Sports bettor Tom Barton is a dual threat

Tom Barton is a professional bettor and handicapping-service provider. He used to work at the Four Corners, Las Vegas' busiest intersection. He would dispatch visiting friends to the sportsbooks at New York-New York, Excalibur and Tropicana. They would collect football spreads, totals and prices. At Coyote Ugly Saloon, inside New. York/New.York, he bought the first few rounds.

"I didn't know that I knew. I was searching because it just didn’t make sense to me why I would pay for a bad bet."

Thomas Barton Sr. never bet a buck on an individual game. He brought the weekly NFL office pool sheets home in Levittown, New York. Junior, maybe 7, helped him pick. Senior won the first-place loot four or five times a season. Tom Jr. says "the house" or mom always got the winnings. The money went to take Tom and Kim to Disney World. Barton is a radio host and sports handicapper. He and partner Tim Unglesbee have hosted a 10-to-midnight weekend radio show on Vegas’s Fox Sports outlet for 12 years.

Sports bettor Tom Barton is in Las Vegas for the first time in three years. He has $10,000 in his pocket. His clients have begged for more. In two days, he will win with Toledo, Houston, Pittsburgh, Chicago and Baltimore in the NFL. He will return to New York on Monday afternoon with twice as much cash as he brought here. The waitress serves him a $25 burger. Barton should tip himself. Before the pandemic, Barton had noted that Vegas standards had slipped.

Tom Barton is a sports bettor. He always bets on Aaron Rodgers against Chicago. Barton lives in Sandy Beach, near the tip of Long Island with his wife and children. His father died at a young age. He instilled in his son that vacations create memories. Tom Barton doesn't have fancy cars, a nice wardrobe or flashy watches.