33 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A literary parlay in which the reader is often middled, May 28, 2010
This review is from: Lay the Favorite: A Memoir of Gambling (Hardcover)
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-450 Gamblers
+350 Author
I enjoy books on players of all sorts---criminals, athletes, entrepreneurs, traders, gamblers and noir types in general. They detail the underbelly of our society (often posing as the glamorous top layer) without the reader having to lose all his money, go to jail, or get his legs broken by Angelo. What distinguishes Lay The Favorite is that it's a true story of someone who observes and then slowly becomes corrupted by that world...and doesn't even realize it.
The book ends {mild spoiler here, but not really} with Beth jetting off to Rio on money she's stolen from a "sicko" bettor who had just tried to steal money from her. Her quick moral bookkeeping, apparently done in separate ledgers, seems to escape her irony filter entirely, and in the end she is absorbed seamlessly by the seaminess. It's the perfect ending, for all the wrong reasons.
The best things about LTF are the true tales of the professional sports bettors. Raymer recounts their stories well, and if you like interesting characters, here they are. Dinky is the "hero", for beating the odds as a wildly successful bettor for decades (a million to one shot), while Bernard has the much easier job of fleecing the suckers as a bookie. They both consider themselves losers despite millions stashed away in various shoeboxes (for a while), and their stories are full of fascinating, funny moments, including odd tales of barely legal offshore sports books in Curacao and Costa Rica. These guys might be nutty as squirrels in some ways but they're also very bright, and lots of fun to read about. I'm not sure they and their families will be too thrilled about how they all come off here, but apparently they gave their ok for this. Perhaps not the best wager of their careers.
The worst thing about LTR is having to sit through the author's tales of her personal life, which makes the gamblers by contrast seem balanced and so much more interesting. Raymer casually mentions that when she gets tired of a guy she just stops answering his calls and hopes he goes away; in some ways the gamblers come off as nicer folks. After a while, despite her constant mention of how charmed everyone is by her and how winsome she is, one reaches the sections about her inner turmoils and groans in dismay; this advance copy of LTR hit the floor more than once. How long until we hear about the players again?
Because, all told, it's they who make this book worth reading, and the parts about Beth could be lifted from any memoir of a confused, drifting cocktail waitress who treats men like kleenex and then wonders why she can't gain any traction in life. After working as a stripper and doing online porn, she lucks into working for guys who toss bricks of money around like toothpicks but rarely seems to grasp what a longshot she's hit; one wonders exactly which details we don't get here. Oddly enough, the one part of her life that really is fascinating, her quick rise from neophyte pugilist to fighting in an amateur boxing championship in Madison Square Garden, is given short shrift. If she'd spent the time detailing that unique journey that she spends on meandering, banal tales of her love life, this could have been a really fine tome.
Instead, it feels like there are two books here, one very interesting one about the world of professional sports bettors, and one not very interesting one about an immature young woman's coming of age. Which never really happens, unless becoming the kind of dishonest person she's spent the book chastising counts. Time and again she wonders how everyone can rip everyone else off and why no one cares, and then ends the book by doing it herself and toasting the wisdom of her choice with champagne in first class.
All in all, LTF is well worth reading if you like breezy tales of unique, real-life Runyonesque sharps who beat the gambling world until it beats them (the inherent moral here, however backwardly presented). Or if you like reading about a spacy girl's suddenly shifting crushes on whomever. I'm not sure those two markets overlap, but if they do, this book is a new genre unto itself, a weird literary parlay in which the reader often gets middled.
Apparently this was optioned by Stephen Frears for a movie coming out next year called Lay the Favorite, Take The Dog, and that's great news, as the movie has the choice we readers don't have: excise the boring stuff about the author and focus on the crux of the biscuit--the fascinating guys who for a while get the best of a game that's almost unbeatable. Here's hoping Frears takes the over and lays off the road dog.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fast-Paced, Entertaining Look Inside the Business of Sports Betting., June 3, 2010
This review is from: Lay the Favorite: A Memoir of Gambling (Hardcover)
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Beth Raymer, narrator of "Lay the Favorite: A Memoir of Gambling", was not so much a gambler as an employee of a professional gambler and a bookmaker. She called for rundowns, did pay and collect, dealt with clients, kept the books, and was generally a factotum for a couple of talented sports gamblers and bookmakers in Las Vegas, New York and Curacao in the 2000s. She was in an ideal position to observe how these people and their businesses operate, being in the center of the action but also a bit of an outsider. Raymer was dreaming of being a cocktail waitress at a Vegas casino when she lucked into a job at "Dink, Inc." and into the colorful and somewhat depressing world of sports betting that would consume her for the next few years.
"Dink, Inc." belongs to Dink Heimowitz. A gambler since childhood, Dink ran an illegal and highly successful bookmaking business in New York until a brush with the law convinced him to stay on the legal side of the business. He moved to Vegas to gamble his own money, with much success, but Dink never liked it as much as he did bookmaking. Raymer's only qualification to work in his office seemed to be that her happiest childhood memories were of her father's gambling, and she was friendly and game for anything. Fate later takes Raymer to work for Long Island bookmaker and gambler Bernard Rose, who made $2.5 million betting sports by the time he was 19 years old. Their move to Curacao provides an inside, unflattering, look at offshore sports books.
Raymer clearly adores Dink and Bernard, a pair of talented, self-loathing misfits. It's easy to see with whom her sympathies lie or don't, but her ability to get the reader to agree is sometimes surprising. She has a talent for painting people's flaws with a colorful brush, her own included. And Raymer's ability to adapt to even the most bizarre circumstances without giving it much thought is extraordinary. But she readily admits that everything and everyone in her life have in common their precariousness. She avoids anything that would seem to have a future in it. Adventurousness is admirable, but we always feel that Raymer might be slipping down a troubling path. She's not quite likable or ethical. But she is an evocative writer, and "Lay the Favorite" is an entertaining look behind-the-scenes at some of the guys who beat the sports books.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting enough, but nothing overly special, August 19, 2010
This review is from: Lay the Favorite: A Memoir of Gambling (Hardcover)
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The world of gambling that Beth Raymer introduces is certainly interesting, but I wouldn't say her book about it was particularly "must read". Not that I was looking for a How To, but I never entirely understood how it all worked (but that could just be me).
Beth was an interesting character, from her past as a private dancer to her actions at the conclusion, but I never really quite got the "why" to some of her actions.
Would also have liked an epilogue of sorts- where is she now, etc.
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