Haralabos Voulgaris — professional sports bettor who made nine figures betting NBA basketball — walks Shaan and Sam through his origin story: growing up at the Winnipeg racetrack, his sky cap hustle, Canadian football as his first edge, and eventually discovering the NBA halftime scoring pattern that became his real breakthrough. The episode also covers his Bitcoin thesis, his tenure with Mark Cuban’s Mavericks, buying a Spanish soccer club, and his biohacking regimen.
Speakers: Haralabos Voulgaris (guest, professional sports bettor, NBA front office, soccer club owner), Shaan Puri (host), Sam Parr (host)
Growing Up at the Racetrack [00:00:00]
Shaan: Your story is what a lot of people dream about — taking a few thousand dollars, finding an edge, beating the house in Vegas, and turning it into tens of millions, eventually hundreds of millions. Recruited by Mark Cuban to work for an NBA team. Now own your own soccer club. You’re like a comic book character.
Let’s start at chapter one: how you stumbled into gambling and found your first edge.
Haralabos: My dad was what I’d call an unsuccessful gambler — some people would say degenerate. He gambled a lot, unsuccessfully. It caused a lot of problems in our family. I grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba — at the racetrack, from about 12 to 18 years old, every Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday.
What I noticed early on was nearly impossible to beat the horses because the takeout is so high — 30-36%. But the people around me had no process. They were very emotional. I’m a very lowkey person, so watching all these people argue, upset when they win, upset when they lose — it was just different for me.
Vegas at 18 and Canadian Football [00:08:00]
Haralabos: When I graduated high school, my dad was in Vegas and I went to join him for a month. I wasn’t 21. I parked myself in the sports book — they don’t really ID you there. My dad gave me a little money, and I started watching NBA basketball for the first time. I was in the sports book from 4 PM to 11 PM every night watching games on giant TVs.
I was probably roughly flipping coins, but I had to win 11 out of every 10 to beat the vig, so I was losing slowly. But I realized: I really like this. And I want to get good at it.
My first profitable pattern was Canadian football — not soccer, actual three-down football. The CFL had expanded into the United States around that time, and there were some unique structural differences: Canadian teams had to carry certain numbers of Canadian players, American stadiums didn’t always have the full 20-yard end zones, which made those games lower scoring. I just got really good at knowing things most American oddsmakers didn’t know.
The Sky Cap Operation [00:16:00]
Haralabos: While all this was developing, I was a sky cap at the Winnipeg International Airport — the first white sky cap they’d ever hired. I carried luggage curbside and handled snow bird travelers flying to Florida for winter.
The Saturday and Sunday shifts were where money was made — fishing charter traffic coming through. I was making $400-500 in an eight-hour shift easy. Other guys were making $80.
I paid them $80 to work Saturdays for me. The boss found out, started working those shifts himself, and couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t making what I was making. Meanwhile I was getting travelers limos, Cuban cigars — charged triple — just being a concierge at the Winnipeg airport.
Then I went to the airlines directly, underbid the owner, and took over the whole contract. I was 22.
Sam: You’re more of a hustler than I expected.
Haralabos: I was also working 40 hours a week at Rogers Video — Canadian Blockbuster — in the summers. Paying for university at Manitoba. Supporting my parents. I wasn’t rich. I was just working.
All In on the Lakers at 6.5 to 1 [00:24:00]
Shaan: One of your famous bets — you went all in on the Lakers to win the championship at 6.5 to 1 odds. How much was all in?
Haralabos: About $87,000 Canadian. That was everything. But I looked at it like: fishing season just ended at the airport, I’ve paid my tuition, I’m living in my brother’s basement. Worst case I lose and go back to sky capping and make most of it back. So yes — I made the bet.
Shaan: Did he win?
Haralabos: Won.
Sam: Bill Burr has this great line about risk. Someone asked him about taking the leap into comedy and he said: I didn’t see it as a risk. The risk was waking up in a king-sized bed at 40 next to a woman I don’t love anymore, dreading the job I have to go to in six hours. Chasing your dream? No risk at all.
Haralabos: I relate to that. Especially having lived through a Winnipeg winter.
The NBA Halftime Edge [00:32:00]
Haralabos: Okay. This is the biggest edge in the history of gambling edges. I have never uttered this in public before.
Shaan: Nuke it.
Haralabos: In the NBA, Vegas sets the full-game total pretty accurately. For first-half lines, they would just take the full game total and divide roughly by two. What they didn’t price in: the away team gets to choose which basket to shoot at in the first half.
Here’s what almost nobody knew — and I mean nobody was paying attention to this: 27 or 28 of the 30 NBA teams, when they played on the road, always chose to have their offense shoot in front of their own bench in the first half. The logic is that your coaches can communicate better with your offense right in front of them. Your defense goes to the other end in the first half, then in the second half it flips. The result: first halves were systematically higher scoring, second halves were lower scoring.
Three or four teams — the ones I made all my money on — chose the opposite. Jerry Sloan’s Utah Jazz was the original. Eddie Jordan’s Washington Wizards. Byron Scott’s New Jersey Nets. Bad teams, irrelevant in the standings, but their games had a consistent pattern: dramatically lower scoring in the first half, dramatically higher in the second half. And the line didn’t account for it.
So you would have a situation where the total for the game would be, say, 194, and the first-half line would be set at 97. But these teams were scoring like 87 in the first half and 107 in the second half. Every time. You could just bet the under in the first half and the over in the second half and print money.
Shaan: How did you even notice that?
Haralabos: I was watching every game, building databases, tracking team scoring patterns by situation. One team, on the road, consistently scored lower in the first half than at home. I thought it was about them slowing the game down defensively. Eventually I figured out the mechanism — the bench orientation.
I made a lot of money on this over a lot of years. I was betting on credit with a large bookmaker out of Montreal — allegedly connected to organized interests — who would take my bets and settle weekly. I never had to front actual cash. My bankroll was technically unlimited, which meant theoretically if I lost I’d be $2-3 million in debt. But I knew the edge was so large it didn’t matter.
Beards, Bookmakers, and Floyd Mayweather [00:44:00]
Sam: Did casinos ever ban you?
Haralabos: Sports betting doesn’t really work like that. Casinos are for losers — if you win consistently, they just stop taking your bets. I was never betting in casinos. I was betting through street bookmakers and offshore markets.
More importantly: nobody knew who I was, because I never made the bets myself. I always used what’s called a beard — someone who makes the bets on your behalf. I had various beards over the years: successful businesspeople, Hollywood people, degenerate gamblers. For about one afternoon, Floyd Mayweather.
Shaan: How did that go?
Haralabos: Not great. I met him at a Miami Heat playoff game — his business guy introduced us. I told them I wanted to bet one game. They wanted to bet the other side. I said fine, just bet my side for me. They said no, we don’t want to do that — we want to bet the other way. I said okay, just bet against each other then. They said: no, you always win, we can’t do that.
I was out.
Getting paid was always the interesting part. The way to get paid is to be the most annoying person in someone’s life. I had a famous poker player who owed me money — when he won a tournament, I’d get on a plane and just be there when they handed him the cash.
Bitcoin as the Exit [00:54:00]
Haralabos: I stumbled into Bitcoin in 2013. I was getting paid by someone in China — we had an HSBC account in Hong Kong — and he said he could send me Bitcoin. The price was around $180. I said: why does everyone in China love Bitcoin? He explained it. It clicked.
I was already dealing with: Canadian revenue authorities taking 57% of my winnings. Bank accounts getting closed constantly. Not being able to move money between countries without explaining myself. Bitcoin solved all of that.
Every dollar I’ve made betting NBA basketball for the last decade has gone directly into Bitcoin. I made more money on Bitcoin than I’ve made betting sports.
I sold a plane, sold properties in Europe, bought more Bitcoin at $3,300. Friends tried to hold an intervention. I told them: look at what rich people’s assets are doing in Vancouver — all the real estate owned by foreigners as capital flight. Bitcoin is just a more accessible version of that. Michael Saylor has articulated it better than I can, but the core logic is: why hold dollars when they’re printing more every year?
Working for the Mavericks [01:04:00]
Shaan: Mark Cuban recruited you to work for an NBA team at one point.
Haralabos: I worked for the Mavericks for a while. It was during the bubble. At that point, I found I just didn’t enjoy watching basketball the same way. The league had become so politicized — which I understand, there are real issues — but I just wanted to watch a sport. I wanted escape. The games were emotionally draining in a way they’d never been.
I also started watching soccer. It was the first sport to restart after COVID. I was already building models on it. I thought: this is more interesting. Basketball is simple — get a top-five player, surround him with the right pieces. Soccer’s game tree is much bigger. More mathematical. More unsolved.
Buying the Soccer Club [01:12:00]
Shaan: Why a soccer club?
Haralabos: I originally wanted an NBA team. Then I started to see how franchise valuations work — you’re competing with the richest people in the world for assets that are already extremely expensive. And the sport had stopped being interesting to me.
Soccer felt like basketball did when I first started paying attention. New. Exciting. Lots of inefficiencies. We were recently promoted to La Liga 2 — Spanish second division. We had a great start to the season, then had a stretch where we played 22 games in essentially six days. I failed in the culture side — I let the coaches run the players into the ground without pushing back. We’ve been dealing with injuries and a losing streak ever since.
I’m building a proper training facility now. We didn’t have one when I bought the team.
Biohacking and What’s Next [01:20:00]
Sam: You’re into biohacking?
Haralabos: The best thing I’ve ever done is stem cell therapy — mesenchymal stem cells from umbilical cord tissue, at the Stem Cell Institute in Panama. I’ve done it maybe seven times. The injuries you have will repair permanently. The Superman feeling lasts three to four months. It’s remarkable if you get a good batch.
I also do peptides — BPC-157 for injury recovery, ipamorelin, hexarelin, CJC-1295, all with a doctor. Red light therapy. Sauna five times a week. I take about 20 supplements a day.
I’m not into TRT. Tried it. Made me irritable. I raise testosterone through heavy squats, kettlebells, and a few supplements like rhodiola.
Sam: Do you drink or use drugs?
Haralabos: No. I’ve never really done either. I like to be in control of myself, in control of my emotions, making rational decisions. Alcohol doesn’t work for me. I need that edge.
Shaan: So you grew up in a world of vice — gambling, bookmakers, big money — and never got sucked into the substance side.
Haralabos: I’m a control freak. That’s what it is.
The Ranch and What He’s Into Now [01:28:00]
Sam: What’s the future for you?
Haralabos: I bought a ranch. During COVID I was yachting on the Mediterranean and at some point I just thought: I want a ranch. I want horses. I want simple.
The gambling operation still runs — automated now, two models, zero human input from me. I do it because the people who work for me have done so for 12-13 years and it’s meaningful for them. A bad year for us is 4-5% ROI per bet. A good year is 8-9%.
Every dollar we make goes into Bitcoin.
Shaan: That’s a pod.