secret wealthy gamblers club is going to war, page-5

Pretty good head start when you get up to and possibly over 10% in kickbacks on betting turnover, hard to lose, and even IF you did, as long as it's not more than 5% you're still cookin' with gas after the rebate kicks in. I think if you employ 300 people and use mountains of data and video footage to analyse form, it could be classified a business LOL. This (betting exchange wagering) has similarities with algo trading on the stockmarkets world wide. I've put up a couple of other links here, including his sidekick David Walsh and his incredible poo making machine Cloaca exhibited at his Tasmanian Art Gallery MONA (Museum of Old and New Art)

http://www.championprofits.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Living-Learning-with-the-Worlds-Biggest-Punters.pdf

Zeljko Ranogajec

“behind that enigmatic demeanor and shyness is one of the
world’s dynamic businessmen, and clearly the biggest punter
the world has ever seen or likely to see” He had just invested a lazy $19.7 million in a Mosman mansion.
The very private Zeljko Ranogajec must have hated to see his name in the weekend newspapers, especially as it had nothing to do with punting.

Zeljko values his privacy and goes to enormous lengths to remain clandestine, unlike his high profile colleagues who are media favourites.

I feel privileged to have met the great man over a steak at the trendy Oaks Hotel at Sydney’s Cremorne and found him to be an amiable, fascinating individual who had mastered the art of delegation like a well drilled General.
Zeljko is a strategic thinker with a computer like mind, but like all good generals, he wisely nominates a hand picked “Lieutenant” to do his qualifications before he offers the final decision.

Our lunch was set up by a mutual friend “Nick the Thief” who first met Zeljko at Sydney’s Star City playing blackjack before they both were banned for card counting. We were to discuss a proto type that I had developed to allow punters to bet against each other. Unfortunately
the backward Australian government was still coming to grips with the internet and gambling laws and was stalling with reform. It made it virtually impossible to launch such an enterprise in this country back then when you mix red tape politics with the forbidden word “gambling”.

It would have been interesting if we had brain stormed the initiative again in more depth before two bright guys in the U.K. Andrew Black and Edward Wray, who had a similar vision and a more innovative government, and were able to launch their business without the red tape. That business today is known as Betfair.com and is the world’s biggest Internet gambling website that produces 15 million bets every day and just posted a 29 million pounds net profit. Ouch!

Maybe Zeiljko should have left his front men at home that day, but he has not done much wrong since. Zeiljko was not what I expected and certainly he could have a security
guard on his toes if he boarded a plane, but looks can be deceiving, and behind that enigmatic demeanor and shyness is one of the world’s dynamic businessmen, and clearly the biggest punter the world has ever seen or likely to see.

So why is he so private and why does one of the world’s biggest winner’s consciously masquerades as a loser?

Not even the majority of his huge staff employed at his company Humbletons are aware that he is the “boss”, or even that he exists. He does not even turn up at the company staff Xmas parties. Maybe he thinks that someone in the street may try to “snip” him, or maybe he is just a Russell Crowe fan and wants to copy his wardrobe and barber.

Although he is private and would never win a David Jones best dressed contest at Royal Randwick on Doncaster Day, Zeiljko knows that he is the best at what he does and has no problems in saying so when he wants something. This is a powerful leverage when negotiating as most people want to be involved or do business with someone who turns over such vast sums of cash and who wakes every morning to see how much bigger his bank account has grown overnight, although not always. Zeiljko’s inflated ego is known to have curtailed a huge business opportunity early in 2009 as listening would have been more productive instead of dictating.

It has been alleged that Zeljko actually owns his own Betting Exchange as he has his own software development group to ensure that he has leading edge information technology and importantly all the “secrets” remain in house. The Exchange is known as WBX, or World Betting
Exchange and in April 2007 a forum mite posted this:

WBX: Anonymous

I understand that a betting syndicate is involved with the operation of WBX & has 3rd party ownership of WBX. The betting syndicate includes one of the world’s biggest gamblers Zeljko Ranogajec. The public are betting against the syndicate\’s computer generated bets.

It has often been mentioned that Zeiljko has developed his own software robots who automatically claim a wager on Betting Exchanges when the prices fall under 100%. The software is so intelligent and so fast that it makes it impossible for a human to compete.

For the uninitiated, if Betfair posted odds on a soccer game with Blyth Spartans at 19.13, the Draw at 7.08 and Blackburn Rovers at 1.24 the total odds percentages would equal 100%. If any of those prices firmed the Robots would instantly place a wager. Because the Robots are betting under 100% they (and Zeiljko) cannot lose regardless of
the result. Because of his sheer turnover Zeljko commands the red carpet treatment from every Tote in the world, and he gets it. If he asks for the top floor in the High Performance room at Randwick race course for some of his staff to crunch numbers, the answer is “no problem sir, anything else, what would you like for lunch?”

It does not matter if it is horse racing at Randwick, football or trots in Holland. You name it and chances are that Zeljko is betting on it, and if he is not then he likely will be soon.

Dave Jay from Scotland posted this on a Punting forum:

“Studying the form and all that good stuff is fine, but things change all of the time and the market is dynamic. That’s why the big lads, I reckon no more than a handful world wide, employ statisticians, programmers and market analysts to keep ahead of the game. People like Zeljko Ranogajec, who is rumored to account for around 25% of
all Betfair liquidity.”

Zeljko recently set up his head office in Sydney’s plush Pyrmont, which is five star all the way and the size of a football field overlooking beautiful Darling Harbour. The security is like Fort Knox with special card keys for each board room that have a defined revenue stream like “Hong Kong Speed and Bias”, “U.K Races” etc..Logic would tell you that with massive monthly operating expenses which include almost 100 skilled video analysts and countless
management and admin staff, it is difficult to survive with tiny margins of 1% and 2%.

So, how does he do it? When you are turning over literally billions small margins are enough and as a separate profit contribution Mr. “Zee” has negotiated a kick back commission from most of the world totes which range from 2% to 10% based on turnover and vary between racing and sports. Now we are talking big potatas.

If the “mail” is even remotely close that Zeiljko is responsible for 5% of the Australian Tabcorp turnover then we are talking about an institution. Alan Woods was said to be responsible for 2% of the giant Hong Kong Jokey Club hold where he turned his $100k card counting winnings into over $700 million.

Zeiljko, like Woods, is also a mathematical genius, and got his start from being able to count the cards at Casinos also, which must have disappointed his Croatian immigrant parents who had ear marked a legal career for him in a modest Hobart office.

A mathematician would advise you that 98% of people lose punting on the TAB as they take out over 17% profit before the event starts. Zeiljko is one of those 2% who win or break even because his vast form data base recognizes when there is a “mistake” and the value available more than counters the take out rate. He employs analysts world wide who receive a weekly satchel with computer CD’s of their designated territories to analyze. The meetings are all manually analyzed and each horse gets a comment and a rating which is in code.

The highest rating for a horse is deemed an “SQ” (Special Quality) and if it earns the highest rating of SQ5, which in layman’s language means it is unbeatable next start. It would be like a Class 1 horse racing in a Class 1 race that would have Group Class potential, or Billy Slater playing for Cessnock Goannas. All the analysts are English, even though the CDs may arrive in German, Chinese or Japanese. Every horse is rated and logged into the
central data base. To emphasize how private Zeiljko is, the majority of his staff have no idea that they work for him. All they know is that they are employed by a company called Humbletons and that their pay cheque turns up
every week.

Forumite “Shifty MP” had this to say on the Sportal Forum in Oct., 2007:

Humbleton is a very insular, very incestuous, very tight-knit group that is hard to get in / out of. Said to be the monkeys that feed Zjelko his information - this is unconfirmed, but likely. It is debatable how much longer Zeljko can remain “invisible” as he is fast becoming not only one of the world’s wealthiest men, but one of the most influential.

He is already the leading player in most countries with legalized wagering so where does it stop? If we are to judge Zeljko, we know him to be methodical and based on
previous initiatives then surely owning his own betting shop and tote would be on the drawing boards. Hold fire!
There are over 500 betting shops in the world already and Zeljko is NOT a “me two” guy, he is an innovator, who breaks new ground and likes to tread where others would not dare. A global tote perhaps that would accommodate pools from every wagering country world wide is a mouth watering thought. Now that is more like it. That sounds like Mr.”Zee”.

More on Mr. Zee
http://www.racerate.com/Zeljko_Ranogajec.htm

And Mr. Walsh's MONA museum....
http://art.anazana.com/en/news-archive-13508/page-31055:13/page-42386:12/open-news:10478

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdlLBWymnUA&feature=player_embedded