THE LIFE OF A BOOKIE – CHICAGO

There are only four markets in Major League Baseball that have two teams. One of those is Chicago. So you know that it’s a “major” place to be.

The Windy City is a great sports town. Not only do they have the Cubs and White Sox, but “Da Bears” and “Da Bulls,” although Michael Jordan is not running up and down the floor any longer. And the Blackhawks have long been one of the NHL’s most solid franchises.

• This is not a metropolitan area that has a lot of transients. So what you are going to find in Chicago is that you’ll encounter a lot of genuine loyalists. And you’ll have to tailor your bookie business accordingly.

What we mean is that you can look at this situation when you are going to make your lines. You are going to take a long look at moving according to what you expect your players to do. With the NFL games played by the Bears, it’s probably easier, because you can hold the line for a few days while YOU gather the information that is necessary to settle on a number.

• If you don’t understand any of that, we’ll explain. When you have the PPH software from Real Bookies, you have a lot of latitude as to how you place your odds on any given game. The numbers come in from a very solid line service, but you can go into your “back end” and make adjustments if your needs dictate it.

This presents the opportunity to beat a local crowd, whatever the sport is.

There are some similarities between Chicago and another city with dyed-in-the-wool sports fans, like New York.

• One of those similarities is that both cities boast very street-smart bettors. So make no mistake about it – they are going to take advantage of a bad number if that’s what you put up.
• You can make a lot of these moves when you determine when to do it, and not before that. When dealing with heavy local sports activity and lots of locals who are probably in the fold with you, it’s very critical that you be on top of things as far as injuries are concerned. So don’t be in the dark about that.

The dynamic with some of these teams is interesting. It would not be unfair to say that this is a “Cubs town.” The White Sox just don’t get as much attention or respect. Let’s put it this way – the White Sox have hinted at moving out of town in the past. The Cubs would never think of leaving Wrigley Field. It is such an institution that the houses across the street, in the residential neighborhood it resides in, have lent themselves to having “stadium clubs” built on their roofs, so that patrons can watch games from there.

This is pretty much the oldest NFL city, as the Chicago Bears and George Halas were there virtually from the beginning. Be VERY prepared for your clientele to jump on the Bears at every opportunity, and therefore it is perhaps judicious of you to wait and see which way the lines are moving before posting something for your customers in the Windy City. This is something you can very easily do with the PPH software, as you are at the controls. And remember that when you find some of your players are ALWAYS betting the Bears, or any other Chicago team for that matter, you even have the latitude to adjust the lines on a per-player basis, because of the “player management” capability of the software itself. Just contact the Real Bookies offices and you can get that done.

The one thing we would advise you to do is to be very careful about college basketball with your customers. There are probably about 20 college basketball programs to be found within a couple of hours of Chicago, so it is quite possible that some of your players are going to be have information about one of the programs that you are not aware of.

What you’ll want to do is track the patterns of your customers to see if they are a little too “sharp” on any school in a way in which it looks suspicious. Remember that you can also limit the menu offerings to players, based on your own judgment. The controls are at your fingertips.

There is a lot to enjoy around Chicago. It’s still the third largest city in the nation. And while the Windy City has acquired a reputation as a place that is dangerous as far as gun violence is concerned, that’s probably not where you’re going to recruit players or collect anyway.

There are affluent suburbs, like Evanston. You have much to enjoy on the North Side. There are still a lot of places to network and recruit players that way. There is some of the best pizza in the country to be found, and then, of course, there is Chicago Beef.

One thing you can’t have any “beef” with is that opportunities abound for you as a bookie in one of the great cities of the world.