----- 3 stars ----- The Gambler Who Cracked the Horse-Racing Code / Bloomberg Businessweek Bill Benter did the impossible: He wrote an algorithm that couldn’t lose at the track. Close to a billion dollars later, he tells his story for the first time. [...] “If you bet on horses, you will lose,” says Warwick Bartlett, who runs Global Betting & Gaming Consultants and has spent years studying the industry. What if that wasn’t true? What if there was one person who masterminded a system that guaranteed a profit? One person who’d made almost a billion dollars, and who’d never told his story—until now? In September, after a long campaign to reach him through friends and colleagues, I received an email from Benter. “I have been avoiding you, as you might have surmised,” he wrote. “The reason is mainly that I am uncomfortable in the spotlight by nature.” He added, “None of us want to encourage more people to get into the game!” But in October he agreed to a series of interviews in his office in downtown Pittsburgh. The tasteful space—the top two floors of a Carnegie Steel-era building—is furnished with 4-foot-tall Chinese vases and a marble fireplace, with sweeping views of the Monongahela River and freight trains rumbling past. Benter, 61, walks with a slight stoop. He looks like a university professor, his wavy hair and beard streaked with gray, and speaks in a soft, slightly Kermit-y voice. He told me he’d been driven only partly by money—and I believed him. With his intelligence, he could have gotten richer faster working in finance. Benter wanted to conquer horse betting not because it was hard, but because it was said to be impossible. When he cracked it, he actively avoided acclaim, outside the secretive band of geeks and outcasts who occupy his chosen field. Some of what follows relies on his recollections, but in every case where it’s been possible to corroborate events and figures, they’ve checked out in interviews with dozens of individuals, as well as in books, court records, and other documents. Only one thing Benter ever told me turned out to be untrue. It was at the outset of our conversations, when he said he didn’t think I’d find anything interesting to write about in his career.
Links
Links
Links
----- 3 stars ----- The Gambler Who Cracked the Horse-Racing Code / Bloomberg Businessweek Bill Benter did the impossible: He wrote an algorithm that couldn’t lose at the track. Close to a billion dollars later, he tells his story for the first time. [...] “If you bet on horses, you will lose,” says Warwick Bartlett, who runs Global Betting & Gaming Consultants and has spent years studying the industry. What if that wasn’t true? What if there was one person who masterminded a system that guaranteed a profit? One person who’d made almost a billion dollars, and who’d never told his story—until now? In September, after a long campaign to reach him through friends and colleagues, I received an email from Benter. “I have been avoiding you, as you might have surmised,” he wrote. “The reason is mainly that I am uncomfortable in the spotlight by nature.” He added, “None of us want to encourage more people to get into the game!” But in October he agreed to a series of interviews in his office in downtown Pittsburgh. The tasteful space—the top two floors of a Carnegie Steel-era building—is furnished with 4-foot-tall Chinese vases and a marble fireplace, with sweeping views of the Monongahela River and freight trains rumbling past. Benter, 61, walks with a slight stoop. He looks like a university professor, his wavy hair and beard streaked with gray, and speaks in a soft, slightly Kermit-y voice. He told me he’d been driven only partly by money—and I believed him. With his intelligence, he could have gotten richer faster working in finance. Benter wanted to conquer horse betting not because it was hard, but because it was said to be impossible. When he cracked it, he actively avoided acclaim, outside the secretive band of geeks and outcasts who occupy his chosen field. Some of what follows relies on his recollections, but in every case where it’s been possible to corroborate events and figures, they’ve checked out in interviews with dozens of individuals, as well as in books, court records, and other documents. Only one thing Benter ever told me turned out to be untrue. It was at the outset of our conversations, when he said he didn’t think I’d find anything interesting to write about in his career.