I grew up around sports gambling. My dad, Elmer Pellegrini, was a bookie who ran an illegal sports gambling operation from our home throughout my childhood until his untimely passing on March 2, 1995. I like to say he was the OG when it comes to working from home.
I was never allowed to tell my friends what my Dad did for a living, and since he was so much older than my Mom, I just told everyone he was retired. My Mom used to take me out all day on the weekends because my Dad was busy taking phone calls about all the games going on and she didn't want me to be home in case the police or FBI showed up to arrest him.
That actually happened once when I was a baby. One of my Dad's customers turned out to be an undercover agent and the police raided our house. My Mom had tape recordings of me making baby talk, but you could hear my Dad in the background taking phone calls from his customers. They had to listen to all of those tapes and confiscated some cash from our home, but here's where things take an interesting twist; my Dad was the most generous guy I've ever heard of. No one was allowed to pay for anything when he was around, and he was the biggest tipper you've ever seen. His motto was always "Everyone's gotta make a living."
One night he was out to dinner with my Mom for his birthday. He was wearing a beautiful new tie that my Mom had purchased for him as a present and they ran into an old friend in the restaurant. His friend immediately complimented him on the tie and he insisted on giving it to him. Not because he didn't love the gift from his wife, but because he was so generous that he just had to do it. I later asked my Mom if she was upset about it, but she wasn't; that was just Elmer.
Elmer Pellegrini and Rita LaFleur — my parents
The undercover agent who was collecting intel on my Dad soon realized what a good person he was. They would meet for breakfast, most likely to exchange cash, but my Dad would never let him pay for anything. He once even took the guy's whole family out to breakfast. He was a unique person who didn't fit the mold of what you might expect based on what he did for a living.
When his trial finally happened after the arrest, the undercover agent had to testify. Instead of testifying against my Dad to help put him in prison, he ended up testifying on behalf of my Dad to keep him out of prison. He explained to the judge what a good person my Dad was; how generous he was and how good of a family man he was. It was based on this testimony that the judge decided to take leniency on my Dad and never sent him to prison. I owe that agent, and that judge, a lot because my life most certainly would have turned out differently if my Dad would have gone to prison during the first couple of years of my life.
Before his passing, my Dad always used to say to me "Don't do what I do. Make something better out of your life." I was 14 when he passed away from cancer and went through some tough years following that experience, but ultimately I found my way. In the late 1990's I could tell that the Internet was going to be a big thing, so I got into web development and was able to make a nice career for myself.
Building a career in web development
After several years of working as a contractor and working at little startups, I got my big break when I was hired as a Web Development Engineer at Amazon. I spent about 2.5 years there, then ended up taking a role as a Software Engineer at Microsoft. After 8 years at Microsoft, I felt it was time to move on, mostly because I wanted to focus on Cappers.
I avoided sports gambling for most of my life, but after moving to Las Vegas in my early 40s, I started getting interested in the process of sports handicapping. I wanted to understand why professional sports gamblers made their betting decisions and soon started reading every book and article that I could find. I quickly realized that handicapping a game is a slow process because it takes so much research, and there are so many numbers that need to be plugged into various equations.
The foundation of Cappers
Based on my web development and software engineering experience, I instantly realized that I could speed up the sports handicapping process significantly by codifying these gambling systems into a website. This is how the Cappers App was born, although at that time I never intended for it to be a public-facing property. It was solely meant to help me speed up my own handicapping process.
After a while, I started to see the value in what I was building and quickly realized that if it was valuable to me, it would probably be valuable to others as well. However, it wasn't until I presented my work to my close friend, and business partner Devin, that I was able to see the big picture. Devin is the most successful entrepreneur I know, and someone that I have always looked up to for various reasons. He was a big inspiration to me early in my development career and then inspired me again based on his experience forming and running successful startups.
It was about eight months from the time that I first started coding what would become the Cappers App to our beta launch, and I'm not exaggerating when I say there were probably less than 10 days during that stretch where I didn't work on it. It was my baby and I was obsessed with adding new features, improving betting system calculations, and integrating with other systems. Devin's vision and experience took my little sports gambling tool and transformed it into a real startup company.
Based on my childhood experiences, I feel like Cappers has brought me full circle. I was surrounded by sports gambling as a kid, then I avoided it as I got older because I wanted to follow my Dad's advice by making something better out of my life. I worked for more than a decade at two of the largest companies in the world and learned a ton. Today, I'm in a position where I was able to take two of these major life experiences and combine them.
Once Cappers started coming together it felt like my destiny. I don't see how anyone could be more qualified than me to be a founder of a business like this. The funny thing is, I grew up the son of a bookie, and now I'm a founder of a company that helps sports gamblers beat the bookies. I know my Dad would be proud though, and no one would be cheering for Cappers' success more than him.
Now that Cappers is a thing, there's no question that our success is based entirely on the success of our customers. We are obsessed with improving our platform and betting recommendations. We're not a tout service, meaning we don't tell you specifically who to bet on. Our goal is to present our customers with all of the most relevant betting information they can get, then let them make their own decisions.
We focus heavily on building out our own sports databases, then using that data to run every gambling system calculation we know of at once. We present all of the most important data to our users and plug that data into artificial intelligence models to present our users with AI-generated picks.
Based on our vision and coding prowess, you can expect the Cappers platform to continue growing and evolving for years to come. Sports gambling is a journey, and you can be sure that the more we learn, the more we will put into our platform for our customers to profit from. We think of ourselves as a premium service at a fair price point. We're not affiliated with any sports books and we don't advertise to our users. When you pay for a Cappers App subscription, you get unlimited access to this tool that we have and continue to pour our hearts into on a daily basis.
We strongly believe in the service we provide and urge you to join us on this journey. Although sports gambling knowledge accumulation is a never-ending process, these are the commandments that we urge all sports gamblers to follow. Here's to our mutual success!
The Cappers Commandments of Sports Betting
- Never bet money you can't afford to lose.
- Don't start chasing when you get behind.
- Have a bankroll management system.
- Have a reason for every bet you place. Favorite teams and gut feelings are not valid reasons.
- Find handicapping systems that work for you.
- Favor bets with positive payouts. This will allow you to turn a profit even with a losing record.
- Don't focus on total wins and losses. It's all about your return on investment.
- Learn from people who know more than you. There has never been more available information than right now.
- Betting every game on the slate is almost always a bad idea. Choose your spots wisely.
- Public perception is usually skewed. When in doubt, fade the public and follow the pros.
- Don't get too down from the losses or too up from the wins.
