# He made $100m betting on the NBA… here’s how  ## Episode metadata - Episode title: He made $100m betting on the NBA… here’s how - Show: My First Million - Owner / Host: Hubspot Media - Guests: [Haralabos 'Bob' Voulgaris](https://share.snipd.com/person/a1beffba-ac21-4486-9846-cf536298561b) - Episode publish date: 2025-02-07 - Episode AI description: Haralabos Voulgaris, a legendary figure in sports betting, shares his journey from novice gambler to a multi-million dollar success story. He reveals his unique strategies, blending psychology and statistics, particularly in basketball. Voulgaris discusses his controversial view that 'casinos are for losers' and dives into his ventures with Bitcoin and even owning a soccer team. He highlights the emotional and financial intricacies of rapid wealth accumulation, stress management, and the transformation of individual betting to a collaborative operation. - Duration: 01:02:58 - Episode URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/episode/cd86408a-bd93-48f8-b7ab-b2e778ebef6e) - Show URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/show/a3bc85ac-9318-431c-9821-7a14a7408e4b) - Export date: 2026-02-11T20:07:11 ## Snips ### [Vegas Immersion](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e2065e21-9691-4316-904f-15a59eecd846) 🎧 03:38 - 06:02 (02:24) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/5ee609f1-d638-4ac6-aeed-4aa3563bf72c" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - At 19, Voulgaris spent a month in Vegas with his father, watching basketball games in sportsbooks. - He realized he enjoyed it and wanted to become proficient, so he began studying the game and market. #### 💬 Quote > I park myself in the sports book and hope that nobody tells me. Because they don't ID you in the sports book. > — Haralabos Voulgaris Haralabos Voulgaris on how he got around age restrictions in Vegas sportsbooks. #### 📚 Transcript **Shaan Puri:** So **Haralabos Voulgaris:** that's how I got started. And then at some point after I graduated from high school, I went to Vegas with my dad. He was there. And I went there for like a month or so. He there gambling? Yeah my dad was it was daylight hours and he had money in his pocket he **Shaan Puri:** was gambling what **Haralabos Voulgaris:** was **Shaan Puri:** what was his occupation he **Haralabos Voulgaris:** was he came he was a first generate he moved to canada when he was he's got a great you should have him on the show uh he's got a great story he moved to canada when he was like 20 years old, didn't speak a lick of English, became a dishwasher at Kentucky Fried Chicken, and just worked his ass off. And so he moved his way up from dishwasher to restaurant to finally getting involved in real estate somehow, by some way, owning a commercial. He had strip malls all over Winnipeg. **Shaan Puri:** So he's an entrepreneur? Big **Sam Parr:** time entrepreneur, yes. And when you go to Vegas, you're not 21, right? You just graduated from high school. So what do you do with your dad? You're in a casino. You can't really do much. I park myself in the sports book and hope that nobody tells Because they don't ID you in the sports book. Yeah, you just sit there. They're supposed **Haralabos Voulgaris:** to, but they don't. Like you're just in the sports book. So you're just sitting there, you know, you're, and I just watched basketball. It the first time I really ever watched NBA basketball to that extent. Previously, I watched a lot of hockey and Canadian football. My dad would give me a little bit of money, not a lot, and I would watch basketball. I would sit there from 4 p.m. Pacific to 10 p.m., 11 p.m. Pacific and just watch the games on these giant TVs. Then I started to really enjoy the routine of watching the West Coast games. So I started to kind of pay attention more to the West Coast teams. I was like Chris Webber's rookie year when he played for Golden State. And they had run TMC, I think it was, before that. And so, yeah, that's what I did. Were you losing money at first? What was going on? When did you start making money? I didn't really win. I wasn't losing a lot, though. I had an okay opinion by the end, but yeah, was losing, of course. I was probably flipping coins and paying big, so I was probably 50-50 roughly, but I needed to win 11 to 10, 11 out of every 10. So it wasn't bad. It wasn't like I was getting my ass handed to me or anything. Then I realized I really like this and I want to get good at it. I just thought about what does that mean? What do I have to do to get good at it? --- ### [Learning from Sharps](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f19ab54d-7656-4e83-a931-3a7b100e285c) 🎧 06:04 - 08:10 (02:05) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/716773ac-8dd6-4a88-a432-0a19a5abaf17" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Voulgaris developed pattern recognition skills by observing sharp bettors at the Stardust Casino's morning lottery. - He analyzed their bets, line movements, and consistency to identify profitable patterns. #### 💬 Quote > I started just looking to see, okay, who are the actual sharps? Who are the guys who seem like they're moving money for other people? What are they betting? > — Haralabos Voulgaris Haralabos Voulgaris on his strategy for identifying successful gamblers. #### 📚 Transcript **Haralabos Voulgaris:** started taping games to start reading a lot of newspaper articles on the internet. **Shaan Puri:** When you're saying you're learning to get good at it, how much of it is a human side where you're learning human emotions of the players and leadership and things like that, and the story versus statistics? **Haralabos Voulgaris:** Yeah, back then there was not a lot of good statistics. There was just something called the box score, which is just not very illustrative of the game. So it was almost that and a little bit of database work in terms of just getting aggregates from teams in certain situations. I also tried to really also understand the market more, I think. In other words, the opening lines would go. What I got to be really good when I was in Vegas around that time was seeing the sharps that would line up at the Stardust Casino. In the morning, they had something called the lottery. So the lines would be posted in the morning. And then every sharp would be able to make a full limit bet down in the morning. And they'd have to do a lottery to see who could go first. And then they'd make a bet, and then the book would decide to adjust. So I started just looking to see, okay, who are the actual sharps? Who are the guys who seem like they're moving money for other people? What are they betting? So you're treating it like a job. You must have been getting there early then. What time is that? Yeah, I mean, it's not a lot of work. It's not manual labor. I'm not laying bricks or riding off the back of a brontosaurus **Sam Parr:** like Fred Flintstone, breaking rocks. And so did you go ask them to learn from them, or are you watching them from afar and figuring it out yourself? I **Haralabos Voulgaris:** just wanted to see, okay, this guy made a bet, the line didn't move. That's interesting. Then you see him back the next day and the next day. And then, and then you see that, by the way, it wouldn't just be one. You'd see like now at four o'clock post time, the lines would move even more. So it's like, okay, this, this line moved a lot. There wasn't an injury. That guy bet it early. So it just like little things, just pat. Like, I think if I have one skill in life aside from being, not really caring what other people who I don't know think about me, think, and just being confident in that. I think it's maybe a little bit of pattern recognition. I think I'm decent at that. I think I can see patterns. And I'm also able to identify, oh, was that an actual pattern? Or was I just fooling myself with randomness there? --- ### [Canadian Football Edge](https://share.snipd.com/snip/eeebcbb8-af1a-427a-bc92-5d2a637730de) 🎧 09:13 - 10:30 (01:17) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/d6e4f8d2-9ffe-48a2-8fbc-6d32c3ef2b3e" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Voulgaris's first profitable pattern was in Canadian football, exploiting rule differences and stadium discrepancies between Canadian and American teams. - This edge allowed him to capitalize on market inefficiencies. #### 💬 Quote > My first, my first bit of money was Canadian football. [...] There's a lot of things going on then. > — Haralabos Voulgaris Haralabos Voulgaris on his initial success with Canadian football betting. #### 📚 Transcript **Haralabos Voulgaris:** Back then, that was a lot of money. Now you can just spin up a meme coin and and you're making it by noon. What was the first profitable pattern you figured out? The that really really kind of worked? football was first profit. My first my first bit of money was Canadian football. Not like soccer but actual like three-down football. There's a lot of things going on then. There they expanded into America at that time. And so you had some interest, for whatever reason, in Las Vegas to book Canadian Football League games or offshore markets. And the Canadian teams had to abide by different rules than the American teams. So that was part of it. You had to have a certain amount of Canadians on your roster that were starting. American teams didn't have that. The Canadian stadiums were all compliant to Canadian football league rules. American stadiums did not. So some of the end zones, like the Canadian rules are like the end zones are 20 yards deep, but in some stadiums in America, they didn't have that luxury. So they were like squared off at the back. And so those games are lower scoring. That was a big part of it. And I just got to be really good at knowing a lot about Canadian football and which teams were sharp, were doing innovative things. --- ### [All-in on the Lakers](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b897fa45-ebf8-44ab-bb36-1149b1f86419) 🎧 16:09 - 16:40 (00:30) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/1e2c40bd-2800-4215-b816-e538ec7dc76d" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Voulgaris bet all his money, approximately $87,000 Canadian, on the Lakers to win the championship at 6.5 to 1 odds. - Despite the risk, he saw it as an opportunity with a manageable downside. #### 💬 Quote > Yeah, six and a half to one roughly. [...] It was all my money. > — Haralabos Voulgaris Haralabos Voulgaris on a significant bet he placed on the Lakers. #### 📚 Transcript **Sam Parr:** I didn't know at least some of these stories about you kind of hustling as the skycap and figuring out how to run your own operation down there. So that's pretty cool. When did, like, I don't know, Sam, if you've heard these stories, but I guess a couple of your famous betting stories are, I guess you went all in at one point on the Lakers to win the championship at like six to one odds. **Haralabos Voulgaris:** Yeah, six and a half to one roughly. **Shaan Puri:** How much is all in and what age in the timeline? It was like 87,000 **Haralabos Voulgaris:** Canadian, give or **Shaan Puri:** take. And that was all your money? Yeah. --- ### [Halftime Betting Edge](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7a6a2fff-4206-4e5e-9b41-281c7d2c3cc6) 🎧 18:40 - 20:09 (01:29) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/a2bf5298-363d-4bf3-9bab-30390b45d4b4" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Voulgaris discovered an edge in halftime betting by exploiting Vegas's practice of simply halving the full game total. - This led to predictable discrepancies in halftime scores. #### 💬 Quote > You could also bet on the first half only [...] the way that Vegas was doing is it would take the full score [...] and then for the halftime score they were just cutting it in half, divided by two. > — Shaan Puri Shaan Puri describing Voulgaris's halftime betting strategy. #### 📚 Transcript **Sam Parr:** guess at one point, like in Vegas, you can bet on the full game, which is what most people do. Like me, I'm a casual. I go in, just bet on the over-under, maybe on the final score. And what he realized was like that you could also bet on the first half only, which was like not as common of a bet. But the way that Vegas was doing is it would take the full score, which they're pretty accurate at predicting. And then for the halftime score, they were just cut in half, divided by two. Roughly. Make the first half a little bit higher scoring in general. I **Haralabos Voulgaris:** could tell you guys, look, I haven't told this. I tell this story in a way that makes it so the edge still lives on for the people that are still betting. But I don't know. You kick? You guys caught me out of the kick. **Shaan Puri:** My friends, if you like MFM, then you're going to like the following podcast. It's called Billion Dollar Moves. And of course, it's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the number one audio destination for business professionals. Billion Dollar Moves. It's hosted by Sarah Chen Spelling. Sarah is a venture capitalist and strategist. And with Billion Dollar Moves, she wants to look at unicorn founders and funders. And she looks for what she calls the unexpected leader. Many of them were underestimated long before they became huge and successful and iconic. She does it with unfiltered conversations about success, failure, fear, courage, and all that great stuff. So again, if you like My First Million, check out Billion Dollar Moves. It's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. Again, Billion Dollar Moves. All right, back to the episode. --- Created with [Snipd](https://www.snipd.com) | Highlight & Take Notes from Podcasts