Jimmy the Greek Lost When He Bet On Himself

Snyder had a foolproof system that worked until he tried to explain the astonishing success of Black football players.

“The future is hidden from all men and great events hang on small chances.”

— Demosthenes, Athenian statesman (384–322 BC)

That moment when your life turns upside down and you can’t quite remember how you get there?

Everything was going as planned until James George Snyder, aka Jimmy the Greek, somehow took a precipitous detour. It wasn’t planned and it does not appear to have been intentional. Nonetheless, five words spoken spontaneously ended his career and ultimately killed him.

The same thing happened to the ancient Greek statesman Demosthenes. He spread nasty rumors that Alexander the Great was dead. To his great embarrassment, the formidable warrior was very much alive. Alex was displeased and Demo was banished, and that’s how he discovered that significant events do indeed hang on small chances. Over two thousand years later, his countryman and fellow master of probabilities learned the same lesson.

Fatal Huddle

On January 15, 1988, James George Snyder, also known as Jimmy the Greek, was having lunch at Duke Ziebert’s in Washington, DC, a well-known hangout for sports celebrities. Outside, it was a cold afternoon with little news. That is why an intrepid reporter for the NBC affiliate WRC-TV was waiting at the entrance to interview a bigwig on the occasion of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday.

The reporter, Ed Hotaling, wanted the world’s biggest football bettor to tell him about the role of Black football players. It seemed straightforward enough. It was an innocent effort to get a quotable response from someone who mattered. Snyder burst through the elegant brass-framed, tinted glass doors and a few short sentences changed his life forever. Great events do hang on small chances.

Snyder knew a thing or two about unpredictable outcomes. When he was ten, a psychotic uncle shot and killed his mother and aunt before turning the pistol on himself. Snyder stayed late at the grocery store to wait for a ride that day. It saved his life. It also encouraged him to start gambling.

Jimmy the Greek discovered that knowing the odds can make the difference between life and death and between winning and losing. To become a successful gambler, he built a system based on probabilities.

We actually blossom in the face of a significant setback like losing a job or a loved one. Pow! Boom! Smash! Most of us rebound and move forward, stiffening our resolve and raising a fist to the gods of chaos. “Go ahead. Do your worst; I can handle it.”

However, when tiny gnats invade our mental airspace it drives us mad. We get distracted and miss at the exact moment we can practically touch the brass ring.

Complexity

In a different context, as Hemingway observed, complexity develops gradually so that we aren’t aware of it entering our lives, and then suddenly. Those are “oops” moments. Complexity creates a technical glitch in our brains by sending too many signals to process. Everything is calm, and the waters are smooth, except there is a large iceberg drifting in the mist towards the port side. Boom. We become captain of our own Titanic. The newspapers call it a tragedy, however, it is nothing more than complexity at work.

When we cram size ten problems into a size eight brain the future comes too quickly, and we become sidetracked by flotsam and jetsam. Complexity is welcomed with open arms. Two factors are necessary: a scarcity of time and minor distractions. A ticking clock led to the First World War (due to a drawn-out mobilization period) and the pandemic mania (the time it took to find a cure). It’s why otherwise smart people made stupid decisions.

The concept has been confirmed by experts as varied as Yogi Berra and Neils Bohr. The aphoristic baseball catcher and the nuclear physicist rarely appear in the same sentence, however, they came to an identical conclusion: “Predictions are difficult, especially about the future.” So what is the answer?

Create a decision-making process that allows you to calculate the odds. You can estimate the probability of outcomes even if you do not know when they will occur. James George Snyder created a successful TV career out of doing that for NFL football.

Jimmy the Greek, as he was called since his family roots were not far from Athens, did for sports betting what Warren Buffett did for the stock market. He simplified it so ordinary people would understand the complexities. He took the random elements that floated in front of him, like Captain Smith of the Titanic should have done with the iceberg, and fit them into a system that was predictable. For a while, it made him the most successful bookie in the history of Las Vegas.

The Bookie

If you want to win, you need a system

Snyder’s family originated in the sleepy Aegean Sea island of Chios, where wearing a suit and tie was reserved for weddings and funerals. They moved to Steubenville, Ohio, where he hung out with Dean Martin as a teenager. To make a few extra dollars, Snyder turned to small-time bookmaking. Being a good gambler was the next best thing to a formal education. Some could describe it as an addiction that paid off.

Snyder rose to prominence as America’s leading sports bookmaker by making a handsome living sharing betting odds with TV sports fans. Following a David Frost interview with Muhammad Ali, the reigning world boxing champion, he attained widespread renown. The boxer, a rap icon of the time, exclaimed on the program: “All of my critics crawl… All of you suckers bow… If you wanna know any damn thing about boxing, don’t go to no Jimmy the Greek. Come to Muhammad Ali.”

From that moment, Snyder and sports were synonymous. He was parodied in sketches on Saturday Night Live, and Phil Hartman and John Candy ably portrayed his jowly, teamster driver demeanor. He was featured in an episode of The Simpsons titled “Lisa the Greek,” named after him.

His professional career officially got underway when he placed a wager on the Thomas Dewey vs. Harry S. Truman election in 1948. He gave Truman odds of 17 to 1. The wager was $10,000, which was greater than his annual salary. The thing was, politics didn’t interest Synder. He saw the probabilities. Snyder was confident that Dewey would lose. Why? “Women in America didn’t trust mustachioed males.”

He understood probabilities. That became his calling card. His forte was reckoning the odds without appearing to do so. He never relied on instinct or hunches. Synder had a system that relied on probabilities, and his skill was unmatched. Then it all came apart.

Snyder’s Wink

When he became a sports analyst on CBS, gambling was illegal except in Las Vegas, and Snyder could not mention the word betting. So he created a ruse that allowed him to signal the odds.

Snyder predicted the score and the betting began.

For example, everyone who watched NFL Football understood the point spread, a number set by oddsmakers to even the playing field. It’s a way to balance a matchup between two unequal teams by giving extra points to the underdog or taking points away from the favorite, similar to a golf handicap.

Snyder would predict the Los Angeles Raiders would beat the Los Angeles Rams 31–21, a ten-point spread, compared to the official point spread of five. In his opinion, that would suggest the Rams were a heavy favorite, as they more than covered the spread. Now bettors could get to work.

While his commentary was technically not a bet, it wasn’t tiddlywinks, either. Although the NFL had to avoid any connection between gambling and football, Commissioner Pete Rozelle was a friend of Snyder’s and thought it was good for the game.

It was good for Snyder too. It made him famous. And fame, like wealth, permanently changes the odds.

The Score

His formula for picking winners was fireproof.

When he was questioned about the formula for picking the winning football squad, he answered, “There are five things I look for. Overall, team speed is number one. Then the front four on defense. Then the back defense, especially the cornerbacks. The fourth is the quarterbacks.” Then Snyder added #5 and most importantly, “I always have to consider the intangibles.” That was Snyder’s system, and it made him rich and famous.

One thing Snyder never expected to be asked was why African Americans were so prevalent on winning teams. It seemed obvious to him. But there was a side of professional football that most people never realized.

According to the Washington Post, Synder forgot about the fifth factor on that particular Friday as he tried to explain his thinking. With that, he lost everything he had built since leaving Steubenville, riches, fame, reputation, and career.

All it took was five little words.

“Blacks were bred for sports.”

The Intangibles

All he was thinking about was the little-known reality that pro football lacked diversity. A transcript of the Channel 4 interview that aired later that evening went something like this:

Snyder: “Well, they’ve got everything; if they {blacks} take over coaching like everybody wants them to, there’s not going to be anything left for white people. I mean all the players are black; I mean the only thing that the whites control is the coaching jobs . . . The black talent is beautiful; it’s great; it’s out there. The only thing left for the whites is a couple of coaching jobs.”

Later in the interview, he added: “There are 10 players on a basketball court. If you find two whites, you’re lucky. Either four out of five or nine out of 10 are black. Now that’s because they practice and they play and they practice and play. They’re not lazy like the white athlete . . .

Then he doubled down: “The black is a better athlete to begin with, because he’s been bred to be that way. Because of his high thighs and big thighs that go up into his back. And they can jump higher and run faster because of their bigger thighs, you see.”

Still gabbing without thinking too hard, he adds: “I’m telling you that the black is the better athlete and he practices to be the better athlete and he’s bred to be the better athlete because this goes all the way to the Civil War when, during the slave trading, the owner, the slave owner, would breed his big woman so that he would have a big black kid, see. That’s where it all started.”

Finally, he plunges the knife: “The slave trader would breed his huge black guy with his big wife to make a big black child…See?”

Instant Replay

“Jimmy frequently attempted to make a point about a subject he knew nothing about.” — Frank Gifford

His question seemed simple enough, so why did it go so wrong? Could it be that Snyder was in a hurry? Or perhaps he enjoyed talking to reporters too much? Maybe he wanted to pontificate?

The comments understandably touched off a firestorm of criticism. He tried to double back by apologizing, “I should have expressed myself a lot better than I did today.”

The remarks horrified the American public, his superiors at CBS, and the media. He was fired like a scorched briquet. Las Vegas mucky mucks asked, “Jimmy, who?” He started having cardiac issues (which would later claim his life). His job was over. A career of wagering backfired because he risked everything on an inappropriate remark. Jimmy the Greek sued CBS to refute the accusations in court, but the case was dismissed.

According to his obituary in the New York Times, Snyder subsequently commented, “what a stupid thing to say.” Irv Cross, a black former NFL player, claimed to have worked with Snyder and “did not find him to be in any way racist.” Sports great and commentator Frank Gifford said, “Jimmy frequently attempted to make a point about a subject he knew nothing about.”

It was a failure of gambling instinct. Jimmy the Greek didn’t know the odds when it came to his innermost thoughts. We ask why? How? After a lifetime of knowing when to hold and when to fold? But reflective, logical thinking takes place in the quiet recesses of the mind, not the part that looks into the camera and says, “Now, watch this.” Ego and betting don’t mix. Ironically, money and betting don’t mix (most investors don’t beat the S&P 500).

James George Snyder had more skill at calculating odds than anyone on the planet. For once in his life it abandoned him. That was how he learned the teachings of Demosthenes, that it doesn’t take a philosopher to realize small stuff matters.

And then, you have to consider the intangibles.