at hitting any shot in the bag.

Tommy Bolt, the 1958 U.S. Open champion: He couldve been the greatest. He had great everything, a good, solid, compact swing. Not one of those long swings like Hogans where you had to practice every day to keep it; Ty had a gamblers swing. No telling how great that guy couldve beenexcept back then he made more money hustling oilmen in east Texas than he could have made on the tour.

Byron Nelson had heard the name but until 1934 had never seen Thompson. Members at Nelsons club in Dallas arranged a money match between the two best players they knew of in Texas: Titanic Thompson and Byron Nelson.

The way Thompson told it, he shot a 29 on the back nine at Ridglea to win $3,000.

Now, wait a minute. Thompson wants us to believe he was good enough to beat Byron Nelson?

So you go to Nelson under the big oak trees at Augusta National the day the 1994 Masters starts. You ask one of historys greatest players if he ever played Titanic Thompson.

I saw him once, Nelson says. Hed been out in the east Texas oil fields. Those fellas had so much money, it was easy for Titanic to make money out there.

Id turned pro a couple years before when I was 20, 21. The members said they wanted me to play Ty, and I told them I wasnt a gambler. They said, Well take care of that. Ty was backing himself. I had to give him three shots. He shot 71 and I shot 69. The money? I dont have any idea.

What Nelson also remembered were Thompsons eyes. He was a nice-looking man, pleasant and polite, with very sharp eyes. Those eyes could look a hole through you.

The eyes also come up in conversation with Keiser. You find the old man at his driving range in Ohio, 80 years old. You ask if you can talk to him about Titanic Thompson, to which Keiser bellows, Noooo.

I have got nothing good to say about him. He never gave me a dime.

He was a thief. Playing poker, hed mark the cards, and he could see his mark. He had wonderful eyes.

You mumble something about how everyone remembers the eyes. Then Herman Keiser starts talking.

I was with him for one trip across the country. We played 10, 12 places. Good short-iron player, pretty good player all around.

He had fun every minute every day. But all the money he made, I never got a dime. I never wanted it, never took as much as a $10 bill.

Read more:

Golfs killer gambler: The legend of Titanic Thompson - Golf Digest

As investors bid up shares of the probably worthless shares of the bankrupt Hertz ninefold for seemingly no reason at all, some speculated that the truly senseless move was the result of boredom: Too many day traders with too much government stimulus/enhanced unemployment money and too much time on their hands buying things for the sake of buying them, or for the adrenaline rush that comes when those shares collapse once more because the New York Stock Exchange is not as easily fooled as some guy who has run out of things to get mad about on the internet.

Well, they were on to something. Whats more, it wasnt only day-trader boredom driving things. Gambling, as you may have heard, is pretty addictive, and one of the main things people gamble onsportsis not happening right now. Some of those peoplequite a lot, in facthave apparently heard the old saw that investing in stocks is simply gambling, and taken that as an invitation rather than a warning.

Millions of small-time investors have opened trading accounts in recent months, a flood of new buyers unlike anything the market had seen in years, just as lockdown orders halted entire sectors of the economy and sent unemployment soaring.

Its not clear how many of the new arrivals are sports bettors, but some are behaving like aggressive gamblers. There has been a jump in small bets in the stock options market, where wagers on the direction of share prices can produce thrilling scores and gut-wrenching losses. And transactions that make little economic sense, like buying up the nearly valueless shares of bankrupt companies, are off the charts.

Investors are increasingly asking us about the participation of individual investors in the shares and options market, analysts from Goldman Sachs wrote in a note published late last month. Our data suggests that individual investors are indeed a significant proportion of daily volume.

Depending on how much illegal sports wagering you believe there is, and on how little of it has flowed to Korean baseball books, theres $145 billion or so sloshing around, and a sudden embarrassment of free trading options to pour it into, well.

There has been a surge in small investors using option trades to make pure win-or-lose bets on where stock prices will be at a specific time, said Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak, an asset management firm.

Thats another sign that its these gamblers, he said.

It all sounds like another disaster waiting to befall our already battered and benighted world. But, as it turns out, those bored gamblers are doing pretty well for themselves.

A portfolio of stocks popular among individuals has surged by 61% since the bear market trough compared with a gain of 45% for both hedge fund and mutual fund favorites and a 36% rise in the S&P 500 Index The narrative of Main Street weakness versus Wall Street asset inflation is misleading, the strategists said. The surge in retail trading activity has amplified the market rotation toward cyclicals and value stocks.

Trading Sportsbook for Brokerages, Bored Bettors Wager on Stocks [NYT]Goldman Says Mom-and-Pops Stock Picks Are Trouncing Wall Street [Bloomberg]

More here:

Yup, Its Gamblers - Dealbreaker

Gambling welfare campaigners have warned of a potential frenzy in betting on football when the Premier League and Championship restart, with all 92 remaining top-flight games televised live to supporters still largely in lockdown.

Betting companies are expected to resume sustained advertising and marketing, particularly via the apps on which people have accounts to gamble on sport, and TV broadcasts will also prominently show advertising around the grounds and on club shirts. Of the 44 clubs in the Premier League and Championship, 27 61% have a betting company as their main shirt sponsor.

Research by the Gambling Commission into betting habits during the Covid-19 lockdown, published this month, has found they remained quite resilient despite the lack of sport and large numbers of people suffering a drop in income, with only a 5% decrease in active player accounts.

A finding that has worried campaigners is the large proportion, 62%, of engaged gamblers people who participate in three or more gambling activities over a four-week period who in March and April increased the time or money they spent on at least one gambling activity. The research also found a significant increase over the last year in the number of different gambling activities by people who bet online, from 26% engaging in more than one online activity in April 2019 to 42% during the full lockdown month this April.

We know from previous studies that engagement across a larger number of activities can correlate to higher levels of moderate-risk and problem gambling, the commission said.

Charles Ritchie, who co-founded the charity Gambling with Lives after his 24-year-old son Jack killed himself in 2017, told the Guardian: During lockdown people with gambling problems have increased the amount of time and money they spend gambling. We fear that the situation is going to get worse because alongside the welcome return of football and televised live games, we face the awful prospect of a massive boom in gambling advertising and marketing.

Most people will deplore the constant parade in this marketing of the usual celebrities, false glamour and excitement, and incomprehensible offers. But for many people this could spell despair and disaster, lured back into the 90-minute non-stop in-game frenzy of betting on any and every aspect of the game, which is the reality of modern football betting.

Ritchie has consistently sounded the alarm about the increasingly addictive nature of betting on football, due to the growth of in-game offers on the next goal, booking or other event. Research has shown that rapid-outcome betting is more addictive than gambling on longer outcomes, such as a matchs result.

James Grimes, a recovering gambling addict who formed the Big Step gambling awareness campaign, has called on the government to ban gambling sponsorships and advertising in football, and in February completed a 100-mile walk between six Premier League and Championship clubs that have betting companies as sponsors.

The increased opportunity to watch games from home and for free has the potential to cause gambling harm, he said. The social aspect of football has gone for the time being and solitary viewing, with a bookmaker effectively on your phone in your pocket, is a recipe for harm.

As a recovering gambling addict, I think back to when my life revolved around betting on football. I didnt need an excuse to stay home, losing all my money on in-play, high-intensity gambling products associated to football. I dread to think of the consequences for my addiction if I was still gambling now, with the prevalence of betting opportunities and relentless marketing.

Tranmere Rovers chairman, Mark Palios, has spoken out against gambling sponsorship, which he says he has turned down for Tranmere, and the club are working with the Big Step and NHS on initiatives to combat increases in online gambling during the pandemic.

The coronavirus crisis is predicted to increase the commercial pressure for clubs to have gambling sponsors, as other consumer businesses suffer financial difficulties.

In February the Premier Leagues chief executive, Richard Masters, said he acknowledged that gambling required stronger governance, particularly to protect the vulnerable and that the league would cooperate with the governments promised review of the 2005 Gambling Act. However, he said the league would resist moves to ban advertising on clubs shirts.

The EFL has said of its association with Sky Bet that it is happy to work with a responsible, properly regulated bookmaker who recognises the importance of having the right safeguards in place.

A spokesperson for the Betting and Gaming Council, which represents gambling companies, said they had implemented several measures to protect against problem gambling during lockdown. With the return of some sports, the whistle-to-whistle ban on TV advertising during live sport will remain in place and we have further committed that 20% of all advertising will be safer gambling messaging, he said. This is in addition to implementing a ban on gambling with credit cards, new strict age and ID verification checks and providing additional funding for research, education and treatment.

GamCare (gamcare.org.uk, helpline: 0808 8020 133) offers free information, support and counselling for problem gamblers in the UK. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at http://www.befrienders.org.

Read the original post:

Fears for gambling frenzy as Premier League and Championship return - The Guardian

At Famous Studios in Tardeo, Avtar Kaul was editing his film 27 Down, next door to us editing Rajnigandha there. In his manic pace, sometimes Avtar would even be sleeping in the editing room itself.

Avtar, why the bloody hell are you working at this psychotic pace. Take it easy man, because you have no release date to meet. Abhi tak toh hamari filmen koi nahi kharid raha ha. Shayad dabbey mein hi reh jayegi dost?

Look, Suresh, I want to enter it in the National Awards this year. All the Dadas hats are in the ring. I want to throw my little topi in too. I have to meet that deadline, Buddy. You wont understand. he said, his voice trailing off.

None of us, including him, could imagine in our wildest imagination that on the eve of his film getting the National Award for the Best Hindi Film, he would tragically drown in the monsoon seas in Walkeshwar, trying to save a friend who had accidentally fallen off the parapet wall of the property where he had a paying guest accommodation.

We were all in our early 30s then, except Basuda who was 42 years old. Our worship mantra was: Surya soye aur daaru jaage. At sunset, in groups of four, we would pile into taxis and head for our place of worship and liberation; our favourite auntys adda under the swaying palms of a sleepy palms fringed Juhu, or the Koli village in Khar, or an under-construction building in Bandra, whose ground floor turned into a speakeasy at night. In fact, we explored all addas from behind the Taj Mahal Hotel to Sion, where next door, a Sikh rehriwala fried the most scrumptious fish in the universe. And you would tip the Bihari mundoo, of the way beyond Michelin Stars Chef, two one rupee coins for bringing it to you to enjoy with your tharra, and his face and eyes would light up like a jugnu in pitch dark on a summer night.

Those were the glorious days of Prohibition, when booze was available everywhere. Even your lift operator knew an aunty in the slum nearby, whose kholi sold it 247, when you ran out at 2 am, but were still partying.

Bandra was then still a leafy nearly in the boondocks suburb, when habitable Bombay ended at Mahim Church. Beyond the Causeway, except for Juhu, where the rich had their beach shacks, was dehat rural Bharat.

St Michaels Church in Mahim, Mumbai. Photo: Anuradha Sengupta CC BY 2.0

Every taxi driver in Bombay knew the famous aunty in Bandra who lived on the second floor of the building. After the adda served the last drinks but you still wanted another quarter to help you put down dinner at the food carts on Linking Road, the taxi took you below Auntys second floor flat. A basket would slither down from the flat in which you put the money for the brand and quantity of the bottle you wanted, and the basket would fly towards the stars, and would descend again like Pushpak Vahaan with the nectar.

If one of our fellow tipplers got too sizzled, you requested aunty to call a cab, who made the cabbie count the money in his pocket (which was just enough for the fare) and sternly told him: You will leave him at this address, take the cab fare from his pocket, help him to his door, ring the door bell and wait till someone opens it and takes his charge from you. Kya? Samjha?? And we never had an iota of doubt that our buddy would be safely home and puking in his own toilet bowl.

Also Read: Basu Chatterjee, the Real Stealer of Hearts, Remembered by the Boy Next Door

The Bombay Police was reputed to be one of the best in the world at that time. It operated on the system of it takes a thief to catch a thief. Of course, the police took their hafta to turn a blind eye to organised crime but also demanded that sharif log be neither, harassed, cheated or physically harmed. One could send a teenaged girl or a drunken friend in a cab at 2 am and could be sure they would reach their destination safe and unharmed. Bombay was the safest city in the world.

Other than bootlegging, the other major organised crimes were smuggling and Ratan Khatris matka. From the Elysian Fields of Malabar Hill to the slums of Dharavi, everyone had their very own bootlegger, smuggler man and matka bookie.

Everyone, I mean literally everyone, from the society housewife to the ever-smiling toothless beggar outside your building played matka, which could be played for as little one rupee in the slums to several lakhs in the citys satta bazaar. When the numbers were picked out at 8pm, everyone wherever they were, would start asking everyone else: Kya number inkle? The cabbie would ask you in the cab or you him, the lift man would too, while you were lifting to your flat, and the beggars while you were flagging down a cab or waiting for a bus. Ratan Khatris was the True and Revered Once and Future King of the Nights of Bombay. A man of sterling integrity who never had a single charge of unfairness or cheating till the Emergency shut down his operations and jailed him.

Haji Mastaan was the Smuggler King, larger than life and more romanticised by the aam aadmi than a Mills and Boons novel. Not only were smuggled goods available everywhere but everyone in high rises, shops, film and recording studios, clubs and addas had their own personal Smuggler Man. They were not criminals but normal, polite and neatly dressed men, Hindu and Muslim, trying to make a living by catering to a market of respectful citizens. We were in Nehruvian Socialism and flat broke to be able to import anything at all.

Our local industrialists got their license-permit-quotas by bribing both the Neta and the Babu. They manufactured razor blades that nicked off a little flesh along with the hair on your chin, lipstick that melted in sun making the mouths they adorned like Kalis after a blood feast, wooden pencils whose lead snapped after every half page of writing, erasers that adorned the page, after use, with black streaks like pre-monsoon skies, fountain pens which would flow with the same irregularity as the citys water supply.

It was just law-abiding folks who, in addition to the above necessities, wanted cheap tape recorders and cameras, terylene and nylon (the new man-made wonder fabrics) pants and shirt pieces for themselves and gifts to others, toys for the kids whose paint was not toxic, because the Commanding Heights of The State had chained our peoples natural animal spirits for entrepreneurship to institutionalize a corrupt, rent seeking and parasitic system.

Bombay was the lodestone to which, like lemmings to the sea, people from the vast cultural, linguistic and racial kaleidoscope landscape of India headed to make their fortunes through luck and pluck with fathomless optimism. Landless peasants came to become labourers in the massive construction boom, or cooks, drivers, watchmen, taxi drivers, bootleggers and smugglers. Small businessmen from the non-descript dusty towns to become seths and buy expensive flats in high rises popping up everywhere. Dhirubhai Ambani, the son of a village school teacher and ex-attendant of a petrol pump in Oman, was just getting to be known with the launch of Vimal Fabrics.

Educated young men and women came to become journalists and copy writers in the advertising industry, and stars in different areas of the film industry actors, producers, directors, playback singers, musicians.

It was a magical tour crackling with psychedelia, stardust, the music of the spheres seductive with limitless possibilities. It was real because every day someone you knew as a fellow lodger in a seedy guest house or paying guest accommodation in a faraway suburb was moving to his own flat in Bandra, Khar or Juhu, the new prestigious suburbs of upward mobility.

Basuda loved the city with a passion: Suresh, you tell me, which city in the world will make a boy from Mathura a well-known film director. With my family background, the most that was expected of me, and that my in-laws would consider a good match for their daughter, was to become an upper division government clerk.

From L to R: Manu Bhandari (writer of Yeh Such Hai on which Rajnigandha is based), Vidya Sinha, Amol, Basu Chatterjee, Dinesh Thakur, Suresh Jindal

As I trudged along with him on the streets or drove in taxis to studios and theatres to meet prospective actors to cast in Rajnigandha, or to Salil Chawdhurys flat on Pedder Road for a music sitting, or to eat in an Udupi or Irani dhaba, for thats all we could afford, he would give me anecdotal stories from his rich repertoire, both experienced and heard, of the film industry and of the citys famous and infamous icons.

At suraj soye daru jaage time, we would hop in a cab with other friends to float to our chosen adda for the night. Basuda would always drink moderately, silently with eyes half-closed, and leave earlier than all others in the gang, who were mostly younger and bachelors, to always eat his dinner at home in Prabhadevi.

Read more here:

Bombay of the 1970s, a Time of Shady Bars, Petty Gambling and Great Opportunity - The Wire

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Technavio has been monitoring the gambling market and it is poised to grow by $231.63 bn during 2020-2024, progressing at a CAGR of about 5% during the forecast period. The report offers an up-to-date analysis regarding the current market scenario, latest trends and drivers, and the overall market environment.

Technavio suggests three forecast scenarios (optimistic, probable, and pessimistic) considering the impact of COVID-19. Request for Technavio's latest reports on directly and indirectly impacted markets. Market estimates include pre- and post-COVID-19 impact on the gambling market Download free sample report

The market is fragmented, and the degree of fragmentation will accelerate during the forecast period. 888 Holdings Plc, bet365 Group, Caesars Entertainment Corp., Camelot UK Lotteries Ltd., Flutter Entertainment Plc, Galaxy Entertainment Group Ltd., INTRALOT SA, Las Vegas Sands Corp., MGM Resorts International, and William Hill Plc are some of the major market participants. To make the most of the opportunities, market vendors should focus more on the growth prospects in the fast-growing segments, while maintaining their positions in the slow-growing segments.

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The high penetration of smartphones has been instrumental in driving the growth of the market. However, ban on gambling advertisements might hamper the market growth.

Technavio's custom research reports offer detailed insights on the impact of COVID-19 at an industry level, a regional level, and subsequent supply chain operations. This customized report will also help clients keep up with new product launches in direct & indirect COVID-19 related markets, upcoming vaccines and pipeline analysis, and significant developments in vendor operations and government regulations. https://www.technavio.com/report/report/gambling-market-size-industry-analysis

Gambling Market 2020-2024: Segmentation

Gambling Market is segmented as below:

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Gambling Market 2020-2024: Scope

Technavio presents a detailed picture of the market by the way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources. The gambling market report covers the following areas:

This study identifies the use of AI in online gambling as one of the prime reasons driving the gambling market growth during the next few years.

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Gambling Market 2020-2024: Key Highlights

Table of Contents:

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Market Landscape

Market Sizing

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Market Segmentation by Type

Market Segmentation by Platform

Customer Landscape

Geographic Landscape

Drivers, Challenges, and Trends

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Originally posted here:

COVID-19 Impact and Recovery Analysis - Gambling Market 2020-2024 | The High Penetration Of Smartphones to Boost Growth | Technavio - Business Wire

Swedens online gambling operators have some suggestions for how the government might better protect consumers, while the state-run Svenska Spel wants the government to better protect its lottery monopoly.

On Monday, Branschfreningen fr Onlinespel (BOS), Swedens online gambling industry group,offered the government its proposed measures for a safer gambling market, seeking to counter the governments plan to impose strict deposit and spending limits on online casino products as of the first week of July.

BOS recently commissioned a study by Copenhagen Economics to determine what effect the proposed limits will have on channeling Swedish gamblers away from internationally licensed gambling sites and toward locally licensed operators.

The report estimated that the online casino channeling rate will likely fall from its current estimate of 72-78% playing with local operators to a range of 52-63%. BOS CEO Gustaf Hoffstedt believes this will put the Swedish market back to the unsustainable situation that led the government to launch a regulated online market in January 2019.

BOS has put forth seven alternative steps the government could take to improve the channeling rate and thus allow the state to better monitor gambling activity and protect consumers. These include introducing a B2B licensing system to discourage gaming technology suppliers from doing business with international operators if said suppliers wish to continue doing business with Swedish B2C licensees.

Other suggestions include more funding for campaigns to raise awareness of existing responsible gambling tools, collaboration between government and licensees on analyzing (anonymized) customer data, and using that data to establish a risk classification system based on players rather than gambling products.

SVENSKA SPEL CALLS FOR LOTTERY BETTING CRACKDOWN

On Monday, Svenska Spel CEO Patrik Hofbauer published a statement asking the government to crack the whip against so-called shadow operators offering betting markets on lottery draws, which under Swedish law are supposed to be reserved for the state-run Svenska Spel and non-profit groups.

Hofbauer cited an H2 Gambling Capital report that lottery betting sites currently control nearly 40% of Europes online lottery market and that these operators revenues were growing between 10-20% per year, depriving both the state and the recipients of charitable foundations of badly needed funding.

Hofbauer noted that many of these sites hold Swedish betting licenses, which he claimed they use to utilize openings in Swedish gambling laws and corrupt the intentions of the legislators who crafted those laws.

Hofbauer added that Denmarks gambling regulators forbade their online licensees from offering lottery betting products and he urged Swedens Spelinspektionen regulatory agency to introduce the same right and reasonable rules.

One year ago, Spelinspektionen fined lottery betting operator Lottoland $74k for offering products not covered under its Swedish license, including lottery betting and online scratch cards.

Svenska Spels own regulatory compliance is being probed by Swedens consumer ombudsman, which recently ordered the company to disclose its relationship with a local TV channel, on which Svenska Spels lottery products were being promoted without being labeled as a paid-for promotion and without the required responsible gambling messaging. Svenska Spel is appealing the ruling.

See the article here:

Sweden's gambling ops offer alternatives to online casino restrictions - CalvinAyre.com

Part of the point spread family of betting odds, bettors are offered puck lines when they wager on hockey and run lines to bet on baseball. Different from football and basketball ATS odds, which can be posted at 17 points or more, pre-game hockey and baseball point spreads are always 1.5 goals or runs. This is due to both sports being relatively low scoring. As such, it doesnt leave bookmakers with very much wiggle room when setting the odds. Lets break it down.

Hockey is a fast moving, hard hitting and action packed sport. While exciting to watch, NHL contests are often low scoring and tightly contested affairs. When wagering on pre-game puck lines, bettors give up -1.5 goals to back the favorite and receive +1.5 goals to bet on the underdog. Bettors need to pay attention to the puck line juice as it can be expensive. Favorites in hockey receive plus juice pricing while the underdogs are posted with a negative number.

In the example above, Detroit bettors receive 1.5 goals prior to the game and need the underdog Red Wings to win outright or lose by just one goal. As noted, by the (-180) juice, it costs $180 to win $100 with Detroit. Pittsburgh backers are down by 1.5 goals prior to the game and the Penguins need to win by at least two goals to cash a winning ticket. Juice is more favorable when laying pucks with favorites as $100 wager on Pittsburgh returns a $160 profit.

Baseball favorites begin the game with a 1.5 run deficit while the underdog is up by 1.5 runs prior to the first pitch. In the example below, Chicago is chalk, giving up -1.5 runs, and bettors need to wager $100 to earn a $140 return on the Cubs. Philadelphia is the underdog, receiving +1.5 runs, but it costs $160 to win a $100 wager on the Phillies. Baseball and hockey two-way run line wagers are decided after regulation time, plus any extra play, and a PUSH is not possible.

In both hockey and baseball, LIVE in-play point spreads move according to the score of the match. MLB odds often change more dramatically as a run line will balloon if either side has a big inning. For instance, using the line above, if Philadelphia went up 3-0 after the first inning, the LIVE betting run line would likely move to Philadelphia -3.5 with juice in the (-130) range. Laying pucks or runs is a best bet when wagering research shows one side being vastly to the other.

MORE GAMBLING TERMS YOU NEED TO KNOW

Continued here:

Gambling 101: What are Puck Lines and Run Lines? - Sports Illustrated

Some publishers are appearing to embrace betting by hiring integrity monitors that also sell data and betting services to bookmakers. For example, in mid-April, Nevada regulators approved Activision Blizzards Call of Duty League and Overwatch League for betting. Three weeks later, the leagues announced an integrity services deal with the Swiss company Sportradar, modeled on similar deals that Sportradar has with traditional sports organizations like the N.F.L. and the e-sports pioneer Riot Games, the creator of League of Legends, one of the most popular e-sports.

When we first looked at e-sports it was the Wild West, said Doug Watson, head of e-sports insights for Riot, which is owned by the Chinese media and gaming behemoth Tencent. Sports betting is a big part of the ecosystem and was going to happen regardless of whether we said it should happen or not. So we decided to invest to protect the sport and ensure its longevity and legitimacy.

Andy Cunningham, head of integrity and league relations for North America at Sportradar, said that traditional and e-sports leagues pay his company to monitor betting for suspicious patterns, investigate possible corruption, educate players and officials on proper behavior and establish anti-corruption procedures. He said those integrity services are separated from the companys other divisions, which sell sports data and betting services to bookmakers. There is absolutely no conflict in what we do, he said, though some gambling executives, like Blume at Pinnacle, disagree.

Days after Riot announced its integrity deal with Sportradar last summer, the companies announced a separate deal under which a Sportradar joint venture pays Riot for exclusive access to data from the companys League of Legends e-sports tournaments. The Sportradar venture, Bayes Esports Solutions, then sells that data to other companies, including bookmakers. Sportradars relationship with the N.F.L. is similar. Activision Blizzard has not announced a data distribution deal with Sportradar to follow on last months integrity deal. But such an arrangement is being negotiated, according to two people close to the companies who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the deal before it was publicly announced.

A separate path for integrity monitoring is also emerging for e-sports.

Gambling regulators in Nevada, Britain and Malta, as well as betting companies including William Hill, have strengthened their ties to the Esports Integrity Commission, a group in Britain that is attempting to become a central authority to help stop match-fixing and other corruption helping to legitimize the competitions for bettors, fans and sponsors.

But major game publishers have been reluctant to sign up. Game industry executives explained that publishers may want to avoid giving the impression that they actively support gambling or that their games need an international integrity commission in the first place. In Asia, the original home of big-money e-sports, match-fixing scandals have toppled careers, teams and entire leagues.

Here is the original post:

With Real-Life Games Halted, Betting World Puts Action on E-Sports - The New York Times

Oh Seung-hwan of the Samsung Lions, the all-time saves leader in the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) with 277, has served his 72-game suspension, stemming from an overseas gambling conviction.

The KBO handed down the ban in 2016 after Oh received a court fine for gambling. The half-season suspension kicked in when Oh rejoined the Lions last August after getting released by the Colorado Rockies.

Oh pitched for the Lions from 2005 to 2013, before spending the next two years with the Hanshin Tigers in Japan and then parts of four seasons in the majors with the Rockies, the Toronto Blue Jays and the St. Louis Cardinals.

In his first tour of duty in the KBO, Oh had a 1.69 ERA over 510 1/3 innings. He also owns the single season saves record with 47, which he set in 2006 and matched in 2011.

The Lions will host the Kiwoom Heroes for a three-game series starting Tuesday evening at Daegu Samsung Lions Park in Daegu, 300 kilometers southeast of Seoul. They'll have another three-game series at home starting Friday, against the KT Wiz.

The stadium opened in 2016, and Oh has never pitched there. His most recent KBO appearance came on Oct. 2, 2013.

Oh started traveling with the Lions last week and threw a bullpen session while they were in Seoul. Samsung manager Huh Sam-young has said he won't throw Oh into the fire right away, and he will instead ease the right-hander back into action.

"The best-case scenario for us is to have him on the mound with a comfortable lead," Huh said last week.

Eventually, though, Oh will take over as the closer. Woo Kyu-min has done an admirable job in Oh's absence, recording four saves and posting a 3.86 ERA over 9 1/3 innings. The Lions have the second-lowest bullpen ERA in the league with 4.50, and opponents have slugged .379 against their bullpen, the best mark in the KBO.

He pitched in some spring training games with the Lions this year, but his last competitive game came with the Rockies on May 30 last year. He went on the 10-day injured list on June 10 with a left abdominal strain and then was ruled out for the season on July 16 with a right elbow injury.

Oh returned to South Korea in August to undergo an operation.

He spent a big chunk of his 72-game ban rehabbing the elbow. (Yonhap)

More:

KBO's career saves leader eligible to return from gambling suspension Tuesday - The Korea Herald

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With the lift of travel restrictions, the 3rd edition of the MARE BALTICUM Gaming Summit is the first live conference in the industry after travel restrictions are being lifted.

We are excited to announce that Golden Race is going to be among sponsors of the live edition of MARE BALTICUM Gaming Summit and BSG Awards, which is going ahead as planned and will be held on the 6th of August in Tallinn at Radisson Blu Hotel Olmpia Tallinn.

Golden Race joins a huge lineup of sponsors at the conference and in order to secure your seat, make sure to book in advance and choose one of the packages which include either delegate pass or delegate pass and accommodation combo (VIP Package)!

Golden Race is a young, dynamic company born in the field of sports betting in 2006 with the successful launch of dog racing and over 8,000 licenses sold. From this extremely successful first product launch, Golden Race invested in developing many new products based on virtual betting events.

The company is on a global expansion course allowing its customers to share in building an international network.

To ensure that they continue being a leading provider of software solutions for virtual sports and gaming, they strive daily to improve their products and create new, exciting value-added solutions for their partners.

Make sure to book your ticket now in order to avoid disappointment and also book a meeting with their team. The seats are limited and are selling out fast!

Order your Delegate Pass or VIP Package (Delegate Pass +Accommodation) now!

As mentioned in earlier press releases, the conference is going ahead as planned and based on official sources, Estonia has allowed from June 1 for citizens from EU and EEA countries with a slow current spread of COVID-19 to enter the country without the requirement of a 14-day self-isolation period.

As rates of infection change, countries with no quarantine requirement can be added/removed from the list, but at the time of writing, visitors from the following countries can freely enter Estonia without a quarantine requirement: Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Switzerland.

Earlier this month, the team also announced the reset of the online voting stage at the Baltic and Scandinavian Gaming Awards (BSG Awards). Read more here

You can vote for your favorite companies in the Baltic and Nordic region between 1 30 June to help them reach the top 5 and advance to the shortlist. Vote here!

MARE BALTICUM The Baltic and Scandinavian Gaming Summit will once again bring together the leading companies in the Baltic and Scandinavian region for a full day of quality learning and networking with local regulators and industry experts.

You can find more details about the Agenda here or you can register here!

Browse the official event website here: http://www.marebalticumgaming.com

You can view the photo gallery from the inaugural event on the following this link.

Browse the video archives of the panel discussions which were recorded on the 7th of May at the virtual edition of the conference.

For further inquiries about the 2020 live edition of MBGS and BSG Awards (6 August Tallinn, Estonia), speaking/attending/sponsoring options, make sure to send an e-mail to Andrada Bota (B2B Sales Executive at Hipther Agency) or subscribe to the weekly newsletter on thefollowing link.

Visit http://www.marebalticumgaming.com for more details!

For media-related inquiries, please contact Alexandru Marginean (Marketing Specialist at Hipther Agency).

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Read more:

Latvian Gambling Industry to Resume Operations on June 9 - European Gaming Industry News