Customer Reviews

Lay the Favorite: A Memoir of Gambling

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

-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.

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.

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.

As many of the reviewers here note, Raymer expertly portrays the sleaze, glamor and humor of the various offbeat subcultures that attract her. With a true writer's instincts, and a real feeling for language, she also has an uncanny ability to profile oversized characters in all their glory and horror (Dickens would have loved these people). Perhaps because of the assumed transparency of the memoir, however, less attention has been paid to Raymer's most remarkable character: herself. Our narrator is alternately shrewd, naive, wondering, cruel, honest, and manipulative but never less than open to the full range of experience. She's a 21st Century Huck Finn with boxing gloves and a stripper pole. A true American original.

As someone who has placed a bet or two on various sports or horse racing events, I was immediately drawn to Beth Raymer's book on her experiences in the sports betting industry. She gets started as a gofer for a professional bettor in Las Vegas but moves on from there working with an off-shore book in the Caribbean and with an illegal bookie in New York.

I've had a few arguments with a friend of mine who believes that she might have stretched the truth a few times in the book and possible exaggerated a few things for dramatic license. I'm not sure that's true -- or even relevant. Raymer's a good writer and I enjoyed who she recounted her experiences.

What I especially appreciated was that in the beginning of her story, she is a gambling novice and didn't know anything about money lines, odds, point spreads or other gambling terms. As she recounts that part of her experiences, her writing is more detailed and tends to reflect the challenges she faced in learning about sports and betting. As the narrative proceeds, she soon becomes as sharp as anyone and the prose in her book starts to flow as fast as the bets made by various clients to the off-shore sports book. Somehow through all of this she works in details about her personal life involving her dog, her dad and love interests.

Overall, I enjoyed everything about it, but I wonder if people who aren't into the subject matter, like I am, will feel the same way.

Subtitled "A Memoir of Gambling", this is a easy breezy true life adventure of a young woman's experience in the big wide and crazy world of professional sports betting. This is an upbeat book, funny and fast paced. Once I started it I was completely drawn into the world Beth describes and I literally couldn't put it down.

Beth has a way with words. Her descriptions of people are alive with realistic details that bring them to life with all their lovable idiosyncrasies. For example, there is Dink, the high school bookie from Queens turned Las Vegas professional, his wife Tulip who spends his money and sticks with him through good times and bad and Bernard the overweight Long Islander who starts up an offshore betting operation. And then there are all the assorted hangers on, freewheelers and colorful characters that make up the world she describes. But most fascinating of all is Beth herself with her gumption to take on the highs and lows of this crazy world and her pastime of putting on boxing gloves and competing in the ring.

There's a lot to learn from this book. Like how sports betting actually works. And what professional gamblers really are like. And what life is like when every moment is an adrenaline rush and the highs are really high and the lows are really low. This is a world of high stakes. It is also a world of high anxiety.

I loved this book. Found it exhilarating to read. And recommend it to all.

This book was entertaining enough. It's light reading that will pass the time and give you a few chuckles. However, when Ms Raymer is telling her story she comes off as a schoolgirl, just waiting to "grow up." The growing up seems to have happened after the story the book was telling was over. All through the book one assumes there is a point to it all. Perhaps being that Ms Raymer will rise above it all. As it turns out, there is no point. And by her actions in the end of the book, she is no better than the creep who played her for a sucker. Not that she ever claimed to be better, mind you. My advice is to borrow the book from a friend or the library.

Gambling is addictive and so is this book. Beth Raymer is a wonderful, instinctive writer; her ear for dialogue is supernatural (and hilarious), but so is her ability to render description and tell a good story. The writing is fevered, funny, and contains not one false note or awkward sentence. This book tells of her years working for professional sports bettors and gamblers, a career that was preceded by work as a stripper, quasi-social worker, and waitress. She also trains as an amateur boxer during the gambling years.

To say the least, Raymer did not have a stable childhood, and she has commitment issues; but she writes with kindness about her family members. In fact, she is kind about almost everybody, even the lowlifes with whom she comes into contact in Las Vegas and the Caribbean venues where her gambling bosses do their business.

While some of the gambling lingo is not understandable to an outsider, the book still gives an education about gambling, including definitions of terms and unwritten rules of the game, and a recognizable code of ethics. Not all big bookmakers are mob, she explains: many are smart, compulsive Jewish boys who are good at math. She develops a love and loyalty to the men who hire her, trust her, pay her well, and give her sincere fatherly advice. But these men are definitely dysfunctional:

"The only thing you need to know is this: every gambler is a neurotic with an unconscious wish to lose. And as for the rare professionals who are talented enough to beat the house, rest assured they will go to whatever lengths necessary to surround themselves with people who will lose their money for them."

All throughout the story, enormous sums of money are won, lost, thrown around in packages, stuffed into backpacks. This money doesn't go into bank accounts and investments, but into safe deposit boxes all over the city when it's not stolen or floating around between winners and losers. You can feel the intoxication and the lure of excitement, but Raymer doesn't sugar coat the downside of this lifestyle: the drug addiction, the danger, the ruined families. She's a realist, a humorous observer of the action including her own role in it. Well, almost a realist: we never learn for certain if she's really left the life behind her. We do learn that she's turned her sights to become a writer, and I can only hope she keeps on writing.

I've heard a lot about Lay The Favorite over the past few months, and there was something about this book that had me seriously jonesing for it. When I got it in the mail, I read the book within 24 hours. Maybe it's trips to Vegas and my own experiences betting a $10 on an MLB or an NBA game. The book goes equally into Beth's own encounters with degenerate gambling and other walks of life that make her a perfect fit for Dink and Company.

Go get this baby before the movie comes out sometime in 2012. It'll be worth your while.

This is an enjoyable book, in the tradition of Damon Runyon -- a detached, humorous and engaging story of everyday life on the edge. It's light on plot and its portrayals of gamblers, bookies, hangers-on and other riffraff are sympathetic. It is definitely fun with only superficial exploration of the real-world accompaniments to life on the edge -- drugs, physical breakdowns, con games, prostitutes, thefts and a general lack of, shall we say, mental stability among the larger than life -- often physically so -- characters.
In essence, the story is little more than a frame to hang the sketches on. It is apparently a fictionalized memoir of the author's journeying in the world of gambling, acting as a go-fer, confidante and voice of reality in working for slobs who are brilliant gamblers and out of control, out of shape and in and out of money. It is larger than life though based on it and requires a suspension of disbelief in many places. It is partly about her own journey from drift to love and on to graduate school, via New York, Las Vegas and Costa Rica. The journey leads her from a tight relationship -- nonsexual -- with Dink, a gambling whiz to Jeremy --- definitely sexual, the journalist with whom she begins to settle down.
The portrayals are largely a series of short crises, roller-coaster ventures in placing and/or taking bets, and the emotional turmoils of a wide range of characters who pass through the chaos.
The strength of the book is that the stories are fun, with plenty of colorful snippets. Beth Raymer writes very, very well. The prose seems almost effortless in its flow (which takes a lot of effort and even more talent) and has no striving for effect, hype, or wasted words. It is laconic and observant and provides body to what would otherwise be yet another smart-ass comic novel about misfits.
I recommend the book as a very enjoyable read that is alive, pointed in its observations and just fun.