Timeless lessons from the greatest gambler you never knew existed

Any good book is worth re-reading immediately.

We only took a little more than 6 years to re-read the fascinating story of Bill Benter.

Better late than never.

Bloomberg Businessweek called Benter “the gambler who cracked the horse-racing code”.

More fascinating than his achievement was his story. Benter made the journey from a convenience store clerk, to a blackjack card-counter in Las Vegas, to a statistician and coder, and finally to a near-billionaire in the horse-race tracks in Hong Kong.

We recount some timeless lessons exemplified by Benter.

To start, follow the breadcrumbs of your passion to find your tribe.

If no one around you shares your interest, pursue it anyway. You’ll eventually find like-minded people.

Benter read “Beat The Dealer” and never looked back. The book, written by a professor, discussed overcoming the house’s advantage in blackjack.

He went to Las Vegas and wagered the little wages he earned from working at 7-Eleven in small casinos to test the book’s principles.

He found friends doing similar things. They introduced him to a blackjack card-counting team that mentored him.

Next, persist in working hard because it’s fun. The big thing can be in the next step.

Benter and his card-counting team were eventually blacklisted from casinos and had to find a different game.

Alan Woods, who was the leader of the team, suggested horse betting in Hong Kong.

To learn about horse races, Benter went through every possible resource in-person (this was pre-Internet), including teaching himself advanced statistics and software coding.

After nine months of intensive research, Woods and Benter arrived in Hong Kong with their first betting model.

And lost 80% of their capital within a year.

Benter never gave up.

He raised fresh capital by playing blackjack at Atlantic City casinos for two years.

And resumed betting on horses at Hong Kong with a refined model.

He more than doubled his capital within the first year of his return.

But it was not enough.

Benter continued to take drastic action to improve his model. He hired journalists, analysts, coders, mathematicians, other gamblers, and anyone who could improve his model.

He travelled to southwest England and copied years of Hong Kong weather data by hand to include in his model (the weather data eventually proved insignificant).

Finally he chanced upon refining the publicly available odds with his model instead of building odds from scratch.

That was the breakthrough that netted him at least 500% profits.

In a single year.

Finally, bet on yourself.

Benter and Woods split up after their first model failed, but not because of losses.

Woods wanted a larger share of profits if their second attempt worked.

And he wanted 90%.

Benter had little capital and he should be lucky that his mentor wanted to be his partner again.

But he took the hard way out. He rebuilt capital by playing blackjack and leading card-counting teams over two years. Then he refined his model and tried horse betting again.

There is no tougher way to learn to avoid large losses. Go through the loss, rebuild, come back stronger.

And he made sure he was paid for it. He became a near-billionaire after two decades of betting on horse races.

He did not allow his battle scars to go to waste.

There are many more colorful characters and elements to Benter’s story. We invite readers to discover them in the article by Bloomberg Businessweek.