So this guy called Zeljko Ranogajec - born in Hobart Tasmania, Australia in 1961 from Croatian immigrants - is the world's biggest gambler, see... He has an annual gambling turnover of a billion dollars. And this is stated in Wikipedia so it must be true.
Now you're not going to read the rest of the stuff that's about to be set down here, anywhere else.
So... 58 people were killed, murdered, in the 2017 Las Vegas shoot-up and 851 injured. Again - that's recorded in Wikipedia.
Do you believe that?
World's wealthiest and most successful gambler, maybe of all time |
Anyway, going back to Ranogajec, who appears in several company filings under the cover-name of 'John Wilson,' has the story of his life laid out in a few books and publications and every serious professional gambler knows that the story cannot be true. By 'serious professional gambler' I mean you and me; we'd better acknowledge that neither of us knows for sure the guaranteed actual subsequent outcome of any given predicted event - because that would make us prophets and not investors, and if the nomenclature was good enough for Kerry Packer, it's certainly good enough for me but I'll attach it to you advisedly. You can refuse the title if you like.
Ranogajec spent all of the early years of his gambling life, mostly in Las Vegas, losing money along with his friend David Walsh, who is a noted social set identity and art dealer here in Australia.
Now there was never a single day, not even one, during the whole entire time I was gambling professionally, that I was behind on my original stakes nor was I ever in a ledger balance position of any weekly 'loss' figure. It just never ever happened - and to some extent that was my eventual problem because psychologically, I got to the point of saying to myself that eventually it would or must happen and that was one of the reasons I retired from that life. However what sustained me during all the years of incredible, high-tension, keyed-up financial risk-taking was the track record of past successes. I don't think a sensible, sane, rational person can go on taking gambler's risks after a long time of having the experiences of regular losing.
You can go on doing something, but it won't be taking natural gaming risks. It might be working for the FBI, or participating in the surreptitious arms dealing industry, or doing undercover work for global investigation agencies, or even on commission for governments - but you would be more than an ordinary fool trying to discover the 'secret' of betting and always winning or winning on average overall.
Bill Benter, quite a nice guy |
Now see the associates of our Mr Ranogajec have done things like occupy some of the political space on the Left here in Australia, or donate large large LARGE sums of money to Bill Clinton and backing Chuck Hagel to the position of Secretary of State (never happened though). Chuck's been on the board of Chevron. And he was instrumental in the vastly financially successful war in Yugoslavia and in the splitting up of the components of Yugoslavia into smaller nations (such as Croatia, and by extension later on, even the Ukraine) some of whom side with NATO and the Clinton Left side of current US DNC politics. He has a foot-print in the recent successful illegal coup d'etat run by the US Administration under Obama and Hillary Clinton against the Ukraine. He is a friend of Alexandra Chalupa, the covert operative who was paymaster along with Robert Mueller in attempts to find dirt on Donald Trump from as far back as 2015/16.
Now now get me though - people like Bill Benter (Benter backed Chuck Hagel) are not by any means altogether bad at all, in fact Benter and Walsh and these types are incredibly valuable to the arts and to theater and just 'culture' as it is presented to the public.
But that's not the point, there are wheels within wheels here in these social circles involving such gentlemen and you cannot, unless you have a formal position on 'an' inside somewhere there, know or be exactly certain who is doing what and with whose money or why with what ultimate aims.
...Why would anyone, though, be gathering dirt - or in fact as it has turned out - be 'composing' dirt on Donald Trump that long before he was even announced as in the running?
And the answer to that, my friends, is why you keep reading here, because you know that there is an outside chance that if I said the sky is going to fall next Tuesday week, well then, it just might at that.
Art man, David Walsh - also an occasional gambler, hugely wealthy |
As long as you understand there is a difference between a natural gaming risk where there are no unfair advantages, and an organized boat-race masquerading as an 'event' where there are. Ranogajec has been interviewed somewhere during which interchange he said that gaming was about information and that so-called 'low-latency' techniques could be applied there same as they successfully have been, in the stock-markets.
Governments around the world are fairly well-aware of the extraordinarily advanced high tech communications infrastructures that people such as Benter and Ranogajec own and control, and they worry that the privateers have better capacity to indulge in criminal lying and deception than they do - and they do(!). Recently, the Australian versions of the 'Secret Intelligence Service' have been chasing this rabbit down various holes - a rabbit by the code-name of 'Archie' something or other. And they shoved around a character in the racing world called 'Archie Butterfly' among one or two other alias 'Archies.'
So right now don't go around pretending to be 'Archie.' Gucci, maybe; but not Archie...