How bookies find and keep players
A local bookie's players come from people who already know him, or know someone who does. He keeps them by paying on time and dealing a fair number. Everything else a sales brochure tells him about growing his book is secondary to those two things.
The law comes first
Whether you may take bets at all depends on where you live. In most places it needs a license, and a bookie working without one is outside the law, whatever website he rents. This page describes how the trade works; it is not advice on doing it, and it is not legal advice. If you are thinking about it, read how to become a bookie before anything here.
Where players come from
The local book has always grown by word of mouth. A player who is paid on time tells a friend, and the friend wants the same arrangement. That is slow, and it is the right speed, because every new player on credit is someone you are trusting with money you haven't got yet.
The second source is other people bringing players to you. A bookie with a network usually has sub-agents: men who know a group of bettors (from work or a league) and bring them in for a share of what those players lose. Say a sub-agent's deal is 25 percent of his group's net loss, and the group is down $4,000 over a month. He is owed $1,000. Most arrangements carry a losing stretch forward, so if his group wins, he gets nothing until they are down again overall. The per-head software lets you give each sub-agent his own login and see his group's figures on their own.
What I'd stay away from is any public advertising for credit players. A bookie who posts in an online group or buys an ad is announcing himself to everyone, including the players he would least want: the ones who never mean to pay, and the ones who know the numbers better than he does.
Ten good players or a hundred small ones
The pay-per-head office charges by the head, a fee for each player who bets in a given week, the same for a $50 bettor as for a $5,000 one. That fee changes which players are worth having.
Say the fee is $10 a head and your book holds 5 percent of what is bet over a season.
| Player bets a week | Your expected hold | Fee | What he's worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| $100 | $5 | $10 | -$5 |
| $1,000 | $50 | $10 | $40 |
At those figures a player has to bet $200 a week just to pay for his own seat. A hundred players at $100 each cost you money every week they bet; ten at $1,000 each are worth $400. The handle is the same $10,000 either way. So the question for a small book is not how many players it has but what each one is worth, and the hold is the figure that answers it.
Bigger isn't automatically better either. A player who bets $1,000 a week and can't pay a $5,000 losing week is not a $40 player. He is a $5,000 problem. The credit limit belongs with what the man can pay, not with what he wants to bet.
What keeps them
Players stay where they are paid. A winning player who has to chase his money on settle day goes somewhere else the next season, and he tells people why. I'd pay every winner first and on the day, even in a week when the collecting is slow, because the reputation for paying is the whole business. The credit and collections page has the sums for that.
After that comes the number. A per-head site gives a small bookie a board as wide as a big book's, with live betting and props, and players like to see the games they want on it. They notice a stale or overpriced line too, and the better ones will shop it against their other outs. A fair number at -110 keeps the steady player; a book that shades everything to -120 is telling him to take his action elsewhere.
Free play and bonuses are the last thing I'd reach for. To a credit player a free play is a discount on his losses, and he soon learns to expect one every week. A player who stays only for the bonus will leave for a bigger one.
Players you'd rather lose
Not every player is worth keeping. The one who doesn't pay costs more than his losses, because you paid his winning weeks in cash. The sharp who only bets when your line is behind the market costs you the hold the others give you, and the risk management page covers what a book does about him.
A good book is not the one with the most players. It is the one whose players pay, bet a steady amount within their means, and come back next week.