Prop Betting, Blocked on X, and The Poker Hall of Fame | Ep. 38

The shocking case of Jontay Porter, a 24-year-old NBA player banned for life due to gambling corruption, serves as the centerpiece of Norman Chad's passionate warning about the dark evolution of sports betting. Chad masterfully dissects how prop bets have created a dangerous new pathway for gambling corruption that requires just a single player's participation – unlike traditional game-fixing schemes that demanded multiple conspirators.

Chapters

• 0:15 Introducing Gambling Mad
• 1:15 The Dark Side of Prop Bets
• 5:33 Cleveland Guardians Betting Spotlight
• 8:53 Trump Administration Critique
• 14:14 Poker Hall of Fame Problems
• 22:34 Warren Buffett's GOAT Status

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

After signing his scorecard, the president then signed an executive order directing a nuclear attack on all nations that do not have a Trump Golf Club. Mr Trump indicated he would prefer the bombs to be dropped mid-afternoon next Tuesday, after a light late lunch. Norman Chad, norman Chad, welcome to Gambling Mad with Norman Chad. I am Norman Chad, coming up on the program today. I am ranting about UFC, I am gloating about Warren Buffett and I am blocked again on X by another Trump white houser. Gambling Mad as always, brought to you by Fritos Picked fresh off of Central California trees each morning, delivered directly to your local retailer each afternoon, and by the refreshing taste of Fresca Fritos and Fresca. It's a meal. Yes, we are called gambling mad, but I wish on occasion, we could be called gambling glad it ain't happening.

Speaker 1: 1:15

The gambling world is worsening by the month, by the week, by the minute. Last week I talked about the problem with prop bets and, frankly, I let everybody down because there was something obvious that I did not see. Prop bets can involve a particular player and say in basketball how many points, rebounds or assists that player gets in a game. Certain states with legalized sports betting are banning prop bets on college athletes. That, I told you makes sense. College athletes younger, less financially stable than pro athletes are more vulnerable, more susceptible to being approached to do the wrong thing. But here is where I had tunnel vision Prop bets involving pro athletes. They're also ripe for nefarious activity, which brings us to the NBA's Jonte Porter, who we'll get back to momentarily.

Speaker 1: 2:10

Traditionally, if you're going to fix a game in team sports, you might need the cooperation of several participants. An infamous example of this the 1919 Chicago White Sox, when eight of their players took gamblers' money to make sure that they would lose World Series games. Now you can try to fix results, sometimes with just one key player a starting pitcher in baseball, the quarterback in football. But that's no guarantee of success. The starting pitcher might be replaced before giving up too many runs. The quarterback might throw interceptions intentionally, but on that day his team's defense plays very, very well. This brings us to the beauty of the prop bet. The result of the game is meaningless. What is meaningful is simply the statistical performance of a single player.

Speaker 1: 3:03

Let's go to the NBA now and the story of 24-year-old Toronto Raptors backup center, jonte Porter, as related in a terrific article by the Washington Post's. Albert Samaha Porter had accumulated a large gambling debt. He then became entangled with several gamblers with a paper trail showing that he was providing inside information to them on his performance before games. And this is where prop bets and parlay bets collided, offering these gamblers and Ponte and Porter a chance for a big payday. Parleys are multiple bets on one ticket two bets, three bets, four bets, etc. With the payoff growing as the total number of wagers on your ticket increase. You have to be right on all of the wagers for the ticket to cash. So this is what happened.

Speaker 1: 3:56

According to the US Attorney's Office investigation Last NBA season, porter, on more than one occasion, would indicate to the gambling syndicate that he was going to fall ill during the game. So let's take one March 2024 night, the gamblers wagered a multi-leg ticket that Porter would score fewer than seven and a half points. He would get fewer than five and a half rebounds and accumulate no assists, no steals, no blocks, no three-pointers. They risked $109,900 for the opportunity to win $1.3 million if all those propositions came in. So in this game, porter came into the game two minutes 43 seconds left. In the first quarter. He got a couple of rebounds and he missed a jump shot. At the end of the quarter. Porter then told his Raptors coaches that he was feeling ill. He did not play again. So all those totals I mentioned earlier, they came in correctly all came in under.

Speaker 1: 4:59

For that parlay bet to pay more than a million dollars. For that parlay bet to pay more than a million dollars. According to court records, this activity repeated itself Another time in telegram chat. Porter told the group he would pull himself after a two or three minute stint and he wrote hit the unders for the big number. At halftime he messaged the group that he would complain about an eye injury and again he sat out the rest of the game. Eventually, online sports books informed authorities that an unusually large amount of money was being wagered on a marginal player. The NBA investigated and issued a lifetime ban for John Tate Porter, the first player barred from the NBA for gambling in 70 years. You're fired.

Speaker 1: 5:44

The games and their integrity eventually could be under siege because of sports betting money, sometimes dirty money, like we saw here with Porter, but sometimes when it's even clean. You know I haven't even discussed today the threat to gambling addicts. Because of the advent of in-game betting, you can do that from the palm of your hand with a smartphone. This is not gambling, glad folks. This is more and more gambling, mad. Well, it is time for us to gamble. Yeah, I'm in therapy. I tell you the problems with gambling and then I advise you on how to gamble. But never forget, when you bet along with us here at Gambling Mad, you lose less.

Speaker 1: 6:30

Today, we're going to bless the city of Cleveland, ohio, one of America's most cursed sports towns. The Cleveland Browns have not won an NFL title since 1964, and they have never even been to the Super Bowl. The Cleveland Cavaliers, in their 54-year history, have only one NBA title in 2016, courtesy of LeBron James. And the Cleveland Guardians have not won the World Series since 1948. One, of course, they were still the Cleveland Indians. So we are backing the Guardians this season not to win it all.

Speaker 1: 7:03

How stupid do I look? I could have sworn. I heard somebody back there answer that question. How stupid do I look? No, I'm not betting on them to win it all. I am going to bet on the Guardians to win over 82.5 games. They just have to finish a little over 500 for me to win the bet. The Guardians won 92 games last season and the AL Central title, but conventional wisdom says the Guardians have gotten worse and the other good teams in their division the Twins, the Royals, the Tigers have gotten better. So Cleveland is due for a big fall. Hey, I am not roommates with conventional wisdom. I don't like the looks of conventional wisdom. I don't listen to conventional wisdom.

Speaker 1: 7:55

The Guardians still have Stephen Kwan and Jose Ramirez at the top of their lineup. They still have Tanner Bybee as one of the best young starting pitchers in baseball. Do they have a lot of question marks otherwise? Sure. Do they have a lot of question marks otherwise? Sure, but I believe many of those question marks will turn into exclamation points. That's some next level analysis there. Huh, the Guardians. You know they always develop players well and I like the cut of the jib of their second year manager, stephen Vogt. Just a reminder, by the way, we keep you up to date on all our bets. My middle name is transparency, though I cannot spell it, so at the moment, risking a fictional $100 on every wager, we have the Guardians to get over 82.5 wins at minus 120. The Denver Nuggets to win the NBA title at 14-1 odds. Nikola Jokic to win NBA MVP at plus 300. And in college basketball, st John's to make the Final Four at plus 650. St Mary's to make the Final Four at plus 2,500. Hey, if I just get one of those March Madness picks right, we're in the black for all those bets. That's how it works when you're taking the underdog.

Speaker 1: 9:09

68 teams were selected for March Madness, the NCAA men's basketball tournament just underway. West Virginia was not one of them. The Mountaineers were apparently the best team, snubbed. I feel bad for West Virginia. I feel worse for West Virginians whose governor is Patrick Morrissey. He called West Virginia being left out of the tournament quote a miscarriage of justice and robbery at the highest level. End quote he has asked his attorney general to investigate. He said this thing reeks of corruption. The governor stood at a lectern with a sign that read National Corrupt Athletic Association. Now, that's a nice touch. To be sure. West Virginia probably deserve to a spot in the tournament and the NCAA shouldn't even exist. But I'm not losing any sleep over this Heck big time. Division one athletics shouldn't even exist. But don't get me started on that. A very simple solution to all this. So we don't have to go to courts and we're not giving depositions to people on the selection committee and so forth Just let all the schools into March Madness, we're talking an extra weekend of games. I've said it for years Let them all in. What, what, what you disagree, I don't give a damn what you think.

Speaker 1: 10:33

Conor McGregor spoke at the White House on St Patrick's Day and spoke out against a wave of immigrants in his homeland of Ireland. Interesting that the US government would give a bullhorn to a bully with a rap sheet that stretches longer than the Washington Monument. Among the MMA fighters' many sexual misconduct charges is a rape conviction, which calls to mind the big men on campus in the current administration, where the motto is if you're not mistreating women, you're not trying hard enough. Pete Hegseth, secretary of Defense, paid a woman who accused him of sexual assault. Rfk Jr, secretary of Health and Human Services, is a serial adulterer who once groped a family babysitter. Elon Musk, dictator of Doge, was sued by eight former SpaceX employees for fostering a sexually charged atmosphere and treating women as sexual objects. Matt Gaetz would be Attorney General. Oh, okay, that's right, we don't have to worry about him at the moment.

Speaker 1: 11:35

Oh, and I almost forgot Donald J Trump, who has been publicly accused by 25 women of sexual misconduct. The president has denied all of the allegations and other than that one time in which he walked in on naked teenage pageant contestants, as I like to say in New York, move along, move along. Nothing to see here. Time for Trump. Tittle Tattle, all the latest news on the man who signs his name so often only because he can spell it. Cue the music Do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do Seems to be maybe down one horn this week. Who knows, could be sick leave. President Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to speed up his mass deportation efforts, despite being unaware of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 until someone mentioned it at breakfast earlier in the day. I have the best people. The Trump administration is performing polygraph tests on Department of Homeland Security employees to determine who is leaking information operations to the media. Personal note if I were working for Homeland Security, I would refuse to take the polygraph, but I would admit to leaking information.

Speaker 1: 12:52

President Trump again won the club championship at Trump International Club in West Palm Beach, florida his third straight, I believe. After signing his scorecard, the president then signed an executive order directing a nuclear attack on all nations that do not have a Trump golf club. Mr Trump indicated he would prefer the bombs to be dropped mid-afternoon next Tuesday. After a light late lunch, president Trump declared all the presidential pardons issued by Joe Biden invalid because they allegedly were signed by an auto pen. The president also voided the Declaration of Independence because two of the signers, samuel Adams and Josiah Bartlett, used blue ink instead of black ink. Adams reportedly also spilled beer on the preamble. And finally, president Trump attacked Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer saying, quote Schumer is a Palestinian. As far as I'm concerned, he used to be Jewish. He's not Jewish anymore. End quote. Schumer was seen later that night at a debutante ball eating pork chops, frozen peas and wheat thins. That is this week's Trump. Tittle tattle, you're fired.

Speaker 1: 14:13

President Trump is considering a new travel ban that would restrict or sharply restrict citizens from 43 nations from entering the USA. This sharply contrasts with my travel ban, which bars anyone booking a Spirit Airlines flight from entering my home. A 43-nation ban from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. 43 nations there are 195 nations in the world. The world's greatest salesman is putting up a sorry, we're closed sign to nearly one quarter of the world's nations. This seems like a lot of paperwork, security checks, double checking, passports and red tape If we want to isolate ourselves from the rest of planet Earth.

Speaker 1: 14:53

I have a better idea. Let's go to our national map to explain. So we don't want people coming to America anymore. So it's simple we build bubbles over the USA. One big bubble, my engineering friends tell me, is a logistical nightmare, but several smaller bubbles are realistic. You put it over a state, over a region. So what we do here and this project shouldn't take more than several years you know you have Sector A will be the Northeast, sector B the Mid-Atlantic, sector D the Midwest and so forth, covering all the countries with a bubble. We're not forgetting about Alaska, that's Sector I, or the Hawaiian Islands, that's Sector J. Okay, this is realistic to put all these bubbles over us.

Speaker 1: 15:40

And this accomplishes four things at once. Well, first of all, elon should be able to do this, actually in less than four years. It's going to create jobs, just like the Hoover Dam once did. It will keep unwanted foreigners out of the United States and, of course, it will protect us from climate events. However, even with the bubbles, it is still projected to be 122 degrees in Phoenix for a month of Sundays for the rest of the century. Traffic and weather on the fives all weekend.

Speaker 1: 16:11

Let's go back to the desk. Dan Bongino, the new deputy director of the FBI, blocked me on X last month. Ooh, I'm shaking. And now Carrie Lake, perpetual Arizona election loser and denier and the new head of the Voice of America, has also blocked me on X. Ooh, I'm shaking, but I'm getting. I guess I'm kind of getting the message from the Trump administration.

Speaker 1: 16:39

One free speech is selective. Two stay off of X. X is the worst place in America outside of a Tupperware party at Marjorie Taylor Greene's house on a Saturday night. I stay on X primarily for one reason to fight Elon Musk from within. Me and my 60,000 followers are going to storm the castle when Elon and his 220 million followers least expect it and we will restore civility, humanity and decency to public discourse. Oh, before I forget, if someone sees Carrie Lake, because I cannot dialogue with her anymore, let her know that President Trump put her in charge of the Voice of America moments before dismantling the Voice of America, which does leave us with this chilling reality the Voice of America had operated since World War II, the voice of freedom worldwide. Donald Trump is now the Voice of America. This is as good a time as any to remind everyone.

Speaker 1: 17:47

First there was MAGA. Some people love MAGA, love me, some MAGA. Then Came Mega. Mega is better than MAGA. What is Mega? Make Elon go away why? Because he is stomping on liberties. He's stomping on free speech, he's stomping on the Constitution and he's stomping on traditional media. Nobody, nobody, stomps on traditional media on my watch. You want to make America great again. Make Elon go away. Hashtag mega.

Speaker 1: 18:34

I want you to take a look at this woman over my shoulder. Her name is Kristi Noem. Is she the Secretary of Homeland Security or is she the star of the hit new CBS series NCIS Mall Cop? Every day, she shows up on my internet feed in a different uniform, looking like she's about to rescue a cat out of a tree or arrest a drug lord. When does she actually work? She is photographed more than Sidney Sweeney's breasts. President Trump ordered all federal workers back to the office, yet this woman spends four hours a day in a naval surplus store shopping for military fatigues. Oh, and let's not forget Christie, our director of Homeland Security, once killed her dog because it wasn't working out.

Speaker 1: 19:22

The Poker Hall of Fame is broken. I am speaking figuratively. It cannot be physically broken because there is no actual physical location for the Poker Hall of Fame. I would host the Poker Hall of Fame in my own house, but poker players tend to track a lot of dirt when they come into your home, and Tony would leave me sooner than she's planning to.

Speaker 1: 19:46

Here are the problems with the Poker Hall of Fame. One it is too US-centric. It doesn't acknowledge the growth of poker worldwide and the contributions of people outside of the United States, of people outside of the United States. Two, there is a backlog of individuals who should be in the Hall of Fame, but only one person is inducted each year. Three builders and contributors should be in a separate pool from players for consideration, otherwise they seldom get in. So how do we fix it? Okay, obviously you got to allow more than one qualified person per year to be inducted. Other Hall of Fames routinely put in two, three, four people. Baseball can put in two, three, four people. Same with football. Also. Right now, the minimum age to get into the poker hall is 40. Poker is different than most other games or sports. For a poker pro, age 40 is probably halfway into their career. They haven't even completely defined themselves yet, so I would increase the minimum age to 50, at the very least to 45.

Speaker 1: 20:50

Also, who votes for the Poker Hall of Fame? Only the other Poker Hall of Famers. The poker world always marches to the beat of its own stupid drum, and this is no exception. I can think of no other sport in which the Hall of Famers are the ones who decide who joins them. It used to be a mix of Hall of Famers and poker media who voted. That was a better system, but I would take it out of the hands of the poker Hall of famers completely. They got built-in biases. They got friends and enemies. They have their cliques. They have no regard for the big picture, so it should be media and industry veterans voting for the hall of fame.

Speaker 1: 21:31

I used to be a hall of fame voter before they changed it. You know, I would compare poker players resumes, the candidates resumes, and I would talk to people in the industry to get some input, get some other opinions. Most poker Hall of Famers are not doing any homework to inform their vote. They simply have opinions and they treat those opinions as fact. Well, here is an opinion I will treat as fact the late Thor Hansen and the late Miami John Cernuto. Both should have been in the Hall of Fame five or ten years ago, among many others who've been overlooked by those in a rush to induct the next 40-year-old. You want to know how young 40 is. I wasn't even in the poker industry when I was 40. I spent my 20s and 30s chasing skirts, surfing the big waves and enjoying a cool, refreshing fresca.

Speaker 1: 22:34

Before we wrap up, I'm going to say this one time, and one time only. I'm going to say this one time and one time only. Of all the GOATs in my lifetime, no one is GOATier than Warren Buffett. Lebron James has been NBA GOAT over a 22-year career. Tom Brady was NFL GOAT over 23 years. George Carlin was a stand-up comic GOAT for nearly 50 years. George Carlin was a stand-up comic goat for nearly 50 years.

Speaker 1: 23:02

Warren Buffett has been the Oracle of Omaha, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, beating the market for 55 years. He is 94 years old. I don't know a thing about Wall Street, but Buffett has been so good for so long. There's no evidence that he's ever engaged in insider trading, though he reportedly violated his company's ethics policies on a handful of occasions by personally trading the same stocks as the conglomerate. Last week, he was an investing wizard yet again. He had sold most of his Apple shares and built a massive cash pile, so when the stock market collapsed and most people got crushed, he was holding more than $300 billion in Treasury bills. I'm not even sure what that means. I am sure that that's got to be better than my week the grocery store was out of Farmer John's bacon. Then my week the grocery store was out of Farmer John's bacon, so I got a rain check to save $2.75 per package. When they are back in stock, that will do it for another edition of Gambling Mad with Norman Chad. Hope to see you again next time and remember, if you're going to roll the dice, make sure they are loaded.

Speaker 1: 24:21

I've never been a mixed martial arts fan. Then again, I've always been behind the pop culture. Curve Jamba Juice sounded like a terrible idea to me. Texting seems stupid. Why wouldn't you just call the other person? And then there was the UFC as it came into being in the last generation. I thought to myself this is just boxing, but more violent. Do we really need more violent? What type of question is that? This is America. We always want more violent. And while I appreciate the athletic art and skill involved in combining boxing, jiu-jitsu, karate, judo, wrestling, kickboxing and various other brutal and savage barbarities, I'm not crazy about the spectacle of it. I'm not sure it's the healthiest anecdote for our society. So sure, label me the beta male. I am, but yeah, I get squeamish watching one person render the other unconscious for the sake of our entertainment. Even worse, the next time I see a human-type individual reduced to a bloody, bloodshot, bloodstained, bloodletting, blood-soaked, blood-curdling, blood-splattered bloodbath, I will go gambling mad.

Speaker 2: 25:36

Gambling Mad with Norman Chadd is written by Norman Chad and Ghosts, written by Norman Chad. Executive producers are John Scheinberg and Rick Barriodil. Produced by Norman Chad and Rick Barriodil. Our associate producers are Bree Khoury and Asher Freidberg. And edited by Asher Freidberg, with studio facilities at 360 Pod Studios, beverly Hills.