LAS VEGAS — Delayed by a tardy bus transfer and distracted by chatty friends, the amiable and welcoming Chuck finally got down to handicapping horse races April 9.
He was late to address Keeneland, staging a weather makeup day, and a golden opportunity evaporated.
In its eighth race, a mile on turf, Summer in Adriane beat Navy Seal by a nose, paying $95.56 to win, $46.16 to place and $22.66 to show. A $1 exacta (12-10) paid $561.28.
Jockey Juan Hernandez being atop Summer would have drawn Chuck to the 4-year-old gelding because Hernandez is a top western turf rider. Chuck also favors trainer Michael J. Maker.
The Hernandez-Maker combination would have made Chuck investigate further, with a wager on Summer likely.
Chuck missed a big one. He grinned, took it in stride. There would be other tracks, other races, other winners.
But there’s only one Chuck. Fortunately, I befriended him more than 10 years ago in my home sportsbook, at Green Valley Ranch (GVR). Chuck Williams, 74, is as dedicated to handicapping horses as anyone I’ve ever met.
“You know me,” he told me years ago. “If I have a dollar, I’m tryin’ to make a dollar.”
He might be the most congenial person in a room full of bad actors, loud drunks, punks and vultures. He is all about balance. And he’ll never risk money on a sporting event involving teams and players.
“Because human beings are irrational,” Chuck said. “You don’t know who’s hung over or has other issues, and you don’t know their motivations.”
Southern pride
Growing up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Chuck remembers devouring the Morning Advocate newspaper, front to back, that his grandfather obtained at dawn every day.
Sunday sports sections were especially thick, and the agate type of the horse races led Chuck to fashion those numbers into meaning, and the Daily Racing Form (DRF).
He was 8 when the radio call of the 1958 Kentucky Derby, won by Tim Tam, captivated him.
“It sounded so exciting,” Chuck said.
He’d attend his first horse race at Jefferson Downs, in Kenner, near the New Orleans airport.
Chuck is immensely proud to have attended Southern University, whose men’s track and field team won NAIA national outdoor titles from 1965 to 1967.
In 1965, at a meet in Modesto, California, Robert Johnson, Anthony Gates, Everett Mason and Theron Lewis ran the mile relay in 3:04.5, matching the world record set by Arizona State two years earlier.
He also met, knew or played pickup hoops with Mel Blount, Isiah Robertson, Harold Carmichael, Willie Davenport, Oliver Ford, Al Beauchamp, Rodney Milburn, Bob Love and Ken Ellis, all area sporting luminaries.
“[Carmichael] had such huge hands,” Chuck said. “I saw him throw a football 75 yards, and he could dunk with either hand. And that world-record relay team was faster than LSU’s.”
Equine confidence
The ponies became Chuck’s priority. He won $6,700 in one race. At Fair Grounds in New Orleans, he once split a $25,000 prize with someone when both nailed a twin trifecta.
He remembers feeling validation, proof of sound methods and tactics.
In the late 1970s, before simulcasting, he detailed the records of more than 3,800 races, for every DRF track, to provide a tout-like service for a casino.
He charted the top four picks for each race and how they finished, comparing them to his handicaps. His won at a 38% rate, averaging $8.60 per win. The top four exacta and trifecta plays showed overall profit of 45 to 60%.
Alas, the gig fell through.
“But this is why,” Chuck said of his techniques, “I talk so confidently about horse racing.”
In 1980, maybe to salvage a failing marriage, he attended Gamblers Anonymous sessions. Soon enough, Chuck smoked out the counselor’s hypocrisy.
“You were made to feel irresponsible,” he said. “It’s fraudulent. I don’t live like that, that duplicity. It led to studying the [DRF] closer; I became a better gambler. I was doing a fairly good job.”
Along the way, he worked in a labor union, as a carpenter’s apprentice at NASA in Houston, and delivered mail for the U.S. Postal Service. He moved to Las Vegas after retiring in 2010.
“You do what you want to do, not what you have to do or what everyone else is doing,” Chuck said, “if you have a brain.”
A brother, Jerry, lives in Dolton on the South Side. He has sent Chuck money on occasion, but the siblings rarely talk because Jerry disapproves of Chuck’s gambling.
Frugal ’capper
In August 2018, Chuck was rolling along.
“I’m actually happy, really happy,” he told me then. “I’m able to focus. Each setback has made me concentrate more. I feel like I’m about to make a breakthrough, but I like to keep it to myself.”
Setbacks kept lining up. The coronavirus prodded an imbecilic governor to shutter Vegas for 11 weeks. It was like a reunion, seeing Chuck — as much a fixture in the GVR book as its cubicles and kiosks — again.
He asked about my mom. Chuck expressed genuine sorrow when my pop passed away in 2014, and every once in a while he asks how ma is faring.
But he was unbalanced, inadequately digesting DRF charts the night before races, stuff like doctor appointments muddling his daily routine.
“When you don’t pay attention to the little details, they can kill you,” he said. “I’m not where I want to be with my attitude.”
He vanished, for about 19 months, until February 2024. Circumstances led to him being homeless, and navigating several hours in the book became too challenging around when shelters opened and closed their doors.
He finally found a new home, renting an apartment for $415 a month, nearly half of his monthly Social Security benefits.
“I have a place now, food in the fridge,” Chuck said. “I’m proud I got through that.”
His senior citizen’s monthly RTC bus pass, allowing unlimited travel within Vegas, costs $32.50. A storage unit, in which he stores hundreds of DRFs and other items, costs around $50.
That leaves him with roughly $100 a week to spend on food and horses.
Often, he wagers a dollar on a race. A main goal is picking a horse to finish among the top three, or show-betting. In the next cubicle, a big bag of Lay’s potato chips is half-empty, four full plastic Coke bottles remain in a six-pack.
He recently risked $1.80 on a 10-cent Superfecta, consisting of 18 individual dime wagers, and won $126. During the previous 12 months, his most profitable day made him $170.
A guy, let’s call him Javier, with a lucrative career visits the book several times a month and always sits near Chuck to exchange equine angles, insights and philosophies.
Javier says Chuck’s main drawback is his limited bankroll. For instance, it’s imperative to box exactas. Bet on a 1-2 race finish, and that should be covered by “boxing” it, or including a similar wager for a 2-1 finish.
Chuck bet a race for only a 1-2 finish, to govern his expenses. When it finished 2-1, he missed out on a 46-1 payoff.
“He’s a brilliant guy,” Javier said, “the things he comes up with . . . but his [limited] bankroll drags him down. He’s a very good handicapper, but he doesn’t get too risky. He especially knows how horses will fare at different tracks.
“I admire him.”
The goal
Chuck has enough GVR player points to get DRFs gratis. On Christmas and New Year’s eves, he gathered them, retreated home to study and returned the following days to make his bets.
His physiological balance restored, he continues to be the most compassionate, level-headed and rational person in this book. We talk about past Kentucky Derby and Triple Crown victors, which leads to controversial trainer Bob Baffert.
“There are many who’ll win money on a Baffert horse,” Chuck said, “who still despise him.”
I ask him about ticket-cashing horses from the past, such as John Henry or Flightline. Other than that distinct 1958 recollection of Tim Tam, names don’t register with him.
“No memory of great horses or big races,” Chuck said. “My two biggest hits, for $12,500 and $6,700, I couldn’t tell you the names of those horses. Not important. I can look at the Racing Form and figure out what I want.”
Anyone in any sportsbook would be lucky to have an ally like Chuck.
His trials, he said, have made him better. He might even soon return to the karaoke joint on Fremont, where pre-coronavirus he could be found belting out Bobby Caldwell’s “What You Won’t Do for Love.”
“You just have to learn as you go,” Chuck said. “I don’t want any pity party. Either people are with you or not; I’m OK. I don’t use anything as a crutch because my life is so much better now.”
His future? “I want to be 90,” Chuck said, “and still playing the horses.”