LAS VEGAS — A glance at her husband’s grimace as he left his office in their Northbrook home two weekends ago made Beth Miller inquire, ‘‘Are we in trouble?’’
No reason to worry, he said. Matt Miller, a former lawyer who has made a name for himself handicapping horse tournaments, has won more than 100 such tourneys this calendar year.
But he really had wanted the online one that had just concluded.
‘‘I’m looking at a day of important races, and one comes along at Keeneland that has two huge favorites; everyone else is a massive longshot,’’ Matt Miller says. ‘‘I just found my spot. Didn’t know the horses. Didn’t really care.
‘‘I just know the odds on both are 2-1; the rest are 80-1. One of those 2-1s will likely win, but I lost. I’m sick to my stomach. I open the office door and say, ‘Honey, it’s time to go to dinner.’ ’’
Early on, he had led that tourney.
‘‘I’m so competitive; I want to win so badly,’’ Miller says. ‘‘That was a tough one. I can shrug it off as part of the game, but you wouldn’t know it in the first five minutes afterward.
‘‘I won’t say I’m a bigger baby than other people, but you could tell how badly I wanted it. It isn’t the losing; it’s the not winning.’’
Big one in ’21
Friday and Saturday are epic for equine enthusiasts, as Del Mar plays host to the Breeders’ Cup. Miller will leave early to situate himself in the San Diego area.
Many people will want to exchange hellos and share stories with him, like they do at Saratoga, Santa Anita and other tracks he and friends attend.
Miller, 54, will be there for the Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge, which he has conquered three times — twice as adviser/investor and once as sole entrant.
In 2019 came the appetizer, when pal Brad Anderson won the BCBC.
‘‘Incredible,’’ Miller wrote, ‘‘but doing it myself, in 2021, was a feeling beyond measure.’’
Two years later, Del Mar was the stage. To cut to the chase, Miller won the BCBC by wagering all of his $34,000 on 3-1 shot Knicks Go to win the Classic, which it did, a $142,800 windfall for him.
Miller covered his unique path in ‘‘A Bettor Way of Thinking,’’ the book he wrote about horse betting — with many nuggets about sports wagering and gambling in general — that was published last year.
‘‘Coming home a BCBC champion gave me a feeling of validation and pride,’’ he wrote, ‘‘that amounted to a lifetime highlight.’’
I only tap on his ’21 triumph because the colorful and intriguing details, all in the book, are dramatic, as is Miller’s tale of how he honed and polished his tactics into a method to achieve goals and objectives.
‘‘Just keep adapting,’’ he told me last week. ‘‘If you’d have told me 15 years ago what kind of player I’d become, I wouldn’t have even begun to know how that would be possible. I’d never played in a tournament.
‘‘I was the idiot who said, ‘OK, 10 races, I’ll bring $1,500 — $150 a race. Let’s go!’ ’’
He buckled down, listened to various podcasts and became a powerhouse.
‘‘I lost my first BCBC in the dumbest, worst way possible,’’ Miller tells me. ‘‘I never had a good mentor. . . . I learned all this [bleep] on my own.
‘‘Once I figured this stuff out, I decided, ‘Why not help others learn these lessons without having to pay for them themselves?’ ’’
Horsin’ around
Miller retired two years ago, settled into the local library with pen and paper and produced the bulk of ‘‘A Bettor Way of Thinking’’ in two months.
For someone who professes never to read because of an ADD condition that would, on occasion, cause him delays in navigating long legal contracts, that is impressive.
Popular podcaster Peter Thomas Fornatale helped edit it, and a designer produced a gorgeous dark cover with five horses bolting at the reader that Miller’s family turned into a poster, a gift he keeps framed in his office.
Miller has a matter-of-fact writing style that readers should find entertaining. He laughs at himself, pointing out errors and mistakes he has made so others don’t duplicate them.
In particular, there was that long-ago day at now-demolished Arlington when he was gunning for a Jackpot Pick 6 carryover of about $5,000. He had nabbed an initial ticket for about $100, then pursued a ‘‘brilliant’’ idea.
‘‘To play a second ticket,’’ he wrote. ‘‘A cheap hedge.’’
The first ticket hit. He had nailed it. Someone else also had won. Because there was more than one winner, the prize pool carried over automatically. The carryover to the next day amounted to $9,000.
That second ticket, to Miller’s horror, had been his.
‘‘I forgot to remove the horse I already had,’’ he wrote. ‘‘I didn’t realize that I was postured to possibly hit both tickets. I shouldn’t have played ‘all’ as a hedge; it should have been ‘all minus one horse.’ The [bleep]hole was me!’’
If Beth can’t find her husband in his office, she knows where to look next: outside. The calls, from readers seeking further knowledge or wanting to swap stories, come often.
‘‘I’ll talk to them for two hours, standing in the driveway,’’ Miller says. ‘‘Do it all the time. I love it.’’