A Numbers Game | August 27, 2026 | Hour 3

**Jay Cohen** (0:01)
The Numbers told the story, they always do.

**Bill Krackomberger** (0:03)
One of those idiots who believe in analytics.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:05)
This is A Numbers Game with Gill Alexander on VSiN.

**Gill Alexander** (0:09)
Our number three of A Numbers Game at VSiN, the sports betting network, vsin.com, GamePlus, iHeartRadio, YouTube TV, SiriusXM Channel 158, Gill Alexander, Bill Krackomberger. In studio, you can follow him on Twitter at BillKrackman with a K. Name of the podcast is Wise Cracks, which he does with John Orlando.
More of our podcasts are available, and he does it right here from the Circa Sportsbook.

**Bill Krackomberger** (0:32)
Yes, right behind us. We're going to have Randy McKay on football season.
Nice. When he's in town, he'll come in person. If not, he'll be on Zoom with us to give you guys some NFL plays.

**Gill Alexander** (0:42)
Sweet. Okay. Looking forward to that. Randy's always good to hear from, and by good, I mean profitable. Yeah. Okay. What's the story from Europe?

**Bill Krackomberger** (0:50)
No, I was just saying last night we were with someone else at dinner last night that never heard a lot of the stories, but I told him a story about when I grew up on that boardwalk, Kingsburg, New Jersey, and how I broke into gambling there. It wasn't only the parlay cards that were delivered to our house from a bookie, and my father used to give me one, fill one out, fill out 14, you get 10 bucks, which is today's parlay cards that they have now.

**Gill Alexander** (1:14)
The bookie would come to your house to deliver them?

**Bill Krackomberger** (1:16)
Oh, he would drop them off.
He would drop them off on Thursday, pick them up Saturday. Yeah, and my dad, corrupted by my mother, my mother's family, all the Italians, my dad would give them out to my uncles, her brother and her brother's and stepbrother, and they would all, everyone fire a big pack of parlay cards on the weekends. You give them to the guy on Saturday or Sunday, Sunday morning even sometimes. But the boardwalk is really where I broke in gambling at a young age, started working at nine years old, my aunt and uncle's pizza business. And there was the whole boardwalk had these wheels, and the wheels were games of chance where you can win candy and toys. And I told you last night, they had a cigarette stand. But they actually had a cigarette wheel when you were to go in a cart and a cigarette. Cigarettes was a big thing back then. Yeah.
Don't forget, this is the 70s. This is like 70s. Atlantic City was just opening. So I'm nine years old and 77 And literally, Atlantic City just was just about to open. But Atlantic City actually hurt the boardwalk businesses because they had merchandise wheels and beautiful statues and stuff. People came down to me the weekend of gambling on the boardwalk. They were gambling for merchandise. But at night, those games, a lot of them became wheels of chance. So they wheels were real money. So you can bet half the wheel.
You can bet half or half the wheel. And it's 50-50 chance that you're going to win money. And you can put a dollar up and you got to give it almost like a dollar 10 You have to. It's something every wheel was different. There was a couple of different ones. Then we had a ski ball and a little horse game where you you rolled the balls up. And it was basically a little bit of skill to it. And you'd bet on that you win cash instead of merchandise. They had a play. They had something called skillo, which is basically like a Keno, but it's called skillo back then. There were games of chance. So here I am working, making 50 cents an hour, 1977 and gradually I became making more money. I worked at all different types of games on that boardwalk. Gaddafi was a bad leader. I think I told you before we had a kill Gaddafi stand. I worked in the darts stand, leader of Libya, leader of Libya, hit twice in a row and you get tickets to Bon Jovi, front row tickets to Bon Jovi. That was a real prize.

**Gill Alexander** (3:34)
You know what my mom used to say about Gaddafi? Because he was such an awful man.

**Bill Krackomberger** (3:37)
Yeah.

**Gill Alexander** (3:37)
Oh, he's terrible. He's very good looking though. Do you know that?

**Bill Krackomberger** (3:40)
No way. She would say that every day. Really?

**Gill Alexander** (3:42)
Yeah. He's very good looking. He somehow saw her opinion of his physicality took over his awfulness.