Gambler who won $1.2 million on Tiger Woods' 2019 Masters victory: "I had never placed a bet on sports in my life"
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
As James Adducci watched Tiger Woods' pursuit of history in the final round of the Masters on a 23-inch TV screen in a "tiny, jail cell-sized" room in his parents' house in a rural Wisconsin town, he had to continually wake up his father. His father, at age 82, and with significant health issues, maybe didn't fully grasp the gravity of what he was watching. Tiger was on his way to perhaps completing the best comeback story in sports history , but more importantly to the Adduccis, it would determine the outcome of a $85,000 wager he placed on Tuesday at a William Hill casino.
The younger Adducci, a 39-year-old self-employed daytrader, was a nervous wreck. He flew from Wisconsin to Las Vegas earlier in the week to place the wager, which he claims to be his first-ever bet on sports in his life. A man with a mortgage on his house, two student loans and two car loans decided he would take $85,000, which he said was "everything I had that I could afford to lose," and place it on Tiger. Why? "I just thought it was pre-destined for him to win," Adducci explained when reached on the phone on Monday afternoon.
. . . with a backpack he had just bought at the local Walmart to hold the cash, he went from casino to casino to see who would accept the wager. After being turned away by two casinos, Adducci arrived at the SLS Las Vegas Hotel & Casino, operated by William Hill, and after Director of Trading Nick Bogdanovich discussed with his boss, the sportsbook decided to accept the wager, which ended up being the largest individual payout on a futures bet in the sportsbook conglomerate's U.S. history.
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The $1.2 million is a portion of what sportsbooks around the world lost on Tiger winning his fifth Masters title. And the fact that significant wager came from a man from western Wisconsin makes this story even more unlikely,
"A month before is when I knew I was going to do it," Adducci said. "I had been thinking a lot about this. I watched Tiger's performance at the Tour Championship, and things seemed to be going his way. I looked at how well he did there, and some other factors you can't put stats behind. It wasn't about the stats for me. The fact that this was going to be his first major in front of his kids, I was convinced he would win."
Weeks before, he told his wife about wanting to place this wager, and though he faced a little opposition initially: "She said to me, 'I can't stop you from doing this, because if he wins, I'll never forgive myself.' She's a keeper."
How about another wager on Tiger for the next couple of majors, at familiar confines in Bethpage Black and Pebble Beach?
"If he wins both of those, which I think he'll do, he'll go to Portrush, and I think there's no doubt he'll win the Grand Slam, then go to Augusta next year and take the all-time majors title. That's really the same feeling I had that led me to bet on Tiger in the first place. He can just do amazing, superhuman things that you can't even imagine are true. But he has this aura that makes him different than anybody else."
$85,000 was everything that he could afford to lose...I'm not quite sure what that means, but he did come up a winner.
Congrats to him, but that is definitely not a risk I'd take with my own money
Elated to watch the last few hours of the Masters knowing many sick bastards who bet big bucks for Tiger to fail.
Glad it cost the big betting houses biggly bucks.
Does anyone actually believe that a Guy who would bet 85 Grand on a sporting event has never bet on one before ? I think he's full of it.
At first I thought the story a bit odd.
But it is possible that he never bet on sports before.B ut he's a very, very experienced gambler-- I realized that when I read what he does:
The younger Adducci, a 39-year-old self-employed daytrader,
Daytraders (stocks) frequently take big risks-- in fact that's mostly what they do. There are certain principles they use to minimize risks. But they use a lot of "leverage"-- money borrowed overnight on margin. So potentially they can earn tremendous amounts of money-- or lose tremendous amounts.
And while there are certain principles for success, a lot of it is intuition-- and successful daytraders are very intuitive.
So while he may not have much knowledge of sports, apparently he had a strong "feeling"-- an intuitive hit-- that Tiger would win.
(I believe that some successful daytraders have fairly well developped intuitive abilities)