THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 20, 1996 TAG: 9603200036
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY BARRETT R. RICHARDSON
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
THE SHADOWY world of the bookmaker is revealed in ``Confessions of an Ivy League Bookie,'' a vivid portrait by Peter Alson, a Harvard graduate who took a brief fling at being a scofflaw.
At 33, Alson found himself strapped for cash and going nowhere fast. Then he met fellow Ivy Leaguer Michael, who was involved in professional gambling.
When he found out that Michael had made a tax-free $150,000 cash the previous year, Peter accepted a job as a bookie apprentice. As a rookie, he would give betting lines to customers and write tickets.
But the way to make real money, Peter discovered, was to recruit players: ``Bookies are like vampires. (They) have to keep finding fresh blood or (they) die.''
Peter had much to learn about the arcane world of betting, and he shares it all in his fascinating ``confessional.''
First, there were the basics: Players have code names linked to agents, who contact the bookie boiler room to lay down their bets. The bettors pay the agents, who in turn pay the bookmakers.
In gamblers' language, a dollar is code for $100, and fifty cents means $50. A nickel was $500, a dime was $1,000 and the times sign was five dollars, as in 20 X equals $100. The mathematics appear mind-boggling.
Then, there was the confusing vocabulary to learn: point spreads, over-unders, the juice, the vigorish, shading, betting the dog , laying off and the eleven-to-ten.
Peter's colleagues included some colorful and unsavory characters: Pat, an Irishman with ``a busted capillary complexion''; Spanky, ``a nineties version of a Dead End Kid''; Brandi, a motormouth bottle blonde who ``looked like a pizza queen from Corona''; and Steak Knife, the big boss.
Peter had a tough time living on the edge. Living alone in the gloomy demimonde of Brooklyn took a toll on him. He got depressed when he went to cocktail parties where his contemporaries talked about their professions, ``summer homes, mortgages and private schools for their kids.''
There was also the gnawing fear that he would be busted.
And he was. Confinement for 26 hours, ``locked up with the worst kinds of thugs and street punks in a fecal-filthy cell in the Brooklyn House of Detention,'' was sobering. The experience was enough to convince Peter that writing prose, not betting tickets, was his true calling.
If ``Confessions of an Ivy League Bookie'' is any indication, Peter Alson, like his uncle Norman Mailer, has promise as a player on the literary scene. His gambling days are over. MEMO: Barrett R. Richardson is a retired staff editor. He lives in
Portsmouth.
ILLUSTRATION: BOOK REVIEW
``Confessions of an Ivy League Bookie''
Author: Peter Alson
Publisher: Crown. 288 pp.
Price: $23
by CNB