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orse racing is something like a religion in Hong
Kong, whose citizens bet more than anyone
else on Earth. Their cathedral is Happy Valley
Racecourse, whose grassy oval track and lood-
lit stands are ringed at night by one of the sport’s
grandest views: neon skyscrapers and neat stacks of high-
rises, a constellation of illuminated windows, and beyond
them, lush hills silhouetted in darkness.
On the evening of Nov. 6, 2001, all of Hong Kong was
talking about the biggest jackpot the city had ever seen: at
least HK$100 million (then about $13 million) for the win-
ner of a single bet called the Triple Trio. The wager is a lit-
tle like a trifecta of trifectas; it requires players to predict
the top three horses, in any order, in three diferent heats.
More than 10 million combinations are possible. When no
one picks correctly, the prize money rolls over to the next
set of races. That balmy November night, the pot had gone
unclaimed six times over. About a million people placed a
bet—equivalent to 1 in 7 city residents.
At Happy Valley’s ground level, young women in beer
tents passed foamy pitchers to laughing expats, while the
local Chinese, for whom gambling is a more serious afair,
clutched racing newspapers and leaned over the handrails.
At the crack of the starter’s pistol, the announcer’s voice
rang out over loudspeakers: “Last leg of the Triple Trio,” he
shouted in Australian-accented English, “and away they go!”
As the pack thundered around the inal bend, two horses
muscled ahead. “It’s Mascot Treasure a length in front, but
Bobo Duck is gunning him down,” said the announcer, voice
rising. “Bobo Duck in front. Mascot ighting back!” The crowd
roared as the riders raced across the inish line. Bobo Duck
edged Mascot Treasure, and Frat Rat came in third.
Across the road from Happy Valley, 27 floors up, two
Americans sat in a plush oice, ignoring a live feed of the action
that played mutely on a TV screen. The only sound was the
hum of a dozen computers. Bill Benter and an associate named
Paul Coladonato had their eyes ixed on a bank of three mon-
itors, which displayed a matrix
of bets their algorithm had made
on the race—51,381 in all.
Benter and Coladonato
watched as a software script il-
tered out the losing bets, one at
a time, until there were 36 lines
left on the screens. Thirty-ive of
their bets had correctly called
the inishers in two of the races, qualifying for a consolation
prize. And one wager had correctly predicted all nine horses.
“F---,” Benter said. “We hit it.”
It wasn’t immediately clear how much they’d made, so
the two Americans attempted some back-of-the-envelope
math until the oicial dividend lashed on TV eight minutes
later. Benter and Coladonato had won a jackpot of $16 mil-
lion. Benter counted the zeros to make sure, then turned to
his colleague.
“We can’t collect this—can we?” he asked. “It would be
unsporting. We’d feel bad about ourselves.” Coladonato
agreed they couldn’t. On a nearby table, pink betting slips
were arranged in a tidy pile. The two men picked through
them, isolating three slips that contained all 36 winning lines.
They stared at the pieces of paper for a long time.
Then they posed, laughing, for a photo—two professional
gamblers with the biggest prize of their careers, one they
would never claim—and locked the tickets in a safe. No big
deal, Benter igured. They could make it back, and more, over
the rest of the racing season.
eteran gamblers know you can’t beat the horses.
There are too many variables and too many
possible outcomes. Front-runners break a leg.
Jockeys fall. Champion thoroughbreds decide,
for no apparent reason, that they’re simply not
in the mood. The American sportswriter Roger Kahn once
called the sport “animated roulette.” Play for long enough,
and failure isn’t just likely but inevitable—so the wisdom goes.
“If you bet on horses, you will lose,” says Warwick Bartlett,
who runs Global Betting & Gaming Consultants and has spent
years studying the industry.
What if that wasn’t true? What if there was one person
who masterminded a system that guaranteed a proit? One
person who’d made almost a billion dollars, and who’d never
told his story—until now?
In September, after a long campaign to reach him through
friends and colleagues, I received an email from Benter. “I
have been avoiding you, as you might have surmised,” he
wrote. “The reason is mainly that I am uncomfortable in the
spotlight by nature.” He added, “None of us want to encourage
more people to get into the game!” But in October he agreed
to a series of interviews in his oice in downtown Pittsburgh.
The tasteful space—the top two loors of a Carnegie Steel-era
building—is furnished with 4-foot-tall Chinese vases and a mar-
ble ireplace, with sweeping views of the Monongahela River
and freight trains rumbling past.
Benter, 61, walks with a slight
stoop. He looks like a univer-
sity professor, his wavy hair
and beard streaked with gray,
and speaks in a soft, slightly
Kermit-y voice. He told me
he’d been driven only partly
by money—and I believed him.
With his intelligence, he could have gotten richer faster work-
ing in inance. Benter wanted to conquer horse betting not
because it was hard, but because it was said to be impossi-
ble. When he cracked it, he actively avoided acclaim, outside
the secretive band of geeks and outcasts who occupy his cho-
sen ield. Some of what follows relies on his recollections, but
in every case where it’s been possible to corroborate events
and igures, they’ve checked out in interviews with dozens
of individuals, as well as in books, court records, and other
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Bloomberg Businessweek
May 14, 2018