A life as a professional sports bettor is a difficult one. Whereas most of us get paid at the end of the day regardless of how successful that day was, sports bettors need to win to pay the bills. Even salespeople, who sometimes risk making no money at all if they don’t sell, aren’t typically looking at losing thousands because of a bad day at the office. You know what makes a sports betting professional’s life even harder? Not having anywhere to bet. This is what has happened to high roller sports bettor and former poker pro Robert Gorodetsky, according to an article in USA Today.
In late December, USA Today tailed Gorodetsky for a week to see what the hell this guy was all about. At just 25-years old, Gorodetsky has been extremely successful, wagering tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars per day and emerging as a healthy net winner for the last few years. He says he doesn’t have much of a system, that he bets on gut instinct, something that confounds casinos and other sports bettors. Those who have seen him on a regular basis, like casino hosts, say they haven’t seen any evidence of cheating, but some other sports bettors can’t believe he can win so much just flying by the seat of his pants.
Gorodetsky frequently posts winning betting tickets on Instagram, but his critics point out that on the flip side, he never posts losing tickets.
It is sharing like this that led to his recent problem. In the USA Today piece, Gorodetsky bragged about his connections and gambling discussions with a number of professional athletes and coaches.
Talking about New York Giants star wide receiver Odell Beckham, Jr., Gorodetsky pointed USA Today to a May Instagram picture of the two of them with their arms around each other. He then told a quick story about how he loaned Beckham $10,000 to play blackjack. Beckham won and paid Gorodetsky back. He also showed the journalist a text from Beckham in which he expressed interest in laying $20,000 on a baseball game, but that bet never happened.
Gorodetsky also told about texting back and forth with Cleveland Cavaliers assistant coach Damon Jones about baseball picks. L.A. Lakers rookie Kyle Kuzma is also a friend/acquaintance who Gorodetsky will talk to before games.
“He’ll always secretly be like, ‘Who do you got?’ You know what I’m saying?”
MGM Resorts International confirmed to USA Today that it has banned Gorodetsky from sports betting at its casinos. The implication the USA Today is making is that these and other professional sports insider connections are a red flag and may have contributed to the exile.
One other warning sign was Gorodetsky’s thoughts about how easy it would be to pay college players to shave points in games:
You just pay college kids, inner-city college kids who don’t have any money. Give them 10 grand. That’s like a million dollars to them. You know what I’m saying? Have a bad game, here’s 10 grand. I don’t see how they wouldn’t do it.
I’d spread it around Vegas, 20 grand a place. They’d never notice. I wouldn’t beat one casino badly. I’d take a little piece from every single (sports) book.
Gorodetsky said he would never actually do it, but that it would be easy if he wanted to.
Cover photo credit: @bigrobstyle on Instagram
He is actually getting banned for not following the sportbooks mobile platform rules. Services are to only be used while the player is in the state of Nevada, he was in CA when bets were made on his account in the story.
There are plenty of places to play besides MGM!
Yeah that’s bad for the game it hurts the integrity of the sport if there’s wide spread cheating involved and with his money the way he’s been winning he’s got the bankroll to buy a few players but I’m sure he’ll find a way to make his bets he’ll just send a runner to go make his bets when there’s a will there’s a way