{"id":12711,"date":"2023-02-23T07:06:50","date_gmt":"2023-02-23T13:06:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/blog\/?p=12711"},"modified":"2023-02-23T10:37:51","modified_gmt":"2023-02-23T16:37:51","slug":"wild-life-worlds-best-nba-bettor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/blog\/wild-life-worlds-best-nba-bettor\/","title":{"rendered":"Haralabos Voulgaris: The Story Of A World-Class Bettor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Haralabos Voulgaris is not exactly a household name, but if you follow the NBA, bet on basketball, or are seriously into poker, you may have heard of him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2013, ESPN ran a story on \u201cBob\u201d titled \u201cMeet the world\u2019s top NBA gambler\u201d where they detailed how Voulgaris had earned a fortune in sports betting<\/a> before he was even 30.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He has played in the World Series of Poker, worked for the Dallas Mavericks and is even the owner and president of the Spanish third-division soccer club, Castell\u00f3n. Oh, and his current net worth is estimated to be $5 million<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, we\u2019re going to break down the story of one of the gambling world\u2019s most exciting characters and look at his life in betting, sports, and beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Haralabos \u201cBob\u201d Voulgaris was born in Canada to Greek parents, who had moved to the country in their 20s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His father was an entrepreneur in Winnipeg and had a real estate business and a Greek restaurant named after the Greek god Hermes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Greek mythology, Hermes is the god of several things, including games, sports, and sudden enrichment, which probably wasn\u2019t coincidental because Voulgaris Sr. was a serious gambler who gave his son the bug.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through his business ventures, Voulgaris\u2019s father became a multi-millionaire, and after Bob finished high school, they traveled together to Las Vegas for a two-month trip spent almost entirely at Caesars Palace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bob was too young to go on the casino floor, so he spent most of his days in the sportsbook, where he watched countless NBA<\/a> games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He took notes on the games and the book’s adjustments and started gambling on them with his father at night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was by no means high stakes (his largest bet was for $100), but this Vegas education left a lasting imprint on Voulgaris, who said, \u201cI learned at a young age that it\u2019s tough to beat the house – unless you know what you\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n After returning to Canada and starting his studies at the University of Manitoba, Bob continued to bet and took what he\u2019d learned on board. He would bet on NBA and CFL games, making tidy profits while studying and holding down a part-time job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When he finished college, he decided to up the stakes, and ahead of the NBA season, he placed his life savings of $70,000 on the Lakers to win the 1999\/00 NBA championship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This was a massive gamble, as the Lakers didn\u2019t make it past the previous season’s second round of the playoffs, but it paid off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And when captain Shaquille O\u2019Neal raised the Larry O’Brien NBA Championship Trophy above his head, Voulgaris cashed a slip for nearly $500,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This was the injection of cash and confidence that Bob needed to take things to the next level, and in the 2000\/01 season, he made around 350 wagers on the NBA with a lot of success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sportsbooks<\/a> were nowhere near as sophisticated as they are now, and Voulgaris spotted a weakness that he could exploit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Different books would make projections for how many points they thought would be scored in a game but would also take bets on how much would be scored in each half.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unbelievably the sportsbooks just divided their projected game total in half, which didn\u2019t account for the fact that many close NBA games have lots of fouls in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fouls mean free throws, and free throws mean points, so more often than not, teams would score more in the second half of games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Voulgaris noticed this trend and took full advantage of it, but he knew this wouldn\u2019t last, and eventually, the sportsbooks realized the errors of their ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, Bob decided to move on to bigger and better things and had the idea to build a predictive betting model that could take the intuition out of betting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bob Voulgaris clearly had a talent for numbers, but he knew he needed someone genuinely gifted to make his dream of beating the bookies come true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, in 2007, he hired a math prodigy (who he has never named publicly) to help him build a predictive model that could be used on any NBA game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This prodigy wasn\u2019t just the smartest kid in class, by the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He scored a perfect 800 on the math SAT in seventh grade and won national competitions before becoming a teenager.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eventually, after two years of trial and error, Voulgaris and his prodigy developed the model to a level he was happy with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, he used it heavily during the second half of the 2009 NBA season to significant effect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He made up to 1,000 wages a season and made cumulative bets that would reach in excess of $1 million daily<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a>How Did Voulgaris Make His Fortune?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>Professional Gambling<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>The Model Student<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
World Class Poker<\/h2>\n\n\n