"some people claim there's a woman to blame...but I know its my own damn fault"...Gulf Coast is brilliant to visit but before you commit...Hurricane Season over here gets longer every year and they get more powerful. You can't reason with Hurricane Season

In the late 80's I was working for Mecca Bookmakers in London. We had about 1200 shops country-wide.
We (my brother and a few mates) had the expertise and saw an opportunity to open betting shops in the USA and went for it. At that time to legally operate off track betting in any State of the Union you had to own a race track. At that time we identified two options...both in States where off track betting was legal....Pennsylvania (Philadelphia Park Racetrack) and Louisiana (Fairgrounds in New Orleans)
One thing led to another and we sold everything we owned, borrowed a big chunk of money and bought Philadelphia Park. This gave us the exclusive right to open and operate 6 Betting Shops in and around Philadelphia (then the fourth biggest City in America...now overtaken by Houston and Phoenix)

We designed and opened them in a fashion that you would never recognize in the UK....ours were enormous (30,000 square feet), elegant units with a full service restaurant, two bars, food court, comfortable lounges with cocktail service and about a million TV's with live racing from across the globe with all the attendant betting information. They were enormously successful in their day but the proliferation of Casino gaming and legalised Sports Betting in PA and neighbouring states (like NJ and Delaware) did them in. We had anticipated this and got ourselves in the front of the queue for a Casino license at our racetrack and opened 15 or so years ago.....Fast Forward to today........

Parx Casino of which I hold the grand title of Vice President is the most successful casino in this region (which includes Atlantic City)

3500 Slot Machines
120 Tables (Blackjack, Craps, Baccarat etc.)
80 Poker Tables
1500 Seat Concert Arena
Food Court
6 restaurants (Asian, Steakhouse, Pub etc.)
Beer Garden
Sportsbook
Thriving igaming business
Hotel in the design stage
2800 Employees

That's it in a nutshell. We were supposed to be in and out in 3/5 years...make our money and bugger off back to Blighty. Here I am 33 years and counting later ...life got in the way of our plans!

What a brilliant story Andy.
You saw an opportunity and went for it and succeeded.
Takes huge balls that does.
Nice to see a Gooner doing well!

There are a number of stories in the media that Havartz is our highest earning player by a long way. I hope they are false.

In the last 3 seasons Partey has missed 37 games through injury. Rice has missed 0.

I’m sure he will be near the top. He’d have been on big wages at Chelsea and you don’t earn small money when you move for £65m. I’d expect him in the top 3 earners.
I also saw a rumour that that story about him being on huge wages was from Germany and a very pro Bayern media who like to churn these kind of stories to players deemed to have ‘rejected’ Bayern

.

: I love it ; nice little cyclone in a tea cup erupting in the Ashes

Bairstow lets a bowl go past him ; thinking play is dead he wanders off down the pitch to do the mandatory fist bump or some other inconsequential action

Aussie keeper fires ball back , knocks over the stumps ....... Bairstow run out .

Aussie wins the test

MCC members chanting CHEATS CHEATS .....Rishi Sunak's involved ; Geoff Boycott waffling about the 1932 Bodyline , mutterings about Australia's criminal past .

Aussie media chortling typical whinging Poms .... great theatre

Probably the submarine deal will be cancelled ..... break in diplomatic relations .

Will be an interesting Test in Yorkshire next up .

Where the hell are our cricket aficionados Daz and Old Hoy when you need them

Payment structure for Rice is supposedly done. Agreed over 2 years or 3 accounting periods which Arsenal wanted to balance the books. Still the same amount coming out but it works better for the accountants.

I expect Arsenal to make quite the song and dance about signing Rice.

Still won’t be the most famous Arsenal Rice though , let’s not forget that

Cheers david d and others

I aint that smart.......what I didn't tell you in my story is that we lost our original funding (the collapse of the junk bond market scuppered us)....I'm not the one to discuss that with as high finance is way above my pay grade....any event we were right in the nick...we couldn't complete the purchase of Philadelphia Park and were being hit with brutal financial penalties for that failure to complete...we were on the ropes and for a while looked like we would have to go back home with our tails well and truly between our legs....long story short we were introduced to an extremely wealthy bloke who put up the $50 million or so and we purchased the track. However in so doing we ceded much of our equity in return for his money

So the business today is worth conservatively $2 billion.....if things had have gone our way I would own 2% of the Company. That said I've done fine …we got well paid and bonused over the years and I have no regrets. Would've been a better ending if the six of us had held on to our shares but that's life.
I have had a blast.

Currently I am very homesick....time to go home....my love affair with Philly is on the wane (see last nights headlines....5 shot dead)

Next 18 months I'm back....not sure yet where ….I'm leaning towards Hove....my sister lives in Brighton and my eldest up the coast in Rustington...or somewhere Teddington, Hampton Wick, Esher area....my niece lives in Teddington and I've been a few times....its really lovely

Decision time coming soon.

Good to see test cricket being taken seriously! It's dying down here.

Good to see test cricket being taken seriously! It's dying down here.

Not sure what all the fuss was about. Bairstow was dumb and Carey was sharp. Because of that, Bairstow was out.

I essence, bowlers win matches and theirs are better than ours. If they had a sharper captain, it would all have been over much earlier.

Gidday Decaf ... indeed anything to spice the game up , the Bodyline , Alan Donald dropping his bat , Bolt stepping on the boundary rope , the underarm to McKechnie and this incident all help spice up the game that sometimes can be pretty hum drum .

Really interesting to read Andy's description of setting up a serious book-making / casino operation. I confess I’ve always had a certain fascination for gambling though it has never been something I’ve really indulged in. Few mug punts on the Grand National down the years but not much more than that. Last bet I placed was Patrick Vieira to score up at Leicester – and that went down.

Going back a while, both my grandfathers were obsessed with horse racing and it caused their families real suffering on many occasions. Imagine my grandmothers trying to feed their young families – including my parents – when the old man had blown all his wages for the week.

I met Clement Freud at Lord’s many years ago. Really interesting guy and we had a long chat over a few beers. Amongst other things (MP, Chef, TV personality, Author) he was a legendary gambler. He told me that for him, a bet had to mean something. He needed to bet a large enough sum that it would really hurt to lose. I tried that approach a couple of times and while it did hurt when I lost, I never got any sort of thrill from the process. I just couldn’t see the point. Slightly odd because I’ve taken many risks over the years in my professional life so it isn’t that aspect that put me off gambling. I suppose it’s the lack of control. Might be different if I had any sort of knowledge or understanding of what I was betting on, but I didn’t.

No. Not for me.

https://www.parxcasino.com/

Pretty impressive.

Not sure what all the fuss was about. Bairstow was dumb and Carey was sharp. Because of that, Bairstow was out.

In essence, bowlers win matches and theirs are better than ours. If they had a sharper captain, it would all have been over much earlier.

England's crazy declaration in the first test kind of set the tone too.

It can be a dull. But it seems to invoke more passion than the shorter forms where the thrills are rather cheap. The Aussis seem to be absolute masters of winding everyone else up in test cricket which is all good in my book

Really interesting pod on how we’re financing all this activity and the set up the past few years https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/w ... 0619069144

Knows his stuff does nigel Phillips , met him and had a good chat at Bernard’s funeral

Wenger statue is being commissioned for outside the Emirates

A propos of nothing, just spotted this as I logged out - current status of the numbers viewing the site.

In total there are 131 Gooners online :: 3 registered, 0 hidden and 128 guests (based on Gooners active over the past 20 minutes)

Come on you silent 128 - sign up and join in. You'll be welcomed.

... : I love it ; nice little cyclone in a tea cup erupting in the Ashes...Where the hell are our cricket aficionados Daz and Old Hoy when you need them

It is.