Haralabos Voulgaris: Being A Professional Gambler IS Hard Work!

I was reading a really great article recently about Haralabos Voulgaris who is well known for being a poker player in the states but also, more interestingly for us, a high rolling professional sports bettor.

He made his fortune betting on Basketball and still continues to do the same to this very day.

When I first started reading the article I almost rolled my eyes as it is very clear that Voulgaris got “lucky” when starting out with his betting. He threw his life savings of $70,000 on LA Lakers to win the NBA in 2000 at odds of 6.5-1.

Yes he won but that is not a good move in anyone’s book since that bet could have just as easily lost and then where would he have gone next? It worked out for him but going “all in” with your whole bank on a 6.5-1 shot is a very risky strategy so do not try that at home.

Anyway, despite his good fortune of winning close to half a million he now works very hard at what he does. He only bets on “Totals” which is the equivalent of betting on Over/Under 2.5 Goals in Soccer but he puts in a serious amount of research to get the results he requires.

The articles says…

The grind is what makes Haralabos rich. His predictive models rely on an immense amount of data that is constantly being updated. This requires him to watch a LOT of NBA games. “A lot of what I do is just watch more basketball than any other human,” he told Pokercast. “I watch about 400 games from beginning to end. I watch at least one or two quarters of maybe 85-90% of games. I may just watch every defensive possession or every offensive possession or just watch particular lineups or matchups.”

“I am pretty sure I pay more attention to detail to what is going on away from the ball (especially in terms of defense) than your casual fan. That along with realizing pretty early on that I was better off trying to predict what a coach would do in a given game versus predicting what he should or could do.”

Interestingly, Voulgaris claims that many of his losses come as a result of teams or coaches doing something that he was not expecting. He aims to predict what the coaches WILL do as opposed to what they should do which is something many in-play football traders should have a think about. Despite the millions of dollars in his bank he admits to still learning about the game every day.

The main thing to take from this, in my view, is that Voulgaris is letting us all know that this game is not easy and it is hard work. There are many misconceptions about trading and gambling and one of the main misconceptions is that it is easy when it really is not.

I even get emails from people asking if there are any good systems to try that will make money for them but they don’t want anything that will take up to much time or they don’t want to have learn about the sport. Well, it is time for a reality check and the reality is that you need to work hard to make big amounts from gambling. There is no free lunch that will make you millions!

Another thing to take from this is the fact that Voulgaris specializes in the NBA and also stops betting when the play offs begin. He does not bet on the College basketball or any of the other Basketball leagues across the world. He only gets involved when he knows he has an edge.

This is something many of us can all learn from as I doubt there are many reading this that can say they will only ever bet on one specific league when we probably really should be. How much money would you make if you only concentrated on the Premier League or any other league you closely follow?

Anyway I digress, it was a great article and you can read it all in full here.

Check out the video below to see the type of lifestyle he lives…