The Secret Life of a Sports-Betting Addict

How gambling on games took over one man's life. [View in Browser]( [Esquire Sunday Reads]( [I've Lost $500,000 Betting on Sports and Don't Plan to Quit]( I've Lost $500,000 Betting on Sports and Don't Plan to Quit I was making $27 an hour, union money, good scratch for a 17-year-old kid, and that’s when the sports gambling started. My first bet, my friends and I put in $20 each and all three of our picks hit. We won $480, $160 a guy, eight times our money. The dopamine was overflowing, and that’s what you end up chasing. For a while, I placed bets through a friend, but when I was 19, I got my own line of credit and was able to place bets myself. They used to call me “Johnny Overs” because I would take the over on every game. I just wanted to watch a fun game and see points scored. My first week I lost $5,000. One dude gave me a $5,000 a week limit at $1,000 a game. I lost my first $1,000 bet and was like, It’s alright, I’ll pick it up. So then I’m chasing. Another $1,000, another $1,000. I was devastated. I thought, I might have to go to jail, because this isn’t gonna end well. My betting isn’t done through an app with a casino or a gaming company. All my betting is done with local bookies, organized crime, but I don’t want to get into that. If you don’t pay it back, well … [Read the Full Story]( [MORE FROM ESQUIRE]( [Chicago Tavern-Style Pizza is Sweeping America]( Chicago Tavern-Style Pizza is Sweeping America Many might associate Chicago-style pizza with the thick deep-dish versions offered at places like Pequod’s in Lincoln Park with its rich, caramelized crust or Lou Malnati’s, one of the more well-known chains; however, there’s another style with a deeper history that’s equally, if not more ubiquitous across The Windy City: We’re talking about the thin and crispy Chicago tavern-style pizzas, and it’s picking up popularity from coast-to-coast across America. For those unfamiliar, the Chicago tavern-style is identifiable by its cracker-thin crusts with toppings like fennel-forward sausage or spicy giardiniera along with cheese and sauce that’s spread over the top edge-to-edge. Also notable is the way the pizza is often cut into small squares, perfect for picking up with a fork and enjoying with a nice ice cold beer. Though the exact origins of tavern-style are unknown, it’s said to have first been served in Chicago taverns starting in the 1940’s in places like the legendary Vito & Nick’s in the South Side. The thin, snackable pizza offered a way to feed hungry factory workers and help them order that extra drink. [Read the Full Story]( [Gunsapalooza!]( Gunsapalooza! When I was at Big Sandy, it all seemed normal. Even the guy who had mounted a machine gun along with a giant disco ball on the back of his boat, which he parked on a trailer overlooking a set of hills that had been seeded with sticks of TNT attached to glow sticks so that if you shot one of the glow sticks, it would explode. Sure, why wouldn’t you do that? I thought. This was the Big Sandy Shoot, where, it often seemed, anything went. Or nearly anything. The rocket launcher affixed to the top of the Hummer, the very first thing I saw when I got up to the quarter--mile-long firing line, would not be fired, I was assured. Mikey, one of the shooters from Arizona Armory (a largely AR-15-oriented gun seller and gunsmith in Phoenix), told me they’d get in trouble if they launched rockets, so they wouldn’t do that, at least not this weekend. Of the thousands of other guns, though, all laid out on tables and tripods and gun racks, attached to trucks and boats and armored personnel carriers and antiaircraft turrets, pretty much everything would be fired—to spectacular and more than occasionally absurd effect. I would get to fire the World War II–era Browning .50 caliber, the M16, the Smith & Wesson M76 9mm, the MP5, the Uzi, the shorty M16, the Beretta 9mm, the Tantal 5.45x39, the PPSh-41, the Thompson .45ACP, and the AK-47, to start. It was loud as God. It was constant. It was definitely excessive. The Big Sandy Shoot, “the largest machine-gun shoot in the world . . . a uniquely American event,” is held two weekends a year, in March and October, outside Wikieup, Arizona, a remote census-designated place halfway between Vegas and Phoenix on the edge of the Mojave Desert. [Read the Full Story]( [Welcome to the No-Budget Era]( Welcome to the No-Budget Era In roulette, the Martingale system is a strategy where the gambler bets at near-even odds and doubles down after each loss, hypothetically allowing them to tuck away their wins and recoup their losses. It doesn’t always work out that way, as filmmakers Clay Tatum and Whitmer Thomas learned a few years ago when they used it to try financing an entire movie. After several years of trying to get a small Alabama-set comedy called The Mailmen made, the project was stalling. So, they sketched out an idea for a different movie designed to be made in the most bare-bones way imaginable. It had a gambling element. Wouldn’t it be a fun story to finance it through roulette? They spent a week driving Thomas’s old champagne-colored Camry through the desert, to the nearest casino, two hours from their homes in Los Angeles. They parked themselves before the roulette machine with the pretty woman, and pointed at each other before each automated roll, yelling nonsense like “Money Tony!” and “Monkey mode!” And it worked. After five trips, they almost had enough to finance their little movie. They were feeling invincible—until the sixth trip. That day, the ball stopped rolling their way, and, before they knew it, they lost it all and were back in the Camry riding through the vast desert in silence. It’s an unseasonably warm February day, four years later, when Tatum and Thomas tell me this story over lunch at Spicy Village, in Manhattan’s Chinatown. The pair, who could pass as the Southern nephews of Zach Galifinakis and Jim Carrey, pause every now and then to slurp down soup and dumplings. They’re in town because not too long after the gambling loss their luck changed. An old friend called Tatum after seeing one of his shorts. He wanted to produce a feature, and had thirty grand to invest. Do you two have any ideas? [Read the Full Story]( [Luke Combs Isn't Like the Rest]( Luke Combs Isn't Like the Rest In a nice touch at last month’s Grammy Awards, several of the night’s performers were introduced by friends and family. Brandi Carlile was brought to the stage by her wife and daughters, Lizzo by one of the contestants on her show Watch Out for the Big Grrrls. The introduction for country singer Luke Combs, a powerhouse both vocally and commercially who has exploded in popularity in recent years, came from Justin Davis, the owner of Town Tavern Blowing Rock in Boone, North Carolina, where Combs once worked as a bouncer. But with his round physique and ginger beard, Combs exudes nice-guy energy, so just how good was he at guarding the door? “Luckily, there was two of us,” he said on a recent Zoom call from his manager’s office in Nashville. “I didn't particularly love that job—I was more of a people pleaser than the ‘you're not allowed in’ guy. I got it done, but I'm definitely not gonna be in the Bouncer Hall of Fame.” As for the Country Music Hall of Fame? Well, it’s a little early, but Combs—whose fourth album, Gettin’ Old, is out today—has been on a sustained, record-breaking tear; other than Morgan Wallen, who operates in an entirely different stratosphere from the rest of the genre at this point, 33-year-old Combs is Music City’s biggest star to emerge in the last decade. He is also, out of his set of peers, the best pure singer. [Read the Full Story]( [The Best Keanu Reeves Movies of All Time]( The Best Keanu Reeves Movies of All Time Can you believe it? It's almost time for John Wick 4—the film that proves ol' Johnny Wick is a certifiable action franchise and not a trilogy that has stayed past its welcome. Keanu Reeves is a national treasure and he simply does not age. This is Neo from The Matrix we're talking about here. He didn't have to completely reinvent himself as a legendary assassin in a whole other franchise, but boy are we glad he did. We're also thrilled that he spent his career going back in time as a stoner, doing stunts as a children's toy, and trying multiple times to stop a bus with no brakes. While, yes, every time we see Keanu's face in one of his movies is a privilege, there is a hierarchy of his filmography. So, we parsed through everything from the big trilogies (The Matrix, John Wick, Bill & Ted), sports (Point Break, The Replacements), to huh? (Bram Stoker's Dracula) to come up with a definitive best-to-worst list of our favorite Keanu Reeves films. But first, one more thing, because it technically doesn't qualify for this list: If you need any further convincing of the Cultural Impact of Keanu Reeves: Consider 2016's Keanu, the Jordan Peele and Keegan Michael-Key spoofing of John Wick. In place of the dog? A kitten named Keanu. Anyway. Here's a ranking of our friend Keanu's most notable movies from his career. [Read the Full Story]( Follow Us [Unsubscribe]( | [Privacy Notice/Notice at Collection]( esquire.com ©2023 Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Hearst Magazines, 300 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019