Betting on sports has never been accessible or more high-stakes. However, with the invasion of Europe-based businesses in the game, the pros are feeling pumped and routinely getting banned from plying their trade. Is this the ending of this sports bettor?
I am not a bookmaker,” Gadoon Kyrollos tells me as we walk through the Hard Rock Casino in Atlantic City, playing with penny slot machines. “I am a sports bettor.” Kyrollos is one of the highest-rolling sports bettors in the United States. He stakes millions of dollars each year on sporting events, from NFL matches. He is known throughout the world by the title Spanky, also in back pack, sweatpants, and his hoodie, he resembles a 40-year-old version of the Little Rascal. His backpack, nevertheless, is not currently carrying snacks and school books. It’s filled with bricks of cash.
“Bookmakers hang a number,” he explains, as he pantomimes holding a gun gearing as much as his eye and pulling the trigger. “And that I snipe’em.”
Regardless of the bag full of cash, the penny slot machine transfixs Spanky, pumping one bill after the following into it. On his cellphone he consults a recorder which tells him how to play this specific machine so that it is”and EV,” or positive expected value, meaning the player has an advantage over the machine over time. “This is some real insider shit I am showing you right here,” he tells me, referring to his dictionary, that has formulas for dozens of different slot machines plugged in to it. “I mean, it is likely a border of, for example, $12, but in case you’re walking down the road and watched $12, you would bend down and pick this up, right?”
It’s important to Spanky that I understand the difference between bookmaking and betting, because a lot of people don’t know or appreciate the differentiation, such as the Queens district attorney, who charged Spanky with bookmaking at 2012, a charge he states stemmed from a widespread harassment of the business.

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