Diogenes' Search for an Honest Game

They call him Diogenes, the seeker after truth. In truth, he has been one of the biggest bettors on college football in the nation, customarily wagering between $550,000 and $1,100,000 a week on the game.

In recent years, there have been only a half dozen men in the world who would bet on this level--$11,000, $22,000, perhaps $99,000 on the kick of a point. (The odds in football betting are 11 to 10, so the bets--on this somewhat arcane level--are in multiples of $11,000.) One was a Texas billionaire who hired a battery of tipsters and handicappers to work with IBM machines to help him pick points. Another was an oil-lease operator who now has a piece of a safari club in Africa; he wouldn't give a tout money for a tip on a game, but he would put down a $550 bet for him, on the theory that if the tip was any good, the tout could sweat out his own pay-off. Another is the man called Diogenes and he's the latest--and, considering the Federal injunctions now in force against gambling, perhaps the last--of the men who have brought style, success and a certain candor to the field.

As such, Diogenes represents an almost seminal change in the approach to the game. In the past, there was a baroque elegance about big-time betting, a rococo extravagance that exulted in diamond-laden men winning and losing fortunes with a boisterous grandeur. But since the beginning of this century, big-money betting on sports has become less an extravaganza than a clandestine art shrouded by law and custom from the bourgeoisie. This was due to the excessive puritanism that swept the country, a puritanism whose ultimate expression was Prohibition. For as drinking went underground, so did big-money betting on sports. But betting did not come back with the same fervor as did drinking. Indeed, it might be said that betting on sports was further corrupted in the Thirties by an influx of satchel-eyed losers in soiled shirts--technologically unemployed by Repeal--who went into betting with no more qualification for it than an ability to lick a pencil point and circle "6" for the six-point spread. In this tarnished atmosphere, even the virtuosos of the art found they had to combine several eclectic assets in order to survive: brains, guts, money and a gift for the inconspicuous.

Diogenes didn't change all this; he merely gave it his own life style. He is not the raffish type; he has a master's degree in economics from the University of Chicago. He is not baffled by figures: "I was making up calendars in my head for three years in advance when I was five years old." He is not obsessed with the money aspect of betting alone: He can discuss the art form in terms of Aristotle, Adam Smith and Rainer Maria Rilke ("Works of art are, indeed, always products of having been in danger, of having gone to the very end in an experience, to where man can go no further"). His somewhat Socratic mind, and a persuasive personality, once led an admirer to comment that--had he wanted to--he might have become President of the United States. "I would rather," he said, in the tone of a man who knows the ultimate levers of power, "have been Secretary of State."

He resists categorizing. On one hand, he is instinctively a conservative. ("I'm the last of what Roosevelt used to call the 'economic royalists.' ") On the other hand, he is an iconoclast. He does not, for instance, believe a great deal of what college coaches say about the game or their teams. "If you follow the coach," he told me one day not long ago, "he'll break you." For a long moment, his look was deep and interior, like a man chewing mentally on the bones of a hundred dead foes. He has been tempted in the past to believe the coaches: "My character is flawed in that respect," he says. But by now, he has learned to disdain their hollow cant, their pharisaical insistence that the world is flat, exactly 100 yards long and bounded at both ends by goal posts. "Nowhere as much as in coaching and politics do you encounter the feeling that truth is merely relative, that the lie made public must be regarded as Biblical fact," he says. He is especially sensitive to the statements made by coaches about the physical health of their teams. He recalls one October day a number of years ago, when he picked Missouri to beat Air Force Academy by three points. Then he read of a dreadful plague of injuries that hit Missouri. Missouri coach Dan Devine seemed to have doubt that there were enough able-bodied boys in the entire state to replace the men on the injured list. So persistent and so melancholy was coach Devine that the point spread began shifting--as the public and the bettors came to believe him--until Air Force became a one-point favorite. Diogenes read and reacted; he couldn't resist hedging his bets. On Saturday, Missouri turned up with a team that had recovered spectacularly from its injuries--"Saint Francis should have been so lucky with birds," says Dio dryly--and Missouri rolled to a 34--8 victory. "I did the worst thing you can do in sports," laments Diogenes. "I believed the coach."

He tries strenuously to maintain an objectivity. Of course, he has his favorites in football, but he regards them all with the fishy-eyed skepticism of a bank-loan officer. "Loyalty can make only one thing out of you," he says. "A loser." Many people in betting feel that his objectivity is not to be believed. Some years ago, he was approached by a shill--a man fronting for certain bookmakers--seeking Dio's views on the upcoming Northwestern--Notre Dame game. Dio was known to like Northwestern personally; his own school--Chicago--had no team, so he'd transferred his affection to Northwestern. He was also known not to possess the same high regard for Notre Dame--"I just never cared much for the Notre Dame crowd," he says. But he told the shill exactly what he thought: "Notre Dame to win by five." The shill flashed the word to his clients and the next day, Notre Dame went up on the boards as a 13-point favorite. The reasoning was this: If Diogenes--with all his prejudices--liked Notre Dame by five, then the Irish must really be a two-touchdown favorite. At first, Dio was deeply angered by what the shill had done. Dio had already laid a bundle on Notre Dame to win by five and when word got around that he'd tipped the shill, it might look to people in the business as if he were giving them that celebrated calisthenic: the double shuffle. When he calmed down, he decided to exploit the situation: He went back into the betting marts and put a bundle on Northwestern, taking the 13 points. Moreover, he made a point of patronizing those bookmakers who used the shill, hoping--by the sheer magnitude of his bets--to put them in a position where they couldn't do anything but lose. As he'd originally predicted, Notre Dame won by five points, 12--7. So Dio won both sides of his bets--and the shill's clients took a bath. "That," says Dio, "was something I enjoyed."

Perhaps his most remarkable attitude is toward the tensions of the game. He does not agonize that a game--and a bet--may go against him. A while back, he picked Florida to win by a point over Baylor in the Gator Bowl. He was watching the game on TV and Florida had a 13-6 lead, with Baylor muddling around mid-field. Suddenly, Baylor clicked on a 47-yard pass play and got a touchdown that reduced the deficit to one point. As Baylor lined up for the extra point, Diogenes observed that there was $42,000 riding on that single play--"$22,000 of my money and $20,000 of the bookmaker's." Yet he seemed as calm as a Colchester oyster. A successful kick would mean a tie game and $22,000 in losses for Diogenes--but Baylor didn't kick. Instead, it tried to go for two points and the win, by throwing a pass. The pass was incomplete, Florida won the game 13--12 and Diogenes won the bet. "Why worry?" he said coolly. "You know you're going to lose sometimes."

Dio reached this controlled status in the usual maladroit way. He was completely absorbed by both mathematics--"the theory of probabilities"--and sports. The trouble was that he couldn't make a living at either. So he turned his talent to economics. After getting his master's degree, he took a close look at himself and concluded that he really wasn't fit for anything. So he became a securities analyst in a bank. "It's simply a business of picking winners," he says. The action whetted his desire for picking winners in football--as he had done in college--and it so happened that the city he lived in then harbored "business establishments" that catered to such ambitions. (New York City has recently resumed the tradition, at least with respect to horse racing.) At lunch one day, he walked into such an establishment and decided to invest in his favorite team.

"For how much?" asked one of the investment counselors.

"Fifty," said Dio. He'd noticed this seemed to be the figure most frequently used in the investment atmosphere.

"Fifty what?"

"Fifty cents," said Dio. After all, he'd had a lot of experience betting on parlay cards.

The investment counselor gave him a sour look. "The minimum, buddy, is fifty bucks."

Dio went back to the bank. He worked hard and long and he saved his money and in two years, he'd saved $50.

"Then I went right back to that same joint and took my team again--it was an underdog--and I put the $50 on it." The house took his money wordlessly; he won and just as wordlessly it paid him off on the following Monday.

What would he have done if he'd lost that first bet?

"I would have gone back to the bank and worked for two more years and gotten another 50 bucks to put on that team."

He might not have had the chance. For back at the bank, he had a little action going on the side: He was making book on who would get fired next. It was a flourishing side line until the day the president of the bank learned that Dio was carrying that illustrious gentleman as a three-to-one choice to get fired. He fired Dio instead. "I had myself at eight to one," says Dio. He is still bothered by the overlay. "I should have had myself at no better than even money."

Having escaped the stifling embrace of commerce, Diogenes decided to devote himself entirely to art. At first, he felt that something had been lost--perhaps the bloody but beautiful amateur standing of it all. But he adjusted quickly and gradually began to move up the money ladder. "You can bet only what your rating is good for," he says. "If you're a ten-dollar bettor and suddenly you come up with $1000 on a game, the bookmaker is going to want to know why." It isn't only that bookmakers are afraid of "unnatural" money; it's that few bettors can stand the tensions of moving up to a big-money bet. Dio not only could take the tension but he was (continued on page 242)Diogene's Search(continued from page 116) able to win the trust of the bookmakers. Indeed, some bookmakers began soliciting his business so they could use his handicapping to adjust the point spread they planned to offer their lesser customers. "If I get seven points on a game, the guy who follows my pick will get only six and a half points from the same book only five minutes later." In any case, he eventually became one of that very small, very exclusive group of men who bet only top money on sports.

He did not, however, become a very conspicuous member of that group. I've seen him at important conferences and coaches' meetings, circulating quietly, wiping the shrimp sauce from the corners of his mouth as he drops a word with one coach here, another coach there. Most coaches recognize him in a vague sort of way--they know they've seen him somewhere--but they don't quite remember where. He does not bother to enlighten them. He is trying, basically, to take the measure of the men and--by assembling odd bits of information--of their teams. He is seeking the exceptional in both. Mediocrity depresses him; he is excited by talent, however latent. What he dreams about is genius, but unfortunately, that is harder to identify. He is at the coaches' meetings because genuine quality is so hard to identify through the newspapers, particularly early in the season. For the baseball season is at its climax then and the sports pages are filled with baseball news, rather than detailed information on football. "I always lose money until the world series is over," he sighs. Once the coaches scatter and take refuge in their individual work, Diogenes has to rely heavily on the newspapers for information. He reads 20 to 30 of them a day. Some are air-specialed to him by friends all over the country. Others he buys on a brisk five-mile walk to a number of out-of-town newsstands every day. ("That's the way I get my exercise.") He pays no attention to the opinion of sportswriters. He has no respect for the wire-service polls. "One month, I took the A.P. leader three weeks in a row--three different teams they had up there--and I bet against them." He won all three bets and he regards the incident as interesting solely because he found so many people who were interested in losing money on what the pollsters say. "I could have gotten $200,000 down on each of those games, there were so many idiots around," he says.

What he seeks in the newspapers is the information that will tell him what really happened one Saturday or what may happen the next. Here are some examples:

The True Score: "Let's say that Notre Dame beats somebody 29 to 13," he says. "You study the papers and you see that the score was 14 to 13 with two minutes left. Then Notre Dame hit on a long pass for a touchdown. Now the other team has to pass to get into the game and Notre Dame intercepts one and takes it back for a touchdown. They get maybe three extra points on the two touchdowns and win by 16 points. But if you look close, you know the game was pretty much even."

The Weather Score: He watches to see whether the local weather affected a game and then makes an appraisal of how the teams will do under different conditions. Some years ago, for example, he was handicapping a game between Army and Illinois. In the season openers on the Saturday before, Army beat Boston College 44--8, while Illinois lost to an impotent Indiana team 20--0. Illinois didn't merely lose; it looked bad--very, very bad--while doing it. It fumbled ten times; it had its backs sloshing aimlessly in the mud; it could not mount an offense that was coherent, much less effective. But when Army opened as a 13-point favorite over Illinois, Diogenes quickly picked the Illini. For he knew why the team had looked so bad against Indiana. All spring and early autumn, Illinois had worked on a spectacular series of spread-formation pass plays. They were aimed at exploiting the skills of a particular pass-catching end. But Illinois' opening game against the Hoosiers was played in a strong gale and in a heavy rain that immersed central Indiana; indeed, tornadoes hit towns not far from where the game was played in Bloomington. In that stormy weather, Illinois had no chance to put the ball into the air or to use its fancy spread formations. Instead--particularly with ten fumbles--it had to go to a "safety-first" offense with no fancy-Dan tossing of the ball: Just give it to the fullback and hope that he hangs onto it long enough to reach the line of scrimmage. Obviously, it was not the offense the coaches had taught nor one that the team was accustomed to using. Thus, Illinois looked unbelievably bad against Indiana. But Diogenes figured that the score didn't reflect the game so much as the weather. More than that, he felt Illinois had come out of the game with a most subtle but important advantage: Army had not been able to scout Illinois' spread formations and--because it had been the first weekend of the season--it may not even have known they existed. So Army had no idea of what Illinois could do--and would do--on a dry field. Diogenes was right. The following Saturday came up clear and dry. Illinois sprang the spread formations on the unsuspecting Cadets and won the ball game 20--14. Diogenes collected an easy $40,000. "It really wasn't what you could call an upset," he says.

Injuries: "Defensive injuries are the most important," he insists. "If a team has an injury on offense, the coach can work around it, unless it's the quarterback who's hurt. He can always have another halfback carry the ball or another end catch it. Or, if it's a lineman who's hurt, he can set up the game plan so that he--or his replacement--doesn't come under any unusual stress. But on defense, there's no way the coach can hide that weakness. The offense of the other side will always find that injured man--or the substitute who's got to be weaker than he is--and they'll work and work against that weak spot until they break it. You've got to remember that the offense has the choice of time and place--where to attack and when. The defense can't say, 'Please don't hit our right-side linebacker again, because he's got a twisted knee' or 'Please don't hit the man we put in for him, because he's a green kid and he doesn't know what to do when you come at him'. You know the offense is going to go after that guy until it breaks him. And that throws the pressure on some other part of the defense and soon the offense has found a way to break through. And eventually, the whole defense begins to disintegrate. That's why a defensive injury hurts a team--affects the score of a game--more than an offensive one."

After studying the newspapers, Diogenes spends eight hours or so on Sunday handicapping the games of the following Saturday. He has a number of rules that are as much personal as professional. For one thing, he's a "dog" bettor. "Sixty percent, sometimes 75 percent of my bets are on the underdog," he says. He believes that "the dog is always trying," but he can never be quite sure what the favorite is going to do, particularly if it gets a big lead. "A lot of coaches throw the 'girls' into the game when they get ahead by a couple of touchdowns." (The girls--sometimes called the junkowskies--are the reserves.) It's important to Diogenes to know how the coach of the favorite regards winning big--whether he's afraid that running up a big score will jeopardize the job of a close coaching friend or whether he thinks it'll help him move up a few notches in the weekly wire-service polls. (Under Ara Parseghian, Notre Dame has labored hard to win as big as it can; since it doesn't play in a conference, its chief measure of prestige is in the wire-service polls--and Parseghian feels his team must not only win but win very, very big in order to reach the top in them.) It's this kind of information--how a particular coach feels about winning big--that Dio hopes to pick up in the social events surrounding the preseason clinics, conventions and all-star games. "Any time the point spread gets to 20, it's worth a two-to-one edge in the odds if you know what the coach likes to do."

By instinct and insight, he looks for the 7- and 14-point spreads instead of the 6- and 13-point spreads. "The bookmakers hate 'em." he says of 7 and 14. "They're the killer numbers." The reason is that college-football teams still tend to score in multiples of seven. "The bookmaker has to pay me on ties and the 7-and 14-point spreads get a lot of ties," he says. (That's one difference between bigmoney betting and the parlay card game: The bettors on parlay cards lose on a tie.)

There was a change in all this when the two-point extra point was introduced into college football in 1958. This was an enormous boon to bookmakers, if only because it dramatically reduced the chances for ties at 7 and 14 points. Thus, they did not have to pay off so many bettors. "But the coaches have settled down now and they usually settle for their seven on a touchdown--unless it's late in the game and the final score is at stake," says Diogenes. Or unless the score is so lopsided that the effort for two points won't really change the outcome much.

Finally, he puts in the trends of the various teams and conferences. In the Southeastern Conference, for example, he accepts a lower point spread than elsewhere, because "they play more defense and less wide-open football than teams in other conferences do." In Texas and other areas of the Southwest and Southern California, he risks the bigger point spreads. "They put the ball up in the air and this opens up the game more"--because passes lead to more and quicker scores or because they lead to mistakes that allow the other team to score. When he turns to the Ivy League, he looks to Yale--not necessarily to win but to do better than the point spread says it should. For Yale has a certain tradition among bookies and bettors: It likes to win over the point spread. "What most people don't realize is that the year before last was the second time in the past five or six years that Yale went over the point spread almost every game. You show me 19 games in any two seasons where they went unbeaten and I'll show you 18 games where they went over the point spread." The implication was clear: The spirit of Old Eli is to beat hell out of anybody Yale is capable of beating hell out of.

To all this, he adds certain variables that can be discerned by any fan. Two of them are location and climate. "Watch those teams coming out of the lowlands to play at Colorado or Air Force Academy, particularly early in the season, when the visitors maybe aren't in such good shape. They get up in that thin mountain air, a mile high, and they run out of gas late in the game--they can't even catch their breath. But the kids going to those Rocky Mountain schools have been working out in that thin air all season--really, ever since they started school there--and they have more staying power." Similarly, he watches for undertrained, overweight teams visiting Dust Bowl colleges in the opening weeks of the season. "That hot summer sun in the bottom of the stadium--muggy, sweaty weather--it drives visiting teams crazy," he says. He remembers one September when West Virginia went to Oklahoma with a 23-game winning streak in its own conference, a 25-pound-per-man weight advantage over Oklahoma in the line and the exhilaration of a 66--22 win over Richmond in its opening game. West Virginia's reputation was so great--it had already been picked as a potential national champion in one pre-season analysis--that the situation was ripe to pick Oklahoma. Diogenes did exactly that. Then he watched without surprise as those whippet-lean linemen from Oklahoma ran the ponderous linemen from West Virginia all over the field. In fact, Oklahoma unveiled a "jumping jack" offense that had its own linemen moving out of the line of scrimmage in a way that drove the West Virginia linemen frantic, looking for a way to put the right men in the right defensive slots. The new offense didn't score many points for Oklahoma--the score was 0--0 at the end of the first quarter--but it wasn't intended to. It was designed to wear out the mountainous West Virginia linemen in ineffectual effort--running uncertainly up and down the line of scrimmage, trying to figure out the jumping jacks, before the ball was snapped. It worked: A thoroughly fatigued West Virginia line collapsed in the second and fourth quarters and Oklahoma won 47--14.

Another variable is how the coaches feel about one another. The dogs work particularly hard against Ohio State--"Nobody loves Woody Hayes." On the other hand, "Nobody in the Big Ten ever wanted to beat the Elliotts badly." They had--Pete and Bump--a certain tradition to them and many people in the Big Ten felt that they were endowed with greatness. It didn't quite work out that way; Pete and Bump are no longer coaching football in the Big Ten, but while they were, the sense of destiny was a powerful one. Diogenes recalls a Rose Bowl game in which Iowa, then coached by Forest Evashevski, was a 19-1/2-point favorite over California, then coached by Pete Elliott. Diogenes made a side bet at two to one that Iowa would win by 27-1/2-points. Iowa was winning by 32 points in the fourth quarter when Evashevski apparently took pity on Elliott and sent in the junkowskies. Presto! California pushed down the field for a touchdown that reduced the winning margin--final score 38--12--and that reduced Dio's bank roll even more dramatically. "Well," he says, in the tone of a man who should have known better, "any time the point spread goes over 14 in a bowl game, you've got to be guessing."

Once Diogenes has made his picks, he begins shopping for business. In the days when high-stakes betting on college sports was flourishing, the market on college football opened at noon on Monday, New York time. Dio would get on the phone and work quickly; he liked to be finished within two or three hours, because the other big-money bettors would also be getting their bets in and the point spreads would begin changing to reflect the influx of money. "And a half point could mean an awful lot to me," he says. In more recent days, when a deep breath taken in interstate commerce might lead to a Federal jail sentence, the betting must be done where gambling is legal--i.e., Las Vegas--or where it can be kept confined to a single state, as in Florida, particularly Miami. If Dio is not in either of these towns, he exercises extreme caution. He will not admit to buying an out-of-town newspaper (which is in interstate commerce) nor to listening to an out-of-state football game, much less to placing a bet by a long-distance phone call: He is scrupulous about obeying Federal laws. On the other hand, he is willing to admit the obvious: It is not terribly difficult to get to Las Vegas or to Miami within a few hours from virtually any part of the country.

Once his bets are in, he doesn't sit back and forget about them. He's always looking for that shift that will make for a brilliant opportunity. He fondly remembers the occasion when Pittsburgh opened as a six-point favorite over Penn State. Dio took the underdog--Penn State and six points. During the next few days, he watched the point spread drop from six to four to two to even. At that point, he went back into the market and put a "ton of money" down on Pittsburgh. "There was no way I could lose," he explains. Here's why:

1. If Penn State won or tied the game, he'd win the first bet.

2. If Pitt won the game by any margin, he'd win the second bet.

3. If Pitt won by six points or less, he'd win both bets.

As it happened, Pittsburgh came from behind to win the game 14--13. So Dio won going both ways.

He doesn't expect to do that often. "That kind of opportunity comes along only every couple of years," he says. But neither is he satisfied with half a loaf. "It you're half right, you're a loser," he says. He cited some of the mathematics of the art--kindly, like one conveying truth to little children. "If you bet only ten games, you must be 60 percent right"--not on who will win or lose (which is easy enough) but on picking the point spread. Assuming the minimum bet--$11,000 a game--the investor who wins six out of ten nets $16,000, while the bettor who's half right, picking five out of ten, loses $5000. "So the difference between being half right and 60 percent right is a difference of $21,000--and of being a winner or a loser." To be sure, the more bets you make, the more the tyranny of the odds goes down. On 20 bets, you must be right only 55 percent of the time (11 wins). On 40 bets, you must be right only 52.5 percent of the time (21 wins) to come out ahead. But though the percentages go down, Dio's goals do not. "You've got to decide whether it's worth all the time and tension to get down 40 bets--that's an absolute minimum of $440,000--just so you can come out one grand ahead." For most people, he feels, it isn't. "You can do better putting your money elsewhere."

Over the years, Dio's judgment and integrity have provided him with not only a comfortable fortune but also an unusual stature: He became, very quietly, a consultant to college-conference authorities who wanted to know if there was anything provably corrupt in their conferences. He would phone in a report once or twice a week, indicating whether he noticed anything strange in the betting marts. He didn't want a fixed game; it only distorted his handicapping. He feels that "only the thieves" want a fix. So he felt he was helping himself, as well as college sports, by maintaining a surveillance on the hanky-pank within the game. (Some of the discoveries have become public knowledge--in one weekend, there was an attempt to fix two major games. On a less spectacular level, his stream of advice about how the betting was going on certain basketball games--in which a particular official invariably worked--led to the quiet dismissal of the official.) Even within strictly gambling circles, his judgment and integrity are regarded so loftily that he has been accorded something of the status of a Chief Justice. It is, of course, an informal relationship in which he is asked to adjudicate some of the peskier problems of betting. Take the time Alabama was a 14-point favorite over Miami in a game that was to be played on a Friday night in the Orange Bowl. When a heavy rainstorm was forecast for the Miami area, some investors took Miami and 14 points, in the belief that the wind, the rain and a muddy field would make it all but impossible for Alabama to score. They ignored only one possibility: that the storm would be so violent that the game would have to be postponed for a day. That's exactly what happened. By game time Saturday, the weather was clear and the field was dry and Alabama went out and whipped Miami 21--6, one point over the point spread. The original Miami backers--losers all--immediately squawked and refused to pay up. They claimed that all bets were off, because the game was not played on Friday night, as scheduled. And everybody knows you handicap the weather and the playing field as well as the coaches, the teams and the star halfback's pregnant girlfriend. If a vital element of the game--such as its location or date or a successful abortion--changes its basic condition, then all bets are off: At least that was the claim. In time, the matter was bucked up to Diogenes, as the fairest and most objective man in the business. After considering the problem for a judicious time, he concluded that all bets should be off if the game does not go on as scheduled. It was a landmark decision in big-money betting. Since that time, no bet on a sporting event--except for outdoor boxing--carries over if the event is postponed to another day.

All this is not to say that Diogenes has not known frustrations. He is regarded affectionately on his old campus--if largely because he is such a generous contributor to its development fund--but not by his old employers, who evidently still hold a grudge. "I've gone into the bank several times to drop a $15,000 deposit in their laps," he says, "but they won't take it." He has thought of buying stock in the bank and showing up to quiz the president at annual meetings, "But that wouldn't prove anything," he says quietly. In short, because of the sub rosa nature of his occupation, he has been unable to transfer its huge monetary rewards into a commensurate status in the world at large.

He knows the easiest route: to quit. The Government has smoothed the way for him. "The big bookmakers can't operate anymore," he says, "because of that law against phoning gambling information across state lines." As he talked, he communicated the effect of a good conversationalist quietly voicing some regrets over very good, very old cognac. The result of the Federal strictures, he thought, may be to throw big-money betting on sports into a more Victorian era, where it is conducted discreetly as a "gentlemen's game" between individuals--meeting, if necessary, face to face in an unlit closet (to keep the Feds away). But that would alter the excitement of high risk very little. And it would not alter the cerebral exercise involved in the art. As always, Dio says, the art would represent an expression of oneself--a reflection of a certain persona in the presence of high risk. "They can take the superficialities away," he says, holding up a brandy, "but they can't take away its substance. Or its enduring good taste."