It was 2009 in Costa Rica, and bookmaker Rex Beyers was getting ready to learn a lesson about taking bets on the NFL draft.

Beyers was in his early 30s and had been in the business a few years when he got the chance to run an online sportsbook that was located in the same office building as the Costa Rican treasury department. Like many new bosses, Beyers was, in his words, “full of p— and vinegar” and determined to show his staff how he ran things by booking the NFL draft.

Other international online sportsbooks had begun taking bets on the draft in recent years, and Beyers believed he knew enough about the NFL, college football prospects and how organizations approached the draft that he could produce odds on around 50 propositions and put his sportsbook in position to turn a profit. He was wrong.