Gal writes the book on bookies....Big Apple gambling tales

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Beth Raymer was in a panic.



Her biggest player, a Long Island guy named Dave Greenberg, lost a bundle, wouldn't pay and couldn't be found. Raymer, a bookie's agent, knew an uncollected debt spelled disaster.



Finally, she got a chilling voice message from the deadbeat himself.
"I was in trouble in the stock market years ago . . . I'm on probation," he said. "And, uh, my parole officer wants to talk to me about who I've been speaking to on my cellphone. He has all the numbers."



The numbers included the cell of her fiancé, Jeremy, who had been collecting bets for her start-up, and now Raymer faced a horrible choice: Eat the $25,000 debt or risk jail for both of them. She had to make Dave settle up without getting ratted out.



<!-- context: middle --> But how was a nice girl like Raymer, 34, a Fulbright scholar with an endearing giggle and a habit of twirling her curls, supposed to pull off a Tony Soprano?



She recounts those and other high-stakes dramas in "Lay the Favorite," an account of her life working in the underground trenches of professional, and often illegal, gambling, which took her across New York City, Las Vegas and the seedy international betting meccas of Curacao and Costa Rica.



Many who rule the industry are nothing like Hollywood's tough-talking Mafiosi, she says. They're nebbishy nerds who pig out on junk food, gaze at computers all day, work constantly and have no clue how to deal with people.



"They're all Jewish kids who went to Stuyvesant," Raymer says. "They're mathematically inclined, but their social skills are lacking. It's what makes them cute."



"They're all Jewish kids who went to Stuyvesant," Raymer says. "They're mathematically inclined, but their social skills are lacking. It's what makes them cute."
The daughter of a Florida car salesman with a gambling problem, Raymer had been to the track a few times as a kid but had a sketchy résumé: amateur boxer, social worker, "in-house stripper" -- she danced for lonely-hearts at their homes for $150 an hour -- and waitress.



She met bookie Douglas "Dink" Heimowitz, of Forest Hills, Queens, through a mutual friend in 2001. After taking a job as his assistant, Raymer met all manner of comically named insiders, including Fat George, Texas Toast, Chunky, Bah-Bah and Yitzhak, a heavily cologned Israeli chiseler who claimed he could read through playing cards with a laser hidden in his ring.



"New Yorkers love sports, and they love to gamble," said Raymer, who lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. "The minute you open that can, people are like, 'I need that! Can you get me in?' "



One of her tasks was "pay and collect" -- delivering winnings and taking money from those who lost. It brought her to every corner of New York, "from a laundromat in Chinatown to a dentist office on Park Avenue," she told The Post.



"My biggest fear was leaving behind a backpack on the subway with tens of thousands of dollars."



And, of course, there was always the worry about getting busted. Betting on sports is illegal almost everywhere outside of Vegas, and bookmaking can earn you a lengthy prison term.



That nightmare became a possibility with Raymer's dilemma over Greenberg, who ran up his $25,000 tab betting on NFL games in a single, disastrous weekend.
"He was a huge Jets fan," she said.



They worked out a risky compromise. He paid her $1,000, and she agreed to reopen his account.



When the lucky louse hit a long-shot, seven-team baseball parlay, the day was saved. The $25,000 debt was more than wiped out. Dave even won $20,000 more.



http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/big_apple_gambling_tales_YAalhxRJw93F18oWA0Hx9O

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FreeRyanFerguson.com
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Sounds like a great read. Can you get it at Barnes and Noble?
 
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I got a few comments. Not sure why some real nicknames and a real books name was used. I mean if the guys she is talking about wanted to remain anonymous(which now anyone who reads it who has any ties to the business will know exactly many of the cast of characters). Even the names that were changed a little you can easily figure out who she was talking about.

Second comment is this, and please don't think I am mean, but who did she strip for if that part is true? Blind people?

Anyway...her getting this optioned for the money she did to make a movie has to make many of us think what they could get if they wrote tales from offshore. It would blow this book out of the water.
 
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I got a few comments. Not sure why some real nicknames and a real books name was used. I mean if the guys she is talking about wanted to remain anonymous(which now anyone who reads it who has any ties to the business will know exactly many of the cast of characters). Even the names that were changed a little you can easily figure out who she was talking about.

Second comment is this, and please don't think I am mean, but who did she strip for if that part is true? Blind people?

Anyway...her getting this optioned for the money she did to make a movie has to make many of us think what they could get if they wrote tales from offshore. It would blow this book out of the water.

First off I think it's the Girl thing that they are Looking at......That will probably Sell

Yes, there are a Bunch of us that can write a Book(s) that would sell like Hot Cakes..lol

She Not Hot at all, But I will say that the Picture from the Post does her No Justice as well.....She always had a Great Body though.

Guess we will have to read the Book to see What she said, and Didn't say...
 

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Read about this yesterday in Post. Hard to believe she was given so much responsibility? I could be wrong but seems a bit unusual to me.
 
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Read about this yesterday in Post. Hard to believe she was given so much responsibility? I could be wrong but seems a bit unusual to me.

Believe it or Not, there are other Women in this same Business.
I myself know or Knew 4 women at the same Level Elizabeth.
 
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First off I think it's the Girl thing that they are Looking at......That will probably Sell

Yes, there are a Bunch of us that can write a Book(s) that would sell like Hot Cakes..lol

She Not Hot at all, But I will say that the Picture from the Post does her No Justice as well.....She always had a Great Body though.

Guess we will have to read the Book to see What she said, and Didn't say...

All we need is a roundtable with our mutual friends to start....
 

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