In the world of high-stakes sports betting, few names carry the mystique and fear that Haralabos “Bob” Voulgaris does. The new documentary from TILT, The Man Who Broke NBA Sports Betting and Beat Vegas, dives deep into the story of how one man turned basketball gambling into a science, and left Las Vegas sportsbooks scrambling to catch up.
Voulgaris didn’t just bet on NBA games. He dissected them. From the late 1990s through the early 2000s, he built a reputation as the most successful NBA bettor alive, exploiting inefficiencies in how oddsmakers set lines. His edge? A razor-sharp understanding of coaching tendencies, game flow, and statistical patterns that most sportsbooks overlooked. For example, he noticed that bookmakers often split the projected total points evenly between the first and second halves, despite the fact that NBA games typically see more scoring in the second half due to fouls and timeouts. Voulgaris capitalized on this flaw relentlessly.
At his peak, he was placing over $1 million in bets on a single day of NBA action. His winning rate reportedly hovered near 70% for years. But his success wasn’t just about instinct. Voulgaris eventually teamed up with a math prodigy known only as “The Whiz” to build a predictive model named Ewing, which simulated games and projected scores with uncanny accuracy.
His dominance in the betting world eventually caught the attention of the NBA itself. In 2018, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban hired Voulgaris as Director of Quantitative Research and Development. There, he applied his data-driven approach to team strategy, helping shape offensive schemes and player rotations. Though his tenure ended in 2021 amid reported internal tensions, his influence on the analytics movement in basketball remains undeniable.
Today, Voulgaris owns Spanish soccer club CD Castellón, where he’s applying similar analytical principles to football. But his legacy in NBA betting is cemented. He didn’t just beat Vegas, he forced it to evolve.
