With a nervous tapping foot, I couldn’t take it any longer. In the middle of a movie I got up and left the theater, allegedly to use the bathroom. Leaving my seat, palms sweaty with anticipation, I pulled out my phone while jogging down the steps. As soon as I was in cell phone- range, I dialed a friend and demanded he check the score of the Cornell vs. Dartmouth basketball game. “Cornell won, by 23,” he told me. Cornell had covered their spread, I had lost, and the pot of money I’d gained from a week of placing sports bets was gone. I was devastated, even angry at the result.
Someone who rarely takes risks out of my own control, my personal descent into an addiction with sports gambling was both furiously quick and brief. Looking for an escape and a distraction, I was turned on to the idea by a one of my best friends, Nathaniel Walker. Walker was making money on his bets by using tips from anonymous posters on an Internet forum. He had researched the different tipsters and found one in particular who had lost only twice all season and seemed an almost automatic lock for success. It was easy money. Or so it seemed.
Everything went off without a hitch for the first week. I used tips from poster rak35’s “10-pt plays”, which were leads that he deemed as guaranteed wins, and quickly doubled my initial investment with a series of conservative $10-20 bets. By the next Friday I was up a sizeable amount when rak35 posted a tip he claimed was an exceptionally good play. Dartmouth would cover against Cornell. I put all of my profits on his prediction in good faith. I lost.
Walker, who originally introduced me to sports gambling, is a 21 year-old junior at the University of Texas in Austin. A lanky six-foot three-inches tall with an angular jawline and immaculately groomed sandy brown hair, Walker has a long history of discovering quick paths to success. With a penchant for diplomacy, he took control of a state representative’s election campaign and turned his candidate’s double-digit voter percentage deficit into a commanding victory in only three weeks. He now runs multiple campaigns for candidates and social issues in Texas, spending many nights going from fundraiser to fundraiser. His foray into gambling had met with early success, and his gains were sizable, often grossing as much as $400 a week.
Unfortunately, Walker also periodically would place all of his earnings on a bet he made without advice. Supporting one of his favorite teams, often the hometown Texas Longhorns, Walker would play $200-400 bets if he thought he had decent odds. The tactic was wrought with failure, and he was forced to re-up his investment nearly every other week.
Unlike my more conservative bets, which were only made with “guaranteed tips” from handicappers’ advice, Walker found himself drawn into making riskier wagers on longer odds and closer games. When I began betting Walker had already been involved for nearly a month, up one day and down the next. Within the first couple of weeks, he was checking the posting forum six to seven times a day, constantly looking for new tips. His betting spread from college basketball to NBA games, occasional hockey face-offs, and even an occasional soccer match. “It’s so exciting it’s hard to tear yourself away sometimes,” Walker said. “Even for a little bit.”
Walker’s immersion into the land of Internet sports gambling is not a lonely one. Students at colleges across America today frequently put their hard earned money on games. While they won’t divulge their average client age, Australian based www.canbet.com confirms that many of their clients are of university age. The Connecticut Council of Problem Gambling, one of the only state run agencies that focuses on problem gambling (founded after the rapid expansion of Native American run casinos in the state led to a rash of serious gambling debt for a number of its citizens) provides a more precise estimate, claiming that approximately 40 percent of all college-aged students have placed bets on a regular basis for an extended period.
Georgetown is no exception to the rule. A number of students have admitted to experimenting with a variety of betting, many dappling into sports betting on a recreational basis. Unsurprisingly, sporadic use quickly snowballs into a full-blown addiction.
Such was the case with one Georgetown student, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. This student, who had lost an undisclosed amount that was confirmed to be between $1,000-4,000, told me that early success in betting made it easier to get hooked and eventually increase his wager denominations. “I started betting through my other buddies’ bookie, and knowing college basketball as well as I do, I picked out games I was real confident about and made quite a little bit. It was more of a hobby though, because it makes the games a lot more interesting, and you’re constantly calling up friends to get updates and stuff. Some of my friends got real carried away. They’d make a decent amount at the beginning and lose twice that within the next couple of weeks. “
Unlike the experiences of Walker and I, who were both exclusively betters at the mercy of others’ services, this Hoya realized that to keep in sports betting without losing as much money, he would have to take an alternate route: becoming a bookie (bet collector) himself. “Eventually I saw how the whole process worked, and me and my friends figured we would be better off taking bets ourselves. It was five of us and we took bets from all over. For the bookie the best case scenario is taking an equal amount of bets from both sides, and then you just make your profits off the vigs (a $5 charge for a losing bet). But it got ridiculous, you’d have guys betting hockey games, and the spreads were always crazy because you have the open net at the end of close games and stuff like that. But lots? of kids at schools do it, they get addicted because it’s not just making money, it makes the games more interesting, it’s like if a game is boring you can just plop a $20 bet online or something to make things interesting.”
After my first big loss, it took me another week to regain nearly all of my profits back. Undeterred by the Dartmouth setback (but resolved to refrain from betting on Ivy League games) I had continued to use rak35’s picks, which had been completely successful all week. Like all weekends, the upcoming slate was chock full of big games, and tipsters were dropping predictions all around the schedule. While I refrained from betting on the Georgetown-Syracuse game because of a conviction not to bet on my favorite teams, I placed a number of other smaller early bets based on rak35’s predictions. They all hit.
Now up double on my first investment, I was sitting pretty. Until the big tip came over the line. “Quick Cameron, go put all your money on Cal-Riverside,” Walker told me. “Everyone’s posting it, there’s no way they can lose.” I hurried home and checked the forum, and he was right. Nearly every tipster had Cal-Riverside covering their 2.5 point spread over UC-Irvine. I knew nothing about the two teams, but was confident that with the rash of recent success this game would go right too. I called Walker back to consult about the bet, and he told me what I wanted to hear. “Go in as much as you can. This isn’t a lock, it’s more than that. This is a ‘Sell your house, bet your car’ type lock,” he said. I was convinced, and I put in nearly all my cash.
Three hours later, I felt like I was back in the movie theater. Nervously watching a soccer game at a bar, I itched to check the score. I knew the Riverside vs. Irvine game was over, and I couldn’t wait any longer to hear that I had doubled my money. Finally, I gave in and went outside to call a friend. After asking him to check the score, he ambled to a nearby computer and gave me the news: “Irvine won by a lot man. Looks like eight points.”
I sat silent on the other end of the phone. What had happened? This game was supposed to be a sure lock-it couldn’t go wrong! In my mind I had already won the money. I was thinking about the bets to be made with it the next day, and hoping that with those picks I could be up to five times my money. It was all going so well, so easily. Finally, my friend asked, “Cam, you still there? What’s going on man, you OK?” Still dumbfounded I muttered a “Yeah, I’m fine. Listen I’ll call you back in a bit.”
As I hung up the phone, I was fuming mad. How dare these forum-posters give bogus leads! It wasn’t their money they were losing, it was mine! I sat down on a cold street corner, determined to think through my sudden change of luck and drastic turn of events. I had become addicted to the rush. The thought of getting money without having to work for it was too seductive, and I had fallen head-over-heels for the opportunity to do so while still paying attention to sports. While I had started betting on games between teams I had seen, within two weeks I was placing wagers on games between teams I didn’t know anything about, playing games I couldn’t even see.
For me, the scariest part of the whole transition was that it had happened so fast. As I walked back into the bar I pledged not to bet on another game. The next morning I got a call from Walker with more tips. “I’m out man, I can’t afford to lose the cash,” I said. He said he understood, and that he was sorry about the game from the night before, which had also cost him his entire account balance. He would cash out of his account two weeks later.
While Nathaniel and my adventures in sports gambling may have been thwarted after early setbacks, others are only able to quit temporarily, and find themselves pulled headlong back into more betting, a redux of their addiction. Some, like my fellow Georgetown gambler, become bookies themselves to try to curb their losses. Others, like Walker, are pulled into other forms of gambling such as Internet poker and casino gambling. None escape unscathed, however, and I was fortunate to emerge with as small a loss and stigma as I did. Like all addicted gamblers, I had lost sight of the fact that even with good advice, a bet is always a risk. The money is never free, and I had quickly surpassed the limits which I had assumed would hedge my bets. It was a mistake that taught me the powerful seduction and ease of sports gambling, and hopefully taught me a lesson I won’t soon forget.
