Top sports bettors of all time: famous professional gamblers

06/12/26

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Sports bettors are basically professional gamblers. Their work is to be able to provide their clients with the right advice on a particular game, or to make money themselves off of games. The business models of many of the best sports bettors in the world involve large teams of analysts and data scientists, as well as a broad network of contacts within the industry. It’s not the sort of thing that can be done by people in their free time, as it requires an enormous amount of data to be able to provide any level of consistency to their wagers. There are many who are able to turn sports into a financial transaction, using statistics to figure out the best times to put their money down in order to make sure they are able to get the returns on their investments that they are hoping for. This article will take a look at the lives of the world’s greatest sports bettors, as well as at the methods they use in order to be able to provide their clients with the returns on investment that they are hoping to receive.

What separates elite sports bettors from casual gamblers?

According to many within the industry, for someone to be deemed a “Professional Sports Bettor” they need to derive the majority of their income from sports betting. That is a huge difference from a casual gambler that from time to time hits big on a particular night or is on a hot streak. The term “Professional Sports Bettor”, “Sports Handicapper”, or even “Advantage Player” are all vastly different entities from your typical casual gambler.

Professional sports bettors operate within the context of expected value (EV). A large portion of bets placed through online sportsbooks are placed by people who are betting based off of how they perceive a situation. For example a person betting on a soccer match for Sunday because they believe that team is going to win the match for Sunday’s game. These types of bettors are referred to as “perception bettors” or “square bettors”. They are betting on the most likely outcome of a match as perceived by the bettor.

A sports bettor on the other hand operates within the framework of expected value looking for situations in which the sportsbook implies a lower probability of an event to occur than what the bettor calculates to be the actual probability of the event occurring. For example a sports bettor looking to place a bet on a NBA game between team A and team B for Friday night. After conducting research of past statistics and trends on both teams the bettor calculates that team A has a 58.67% chance of winning the game. The sportsbook lists team A to win at odds of -150. In this scenario the bettor believes he or she has an advantage and is placing a bet with the intent to earn a profit provided he or she can consistently identify situations in which he or she believes to have an advantage and only place wagers on those situations.

In terms of measuring their own performance, elite sports bettors typically use a variety of different statistics in order to see how well they are doing, with one of the most popular being their Closing Line Value (CLV). The CLV is used by professional sports bettors to measure how well they are doing compared to the final published odds for a particular game. This is the price that sportsbooks are offering on a particular team or event at the time that the game is about to start. If a bettor is able to get better value on their wagers than what the market as a whole is offering, then they will have a positive CLV, meaning that they are profiting from their wagers over the long-term. In order to utilize the concept of CLV in order to measure their own performance as professional sports bettors, the wagers that a bettor places must be tracked in order to come up with an accurate figure of just how well they are doing.

By using their Closing Line Value, professional sports bettors are able to see just how well they are doing as gamblers, and also determine whether or not they have an advantage over the rest of the market. If a bettor can figure out that they have an edge over the rest of the market, then they are truly professionals who treat their betting like a business, using strategies like bankroll management and various staking plans in order to maximize their returns. By employing the use of a Kelly Criterion or even simple flat betting, in addition to remaining detached from their wagers in order to be able to make the most rational, data-driven decisions possible, professional sports bettors are typically able to specialize in a small number of markets in order to gain the highest level of insight into that particular area. They are able to gain such insight by using large databases and a number of custom models in order to crunch the numbers and come up with the most likely outcome for a given event.

Top 15 most famous sports bettors in history

Below is a list of some of the world’s greatest sports bettors. In this list you will find professional sports bettors, casino advantage players, lottery strategists, and other infamous gamblers from around the globe. Bankroll, Net Worth, and Win Rate of each famous gambler have been reported by various media outlets worldwide. The problem, however, is that reported figures for each of the top sports bettors of all time: famous professional gamblers will be wildly different and in many cases completely unknown. The section below is strictly for your entertainment.

Billy Walters

Billy Walters is often reported to be one of the greatest sports bettors of all time. The Las Vegas based gambler has reportedly had a winning streak of over 30 years. He was the leader of the “computer group” in his younger years, which was essentially a syndicate of high-stakes gamblers that would pool all of their resources and money to generate the greatest amount of returns on investment. The “computer group” took full advantage of large information networks, and would even manipulate betting lines in order to generate an edge on a particular game. Walters ran the group with the aid of “runners” that would go to different locations to put down wagers on his behalf. Walters was convicted of stock market insider trading a few years ago, but he was later pardoned by the President. It is worth noting, however, that Walters was convicted and sentenced for his involvement in stock market insider trading and that his illegal activities in the stock market had absolutely nothing to do with his career as a sports bettor.

Haralabos Voulgaris

Haralabos “Bob” Voulgaris – Next up is Haralabos “Bob” Voulgaris. He is a highly accomplished NBA bettor and has spent most of his life studying basketball in extreme detail. For years he studied the tempo of basketball and how it can fluctuate greatly from game to game as well as from half to half. He has also spent years studying the substitution patterns of coaches in the NBA. With all of this information he is able to determine when the sportsbooks have incorrectly set the total for the halftime as well as the fourth quarter of games. With all of this knowledge under his belt Voulgaris has accumulated a great deal of wealth and is currently the Director of Quantitative Research and Development for the Dallas Mavericks.

Tony Bloom

Tony Bloom, the owner of the Football League Championship club Brighton & Hove Albion FC, is a famous poker player and businessman as well as a well-known professional sports bettor. The betting operation he is involved with is called Starlizard, a betting advice service and betting syndicate that acts as a type of sports betting ‘hedge fund’. They operate all around the world and use cutting edge, complex data models to hunt for all types of sports betting value. Although they specialize in international soccer, they also offer advice and Betting Systems for other sports such as tennis and American sports. Tony Bloom and his team of professional sports bettors use a variety of different Betting Models and strategies to maximize their profits. Elite sports bettors run their professional sports betting like a business, they implement strict staking plans and focus on Bankroll Management to ensure that they are never losing too much more than they can afford to in a downswinging losing period or in betting terms ‘ruin’. The majority of professional sports bettors use what is called the Kelly Criterion when it comes to staking plans for their wagers. The Kelly criterion is a mathematical formula that can be used to work out the optimal amount to stake on any given Betting Market, taking into account the expected value that the sports bettor believes that they have been given and the natural variance that is present in any gambling event.

Bill Benter

Bill Benter. As a professional player, Benter is best known for his work in blackjack and as an advantage gambler in Hong Kong horse racing. His biggest winnings to date have come from running a computer program he wrote that uses an enormous amount of data to handicap horses. Benter is now most well known for his philanthropy and donating large sums of money to various causes.

Zeljko Ranogajec

One of the biggest unknown figures in sports betting today is that of Zeljko Ranogajec. He is from Australia where his sportsbook syndicate, (referred to by some as a sportsbook pool) focuses on all forms of horse racing around the world in addition to various forms of lottery games. Ranogajec, along with his groups of expert handicappers also engage in various forms of casino advantage play. Zeljko’s and his group’s sport betting pool operation generates most of its returns by leveraging large amounts of money to rebate-driven volume plays within the various forms of gaming. In essence, Zeljko’s operation acts as a very large pool of money wagering in to various games with the returns on his investments being high due to the extreme volume of turnover generated by the pool. According to reports, Ranogajec is estimated to turnover as much as billions of dollars per year in the various games that he operates in.

Alan Woods

Alan Woods is an Australian professional mathematician, computer programmer, advantage gambler, professional gambler, statistician, and horse racing gambler. Woods and professional gambler Bill Benter (see above) were briefly business partners in Hong Kong’s large racing pools in the 1980s and 1990s. Since returning to Australia in the early 2000s, Woods reportedly has become heavily involved in Advantage play of lotteries and in casino games. Like the others above, he has concentrated his professional gaming career on horse racing rather than on American sports.

Rufus Peabody

Rufus Peabody is a recognized American professional sports bettor. In conjunction with Dean Massey, he established and is responsible for the highly regarded Massey-Peabody rating systems for the NFL as well as college football. Well known throughout the sports betting community, Rufus is an open book advantage player and often writes about and appears on various sports betting related podcasts. Much of his writings pertain to tracking and explaining various forms of variance that affect all sports bettors alike, as well as in depth detail about closing line value as well as other mathematical models involved in the world of sports for which he has developed.

Edward Thorp

Edward Thorp. Edward Thorp is not a sports bettor in the classical sense. He is the mathematician and author of “Beat the Dealer” who showed that using a system of counting cards blackjack could be played with an advantage. He went on to apply his knowledge of probability to the stock market in “Beat the Market.” His work on the use of the Kelly criterion for bet sizing has become the basis for all subsequent mathematical advantage gamblers, including sports modelers.

James Holzhauer

James Holzhauer entered the fray on Jeopardy! with the game show where contestants answer questions in the form of a question in hopes of amassing a large amount of cash, with a most unusual background: that of a full-time professional sports bettor. Prior to his time on Jeopardy! Holzhauer worked in the handicapping field, focusing primarily on baseball and also writing futures. He wrote books and created a program for people to hone their skills at trivia games, before eventually turning his focus to winning large sums of money on television. He uses a variety of methods to take down his opponents, utilizing well-established +EV strategies, and employing other betting tools in the form of board-hopping, or amassing large sums of cash to place on Daily Double clues in order to gain a competitive edge on the program.

Jon Price

There are literally 100’s of Sports Pick-Selling Touts attempting to make a living from selling picks to gullible sports bettors. The great majority of these folks are complete failures, and they are attempting to make a living by lying to the public in order to make a quick buck. Yes, every now and then some Sports Pick-Selling Tout will have a great run of successful picks in a row (we call this a “hot streak” or “teaser” in order to try to sell others on their “expertise” to make sure of profits in the future. But, that is just what they are attempting to do: make sure of selling their picks to gullible sports bettors. So, unless you can figure out a way to verify a Tout’s closing line value (CLV) and their long-term past performance records (so that you can decide for yourself as to the degree to which a Tout is completely honest in all of their marketing claims) then you are only liable to lose your money when you make the mistake of relying upon the advice of any Tout attempting to sell you their picks.

Spiros Athanas

Spiros Athanas is a name that is recognized throughout the sports betting community. He is commonly referred to as ‘The Greek’ and for good reason. The Australian born entrepreneur is of Greek descent and specializes in the sports betting sector. The Greek Sportsbook owner is famously an advantage player of great ability as well as running a bookmaker for his North American based clients. Many view Athanas’ legacy to that of a great oddsmaker and bookmaker rather than an advantage player.

Vegas Dave

A man known to be one of the most well-known figures in the world of sports betting is Vegas Dave, whose real name is Dave Oancea. As a well-known figure, he’s been featured in a number of TV appearances and speaks of his wins including a futures bet he placed on the Kansas City Royals to win the World Series as well as a futures bet he placed on the Denver Broncos to win the Superbowl. Oancea also touts his skills as a sports bettor to help make money for others by selling his picks for customers to purchase. However, his pricing for his services are said to be way out of line by many in the industry. However, Vegas Dave’s been in the news for reasons other than his wins in sports. In 2018 he was charged with committing fraud in the use of the Social Security numbers of others to open lines of credit at casinos throughout the country to place large wagers. After being found guilty he was sentenced to prison and as of now is not allowed in any of the sportsbooks in Las Vegas. His case highlights the image a person portrays versus their actual success in the world of sports betting.

Stanford Wong

John Ferguson is a gambler and author best known by his pen name of Stanford Wong. Wong is famous for his work on Blackjack strategy in books such as ‘Blackjack Science’ as well as ‘Professional Baccarat’. His work on casino gamblers around the world. He is also well known for his ‘Wonging’ strategy for playing Blackjack. Only entering a game of Blackjack when the count is favorable Wong’s method is one of the most recognized for players looking to get an edge at the tables. In sports betting Wong is recognized for his work on topics such as teaser betting, arbitrage, and other advantage play in markets such as NFL games. The amount of research and information that Wong has put out on various gaming topics makes him a legend and is a large reason why many professional gamblers and “sharp” bettors use similar strategies to try to find an edge in the market.

David Walsh

David Walsh is an extremely individual Australian gambler, art collector and race horse breeder and owner. A computer programming mathematician Walsh is believed to have made his fortune through his large horse-racing syndicates which take advantage of betting pool anomalies. It is widely believed that Walsh also utilizes a large computerized system that looks for various discrepancies in how various different sports market odds are calculated allowing him to place advantage bets. He is in similar lines of work to the already well-documented case of Zeljko Ranogajec.

Mikki Mase

Mikki Mase or Mikhail Darbinyan, who goes by the pen name of Mikki Mase, is an Online Casino Advisor and Sports Book Reviews writer. He spends most of his time playing in the high-stakes tables of online casinos and lately has been focusing a lot on the baccarat tables where he boasts of huge wins. Like the casino games of chance in order to make huge amounts of cash, and refers to his method for achieving this as his “system” for beating the casinos at their own games. The problem with Mase is that there is no evidence to support his extreme claims of profits made from long-term casino gaming. As a result, it appears that Mase is just another self-promotional individual online who markets his “system” in order to make money from his sales. Clearly, he does not have the proper data or models to back up his extreme claims of success and as a result is just another average gambler in the long-run of casino gaming.

Common strategies used by successful sports bettors

To build up a bankroll, make consistent profits and to cover losses in the long run every sharp bettor uses strict bankroll management. As a result, the bet size in relation to the bankroll is very small (1-3%) in order to be able to absorb unexpected blackouts during a losing streak.

A few key principles form the basis of all great betting strategies. The core, and perhaps most important, principle is that of bankroll management. To put this into practice, for every bet you place, you must figure out what percentage of your overall bankroll that bet will comprise. The recommended amount for this is 1% to 3% per wager, but there are some very experienced bettors that can push this up to 5% or so, and on occasion even cap themselves at a much higher number for a particular wager. However, it is generally agreed upon that even the greatest of betting minds can lose streaks of significant length, thus it is always smart to keep one’s wits about them when it comes to how much one is willing to risk for any given wager. In addition to bankroll management, there are two other major concepts that are considered to be of extreme importance for any professional looking to earn a living through sports betting: models and systems. These can take the form of very in-depth, statistical models, or a more straightforward, often rule-based system that is easy to implement, but provides consistent results in the long run.

The sharpest of sports gamblers at SharpsStats have the edge over the rest when it comes to combating favorite/underdog bias. This occurs for a couple of reasons. First, they come up with the most logical lines based on their many methodologies. In addition, most gamblers fail when it comes to combating recency bias. This refers to gamblers giving recent performance of a team excessive consideration. They fail because they do not have an adequate number of models, which take into account the gamblers’ past statistics, in order to establish the most logical lines of their own. For a gambler to consistently combat recency bias, they must consistently come up with a variety of different models in order to arrive at the most logical lines in order to search for value as opposed to making picks.

The role of analytics in modern sports betting

For years sports betting has grown in popularity due in part to the explosion of data in the past decade or so that has become available to bettors and bookmakers alike. Now the majority of ‘pro’ or ‘sharp’ sports bettors code models, in order to quantify large amounts of data that is continually compiled and updated, using languages like Python, R and SQL in order to analyze in detail the numbers pre-game as well as for betting in play for a variety of derivatives such as markets for individual moments in time or other live markets within the match.

There is an overabundance of data available for sports bettors today. It is up to the bettor to filter through the many sources of data to find the information that will assist in making wiser sports betting decisions. The bulk of professional sports bettors rely on play-by-play data from past games, optical player tracking data for players on the field, Expected Points Added, Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) for football, expected goals for soccer, shot-quality statistics for basketball, and many more. All of this data will not guarantee a person to make money in sports betting, however. With so many efficient markets today, it is the combination of a good analytics model and perfect market execution by the professional sports bettor that creates the edge to make consistent profits in sports betting. This means being able to execute through the betting limits of online sportsbooks, to have accounts funded to take advantage of the best odds available, and to enter the correct market at the correct time to ensure maximum value for the bettor.

Different sports where professionals often specialize

In terms of the different sports that professional bettors specialize in, it is rare for one individual to have enough knowledge of different markets to be successful in all of them. Most people specialize in certain areas of a few different sports. For example, while the market for football is by far the largest of the North American sports in terms of the volume of money available, it is also one of the most efficient markets. This means that there are very few opportunities to find value in the market, and as a result there are very few professional sports bettors who specialize in football. On the other hand, while the market for baseball is much smaller than that for football, there are many more opportunities for professional bettors because the market is less efficient.

NFL and college football betting

NFL – With so much liquidity in the market it is a very scrutinized sport, in terms of lines and the ability to earn money. The edges that do exist are very small, but can be very profitable with a large enough bankroll and sufficient volume. Many sharp bettors run very in-depth power rating systems and also analyze situational factors, such as travel, rest, and weather. College football is a complete opposite when it comes to liquidity, with over 130 FBS teams the linesman cannot possibly know the true value of every game. This creates a very profitable market place for those who bet on lower level conferences and have a strong understanding of the teams.

NBA betting and pace-based analysis

In the NBA, as the number of possessions per game is very high, the scoring from game to game will have less variance than in other sports with lower averages. Thus, the focus for NBA professionals is on models that rely on possession by possession data. The statistics from these models can be used to create an assessment of a team’s efficiency. Professionals utilize this type of model to seek out edges in situations where teams are prone to fatigue, such as on the second night of back to back games. They can also gain an advantage by tracking information that can be affected by load management of individual players. Injuries also have an immense impact on a team and their statistics, so professionals use many different statistics to try to gauge how much of an impact an injury may have on a team and their chances of winning in live-betting totals when the team’s rotation is affected.

Soccer betting and global markets

One of the largest global liquidity pools can be found in the world of professional soccer or football. As a result, a large number of professional sports betting experts from around the globe study the many professional soccer matches played in leagues from around the world in order to gain an edge when betting on individual matches. Developing their own statistical models using the large amounts of historical match data, created by the individual, these professionals can use their pre-game models to gain an edge by analyzing many aspects of individual matches. Two of the most popular markets found among professional soccer bettors are the 1X2 or match winner/draw market and the Asian handicap market. One of the most important statistics used by professional soccer models is expected goals (xG) or chances created by both teams during the match.

Horse racing and quantitative betting systems

On the other hand, Quantitative Horse Racing Models can generate a significant amount of return on investment. This is primarily due to the nature of the pari-mutuel model in which the bettor is betting against other people in the pool as opposed to against the house in a fixed-odds market. For these types of models, there is a large amount of historical data available, which can be run through advanced algorithms in order to determine an edge in the market. In order to scale up a large horse racing syndicate and achieve large returns on investment, however, there is a significant amount of focus placed upon rebate negotiation with the host track. Essentially, the goal of the large-scale horse racing model is to run a largely breakeven model at a rebate-capable track in order to generate tremendous returns as the model is scaled up.

Biggest lessons beginners can learn from top bettors

Whether you’re a seasoned pro at sports betting or just a beginner and want to get in on the action, you have to remember one thing: sports betting is capital allocation. Put simply, it is a numbers game and the number in the spread is what you are trying to beat in order to have a winning night of action. With that in mind, it is critical to log as much detail as possible for every individual wager that you place. The following are the various things that you should be including in order to log your wagers properly:

All wagers should be recorded. The records should include: the odds at which the wager was placed, the amount of the wager, the closing line, and the result of the wager. Even a good sports bettor will have periods of time where it appears that they are losing. However, the variances in the results of wagers will make it appear that way when in reality the amount of the bankroll is merely going up and down in value. Large drawdowns in value do occur. Even the greatest of sports bettors have experienced large losing periods of time. It is the way that the bettor handles the downswings in value that will allow him/her to be a long-term winner. The only way to know for sure that one is a winner at sports betting is to accurately keep a record of all of the wagers that they have placed and have a positive expected value for each wager. Two things to look for in a potential wager are an edge and probability. There is no such thing as a “guaranteed lock” in sports betting for sports.

Frequently asked questions

Who is the greatest sports bettor of all time?

There is no well recognized individual considered the greatest sports bettor of all time. Many have made significant amounts of money over a long period of time betting American sports such as Baseball, Basketball, Football, and Hockey, others a large sum of betting Global Soccer, Tennis and others. Such well known professional sports bettors as Billy Walters, Tony Bloom, Bill Benter and Zeljko Ranogajec are good examples of well recognized and extremely successful professional sports bettors.

How do professional sports bettors make money consistently?

Professionals only place wagers on sports and wagers where they have a positive expectation or an edge, which is greater than their expected loss. For the most part, the sports bettor is not betting on whether they think the team will win or lose. Most professionals look for imbalances in the current lines, which are typically provided by the sportsbook in the form of odds or a point spread, and attempt to take advantage of them by placing wagers when the current line provides better odds or point spread than the expected line of the sportsbook (the Closing Line Value). Their edge may be fractional, but when combined with their bankroll, they can capitalize on their wagers time and again throughout the year.

Which sports are most profitable for professional bettors?

When determining the most profitable sport to play it is important to note that the most profitable will be the one where the bettor can create the greatest amount of value in their predictive models for. While the NFL could be considered the largest betting market with the biggest wagers placed, the profit per wager is generally considered to be very small. While edges do exist to make money in the sport it is not worth most people’s time to attempt to reap them. Other sports such as tennis and college basketball offer very large mathematical edges to make money for individuals but are restricted by the sports books on how much an individual can wager. A popular alternative to the traditional team sports is prop betting. It is similar to typical wagers but typically offer much greater mathematical edges to create value from.

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