Fucking coffee. I pop a Provigil and head to Whole Foods. After 2 years, yesterday I made the mistake of striking up a conversation with the Barista. For two years I say nothing but "yes" when they grab the 20oz cup and fill it up with medium roast. Yesterday I made the mistake of asking her if she liked her job. Does she like her job? Two years and that's all I can come up with? Fuck. Now she's gonna expect me to make small talk with her every day. This makes me very anxious. Fuck it. I'm not saying shit. If she tries to talk to me I'm switching to CC's--which will suck because then I'll have to pay for it. I got it! I'll be on my phone. I'll be on my phone for the next fucking month until she forgets we ever exchanged words. Genius. Free coffee again. All is well in the morning.
Alright let's get on with it. I'm going to take a break before getting into my winter of 2006-2007 on the davenport to give you a recap of my March Madness greatest hits while reporting on agony and the ecstasy of the coming weeks. So here it is... bang bang........ Let's fucking go!
2006... Hudson, NY
Heartbreak and the search for endorphins...
It's was noon on Tuesday of Championship Week and the beginning of the Big East Tournament. My entire Winter up to that point had been consumed by sports betting, horse playing, and poker. Every waking moment of my life. If I wasn't at the gym or watching Ingmar Bergman films, contemplating my eventual disappearance from planet earth, I was gambling.
Perhaps gambling was not the right word, as I didn't really have anything to lose. The only question was how much money I was going to win, as the cash that was deposited into these sites was all on credit.
Interlude on the acquisition of many bank accounts...
Most these sites would approve a transaction with just a legit routing number. I could use 1234567890 as a bank account number and it would be approved. This was fine with me because the cash from that check would be dumped on the poker table. If we needed to cover a deposit if we won... so as not to lose our winnings... we would use a legit bank account. I accomplished this by bombarding a bank account with bullshit deposits and then going to the bank and telling them I didn't know what the hell the transactions were. They'd close the account immediately and give me a new one. There were a lot of branches and a lot of banks, so there was never any problem finding a bank account for these transactions.
Optional...
I feel like I need to clarify this deal for those that don't quite understand. It goes like this. You open an account at a sportsbook. One of the methods of deposit is echeck. An echeck is just like a real check only it's electronic (no fucking paper). On your first deposit there will be a limit, as it will be given to you immediately to play with. So you write a check for $500 and you're account is credited stat. So if you run it up to say $5000, you simply make sure the $500 is in your bank account before it hits. Now some sights will just take the $500 out of your winnings if the echeck bounces. Back in the day most sights would do this. If you're dealing with 3rd party processors you really never had to cover the echecks. If the echeck bounced, the processor would notify the sportsbook and your account would just be frozen, winnings intact, until you sent in the money to the processor--usually by money order. Then you're account would be opened and you'd be free to cash out. Now with some sights you could just make up shit and be given money to play with. For example you could set up unlimited accounts using fake names like "Shakes McCullar" and a bullshit bank account like mentioned above. Now there was no way to cover these echecks obviously, so your account would never be legitimized to cash out. So you dump the fucking money on the poker table to someone with a legit account. You need to make a quick $500?... you dump it asap. You want to go for a hit?... you bet a 3 team parlay and hit for $3000 then dump it. Fuck the scenarios. Now as far as the fake names... you usually had to validate your identity somehow, which I would always find a way to do. We'll address this later but. So it was possible for Shakes McCullar to open an account with a processor and deposit, run it up, send a money order, then cash out... usually by check (you just have the fucking check sent to you and deposit it 3rd party). In some instances you would have to cash out moneygram or western union, in which case you had to find some seedy mini-mart or whatever who didn't ask for ID or in emergency situations have a fake ID made. In any case I'd always find a way to get the fucking money out of the account. So this is the fucking gist of it. Let's go here.
Chip Dumping and probability theory...
March Madness and the heart stopping beauty of echecks...
note: all the sportsbooks had poker rooms, thus the reference to the sportsbook itself when discussing poker...
By the time Championship Week rolled around I had a few accounts with a nice number--around 3k each. Up until this point we were well under the radar, and had yet to have any trouble cashing out. I was pumped up to bet the games.
A couple days before March Madness began it occured to me that these books might be loosening up on their echeck deposit limits... that they might be bumping up the Ponzi scheme a bit--as this was the time of year that the most money is wagered on sports. So I called up Crookmaker. I got someone in customer service and I could hear chatter all around in the background. It was like a fucking boiler room in there. These fucking guys were bombarding the great people of this country to get their hard earned money in their sportsbook. Fuck these people. I hope you the reader understand this.
So I was feeling pretty good. I asked them what their echeck deposit limit was. Sure as shit they tell me $10,000. Hilarious. I thank them and immediately begin to map out the next couple of weeks.
At this time my boy Max was in Italy visiting family. So The Network was down to 4 heads for this gig. I decided to do it like this....
I had Jimmy write a check immediately and we played with it throughout the first round. I did this for two reasons. One... I was travelling to Florida over the weekend and wouldn't have the time or desire to dump chips. Two... these echecks would generally take at least a week to clear, so if we were up at least 10K after the weekend we'd deposit the 10K to cover the echeck--just in case they took our winnings away from us because the echeck bounced (which was about 50/50).
Then I would have Vinny open an account the following week and depending on what happened with Jimmy we could actually dump some chips into Vinny's account as well as mine. This would make it look a lot more on the up and up. The idea was to have a few accounts to dump chips back and forth with--my account being legitimized--and only cover the 10k echeck if it was worth it.
What happened? Fuck I went nuts on the opening round and blew through the first 10K. I figured we'd try to make 100K the first weekend. I bet $1000 three team parlays and anywhere from $500 to $5000 a game. After running up and down all weekend I lost our last 4K on one play...... Time for fucking Vinny.
Vinny's 10K was excruciating. We could do nothing on the poker tables and couldn't hit a fucking game to save our life. On the tables we just couldn't seem to not only get a legit hand to dump some chips into my account, but we couldn't win any hands against the table. If one of us had a flush draw and the other the best hand after the flop, some asshole would always call us and catch something to beat us both. It was awful. As far as the games, we didn't even make it to the Sweet Sixteen. I blew through it all on the fucking NIT. Not only did we blow the 10K, but I lost a couple thousand out of my legit account. A big shitshow. Fuck it. It happens. It had happened before and would happen again. The good news is we still had another 10K to work with. At this time I was confident we could still make 100K on this fucking tournament.
It was time to bring Billy into play. I call him and he immediately opens an account and deposits 10K. It's the first Thursday of the Sweet Sixteen. Now Jimmy's echeck had yet to hit his bank account so I figure we had at least a week and a half to cover the echeck. So the strategy is to relax with the games and play it conservative. We wanted to get at least 10K out of this whole thing to make it worthwhile. Once we got the 10K in my account we could re-evaluate. So we went small through the Sweet Sixteen and went light on the poker tables throughout the week. The Friday before the Final Four we had a big night on the tables. The hands were legit and I felt like we played everything super cool. In one hand Billy had an Ace high flush and I pulled a full house when the board paired on the river. He bet out and I pushed him all in. At that point he was too invested and had to call. An easy 4K dumped in one hand. The rest we dumped after that hand, as it appeared as if Billy was on tilt and I was fucking around with him. It went down real nice and now--with the other accounts we had working--The Network had nearly 20k to bet that fucking tournament with.
Twenty five electoral votes...
I called up Crookmaker. When I told them I wanted to cashout they told me that unfortunately my account had been "frozen" pending a review of my play in the poker room. I was livid. I asked them if I could at least play with the funds for the weekend and just have no ability to cash out. They told me that the account would remain "frozen" until my play in the poker room was reviewed by an "expert" who they use in such situations. Fuck me this was bad. So I made the only move in this situation... I went absolutely nuts. I asked for a manager. I got a manger. He told me to fuck off. I told him to fuck off. I told him I was going to post on the online forums about what crooks they were. I told him that I'm going to call and harrass his staff all weekend if he doesn't open up my fucking account. I told him that he didn't know who he was fucking with and that I was coming after him and everyone involved in Crookmaker. I told him whatever I could think up until he told me once more to go fuck myself and hung up the phone.
I went back to the table. My beer was piss warm. My parents simply asked me if everything was Ok. My fucking parents. God love them. They were just happy to see me and hoped to Christ that I'd figure this shit out soon... before it was too late.
Now I wasn't worried about losing the funds in Crookmaker at this point. This had happened once before, and even after they came to the conclusion that we were chip dumping, I was so persuasive with are defense--which included emails and Oscar winning performances on the phone to not only the sportsbooks but also to the sportsbook watchdogs (who were people that graded the books on integrity)--that the sportsbook gave us our money and apologized. This time would be no different.
The problem was the Final Four started that afternoon and I wanted to put 5k each on UCLA and George Mason. Thankfully I would have had a split, so there was nothing lost. This would not be the case two weeks later, when after an extensive review, Crookmaker determined that I was involved in chip dumping and that I could indeed go fuck myself. They did analysis of the time we spent at the table and all of the hands we were involved in together. They straight up told me that I had someone write a phony check and dump the funds to me. They waited a couple weeks to freeze the account, so they must have waited to make sure the check bounced. After a valiant battle I was indeed defeated. This was the first loss for The Network and it was painful lesson to us all. But we would learned from it and in the future we would win much more than we lost.
I ended up losing pretty much everything I had in all the accounts on UCLA in the Championship game. Fucking Farmar. The Network was pretty pissed off at me for that one. But we regrouped and pushed forward. The fucking Madness. I don't need March to get it. The fucking Madness is always with me. And so it goes. I end this blog rolling into this years Tourney fully armed. I've been scouting these teams for the last few weeks. I'm absolutely ready to crush it. I'll keep you posted on my progress as we move forward toward the Final Four... right here in the greatest city in the world-- fucking New Orleans!
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