Bob Dietz' Coming Appeararance On PokerFraudAlert Radio

[cyberbabble]

Alan "dink" Denkenson who died a few years ago. He was sports bettor, handicapper, ex-bookie. Known by nearly everyone in sports gambling world.



Google will find many references. I don't think he liked the movie.

[kewlJ]

Thank you. It was a good listen. Finally, something useful from you.

Some colorful names. Eddie drink your milkshake, Spanky, Joey Tunes. Could just as easily be mob guys from the 70's.

[smurgerburger]

Yeah well how many college professors had he had lunch with???

[AxelWolf]

I find it pretty funny but a tad strange that most of you really have no idea what you're talking about, but seem to have strong opinions anyway. I think they call that Dunning-Kruger in the psychological literature. Well, make that all of you except Boz, really. Boz knows his stuff. Now obviously Boz is a neutral party, so you can direct questions at him also.

I get a kick out of cyberbabble. No, not everyone in The Wise Guys was a "tout." In fact, the gentleman known as "Southern Comfort," who had arguably the best overall Wise Guys ATS record ongoing for decades, was not a "tout." He was years ahead of his time. He was plugged into arbitrage and middles-shooting via offshores with auto-alarms back before Windows existed as a system. He is the only handicapper who said he never had a losing calendar year, and I believed him.

There were other private handicappers in The Wise Guys.

Cyberbabble purposefully paraphrases something I said, which is that I had the best or second best record ATS in the Wise Guys for the cumulative time I was in the contest. Obviously I wasn't first or second every individual year; that's beyond ridiculous.

I have no idea what Axelwolf was referencing. I'm not going to read an entire Street and Smith without some guidance as to what the question is.

Good try, though, cyberbabble. Nothing like being anonymous and wrong. You know, you could have saved everyone some reading time by ending your post with, "I don't know anything specific." That about sums up your post.

As to, "too much competition to get any traction," yeah, that was good, cyberbabble. That's why Mr. Walters hired me. He felt sorry for me.

If you guys have no legitimate, respectful questions, I'll drop the daily 11 PM EST check-in and make it once a week on Monday night at 11 PM. Todd has my email so he can contact me any time.

Have a good one! Axelwolf, if you have an actual question of some kind, just email me. Half the time, I can't tell what the hell you're talking about. I don't know if it's me or the Captain Morgan, but I think a private email is the way to go.

Boz, if you have the time and inclination, consider helping these guys out. I don't know if these folks are all slot machine experts, poker players, or just general maroons, but the lack of sports betting savvy is pretty startling.

I had a very simple question.

I just want to know if this magazine is the (or associated with) Tipsters or Gypsters published by Mike McCusker, the one you are always talking about?
http://ia801402.us.archive.org/22/it...ears)_text.pdf

Jesus, Axelwolf, this is why I'll limit myself to once a week. But because I'm into sports betting education, here we go:

This is Street and Smith, about the most famous, kind-of-old-school college football pre-season magazine. It published forever. If I remember correctly, I think I read Street and Smith because it tried to give kicker/punter summaries for most of the college football teams in a clear fashion when many other magazines kind of blew off returning kickers unless they were all-conference or had some kind of notoriety. Pre-internet, I religiously read Street and Smith and GamePlan and another one whose name eludes me. I still read them post-internet but cross-referenced them with other sources.

Let's go one step at a time.

While you might think me to be asking if that was the correct magazine, or associated with it was dumb/odd/strange/crazy... It's really not. I think it would be hard to find many people who have ever heard of those magazines, but that can be a different debate(even a side bet). Let us take that out of the equation for now.

I googled "Tipsters or Gypsters published by Mike McCusker", and this is what came up in the top 5 or so....

WINNING STYLE | —~

Internet Archive
https://archive.org › download › street-smith-pro-f...
PDF
Our winning record monitored and verified by Mike McCusker of Las Vegas. To order. McCusker's Tipsters or Gypsters, send $17 to P.O. Box 19477, Las Vegas, ...

That link took me to the link I posted up here, and that's why I asked the question in the first place. I think most reasonable people without inside direct knowledge of those publications would be wondering the same thing.

[redietz]

I had a very simple question.

I just want to know if this magazine is the (or associated with) Tipsters or Gypsters published by Mike McCusker, the one you are always talking about?
http://ia801402.us.archive.org/22/it...ears)_text.pdf

Jesus, Axelwolf, this is why I'll limit myself to once a week. But because I'm into sports betting education, here we go:

This is Street and Smith, about the most famous, kind-of-old-school college football pre-season magazine. It published forever. If I remember correctly, I think I read Street and Smith because it tried to give kicker/punter summaries for most of the college football teams in a clear fashion when many other magazines kind of blew off returning kickers unless they were all-conference or had some kind of notoriety. Pre-internet, I religiously read Street and Smith and GamePlan and another one whose name eludes me. I still read them post-internet but cross-referenced them with other sources.

Let's go one step at a time.

While you might think me to be asking if that was the correct magazine, or associated with it was dumb/odd/strange/crazy... It's really not. I think it would be hard to find many people who have ever heard of those magazines, but that can be a different debate(even a side bet). Let us take that out of the equation for now.

I googled "Tipsters or Gypsters published by Mike McCusker", and this is what came up in the top 5 or so....

WINNING STYLE | —~

Internet Archive
https://archive.org › download › street-smith-pro-f...
PDF
Our winning record monitored and verified by Mike McCusker of Las Vegas. To order. McCusker's Tipsters or Gypsters, send $17 to P.O. Box 19477, Las Vegas, ...

That link took me to the link I posted up here, and that's why I asked the question in the first place. I think most reasonable people without inside direct knowledge of those publications would be wondering the same thing.

So one of the advertisers in Street and Smith mentioned "Tipsters or Gypsters?" as a way to verify their record. That makes sense.

But "googling" something is not exactly "research." I'm going to get on your case about this -- in that you used the common line, "I googled it"" as meaning you actually did some research. Well, then, how many pages with how many entries did you pull up? How much time did you spend "googling it?" Did you read the first 5000 entries, the first 500, or the first 50? Quite a difference there. Did you spend a week "googling it?" Or a day? Or an hour? Again, quite a difference. If there's one thing that exemplifies the lazy approach to knowing anything about anything, it's saying "I googled it" as if that means something. Give the details. You googled how many entries and how long did you spend "googling it?"

Considering that you live in Las Vegas, and that I mentioned multiple times that McCusker published out of Las Vegas and was interviewed by the San Fran Chronicle, a starting point for "researching" him would probably include a visit to Gambler's Book Store, seeing if they had old issues on file, if they had records of their being the publishing house, and if they had ever heard of it. Second might be to either call or visit the San Fran Chronicle and ask about somebody checking their pre-internet files for a record of that interview/column about McCusker.

These aren't Herculean tasks. Journalism (or any kind of actual research) requires this kind of simple legwork.

I also mentioned a poster here under an Asian name who was a professional card counter and who had a collection of "Tipsters or Gypsters?" better than mine. So tracking down those posts on this forum might help. Maybe you knew the guy (unlikely, but worth a shot). I tracked him down. He wasn't Asian, and he was also (I know you guys love this) an East Coast academic when he wasn't counting cards.

All I'm saying is, as a substitute for saying "I googled it," do some friggin' legwork, the kind of simple, uncomplicated legwork that people have been doing for a hundred years. My brother-in-law is a PI and my nephew (not the brother-in-law's son, by the way) is training to be a forensics PI. The majority of what they currently do is online research. That research requires a lot of painstaking work going way beyond an hour (or less) of "googling it." So when I roll my eyes at people saying "I googled it" as if 10 minutes of typing means something, that's why. I've seen people do the actual work, and I was a journalism major myself back in my youth. Ten minutes of googling is not "research."

Final note. The handicapper including that McCusker address did so because for a long time McCusker didn't charge anything to monitor people. The rule was that if you advertised your record as being verified by "Tipsters or Gypsters?" that you include a plug for "Tipsters or Gypsters?" with McCusker's address. Eventually McCusker began charging some nominal fee, I think it peaked at $140 or something like that (for football; he also did hoops monitoring). I don't remember clearly if he dropped the plugging him in an ad rule when he began charging a fee. He may have.

[kewlJ]

I also mentioned a poster here under an Asian name who was a professional card counter and who had a collection of "Tipsters or Gypsters?" better than mine. So tracking down those posts on this forum might help. Maybe you knew the guy (unlikely, but worth a shot). I tracked him down. He wasn't Asian, and he was also (I know you guys love this) an East Coast academic when he wasn't counting cards.

The poster that goes by KimLee, posted here for a few weeks back in 2018. He came here to back up something I had said about a chip inventory, when the trolls started giving me shit about it. I did not ask him to do so and was surprised when he did. I didn't think this forum and all the trolling would be to his liking and it wasn't as he didn't stay long. He did seem to know all about Rob Singers long history of ridiculous claims, so he must have encountered Singer on some other forum.

I haven't really been in contact with KimLee since he posted here for that short period. But as a courtesy to Redietz, I emailed him and made him aware of this conversation. I have no idea if that is still a valid contact email for him or not, or if it is, if he would have any interest in this discussion.

[mickeycrimm]

Another question for the radio show:

Dietz, have you ever answered a question without insulting the questioner?

Your question gave us a chuckle as I was having brunch with my friend who has a PhC from Dartmouth, and my other friend who co-wrote a short film that brought the audience to tears at an IFF screening.

We weren't laughing WITH you.

I wasn’t laughing so you wouldn’t have had anyone to laugh with anyway.

PS: What is a PhC?

[mickeycrimm]

Jesus, Axelwolf, this is why I'll limit myself to once a week. But because I'm into sports betting education, here we go:

This is Street and Smith, about the most famous, kind-of-old-school college football pre-season magazine. It published forever. If I remember correctly, I think I read Street and Smith because it tried to give kicker/punter summaries for most of the college football teams in a clear fashion when many other magazines kind of blew off returning kickers unless they were all-conference or had some kind of notoriety. Pre-internet, I religiously read Street and Smith and GamePlan and another one whose name eludes me. I still read them post-internet but cross-referenced them with other sources.

Let's go one step at a time.

While you might think me to be asking if that was the correct magazine, or associated with it was dumb/odd/strange/crazy... It's really not. I think it would be hard to find many people who have ever heard of those magazines, but that can be a different debate(even a side bet). Let us take that out of the equation for now.

I googled "Tipsters or Gypsters published by Mike McCusker", and this is what came up in the top 5 or so....

WINNING STYLE | —~

Internet Archive
https://archive.org › download › street-smith-pro-f...
PDF
Our winning record monitored and verified by Mike McCusker of Las Vegas. To order. McCusker's Tipsters or Gypsters, send $17 to P.O. Box 19477, Las Vegas, ...

That link took me to the link I posted up here, and that's why I asked the question in the first place. I think most reasonable people without inside direct knowledge of those publications would be wondering the same thing.

So one of the advertisers in Street and Smith mentioned "Tipsters or Gypsters?" as a way to verify their record. That makes sense.

But "googling" something is not exactly "research." I'm going to get on your case about this -- in that you used the common line, "I googled it"" as meaning you actually did some research. Well, then, how many pages with how many entries did you pull up? How much time did you spend "googling it?" Did you read the first 5000 entries, the first 500, or the first 50? Quite a difference there. Did you spend a week "googling it?" Or a day? Or an hour? Again, quite a difference. If there's one thing that exemplifies the lazy approach to knowing anything about anything, it's saying "I googled it" as if that means something. Give the details. You googled how many entries and how long did you spend "googling it?"

Considering that you live in Las Vegas, and that I mentioned multiple times that McCusker published out of Las Vegas and was interviewed by the San Fran Chronicle, a starting point for "researching" him would probably include a visit to Gambler's Book Store, seeing if they had old issues on file, if they had records of their being the publishing house, and if they had ever heard of it. Second might be to either call or visit the San Fran Chronicle and ask about somebody checking their pre-internet files for a record of that interview/column about McCusker.

These aren't Herculean tasks. Journalism (or any kind of actual research) requires this kind of simple legwork.

I also mentioned a poster here under an Asian name who was a professional card counter and who had a collection of "Tipsters or Gypsters?" better than mine. So tracking down those posts on this forum might help. Maybe you knew the guy (unlikely, but worth a shot). I tracked him down. He wasn't Asian, and he was also (I know you guys love this) an East Coast academic when he wasn't counting cards.

All I'm saying is, as a substitute for saying "I googled it," do some friggin' legwork, the kind of simple, uncomplicated legwork that people have been doing for a hundred years. My brother-in-law is a PI and my nephew (not the brother-in-law's son, by the way) is training to be a forensics PI. The majority of what they currently do is online research. That research requires a lot of painstaking work going way beyond an hour (or less) of "googling it." So when I roll my eyes at people saying "I googled it" as if 10 minutes of typing means something, that's why. I've seen people do the actual work, and I was a journalism major myself back in my youth. Ten minutes of googling is not "research."

Final note. The handicapper including that McCusker address did so because for a long time McCusker didn't charge anything to monitor people. The rule was that if you advertised your record as being verified by "Tipsters or Gypsters?" that you include a plug for "Tipsters or Gypsters?" with McCusker's address. Eventually McCusker began charging some nominal fee, I think it peaked at $140 or something like that (for football; he also did hoops monitoring). I don't remember clearly if he dropped the plugging him in an ad rule when he began charging a fee. He may have.

C’mon, dude. If you want to do proper research on MCCuckster then you have to go to Seattle. When did you go to Seattle?

[accountinquestion]

Jesus, Axelwolf, this is why I'll limit myself to once a week. But because I'm into sports betting education, here we go:

This is Street and Smith, about the most famous, kind-of-old-school college football pre-season magazine. It published forever. If I remember correctly, I think I read Street and Smith because it tried to give kicker/punter summaries for most of the college football teams in a clear fashion when many other magazines kind of blew off returning kickers unless they were all-conference or had some kind of notoriety. Pre-internet, I religiously read Street and Smith and GamePlan and another one whose name eludes me. I still read them post-internet but cross-referenced them with other sources.

Let's go one step at a time.

While you might think me to be asking if that was the correct magazine, or associated with it was dumb/odd/strange/crazy... It's really not. I think it would be hard to find many people who have ever heard of those magazines, but that can be a different debate(even a side bet). Let us take that out of the equation for now.

I googled "Tipsters or Gypsters published by Mike McCusker", and this is what came up in the top 5 or so....

WINNING STYLE | —~

Internet Archive
https://archive.org › download › street-smith-pro-f...
PDF
Our winning record monitored and verified by Mike McCusker of Las Vegas. To order. McCusker's Tipsters or Gypsters, send $17 to P.O. Box 19477, Las Vegas, ...

That link took me to the link I posted up here, and that's why I asked the question in the first place. I think most reasonable people without inside direct knowledge of those publications would be wondering the same thing.

So one of the advertisers in Street and Smith mentioned "Tipsters or Gypsters?" as a way to verify their record. That makes sense.

But "googling" something is not exactly "research." I'm going to get on your case about this -- in that you used the common line, "I googled it"" as meaning you actually did some research. Well, then, how many pages with how many entries did you pull up? How much time did you spend "googling it?" Did you read the first 5000 entries, the first 500, or the first 50? Quite a difference there. Did you spend a week "googling it?" Or a day? Or an hour? Again, quite a difference. If there's one thing that exemplifies the lazy approach to knowing anything about anything, it's saying "I googled it" as if that means something. Give the details. You googled how many entries and how long did you spend "googling it?"

Considering that you live in Las Vegas, and that I mentioned multiple times that McCusker published out of Las Vegas and was interviewed by the San Fran Chronicle, a starting point for "researching" him would probably include a visit to Gambler's Book Store, seeing if they had old issues on file, if they had records of their being the publishing house, and if they had ever heard of it. Second might be to either call or visit the San Fran Chronicle and ask about somebody checking their pre-internet files for a record of that interview/column about McCusker.

These aren't Herculean tasks. Journalism (or any kind of actual research) requires this kind of simple legwork.

I also mentioned a poster here under an Asian name who was a professional card counter and who had a collection of "Tipsters or Gypsters?" better than mine. So tracking down those posts on this forum might help. Maybe you knew the guy (unlikely, but worth a shot). I tracked him down. He wasn't Asian, and he was also (I know you guys love this) an East Coast academic when he wasn't counting cards.

All I'm saying is, as a substitute for saying "I googled it," do some friggin' legwork, the kind of simple, uncomplicated legwork that people have been doing for a hundred years. My brother-in-law is a PI and my nephew (not the brother-in-law's son, by the way) is training to be a forensics PI. The majority of what they currently do is online research. That research requires a lot of painstaking work going way beyond an hour (or less) of "googling it." So when I roll my eyes at people saying "I googled it" as if 10 minutes of typing means something, that's why. I've seen people do the actual work, and I was a journalism major myself back in my youth. Ten minutes of googling is not "research."

Final note. The handicapper including that McCusker address did so because for a long time McCusker didn't charge anything to monitor people. The rule was that if you advertised your record as being verified by "Tipsters or Gypsters?" that you include a plug for "Tipsters or Gypsters?" with McCusker's address. Eventually McCusker began charging some nominal fee, I think it peaked at $140 or something like that (for football; he also did hoops monitoring). I don't remember clearly if he dropped the plugging him in an ad rule when he began charging a fee. He may have.

So fucking classic.

[Don Perignom]

PS: What is a PhC?

I'm not saying a PhD is useless, but if you want to moderate a book club, you need meaningful credentials.

[kewlJ]

Final note. The handicapper including that McCusker address did so because for a long time McCusker didn't charge anything to monitor people. The rule was that if you advertised your record as being verified by "Tipsters or Gypsters?" that you include a plug for "Tipsters or Gypsters?" with McCusker's address. Eventually McCusker began charging some nominal fee, I think it peaked at $140 or something like that (for football; he also did hoops monitoring). I don't remember clearly if he dropped the plugging him in an ad rule when he began charging a fee. He may have.

The more that is revealed about this McCusker monitoring report or service, the more it seems like a scam. Or part of a scam. Or the tools of a scam/scammer.

As a professional blackjack player, I don't need anyone to monitor my results. My results are shown in my bank account. THAT is what being a professional player or gambler is about....making money to make a living.

But this McCusker report or monitoring service, doesn't add to your winnings or bank account. It is just a tool that enables you to sell...to market. So your money isn't coming from gambling....in this case winning sports bets. It is coming from marketing a service....your picks.

Therefore Redietz, you are or were not a professional sports bettor for 40-50 years. You were a marketer. A professional marketer, selling a service. The deeper we dig into this.....the more obvious it becomes.

[kewlJ]

This raises the question...who is monitoring the monitor?

If you pay a fee of $140 to be included in this monitoring service, who is to say you couldn't pay a larger fee (or payoff) to be included or ranked higher than you should be. This would allow that person to use this tool for marketing his "tout service" to make more money.

No matter how you look at it, this is less about being a professional gambler (in this case sports bettor) and more and more about marketing a service.

A professional gambler makes money by placing wagers and winning more than he loses, whether on sports, at the blackjack table, or a video or slot machine. A marketer makes money by marketing a product or service.

[AxelWolf]

Jesus, Axelwolf, this is why I'll limit myself to once a week. But because I'm into sports betting education, here we go:

This is Street and Smith, about the most famous, kind-of-old-school college football pre-season magazine. It published forever. If I remember correctly, I think I read Street and Smith because it tried to give kicker/punter summaries for most of the college football teams in a clear fashion when many other magazines kind of blew off returning kickers unless they were all-conference or had some kind of notoriety. Pre-internet, I religiously read Street and Smith and GamePlan and another one whose name eludes me. I still read them post-internet but cross-referenced them with other sources.

Let's go one step at a time.

While you might think me to be asking if that was the correct magazine, or associated with it was dumb/odd/strange/crazy... It's really not. I think it would be hard to find many people who have ever heard of those magazines, but that can be a different debate(even a side bet). Let us take that out of the equation for now.

I googled "Tipsters or Gypsters published by Mike McCusker", and this is what came up in the top 5 or so....

WINNING STYLE | —~

Internet Archive
https://archive.org › download › street-smith-pro-f...
PDF
Our winning record monitored and verified by Mike McCusker of Las Vegas. To order. McCusker's Tipsters or Gypsters, send $17 to P.O. Box 19477, Las Vegas, ...

That link took me to the link I posted up here, and that's why I asked the question in the first place. I think most reasonable people without inside direct knowledge of those publications would be wondering the same thing.

So one of the advertisers in Street and Smith mentioned "Tipsters or Gypsters?" as a way to verify their record. That makes sense.

But "googling" something is not exactly "research." I'm going to get on your case about this -- in that you used the common line, "I googled it"" as meaning you actually did some research. Well, then, how many pages with how many entries did you pull up? How much time did you spend "googling it?" Did you read the first 5000 entries, the first 500, or the first 50? Quite a difference there. Did you spend a week "googling it?" Or a day? Or an hour? Again, quite a difference. If there's one thing that exemplifies the lazy approach to knowing anything about anything, it's saying "I googled it" as if that means something. Give the details. You googled how many entries and how long did you spend "googling it?"

Considering that you live in Las Vegas, and that I mentioned multiple times that McCusker published out of Las Vegas and was interviewed by the San Fran Chronicle, a starting point for "researching" him would probably include a visit to Gambler's Book Store, seeing if they had old issues on file, if they had records of their being the publishing house, and if they had ever heard of it. Second might be to either call or visit the San Fran Chronicle and ask about somebody checking their pre-internet files for a record of that interview/column about McCusker.

These aren't Herculean tasks. Journalism (or any kind of actual research) requires this kind of simple legwork.

I also mentioned a poster here under an Asian name who was a professional card counter and who had a collection of "Tipsters or Gypsters?" better than mine. So tracking down those posts on this forum might help. Maybe you knew the guy (unlikely, but worth a shot). I tracked him down. He wasn't Asian, and he was also (I know you guys love this) an East Coast academic when he wasn't counting cards.

All I'm saying is, as a substitute for saying "I googled it," do some friggin' legwork, the kind of simple, uncomplicated legwork that people have been doing for a hundred years. My brother-in-law is a PI and my nephew (not the brother-in-law's son, by the way) is training to be a forensics PI. The majority of what they currently do is online research. That research requires a lot of painstaking work going way beyond an hour (or less) of "googling it." So when I roll my eyes at people saying "I googled it" as if 10 minutes of typing means something, that's why. I've seen people do the actual work, and I was a journalism major myself back in my youth. Ten minutes of googling is not "research."

Final note. The handicapper including that McCusker address did so because for a long time McCusker didn't charge anything to monitor people. The rule was that if you advertised your record as being verified by "Tipsters or Gypsters?" that you include a plug for "Tipsters or Gypsters?" with McCusker's address. Eventually McCusker began charging some nominal fee, I think it peaked at $140 or something like that (for football; he also did hoops monitoring). I don't remember clearly if he dropped the plugging him in an ad rule when he began charging a fee. He may have.

If you did your simple research or just paid a little attention, you would realize that I don't live in Vegas anymore. I haven't for months.

[The Boz]

Catching up from a trip in the airport and saw RED asked me to chip in on the mags and a few other things. I feel I know of many, even most of the national handicappers from the early 80’s to recent times. And I can say I never heard of RED other than on these forums. My opinion is he ran (runs) a small business with a circle of customers he has had for decades and has made them money. I’ve never heard of him marketing his service, which is paramount in the business.

The industry is built on marketing and if RED was doing this for decades I feel very comfortable that I would have seen his ads before. And in the 80’s and 90’s I put myself on most of the tours lists using variations of my name and fake names using addresses of my businesses. It was very interesting to see who bought your name from whom originally. Including the big boys of the time, who operated under different names but also sold the lists to competitors. I kept a simple log of them back then. Mike Warren Laskey was the only one I can remember not selling names but he operated so many shill companies he didn’t need to.

I could go on all day about their scams but my point is I do not believe RED was ever publicly marketing his service and as stated, I believe he has been successful enough over the years to keep customers. If he turned and burned them, not sure how he would have found new ones with advertising.

As for Street & Smith, it was the industry leader for years and I always looked forward to its release along with a few others like it. Before the internet getting the information they published was almost impossible, even if at times it was outdated by the start of the season. Shocked anyone over 50 and a sports fan wouldn’t be knowledgeable about it. But as shown in the link Axel posted, it became filled with scam handicapper ads with all their claims.

Now about T & G and other monitoring services, I differ from RED on this one, though I could be wrong. Like handicappers, it’s hard to trust anyone as being legitimate in reporting results. When I opportunity is there to make money by being less than honest, I’m skeptical numbers and results aren’t being manipulated. RED has told me one guy I always figured was a scammer (Marc Lawrence) was “legitimate”. I thought otherwise because he paid for a 1 hour show on WIP in Philadelphia Friday nights at 11. He obviously was marketing his service and other guests he brought on selling their services. Maybe he wasn’t a scammer in the true sense, was a true handicapper and fairly reported his results. But in the end he was spending good money on a radio spot to market his services. And often that becomes the job instead of finding winners at a level to overcome the fees charged.

Long ass post so I won’t get into the scams like free rolls giving out both sides on a “pay me later” scam and so many others.

Look, I know I won’t change anyone’s minds on RED but I truly believe he hasn’t lied about his history or what does here. But damn, he is stubborn about not accepting others have also found way to make money sports betting. In his defense he is right that most “new” angles and edges are just variations of stuff that has been around for decades. Including the parlay card stuff but if it works for someone, why bash them for it?

[The Boz]

This raises the question...who is monitoring the monitor?

If you pay a fee of $140 to be included in this monitoring service, who is to say you couldn't pay a larger fee (or payoff) to be included or ranked higher than you should be. This would allow that person to use this tool for marketing his "tout service" to make more money.

No matter how you look at it, this is less about being a professional gambler (in this case sports bettor) and more and more about marketing a service.

A professional gambler makes money by placing wagers and winning more than he loses, whether on sports, at the blackjack table, or a video or slot machine. A marketer makes money by marketing a product or service.

This is the quandary of the gimmick and why I was suspicious of any monitoring service. While one or two were honest, there is too much financial incentive to do exactly what you said. One service in particular let handicappers send their picks in AFTER the games were played for extra money.

It’s sad because it hurts legitimate cappers like RED and also the customer. But it’s the game and I’m not sure how you get past the “He’s a scammer but I’m legit”.

[kewlJ]

Thanks Boz for weighing in. I want to focus on this particular section of your post: "And I can say I never heard of RED other than on these forums. My opinion is he ran (runs) a small business with a circle of customers he has had for decades and has made them money. I’ve never heard of him marketing his service, which is paramount in the business".

Again, to me, an outsider in this sports betting "racket", this seems like it is more about marketing a product or service than being a successful sports bettor/gambler. As a matter of fact, you could be a consistent loser in the sports betting part and still make money marketing your service.

I mean that would be like if I were a losing blackjack player, but then wrote a book about winning blackjack play and made money off the book. (Come to think of it, that is exactly what Rob Singer did with video poker). But is that a winning player or winning gambler, or someone marketing off losing gambling or even marginally winning play.

Someone calling themselves a professional sports bettor or professional gambler should be making money off their plays and gambling, not some side related things like marketing services or selling books. Just an opinion.

Maybe I am being too hard on Redietz. I am not saying he did anything others didn't or weren't doing. But that is just not a professional gambler/sports bettor to me. And then he has the audacity to put down and attack players that are making money off their actual wagering (even if it involves the bonuses rather than winning enough to cover Vig). That is the part that is annoying.

[AxelWolf]

This raises the question...who is monitoring the monitor?

If you pay a fee of $140 to be included in this monitoring service, who is to say you couldn't pay a larger fee (or payoff) to be included or ranked higher than you should be. This would allow that person to use this tool for marketing his "tout service" to make more money.

No matter how you look at it, this is less about being a professional gambler (in this case sports bettor) and more and more about marketing a service.

A professional gambler makes money by placing wagers and winning more than he loses, whether on sports, at the blackjack table, or a video or slot machine. A marketer makes money by marketing a product or service.

This is the quandary of the gimmick and why I was suspicious of any monitoring service. While one or two were honest, they is too much financial incentive to do exactly what you said. One service in particular let handicappers send their picks in AFTER the games were played for extra money.

It’s sad because it hurts legitimate cappers like RED and also the customer. But it’s the game and I’m not sure how you get past the “He’s a scammer but I’m legit”.

No magazine advertising because most everyone caught onto that BS.

If you want to get a big sucker investor(sucker) you really need to meet face-to-face to pitch him and show him your package and load them up with a bunch of bullshit and tossing around big names.

What else do you think they have these big Sports conventions/conferences or whatever you want to call them? That's where the real recruitment happens.

I imagine a Herbalife situation where everybody's pumping everybody up, telling everyone how much money they can make while cramming with a bunch of heavily skewed information. They're all feverishly scrambling around finding each other investors and probably getting a cut for introducing each other to investors. You get a bunch of suckers around there thinking there's big dollars to be made. I'm sure all the recruiters know each other and who does what sport so they can pair the suckers with the proper people. For example, some guy's interested in betting NFL so they introduce them to the supposed NFL expert, while another guy is interested in betting on college football, so they introduce him to the so-called college football expert.

[AxelWolf]

Let's go one step at a time.

While you might think me to be asking if that was the correct magazine, or associated with it was dumb/odd/strange/crazy... It's really not. I think it would be hard to find many people who have ever heard of those magazines, but that can be a different debate(even a side bet). Let us take that out of the equation for now.

I googled "Tipsters or Gypsters published by Mike McCusker", and this is what came up in the top 5 or so....

WINNING STYLE | —~

Internet Archive
https://archive.org › download › street-smith-pro-f...
PDF
Our winning record monitored and verified by Mike McCusker of Las Vegas. To order. McCusker's Tipsters or Gypsters, send $17 to P.O. Box 19477, Las Vegas, ...

That link took me to the link I posted up here, and that's why I asked the question in the first place. I think most reasonable people without inside direct knowledge of those publications would be wondering the same thing.

So one of the advertisers in Street and Smith mentioned "Tipsters or Gypsters?" as a way to verify their record. That makes sense.

But "googling" something is not exactly "research." I'm going to get on your case about this -- in that you used the common line, "I googled it"" as meaning you actually did some research. Well, then, how many pages with how many entries did you pull up? How much time did you spend "googling it?" Did you read the first 5000 entries, the first 500, or the first 50? Quite a difference there. Did you spend a week "googling it?" Or a day? Or an hour? Again, quite a difference. If there's one thing that exemplifies the lazy approach to knowing anything about anything, it's saying "I googled it" as if that means something. Give the details. You googled how many entries and how long did you spend "googling it?"

Considering that you live in Las Vegas, and that I mentioned multiple times that McCusker published out of Las Vegas and was interviewed by the San Fran Chronicle, a starting point for "researching" him would probably include a visit to Gambler's Book Store, seeing if they had old issues on file, if they had records of their being the publishing house, and if they had ever heard of it. Second might be to either call or visit the San Fran Chronicle and ask about somebody checking their pre-internet files for a record of that interview/column about McCusker.

These aren't Herculean tasks. Journalism (or any kind of actual research) requires this kind of simple legwork.

I also mentioned a poster here under an Asian name who was a professional card counter and who had a collection of "Tipsters or Gypsters?" better than mine. So tracking down those posts on this forum might help. Maybe you knew the guy (unlikely, but worth a shot). I tracked him down. He wasn't Asian, and he was also (I know you guys love this) an East Coast academic when he wasn't counting cards.

All I'm saying is, as a substitute for saying "I googled it," do some friggin' legwork, the kind of simple, uncomplicated legwork that people have been doing for a hundred years. My brother-in-law is a PI and my nephew (not the brother-in-law's son, by the way) is training to be a forensics PI. The majority of what they currently do is online research. That research requires a lot of painstaking work going way beyond an hour (or less) of "googling it." So when I roll my eyes at people saying "I googled it" as if 10 minutes of typing means something, that's why. I've seen people do the actual work, and I was a journalism major myself back in my youth. Ten minutes of googling is not "research."

Final note. The handicapper including that McCusker address did so because for a long time McCusker didn't charge anything to monitor people. The rule was that if you advertised your record as being verified by "Tipsters or Gypsters?" that you include a plug for "Tipsters or Gypsters?" with McCusker's address. Eventually McCusker began charging some nominal fee, I think it peaked at $140 or something like that (for football; he also did hoops monitoring). I don't remember clearly if he dropped the plugging him in an ad rule when he began charging a fee. He may have.

C’mon, dude. If you want to do proper research on MCCuckster then you have to go to Seattle. When did you go to Seattle?

I guess he thinks I might have an interest in spending a bunch of time researching some old scammy defunct magazine so we can talk about it on some podcasts that may never happen.

[AxelWolf]

Catching up from a trip in the airport and saw RED asked me to chip in on the mags and a few other things. I feel I know of many, even most of the national handicappers from the early 80’s to recent times. And I can say I never heard of RED other than on these forums. My opinion is he ran (runs) a small business with a circle of customers he has had for decades and has made them money. I’ve never heard of him marketing his service, which is paramount in the business.

The industry is built on marketing and if RED was doing this for decades I feel very comfortable that I would have seen his ads before. And in the 80’s and 90’s I put myself on most of the tours lists using variations of my name and fake names using addresses of my businesses. It was very interesting to see who bought your name from whom originally. Including the big boys of the time, who operated under different names but also sold the lists to competitors. I kept a simple log of them back then. Mike Warren Laskey was the only one I can remember not selling names but he operated so many shill companies he didn’t need to.

I could go on all day about their scams but my point is I do not believe RED was ever publicly marketing his service and as stated, I believe he has been successful enough over the years to keep customers. If he turned and burned them, not sure how he would have found new ones with advertising.

As for Street & Smith, it was the industry leader for years and I always looked forward to its release along with a few others like it. Before the internet getting the information they published was almost impossible, even if at times it was outdated by the start of the season. Shocked anyone over 50 and a sports fan wouldn’t be knowledgeable about it. But as shown in the link Axel posted, it became filled with scam handicapper ads with all their claims.

Now about T & G and other monitoring services, I differ from RED on this one, though I could be wrong. Like handicappers, it’s hard to trust anyone as being legitimate in reporting results. When I opportunity is there to make money by being less than honest, I’m skeptical numbers and results aren’t being manipulated. RED has told me one guy I always figured was a scammer (Marc Lawrence) was “legitimate”. I thought otherwise because he paid for a 1 hour show on WIP in Philadelphia Friday nights at 11. He obviously was marketing his service and other guests he brought on selling their services. Maybe he wasn’t a scammer in the true sense, was a true handicapper and fairly reported his results. But in the end he was spending good money on a radio spot to market his services. And often that becomes the job instead of finding winners at a level to overcome the fees charged.

Long ass post so I won’t get into the scams like free rolls giving out both sides on a “pay me later” scam and so many others.

Look, I know I won’t change anyone’s minds on RED but I truly believe he hasn’t lied about his history or what does here. But damn, he is stubborn about not accepting others have also found way to make money sports betting. In his defense he is right that most “new” angles and edges are just variations of stuff that has been around for decades. Including the parlay card stuff but if it works for someone, why bash them for it?

I'll step in for jdaewoo

Don't you have some legit floor shitting stories to be posting up?

[redietz]

This raises the question...who is monitoring the monitor?

If you pay a fee of $140 to be included in this monitoring service, who is to say you couldn't pay a larger fee (or payoff) to be included or ranked higher than you should be. This would allow that person to use this tool for marketing his "tout service" to make more money.

No matter how you look at it, this is less about being a professional gambler (in this case sports bettor) and more and more about marketing a service.

A professional gambler makes money by placing wagers and winning more than he loses, whether on sports, at the blackjack table, or a video or slot machine. A marketer makes money by marketing a product or service.

This is the quandary of the gimmick and why I was suspicious of any monitoring service. While one or two were honest, they is too much financial incentive to do exactly what you said. One service in particular let handicappers send their picks in AFTER the games were played for extra money.

It’s sad because it hurts legitimate cappers like RED and also the customer. But it’s the game and I’m not sure how you get past the “He’s a scammer but I’m legit”.

No magazine advertising because most everyone caught onto that BS.

If you want to get a big sucker investor(sucker) you really need to meet face-to-face to pitch him and show him your package and load them up with a bunch of bullshit.

What else do you think they have these big Sports conventions/conferences or whatever you want to call them? That's where the real recruitment happens.

I imagine a Herbalife situation where everybody's pumping everybody up, telling everyone how much money they can make while cramming with a bunch of heavily skewed information. They're all feverishly scrambling around finding each other investors and probably getting a cut for introducing each other to investors. You get a bunch of suckers around there thinking there's big dollars to be made. I'm sure all the recruiters know each other and who does what sport so they can pair the suckers with the proper people. For example, some guy's interested in betting NFL so they introduce them to the supposed NFL expert, while another guy is interested in betting on college football, so they introduce him to the so-called college football expert.

"Who monitors the monitor?" is a decades-old question. The answers are (A) the clients and (B) any competitions in which the handicappers post selections in public before the games. There also existed a rather sleazy but legal corps of "Consensus Services," whose gimmick it was to sign up for multiple handicappers, then provide the selections of a given number of them to clients for a fee. In other words, the consensus service would sign up for 30 different handicappers, then divvy out the selections of five or 10 or all of them for different degrees of fees. The consensus services financially killed the most honest, legit handicappers. We tried to combat them in various ways, which is a topic for another day. I'm sure Boz can figure out some of the things we'd do.

If clients are given one array of games, and the those records vary wildly from what a monitor reports, then obviously there is a problem, but it's a pretty obvious thing to notice since nobody really has the ability to censor clients. If a monitor says a guy was 65-45 ATS in 2006, and multiple clients report he was 55-55, then there's a problem. Nothing like that ever happened with McCusker. In fact, his adherence to day/time/sports book specificity meant any records with him were actually an understatement of someone's ATS record. Your actual record was almost always one or two or three games better than what McCusker labeled you, because you didn't get to plug games in at the point in the week when lines most favored you. You were stuck with his day/time/locale rules, which were based on when civilians were most likely to bet games (in other words, Fri night/Sat for college; Sunday for Sun NFL; Monday for Mon NFL, and so on). McCusker was writing for a knowledgeable but largely civilian readership, so he made his rules for them.