Well after closing time, the staff at Abunai, a poke restaurant in Northwest D.C., grew accustomed to leaving on the lights for a single customer. It had good reason to treat this 27-year-old former data scientist so well. His patronage brought in well over $100,000 — despite him rarely ordering anything to eat or drink.
“I don’t even like raw fish,” he said.
What drew him to the 15-seat establishment on L Street were the two sports betting kiosks run by GambetDC, the District’s government-sponsored sportsbook. The bettor had discovered that the oddsmaker used by GambetDC regularly set betting lines that deviated, sometimes significantly, from those offered at the savviest national sportsbooks.
Exploiting such differences is one of the easiest ways for sports gamblers to make money — and one of the fastest ways to get restricted on how much they can bet. Many of the country’s top operators aggressively limit how much customers can wager after they show winning tendencies — and this bettor said he was limited on GambetDC’s app.
