Tony Bloom Gambler
Tony 'The Lizard' Bloom, a gambler at heart, is unlikely to give up just because the odds are against him. NOW WATCH: Watch Martin Shkreli laugh and refuse to answer questions during his testimony to Congress. See Also: The 100 coolest people in UK tech. Here are the 27 countries with the highest levels of. That honor goes to Englishman Tony Bloom, who was featured in a lengthy profile by Business Insider in 2016. Bloom, a veteran gambler who owns the Brighton & Hove Albion Football Club (that’s.
Tony Bloom Gambler Book
Tony Bloom has been hailed as one of the top poker players in the world, and over the years has mixed it up at the tables against such greats a Phil Ivey and Daniel Negreanu. Although the exact amount of wealth he has acquired through his poker, sportsbetting and gambling enterprises is not known, the notoriously private gambler is believed to be a billionaire.
After all of his success, though, Bloom is now gambling in a whole new way–on the Brighton and Hove Albion Football Club. And not as a sports bettor either. Instead, Bloom serves as the Chair and owner of the team, and is betting big on keeping his side in the Premier League. In fact, since acquiring Brighton, Bloom has already invested more than £200 million in the club.
Gambling Past
The 47-year-old has been gambling since he was 15, and he has loved football for just as long. His grandfather was the vice Chairman of Brighton and was fond of horse and dog racing. As a result, Bloom credits the man as the source of his gambling genes, with Bloom having attended games alongside his father and grandfather, sitting in the luxurious director’s box throughout the action.
“My grandad Harry who was vice chairman [of Brighton] for all of the 1970s, he had a big interest in betting,” explains Bloom, “but more horse racing and dogs, betting on football wasn’t really around when he was growing up. I think that comes down genetically to some extent so I probably get it from him. I bet on Brighton occasionally growing up. To be quite clear, that was when I had no involvement!”
As the owner, he now travels by train to watch the team play in the stands alongside other players, and has said that’s the way he prefers to see the club.
Brighton Acquisition
Bloom purchased Brighton 11 years ago from Dick Knight, using money from his gambling winnings and from the founding of Premier Bet. He then invested in funds for a new stadium and practice facility, all with one goal in mind–getting the team up to standards so they could be admitted into the Premier League. That in and of itself was quite the gamble, as there was no guarantee that his efforts would be successful.
The investments meant that Brighton operated in the red for two years straight, but posting losses of £25 to £30 million per year did not phase Bloom. As a seasoned gambler, he weighed the potential of risk and reward and decided it was worth the bet.
Checkered Past
Brighton has had struggles on the field as well. Injuries reduced the team to a bare bones lineup at one point, and a few years back the team was at the very bottom of the rankings of League One. Still, the football club has since rebounded, and for three years, Brighton has reached the top tier of the Championship league, and although they did not get promoted automatically, after several attempts, it was still quite a feat.
That all changed at the end of last season, and now that Brighton is a part of the Premier League, the gamble is far from over. In fact, many feel that the odds of the team staying up and remaining competitive are low. Bloom does not seem to be concerned, though. Much as he does at the poker tables, he remains focused on the win and isn’t letting the speculation and risk shake his confidence. Only time will tell if he and his football club can beat the odds, but with Bloom’s mix of well-calculated strategy and gambler’s luck, those who want to bet against him may wish to think twice.
Story So Far
As of September 9th, Brighton are currently lying at number 17 in the Premier League on just 1 point, having secured one draw and no wins from three games. It still early days, though, and Brighton’s initial games have been against tough opposition, including Manchester City and Leicester. Bloom will therefore be hoping that his team will be able to quickly adapt to the highly competitive and skilled environment of the Premier League and start notching up a few wins, especially as his side starts facing teams that they have a more reasonable chance of scoring a result against.
In other words, a teams success often depends upon just small margins, as highlighted by the fact for three seasons Brighton reached the play-offs, but ultimately failed to qualify after losing at the last hurdle. Just like in the past, Brighton may be facing long odds of success in one of the world’s most competitive leagues, but through the determination they have shown in the past, Bloom is hopeful that his team will still be there come the beginning of next season.
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The Supreme Court has overturned a federal ban on state-authorized gambling on sporting events, thus reopening the door to a profession that has long boasted its fair share of Jewish participants, some legendary in the field.
The likes of Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel, of course, were instrumental in organizing gambling on a host of activities — pretty much anything you could place a bet on — especially on cards and games of chance in casinos in Cuba, Miami, and Las Vegas. The characters of Hyman Roth and Moe Greene in “The Godfather” films were loosely based on Lansky and Siegel, respectively.
Arnold “The Brain” Rothstein was probably the most notorious Jewish sports gambler of all time. He first focused on horse racing, in which his wide net of informants trading inside information helped establish him as a kingpin of organized crime in the early 20th century, making him a millionaire by age 30. And though it’s still a matter of some controversy, Rothstein is generally credited with one of the biggest sports bets of all time: the so-called Black Sox Scandal of 1919, in which someone — Rothstein? — paid the Chicago White Sox to deliberately lose the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. The fix paid off handsomely to those who bet on the Reds, including Rothstein himself, who nonetheless was never indicted for the crime.
But Rothstein was just one of a long line of Jewish sports gamblers, dating back at least as far as Dr. Robert Underwood, who, according to the New York Times, is considered the founding father of modern bookies. “Doc Underwood, as all gamblers knew him,” wrote The Times, “sold his first pool in 1855 in New Orleans on a match race between the horses Lexington and LeCompte and later ran a betting operation out of the basement of the United States Hotel in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.” According to Leonard Jay Greenspoon’s “Jews in the Gym: Judaism, Sports, and Athletics,” Underwood was followed in the profession in subsequent years by several prominent members of the tribe, including Sol Lichtenstein, Abe Levy and Kid Weller.
Leaping ahead by a century of so, in 1984, gambling was considered such a problem in the Jewish community in New York City that the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies formed a Task Force on Compulsive Gambling. The New York Times’s report on the proceedings quoted Rabbi Marc Gellman of Temple Beth Torah in Dix Hills, L.I., thusly: “’It is in the texts of our tradition and in our history. The Talmud refers to gamblers with a Greek word meaning ‘players with dice.’ In the 15th century cards became popular among Jewish communities of medieval Europe, and tennis became a betting game. By the 18th century they were heavily involved in various forms of lotteries.”
Just this past April, self-described “Jew turned evangelical Christian” Wayne Allyn Root, a conservative talk show host, presciently hailed the expected Supreme Court ruling in a column in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, in which he fondly recalled his days working with perhaps the most famous sports gambler of modern times, Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder.
Tony Bloom Gambler Cast
In the past few years, Robert Gorodetsky, a 20-something college dropout from Chicago, has become the most prominent sports gambler in Las Vegas. Profiled in USA Today as “the future face of sports gambling,” Gorodetsky who has ostentatiously gambled with Jewish rapper Drake and New York Giants wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. — has been touted as the most likely sports gambler to become a billionaire in the U.S. once betting on sports is legalized outside of Nevada. It looks like with the new Supreme Court ruling, Gorodetsky may have just scored big-time.
Gorodetsky, however, won’t be the first Jewish sports gambler to have achieved membership in the billionaires’ club. That honor goes to Englishman Tony Bloom, who was featured in a lengthy profile by Business Insider in 2016. Bloom, a veteran gambler who owns the Brighton & Hove Albion Football Club (that’s soccer to you Americans), made millions setting up an online bookmaker and poker websites in the 2000s, and his net worth is estimated by some to now run into the billions. Bloom now owns Starlizard, “a company that treats gambling the way hedge funds treat stocks,” acting “more like a betting adviser than a bookmaker — it doesn’t actually take bets.”
As for whether or not any of this activity is kosher, that’s up for interpretation. The closest line in scripture dealing with gambling is probably this one from Proverbs 13:11: “Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished, but he who gathers by hand will increase.”
Tony Bloom Gambler Movie
Seth Rogovoy is a contributing editor at the Forward.