The World's Most Successful Gambler | Billy Walters

26:16And a lot of the guys that know how to make numbers, they don't know how to bet. You know, they take bad numbers, they bet at the wrong time. And the other biggest issue that most of them have, they can't bet much money. They don't know how to go out and bet several million dollars on a ballgame. And that's something that I know how to do. That's the reason that I've won so much more money than anyone else. Jack Binion, whom you mentioned, I had the great pleasure of, you know, they had a Sports Gamers Hall of Fame this year in Las Vegas, the very first one. And I had the great pleasure of Jack introducing me to that.

26:51And he made a comment, and the truth is the truth. I don't want to come across here as somebody who's being a real braggart here, but the truth of the matter is, where I won hundreds of millions of dollars betting sports, I would say that the guy second may be, I doubt if he won 20. And there's a reason for that. And the reason was, I put together a network, James, where I was able to bet millions of dollars on a ballgame where most people could only bet maybe, say, a couple hundred thousand. So there were a number of other things we kind of did over the years with other people. I had an office in Panama City, Panama.

27:27When I closed it up in 2016 to prepare for the trial in the Southern District of New York, I had 1 ,600 accounts in that office. And those were 1 ,600 accounts that we used around the world. None of them were in the U.S. They were all outside the U.S. And then I had an office in Las Vegas that I had about 150 accounts. and that's another part of what I did that was quite a bit different than most other people. Most of these other people today that are betting on sports and throughout the years, again, they were never able to bet a significant amount of money on sports. What's the benefit? Other than obviously betting more money makes or loses more money, what's the benefit of having so many different accounts and were you able to like move the line or were you able to make more bets so to diversify appropriately or?

28:16Well, the benefit is, is you're able to bet a larger volume, a larger amount of money. And then more importantly is the next thing, James, is a lot of these bookmakers, when you beat them out of their money, you know, they'll close your account down. They'll throw you out. Well, you know, the whole key is not to get thrown out to keep the account and not only to keep the account, but to be able to bet them more money than, you know, than their posted limits. And there's a number of things that you do in order to achieve that. A lot of the bookmakers, it's real simple. If you beat them, they're going to throw you out.

28:47And there's only so many bookmakers. So if you look around, next thing you know, you don't have anyone to bet with if you win on a continual basis. And I did that for 36 consecutive years. And that's really kind of what separated me from other people doing what I do. You know, when the line first comes out on Sunday night or, say, Monday morning, there are people who can beat that line. I mean, but they can only bet a small amount of money. Okay, once the line, once you're into a Tuesday or Wednesday and that line, you know, has been bad and it's basically solid, the number of people that can win after that, it's less than 1 % of the people who are betting sports can win consistently.

29:32You know, over the years, I've seen a lot of guys come along and, you know, they're successful for a year or two years or maybe three years. Or guys will come along. All they do is bet college basketball or all they do is bet certain conferences. You know, a lot of, you know, two, three, four years, five years. Then you never hear from them. They can't win anymore because they've lost. Whatever advantage they had is gone, you know, because essentially the public's caught up on it, you know. And so the benefit of being able to bet a lot more money is that you could look for advantages in many more places, not just bet one conference or one sport or whatever.

30:10What's the actual percentage benefit of what advantage does it give you? Again, other than that, if you bet more, you can make more. What advantage does betting more money give you? Because it seems like it's harder to be flexible with more money. Well, it is much harder, but it's just as simple. I mean, I could bet, let's say Monday morning, I could maybe bet a grand total of$60 ,000,$80 ,000, or$100 ,000. Let's say I had a 6 % advantage, okay? So I'm going to bet$100 ,000, I'm going to get a$6 ,000 return on my money, okay? But let's say come Saturday, that game, I bet a million dollars on it, I get a 3 % return.

30:48So did you rather have$30 ,000 or did you rather have$6 ,000? So to me, it was, you know, it was all about volume and return, nothing more, nothing less. You know, the more money I could invest, the greater amount of money I could earn. I mean, so like you could bet on Monday, but you could also bet on Saturday as the line changes. You could do things to diversify. Well, the other thing I didn't want, I didn't want anyone to know what I was betting on also, James, because I had people over the years who tried to buy people who worked for me. A lot of the bookmakers we bet with, the clerks who worked in there.

31:21They were being paid to tell people who we were betting on. And what happens, I bet on a game and a line moves too much. There's no value. I mean, I can't bet, you know, if they shut me out. So there's nothing. And then, you know, contrary to public opinion, you know, I want to see the bookmakers win. I don't want to see the bookmakers lose. Anyone that was involved with me directly or indirectly, I want them to win. But I'm not looking for someone to steal my information and go out and beat bookmakers out of a lot of money with it because nothing good is going to come out of that for me. All the bookmakers are going to do is reduce these limits or either go out of business if he loses too much money.

32:00So over the years, I mean, I've had people go through our trash. I've had people tap my phones. I've had people buy my employees. I've had everything in the world, people trying to steal our information. So, you know, between creating 1 ,600 accounts, maintaining 1 ,600 accounts, and keeping people from stealing your information and then handicapping and betting on sports and winning consistently, I've been a busy guy. You know, it seems like you're in a, it's a dangerous field, gambling, right? There's a lot of organized crime. There's a lot of violent figures. Like you say, you had people wiretapping your phones, stealing your trash, paying off your employees.

32:41Like, how do you keep sane in all that? You're juggling a lot and, you know, focusing on the betting. What points were you scared? Well, James, I want to set the record straight as far as organized crime is concerned, as far as, you know, at least as far as what I know, and I think I know quite a bit, there's been an organized crime involved in sports betting or gambling, period, since Tony Swatro was in Las Vegas. You know, that was a guy who was killed in the movie Casino. Once he was killed and he was gone, I think any influence of organized crime they had in sports betting, I think that went out the window with it also.

33:18And their involvement was primarily booking sports anyway. You know, that's one good thing about legalized sports betting today. It's totally transparent. The people involved in it have been vetted. They've been given a license. You got jobs have been created, you know, taxes are being collected and people are able to bet on sports, which is great. I think that's all good. But I don't think there's any organized crime involved in sports betting or sports bookmaking for that fact. And I don't think there's been any involvement for a long, long period of time. And as these, like we discussed with gambling, how, with sports betting, how there's a lot more quants out there, but you have this, also this qualitative side, just from your experience, I guess you have a network of people who tell you when, oh, the team's morale is low today or whatever.

34:07You must have a network of information that you tap into. I guess a similar thing, this relates to when you later went to prison, but with stock trading, stock trading is really just a form of gambling. You can use statistics, which many people do. There's all sorts of quantitative traders. Then there's the qualitative where you still need an edge. You still need some way to say to yourself, I know more information than other people. I'm not talking about insider information, but you need to have maybe you go to industry conferences or you know people who do or you know people at the company, you know what other big investors are investing, like you were friends with Carl Icahn, you know, and this is where you started to get in trouble.

34:48There's, you know, can you talk about the case that was against you? Like what happened? Sure. I've been investing in stocks for a number of years, you know, 15 years prior to this case server coming about. I'd invested in hundreds and hundreds of stocks, not just a few. And the stock that I went to prison with, I'd been investing in that stock for 10 years. So it wasn't like, yeah, it wasn't like a stock that I just happened to buy and made a few bucks on, and then I ended up having a problem. And it's a long, long story. And that's one of the primary reasons I wrote this book was to give the details of that because, you know, you can never do that in an interview as much as you'd like to be able to go into details.

35:27We'd be here for a while explaining it. But to me, stock investing, frankly, is child's play compared to betting on sports and winning consistently. But all stock guys do, whether it be Carl Icahn, whom you mentioned, or Warren Buffett, or David Tepper, there are a lot of people that I respect in that world. But all they do is they do an assessment of a publicly traded company. They come up with what they believe the value of that company is. If it's underpriced, they're going to buy that stock in that company. If it's overpriced, they may short it. I do the same thing. I mean, I'm invested in the stock market substantially today.

36:05And again, they're doing the same thing that I'm doing in sports. They do an evaluation of a public and traded company. And I saw you have Mark Cuban on your show. Mark's a very, very smart guy. That's all anyone does with any type of a business, or whether it be public or private. You do an evaluation, and you invest your money. You bet your money based upon if you feel like there's value there. And if you're right, you know. But the thing about the stock market, there's things that can happen in the stock market that have nothing to do with an individual stock that can either positively or either negatively affect it.

36:40I mean, you can have geopolitical issues that come up in the stock that could end up devastating the stock market. You may own a great stock or great company. So you're not only investing in that particular stock, you've got to have a pretty good eye you know, what's going on around the world and things that could happen that could have a negative or positive effect on the software investor. But again, it's all the same thing, James. It's identifying, finding value, and betting your money one way or the other. With sports betting, I could see how you had confidence. You had an edge because you had the quantitative side, which had a known statistical edge, and you had the qualitative side.

37:17You had a network of people with information. You knew a lot about every sport and game and team and player. So you had both the qualitative and quantitative confidence that you had an edge. How do you build now confidence that you have an edge in the stock market or with any particular stock? I'm a contrarian investor. I mean, anytime, you know, the majority of the money that I made outside of SportsBunny, I'm buying things when other people are selling. I'm selling when other people are buying. I mean, it's just pretty, it's true. And a lot of times you'll see stocks get, in my opinion, way oversold or way overbought.

37:51And that creates opportunity. You know, when we had a financial downturn in 2008, 9 and 10, I bought 22 automobile dealerships. At that time, I mean, no one wanted to buy automobile dealerships. Everyone wanted to sell them. So I bought 22, went in and we turned them around. And to me, it's just really that simple. I'm looking for value in stocks also. I mean, when stocks are trading to a certain multiple and you don't see a lot of room for a particular broker, so to speak, or if you're on the other side of the coin, you see a company that's poorly managed, poorly ran, got a bad CEO and the stock is underperforming.

38:33I mean, I'll give you an example, Walgreens right now. I mean, I mean, Walgreens is stocks, you know, at an all-time low. And, you know, the CEO, she just left. And they're in the process of trying to locate a CEO. They've got other issues. I mean, you've got everybody, everyone's, you know, familiar with these in-store thefts. And, of course, they've got a number of their stores in the UK and whatever. But I think that's a stock that, you know, potentially has got a tremendous amount of room on the upside. and so okay everybody's dumping that stock I'm buying it so am I right or am I wrong but when I look at you know and I look at the revenue I look at the balance sheet and and I look at I mean the most conservative the analysis that I can do as far as you know what the PE is going to look like going forward stock looks really really cheap to me so I bought it I mean and on the other hand stocks that I own that I feel like get too pricey, I'm going to sell them.

39:32Am I right all the time? Nope. Am I wrong all the time? Nope. Same thing goes with sports. I win 57 or 57 games that I bet on, James, but I bet on a lot of games. I bet on 30, 35, 40 games a week. So you can do the math, and the amount of money I invest in, the return I get on a weekly basis is still a pretty good business.

40:11throughout these decades of successful gambling and a successful career you've obviously been the subject of many investigations particularly the issue of whether you were a bookmaker or not and you had to convince the fbi you know you had to explain to the fbi the difference between bookmaking and making bets. What really finally got you was this insider trading one. And, you know, at age 71, you actually had to go to jail. Were you in a state of panic at this point or what was going on in your head? Well, you know, first of all, I'll address the things with the sports betting. When I organized a group of organized bettors in 1982 in Las Vegas, The FBI or law enforcement had never seen a group of organized betters.

40:57The only thing they'd ever seen was organized bookmakers, and the majority of them were involved with organized crime. So I had about 30 guys in Las Vegas. We were betting sports all over town. We were winning a lot of money. And there was an FBI agent who had been out of the academy for a couple months, and he started this investigation on the belief that we were organized bookmakers that were affiliated with organized crime. put wiretaps on our phones for a couple months. No one ever took a bet. All we did was bet. But they still rated 13, 14 places throughout the United States, the complicated records and what have you.

41:35After they got them, they realized we weren't bookmakers and all we were doing was betting. Four years, 11 months, two weeks later, two weeks before the statute of limitations ran out, I got indicted in 1990 in Las Vegas and I was charged, believe it or not, James, in the gaming capital of the world. I was charged with being part of a criminal conspiracy conspiring to bet on ballgames. Now, stop and think about that for a moment. The majority of the states in the United States sports betting is now legal. I was indicted in Las Vegas, Nevada in 1990 for betting on ballgames. Now, I went to court.

42:12They indicted my wife also. I saw my wife being taken out of the front of our home with handcuffs on and leg irons for betting on ballgames. And we went to court, and of course, we were exonerated. The jury and the newspapers, they basically ran the FBI agent out of town. I mean, when the facts came out in court, what it was all about, it was a travesty. It was a travesty for everyone involved, including the government. And then after that, I was indicted three more times by the state prosecutor for the same thing, betting on ballgames. It's nothing more, nothing less. Every time that was sold out of court.

42:55But over the years, I spent millions of dollars in legal fees. And you can imagine, you know, what it put my family through. Or, you know, that's the reason I'm so excited today to see Legal Lives Force Perry. How did your wife and you survive the strain of that? Like, she, I mean, not that you, anybody gets used to being indicted and threatened with jail. but it seems like you were a little bit more comfortable than most at being able to surf these ups and downs in gambling based on your experience. You know, you mentioned in the book, your wife was shocked at the thought that she might have to go to jail.

43:31How did you guys survive and deal with it personally? Well, we knew, James, we weren't doing anything wrong. I mean, we had a very, very strong, concrete belief. We knew we were not doing anything wrong. And at the end of the day, that's the reason that, you know, we continued to do what we were doing. You know, we both knew that we weren't doing anything ethically or morally wrong. And as a matter of fact, when I got indicted in 1990, you know, and the FBI, they indicted my wife also. And strictly, they were just trying to blackmail me into or force me into pleading guilty to something. They were going to let her out of the indictment.

44:08That's the only reason she was indicted. Well, we met with our attorney, and again, we share all of this in the book. But we, you know, my wife is actually the one, I was ready to plead guilty of anything to get her dropped out of the pipe. I couldn't, the thought of my wife spending one night in jail was something I could, there's no way I could have lived with that. But she is the one that says, no, we are not going, you're not going to plead guilty of anything. We were, if we're going to put you in this country in jail for betting on sports, she said then, you know, she said, I just can't believe it.

44:45So we both decided and we got indicted. We went to court and sat next to each other in federal court and every day. And then, of course, we were exonerated. But what's the law? But the idea and the thought of somebody that was going to indict you for betting on ballgames. But they indicted me for something. It's not even against the law. I mean, betting on ballgames is not illegal. That was what was such a big joke about it. If you were to read the local newspaper, the Review Journal, they had a big front page story. This is like Alice in Wonderland. They have mistakenly indicted a guy by the name of Proctor Hawkins, who was a bookmaker.

45:25He was actually taking bets and violating the law. They had indicted him and charged him with being a bettor. His lawyer went to the court before the judge and filed a motion to have his case thrown out because he was wrongfully charged. So they had to throw his case out. A guy was actually violating the law. And they were prosecuting people who were betting on sports who were not violating the law. I mean, it was literally, it was, I mean, it was hilarious unless you were part of it. But it was just, bottom line is, it was a mistake. It was something that happened that shouldn't have happened.

46:03You know, again, law enforcement didn't understand at the time the difference between betting and bookmaking. And then, as happens a lot of times, they spent a lot of money and resources, and then someone made a decision at the very end, we're going to go forward with this indictment, and that's what they did. But the outcome was we were exonerated. But unfortunately, I had to go through that four times. In Las Vegas, I had to go through it four times. But, you know. And so, okay, so then when they, it seems like they had a thing for you because then they, you know, did the thing with the insider trading, which is, which is something that's notoriously difficult to, you know, there's so many gray areas and it's notoriously difficult to pin down, but you got indicted and sentenced and, and, and so on.

46:48and you spent some time in jail. And, you know, and like you mentioned, your daughter, you know, you found out your daughter committed suicide while you were in jail. Like, what was going on? What was going on with her? What was going on in your mind? And maybe describe that story. It's a sad story. Yeah. You know, again, I tell this story in complete detail in the book, and that's the reason that I wanted Armand Catan to work with me. I know Armand's, he worked for 60 Minutes for a number of years. He's a great investigative reporter. And to tell the story and to tell it in detail, you know, I needed some assistance for that.

47:25And you're right. I mean, I was either under investigation or indicted for over 20 years. And then what happened is, what I realized is, you know, there's a little thing I think called a vendetta, so to speak. And I was right in the middle of that. And then what had happened in New York initially, I was being investigated along with Carl Acker. And that investigation went on for three years, and there was nothing to it. And basically, it was over. And the agent who was leading that case was a guy named David Chavez. He was the supervisor in charge of the FBI White Collar Crime Unit in New York.

48:01And he ended up being a rogue FBI agent. I mean, later on, in our case, they found out he was a bunch of illegal, unethical things. He was suspended from the FBI. and again, it's all, I can't explain all of it in an interview. That's the reason I wrote the book. But it's really, truly unbelievable. I mean, when you know all the facts. But I'd owned this stock off the whole for 10 years and it was a company called Dean Foods. I ultimately ended up being indicted for buying this stock and that's what I went to prison for. I served 31 months in Pensacola in prison. The only reason I got out after 31 months was because of COVID.

48:44And the only positive thing that happened in there was I mentored a couple dozen men. But while I was in there, my daughter unfortunately committed suicide. She had an opioid addiction, and she had had it for a period of time. And, you know, I'm as sure as I am talking to you, James, if I hadn't have been in prison, my daughter would be alive. And because if she and I could have communicated, which we, you know, had over the years when she had issues, we were always able to deal with these things. But because I couldn't communicate with her, that's, you know, she ended up committing suicide while I was in there.

49:22But again, I keep going back to the book because the only way that you're really, you know, it's in detail in the book, everything that you've talked about. All the facts are in there. It's not a, you know, he said, she said deal. It's, you know, it's a fact-based book, as you know. You've read it. And it's filled with nothing but transcripts, court documents, and everything that I'm alleging here. It's all in the book. And it'd be very easy for someone to read it, come to their own conclusion one way or the other. Yeah, no, it's a riveting book. It's a great story. I really encourage people to read it.

50:03Plus, you do have to spend several chapters outlining your entire betting system, as you said earlier. if someone were to, let's say someone's 20 years old and they read this and they're inspired and they want to, you know, gambling's legal everywhere. There's not the same issues you dealt with back in the seventies, eighties and nineties and so on. Uh, someone wanted to be a gambler, how would they think to themselves, how can I come up with my, with my edge? You know, there's, there's thousands, tens of thousands of people trying to be, you know, gamblers. How How do you formulate coming up with an edge?

50:38What's the strategy you would use now if you were 20 years old? Well, everything that I know about, 100 % of it's in the book, okay? I mean, I did not leave one thing out. Ten years ago, James, I wouldn't have sold this information for$20 million. I'm 77 years old. It's my legacy. And it's something that I wanted to leave for sports gamblers in the sports world. But the person you've described, what I would advise, if they're going to try to pursue it as a professional, then okay, fine, go take a look at it. I've explained to you how to build your program. I've explained to you how to do everything that there is to do.

51:16Now, if you're someone who's got a normal job or you're someone who's going to do this and you're not going to pursue it that way, my advice to you is, look, you want to bet on sports, betting on sports is a lot of fun. Look at it like it's a recreation. You're going to lose your money. Take the amount of money that you can afford to lose and no more. Now, I put a basic betting strategy in there that will give you a chance to win. And I've explained in there, I put all kinds of charts in there that shows the public for the first time ever, they're going to know, okay, this is exactly what a half point spread.

51:51This is exactly how the money line compares a point spread. These are what the exact odds are. These are the various factors that go into all these games. So regardless of what your level of sports better you are, you're going to learn a lot just reading this. But my advice to the average person is don't look at this as a get-rich-quick scheme because it's not. It's something you're probably going to lose your money doing, and it's a lot of fun. It's a recreation. Take whatever you can afford. But do give yourself a chance to win. You don't want to have one bookmaker. You need to have, you know, four, five, six, as many as you possibly can.

52:28You got to take good prices. You know, you got to have a betting strategy. You got to have a money management system, which, again, it's all laid out in the book. But don't get involved in this to think you're going to get rich betting sports because you're not. If you take that approach to it, you know, you could have some of the same problems I've had as a young man. And I can tell you how that one goes. You're going to start off. You're going to get a loser. Then you're going to have this little conversation with yourself mentally. As soon as I get even, I'm going to quit. Well, if you do get lucky and get even, you're not going to quit.

53:00You're going to even be more fired up to bet. And then you're going to go down that road, and that was the road that I went down thinking that I was going to get rich quick. That's not the case. Now, how I came from where I was at to where I've gotten to today in the sense that I've shared, the odds on that are probably 20 million to one. And if you read the book, you'll see the various things that happened in my life that I dealt with. But again, battle sports, have some fun, put up whatever amount of money you can afford to lose, figuring you're going to lose it. And, but if you really want to be a pro and you really want to try to pursue this and you've got that kind of passion for it, I have an advanced masterclass in my book that explains exactly what I do and exactly how I do it.

53:52So they're both there. Do you think there will be new areas of betting? Like, let's say political betting. There's not really a market for political betting at the moment, but maybe in the future there will be. Do you think there's ways potentially in new areas of betting to get easier to get an edge? There could be. I mean, if you can bet any serious money on elections, I would have an interest in that myself. But I don't know of anybody who can bet any serious money on it. I'm not anything to make it worthwhile. I do think there's a tremendous amount of potential growth in sports bookmaking.

54:28These publicly traded companies that are licensed today, they're great internet marketers. They're not really, they don't know, as far as the art of bookmaking is concerned, the guys 20, 25 years ago were, I think, much smarter. I think they knew a lot more about bookmaking than these guys do today. I think there's a big market out there that these people haven't pursued. Now, in order to do that, there's going to be some things that have to happen. The taxation with sports betting is ridiculous in this country. The people who got sports betting legalized, I don't know if they didn't realize it.

55:10It was an oversight or whatever, but they've got to go back and fix this. Sports betting today, I'll give you an example, James. You know, if you bet on 50 % water, you're going to get 95.4 % of your money back. So betting slot machines, you're going to get between 96 % and 98%. So it's a tough way to win to start with. But if you happen to win any money by any sports in this country, you have to pay ordinary income on the winnings, plus you have to pay your state taxes. And it's the only thing that I know of in the IRS tax code. You cannot carry forward a loss from one year to the next. Now, if it were to be treated like, say, Wall Street, and there were to be a capital gains, option or something there.

55:54You do that. You're going to attract more sophisticated people. Smart, smart people aren't going to bet large amounts of money on sporting events because of, again, what I just pointed out to you. If you win, you're going to pay over half your money in taxes. If you lose, you can't carry forward a loss one year to the next. That law has to be changed where you can carry forward a loss. If they do that and they treat the taxation similar to what they treat Wall Street, there's a tremendous amount of room for growth. You'll have a lot of people who are in different sectors of the United States, wealthy people, that are better in sports.

56:34Okay, although they've got an uphill road to travel, they've still got a chance. The way it is today, beating sports, number one, is very, very difficult. And if you do win, you're going to get half your money to the government. If you lose, you can't curse for the loss. If this law gets amended, the IRS is, they're going to collect a lot more money in taxes because they're not going to collect any today. But what I'm really afraid of, and it hasn't happened yet, but I think it's going to happen like any day. Every one of these publicly held books, these sports books, the IRS has everyone's information.

57:10They know who you are. I mean, they know everything. So you take a small better or you take any kind of better. To give you an example, let's say you lose$10 ,000 in December betting on bowl games or playoff games, and you win$10 ,000 in January. Well, you've got to pay tax on the$10 ,000 you won. You can't care for it at loss, the money you won in December. It's ridiculous. Now, like I said, these public-entrending companies, the guys that are running them today know a lot about marketing. I mean, the people that they've hired as a whole are running sportsbooks. They really don't understand the art of bookmaking.

57:51And so I think if the right person were to get involved with it, I've never met Mark Cuban personally. I've seen him interviewed a lot of times. I think he was an extraordinarily bright guy. If someone like he were to get involved and were to open up and compete against the guys who are out there today, I think someone like that could do very, very well. Now, for you, when you've been hiring people, you said you mentioned you found an economist who had been the head of the economics department at his university. You found a guy who was the number one guy at Caltech. It's not like you put out a help-wanted ad in the newspaper.

58:29How did you find these guys?

58:35Well, I'm pretty successful at what I do, and most people are involved or been attracted to sports in some way, a lot of them come to me. And, you know, a lot of them I learned, you know, through the grapevine, so to speak, in the industry. And I've recruited some. I mean, it's been a combination of people who sought me out and people who I've sought out. And, again, I started doing this in 1979. So I'm kind of a lone commodity. And people who work for me, frankly, make a lot more money than they work for other people who work in the business. You know, there's an example. You know, I mean, some of these guys, I pay, you know, a million bucks a year or two to do analysis and things such as that.

59:17So, you know, it's, I would say, you know, it's a combination of my success and, again, you know, and the compensation. And James, you know, my average employee in Los Angeles has been with me 12 and a half years. So, you know, we proud ourselves in the relationship that we have with the people we work with. It seems like part of your success, too, is like reading the book, you have this charisma where you're able to meet just about anyone. Like people want to meet you and sit. Like how did you like Carl Icahn is not known for having social dinners with people. And yet just out of the blue, you arranged to have dinner with Carl Icahn when he first comes to Las Vegas.

1:00:01So, like, how did you kind of get a meeting like that? Actually, he raised it with me. I didn't reach out to him. There was a guy named Dan Casella who worked for him, and Dan called me and asked me if I would have done it with Carl. And I said, yeah, well, you know, I agreed to do it. And that's how he and I met. He was interested in handicapping and sports betting. That's how we met. You know, it's funny. You mentioned Jack Bunyan earlier, and Jack is, if not my best friend in the world today. He's certainly in the top two. And Jack, you know, it was a few months ago, he said, Billy, you have the largest, most diverse group of friends of anyone I've ever known.

1:00:39And he's right about that. And I'm very proud of that. But I don't know, I've always kind of met people easy, James. And I don't know, I can't answer. But the majority of my friends are people you've never heard of or you never will. Well, Billy Walters, author of the book, Gambler, Secrets from a Life at Risk. This is definitely the best book on gambling I've ever read. Plus your story is just fascinating. It's riveting. They should make a movie out of this book. I'm sure you're going to at least sell the rights for this to be a movie. And it's going to do very well. So I encourage everybody listening to this to read it.

1:01:21Again, not just for the gambling, but also, Billy, your personal story and your tales on the way to success. And it's an inspirational story in an odd sort of way to say that. But it's a great book. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. And I appreciate it. Thank you. James, thank you. And I've got an invitation to you. You come back to Las Vegas. I'll tell you what we're going to do. We're going to get Jack Binion. I'm going to take you to dinner this time with Jack. And we're going to take you to, we'll take you to a little different restaurant. Not that, You know, the one you went to wasn't great.

1:01:56But if you come out, we'll get Jack and the three of them. So we'll get together and have dinner. And I've got a plug. I've got a good one to take you to. I'm going to take you to Michael's at the South Point Hotel. Excellent. All right. I look forward to that. All right. Thank you so much, Billy. Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

1:02:24Thank you.