Do You Know a Bookie?

At my golf club, for the longest time the bookie in the house was the guy who tended the small bar in the card room (he also had the shoe cleaning/re-cleating concession). As I understand it, though, he merely funneled bets to another guy (listed in the linked story) who was connected to the real action in the area. It all blew up a few years ago, though.

Plano police, feds bust up major illegal gambling operation in North Texas | Plano | Dallas News

 

My brother had a bookie in the mid 1990s in the LA area. I assume my brother was a hundred, maybe a couple hundred dollars a week.

Up comes the Chargers-49ers Super Bowl. My brother thinks he has this game nailed. Niners are going to cover, the Chargers will do something late. He had the full game, the first half, the over under, all these parlayed against each other. He had a ton of bets, and he won something like 18 of 21 of them. He calls me the next day and he says he won over 10 grand!

Alas, the bookie calls him that week, and says that he doesn't have enough money to pay my brother. My brother weighed his options. He was a businessman, and husband and father. What was he going to do, beat the guy up? He did nothing.

I think my brother quit betting with a bookie after that Super Bowl.

 

Gleneagles?

 

Shady Valley, in Arlington.

 

I went to a rehearsal dinner there a few years ago. Good looking club.

 

At my first paper, sometimes we'd get parlay cards (picked up at a crummy little bar in town) and play either $5 on 5 or $5 on 3. Was kind of fun for my just-out-of-college self, but I quit immediately when my SE said that the next time he saw a parlay card in the newsroom whoever was in possession would be immediately assigned to do a Sunday feature on where one could place a bet.

 

I haven't seen a parlay card in 30 years.
Played a few times in college. The kid who ran the business in college offered to turn it over to me. He was graduating. He had me meet with his "boss" one evening.
I passed.

Our old bar manager would place bets. If you wanted action, he was the guy to call.
They used to run an high stakes poker game out the place on afternoons.

 

Some guys I work still do the parlay cards. Never liked those because a push is a loss since you have to win at least 3 of 3 or on some at least 4 of 4.

 

Pro-Line in Ontario is a complete parlay card racket (they have other props but it started as a parlay card) run by the province of Ontario

 

In a blue-collar community in central Illinois, there was a cigar shop that was a poorly veiled front for these activities. If you were "referred" by a customer and went in and dropped this person's name, you were in. Parlays and straight bets on every game there was. Plus they sold "tickets," that were folded papers with 2 numbers on it, stapled to a big board, for a particular game.

You buy the ticket for $1, and say you had 7-0 for the Vikings at Bears tonight. For any quarter the score ended Vikings 7, Bears 0, you won $20 or something. If the final score ended like that, it was $50 or something. They had 50-cent tickets where it paid off (less) for 7-0 in either direction, and tickets that went for $5 and $10. They had tickets for baseball games that paid off every 3 innings, NBA for each quarter and college basketball by halves.

Each Super Bowl Sunday, they had tickets up to $50 each. College bowl games up to $20.

There were rumors this place was backed by connected people in Chicago, but I had no interest in finding out. Going in there and leaving with a pocket full of tickets every Friday during football season was a pretty nice ride, though.

 

One of the only bets I make these days (aside from at the horse races), is a $100 per square board for the Super Bowl like BWIP mentioned. It's winner-take-all, $10,000 cash if you've got the final score.

The bar hosts a private party for people who've bought squares. Free food, cheap drinks - and an armed guard to escort the winner and his cash to his car.