Gambler since 9 years old. What are you waiting for?

If you haven’t just heard about betting and gambling now, “after the last rain,” then the name of today’s hero might sound familiar. Billy Walters is seen as the biggest/most important gambler of the last hundred years, and his story starts exactly like the title says—at the age of 9.

Many of us had small summer jobs, but usually this begins around 14, when you start to be more aware, more responsible. Not the case for Billy Walters, who was making honest money delivering newspapers around the neighborhood at age 8. But even then, he was drawn to the lights of the slot machines in his grandfather’s pool hall. The year after, when he had turned 9 and saved up $125, he put all his money on a single bet: that the New York Yankees would beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1955 World Series. The Dodgers won, Walters lost the bet, but that didn’t stop him from continuing to play. And if we take into account inflation, that $125 back then equals no less than $1,438 today. So we’re talking about a huge sum for anyone, not just for a 9-year-old kid.

Even though for most of us such a loss would mean game over, Walters kept going. By the age of 22, he had lost $50,000. Another shocking event was when he lost his house in a coin toss game. The winner didn’t actually take the house only because they reached an agreement, and Walters accepted to pay the debt over the next 18 months.

This period most likely served as a crucial learning stage on his path as a professional gambler. Losing money, especially in your early years, can be an educational experience. Walters learned the importance of discipline, strategy, and risk management in gambling. Instead of seeing it as failure, he used it as motivation to refine his approach and develop a more calculated method for future bets. His ability to bounce back from losses and turn them into valuable lessons played a key role in his later success as one of the most famous sports gamblers of all time.

A few decades before becoming rich and famous, in 1982, Billy was selling cars in Kentucky. But he never lost his hunger for gambling. One day, he decided to work as a bookmaker, but it must be said that back then this was illegal in Kentucky. After he got caught and paid a $1,000 fine, he decided it was time to move to a city where gambling was not only legal but was the heart of the economy: Las Vegas.

Billy quickly got into the action in the 1980s, long before the internet. To get information in the days before the www, Billy would send his guys every morning to the Las Vegas airport to collect newspapers from other cities that travelers had thrown away. Walters also joined the first serious computer betting syndicate, The Computer Group, which changed sports betting in the 1980s by putting all the data they gathered into a digital database. The group made so much money that the authorities were sure they were running an illegal betting operation. But that wasn’t the case.

Walters was and still is an “investigator,” a person super careful with details. That’s how he won $3.8 million at the Golden Nugget roulette in Atlantic City, in 1986. Through detailed research, Billy found that Golden Nugget was using an old roulette wheel with a statistical tilt toward certain numbers. Billy took a flight to Atlantic City and used this theory, winning millions of dollars.

Today, Walters has a network of analysts who feed him information about games. He places bets through anonymous associates he calls “partners,” who don’t know each other. Few sportsbook managers have seen Billy Walters, but they know his style, his bet, when it comes in, and they move the line accordingly.

Billy claims to have a 57% winning rate on his sports bets. Known for being private and secretive about his methods, Walters once told a reporter:

“If you commit to being a professional gambler and want to be the best, you spend every moment trying to figure out how to beat the game.”

For Walters, this lifestyle—especially the passion and attention to detail—paid off, leading to a personal fortune of $200 million. Among other things, he is passionate about golf and even won the 2008 Pebble Beach Pro-Am with golfer Fredrik Jacobson. Billy owns four golf courses, seven houses, eight car dealerships, and a $20 million private jet.

On a regular NFL Sunday, it’s not unusual for Walters to bet $400,000 on two football games. On a typical NFL Sunday, he usually risks around $2 million across all his bets.

Billy Walters will turn 78 on July 15, which means he’s been involved in betting, gambling halls, tips, or sports betting for 69 years. And so I repeat the question from the title: What are you waiting for?