Billy Walters tells tales about new Sports Gambling Hall of Famers

When the Sports Gambling Hall of Fame was created last year, founder Gadoon “Spanky” Kyrollos said there couldn’t be one without the man regarded as the most successful sports bettor of all time: Billy Walters.

Walters said he feels the same way about Michael Kent, a math and computer wizard who wrote the code that launched the Computer Group — acknowledged as the first syndicate to apply sophisticated algorithms and computer models to sports betting.

“When I became part of the board of directors for the Hall of Fame, I told them there can’t be a Hall of Fame unless Mike Kent’s in the Hall of Fame,” said Walters, 78. “Make no mistake, there wouldn’t have been any Computer Group if it hadn’t been for Mike Kent.

“Mike Kent is the guy who originally did all of the handicapping. He put together the computer software program, the first of its kind, to analyze and handicap sports with. The result was he was way, way ahead of everyone else.”

Walters, a former member of the Computer Group, will introduce Kent and former Las Vegas bookmaker Gene Maday for posthumous induction into the SGHOF on Friday in a ceremony at Circa. Kent died in 2018 at age 74. Maday died in 1994 at age 66.

Kent’s day job in the early 1970s was developing nuclear submarine technology at the Westinghouse Electric Corporation in Pittsburgh.

At night, he developed a computer model that produced power ratings for the company softball team. Kent soon realized the formula could be applied to pro and college sports and wrote a revolutionary computer program to predict numbers against the Las Vegas line.

“He was certainly the beginning of a brand-new era,” Walters said. “Up until that point in time, everybody’s working with a pencil and piece of paper.

“It was almost like when golf went from Persimmon woods to metal drivers. It was a big bang. Lucky for me, I was a part of that.”

Kent beat a bevy of bookmakers in Pittsburgh before quitting his day job in 1979. He moved to Las Vegas, where Walters joined the Computer Group and moved millions of dollars in wagers while protecting the Group’s identity.

“When he came to Las Vegas, it took so much computer firepower to run the program, we were actually leasing space from the government on the weekend to use their computers when they weren’t using them,” Walters said.

The Computer Group won $25 million in one year, according to a 1986 Sports Illustrated cover story on gambling.

After the demise of the original Group, Walters started his own syndicate in the mid-1980s. He continued to work with Kent until Kent retired in 2000.

“I consider Mike to be one of my best friends I’ve ever had in my life,” Walters said. “I think Mike was a genius. I definitely put Mike Kent in the top-five smartest people I’ve ever met in my life. More than that, he was extremely honorable. Morally, he was as good a guy as I’ve ever known.

“What I realized in the early 80s was that I needed to recruit many more Mike Kents. I ended up bringing on 25 over the years and I had six really main guys with similar backgrounds to Mike.”

Jimmy Evarts, co-founder of the sharp offshore sportsbook Pinnacle Sports, is another former member of the Computer Group that will be inducted into the SGHOF.

‘Didn’t fill the hole’

Maday owned Checker Cab and also owned and operated Little Caesar’s, one of the last standalone sportsbooks in Las Vegas.

“Little Caesar’s, you walk in there and the carpet was taped together and you could cut the smoke with a knife,” Walters said. “The odds board was a grease board. Outside was a bank of pay phones that probably did more pay phone business than any other place in the world outside of the Stardust.

“Popcorn was free and coffee was free. There were penny slots. It was just that kind of joint. But Gene probably booked higher than anyone in the world did at the time.”

Walters shared an anecdote he planned to use at the induction dinner.

“I was in there one day and (former Las Vegas casino owner) Jackie Gaughan walked in and bet a quarter million dollars on a boxing match. This was the ’80s. He stood there and stood there for almost 10 minutes and he asked Gene, ‘What are you going to move the line to?’ Gene said, ‘Well, you didn’t fill the hole up,’” Walters said, laughing. “He didn’t move the line at all. That was Gene Maday. You talk about a Vegas character. He was a Vegas character.”

Contact reporter Todd Dewey at tdewey@reviewjournal.com. Follow @tdewey33 on X.