You have never seen him dunk a basketball. Or hit a home run. Or make a tackle in the open field, but Billy Walters is one of the best in sports history. But it just so happens his career happened entirely off the field and largely in the shadowy world of sports gambling.
“Billy Walters is the Michael Jordan of sports betting." That's what South Point sportsbook director Chris Andrews recently told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Now he is releasing his autobiography, "Gambler: Secrets from a Life at Risk" on Tuesday with juicy details about run-ins with the law, the mob, a betting partnership with golfer Phil Mickelson, and much more. The book is written with the help of Emmy-winning investigative reporter Armen Keteyian, who joined Kevin Sheehan to talk about the new book. (Listen to the full conversation below.)
"In the world of hardcore sports betters," Keteyian told Sheehan, "the name Billy Walters was notorious. Mythical almost because of his ability to move money. But I don't think the world really got to know Billy until a January 2011 [60 Minutes] piece. And that's then when everyone kinda wondered what this guy's secret was. And in the book now, those secrets come out for the first time. It's pretty remarkable."
Keteyian goes on to say the book includes two chapters complete with charts and graphs about the now 77-year-old gambler "details his system and his thinking" to "at least give the better a fighting chance these days against, in many cases, the odds are really stacked against them with some of the FanDuels and DraftKings of the world."
Walters' first bet came in 1955 when at the age of nine he lost $125 on the World Series with the Brooklyn Dodgers upset the New York Yankees, a loss of the equivalent of some $1,300. Money he earned from legitimate hard work like his paper route, lawn mowing and shining shoes, and illegitimate sources: hustling pool at Uncle Harry's pool hall. By the age of 10, he was hustling grown-ups and known as "the Kid."
The conversation also gets into offshore betting, Walters' near 30-person syndicate, his system of moving lines in his favor with loud bets and an entire cat-and-mouse game between the sharps and the books.
Stick around for the information about betting for Mickelson and the 3,100 bets he made in a single year and the hundreds of millions of bets he made over a three-year period. And why their friendship ended and how it involves the FBI and a five-year prison sentence.
Follow @BenKrimmel for more.
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