Bay Street Is Gambling Their Money Away on Dice Games

A VICE Canada™ Dramatic Reenactment. Photos by Aaron Wynia.

The name of our source has been changed to protect their identity.

On the 15th floor of a boardroom on Bay Street, a man in a crisp suit and pink Hermes tie shakes two dice in his right hand.  Sweat beads off the forehead and underneath his tailored shirt, his skin is starting to dampen. The doors to the room are closed and a sign has been pushed over that reads: “Meeting in Progress.”  Two men stand over the table in front of him: his opponent, who is winning, and a witness, otherwise known as “the priest.”  He throws the dice down on the mahogany desk as every muscle in his face clenches. High-Low.  This roll is either going to help him, or seriously mess him up. He’s already in the hole $4,000 dollars, which means his next bonus is already gone.

It’s not yet noon, and as the real market is already raging, so too are the bets in the boardroom, or more often, the corners of office floors on Bay Street. “We have to make it quick so that’s one reason dice is good,” says Adam Simon, a 29-year old Bay Street Financier whose income surpasses $300,000 annually, before bonuses. “Usually two guys will grab a priest, head to the corner and throw the dice. But we will literally bet on anything and pools have gotten as high as $50,000 dollars. Like, QUICK! Who’s coming through the door next—guy or girl? $500 bucks.  Or toonie flips – polar bear or bitch? $500 bucks.  How many kilometers is it from your desk to the CN Tower? $150 bucks. Who can get a girl to text them a dirty picture of themselves first? $500 bucks.”

It’s all very well organized too. There are rules. “A number one rule is that you always tip the priest, no matter what.” The Priest works as a witness in every bet. You tip the priest the same way you would tip a dealer at a poker game or blackjack table—a percentage based on what you’ve earned. Simon has seen tips as high as $500 dollars per game. “I wish I could be a priest everyday. You don’t have to do anything. But some guys gets pretty superstitious. If they are winning with one priest- they want to keep him.”

It’s no secret people gamble illegally, and that gambling is addictive—The Problem Gambling Institute of Ontario, in affiliation with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, did a study that shows roughly 332,000 Ontarians are already problem gamblers.  But what I’m finding now, surprisingly, iswho is doing some of this gambling and how it’s getting done. Men in designer suits sneaking to the corners of their offices is, well, kind of problematic. Actually, I can’t decide if it’s problematic or awesome in that American Psycho kinda way.

Anyway, Ontario is already home to the sixth-largest lottery network in North America.  In 2011 total revenue from gambling reached over $3 billion dollars. And gambling on Bay Street is now a considered to be a massive problem by some industry insiders. In a city on the verge of getting a Casino, gambling already permeates Toronto in a major way, and the bankers who control a great deal of Canadians’ dollars are the ones who seem to have some of the most serious gambling addictions.

One particularly successful Bay Street Financier, Kevin John Pinto, the former vice-president of Paradigm Capital, is now known as being the “Exchange Bandit” because he became a bank robber in order to help fuel his gambling addiction.

Pinto started robbing on his lunch break, and in total, took over $30,000 from banks the GTA between January 2002 and September 2008. HE was over $100,000 dollars in debt at the time of his sentencing, despite earning a quarter of a million dollars annually at his actual job. He plead guilty to having robbed ten banks, and was sentenced to a six-year bid in 2009. The average Canadian’s salary that year was about $26,000. Pinto was released from jail after serving just over half that sentence.

One reason Pinto might have turned to bank robbing is that there’s a very important rule for Bay Street Gambling that can’t be broken: You always pay back your debt, no matter what. “I pay my gambling debts before I pay my rent, before I pay my VISA. You pay them back before you pay your mortgage. If you can’t pay your gambling debt—you’re fucked. People will treat you like a fucking leper. If you can’t be trusted by the guys you work with you are basically screwed,” Simon tells me with a very serious look on his face, he’s almost spitting his words out at me.

Because pools can get very high it’s important to keep things in order so there are “bankers” assigned to keep track of people’s debts. Plus, according to my sources, players will often pay using their bonuses and expense accounts. But Simon tells me pretty much everyone knows to bring at least $1000 cash with them in the morning. “Cash and a nice suit—two things you need before you leave your house in the morning.”

“Everyone is playing. Absolutely Everyone. There are so many reasons to do it. Like if the guy whose sitting next to me is selling more than me that day, I want to take that away from him in dice at lunch and then that will make me a stronger person. Traders especially have the problem—if you’re making money, especially in a bull market, you are making so much that people don’t care what they are spending their money on. But there is a lot of money lost too.”

But why gamble? “There’s a rush you get from winning money and a certain joy that comes from beating someone,” says Simon. The risk involved is also a huge part of the gambling addiction and there seems to be certain personality types who are particularly drawn to the rush of possibly losing it all.

In parallel, the stock market has obvious risks too—some might argue it’s just one big gamble. No one could ever predict, for certain, what is going to happen next. But is there a similarity between dice and the market? Is this the reason why Canadian traders and high-stake financiers are spending so much time betting their own money on games similar to High-Low that are totally unpredictable, random, and uncontrollable?

Simon tells me that when guys go into a loss, they will keep trying to win it back, sometimes until they are kicked-out. “If you’re losing you need to chase that loss, it’s just the way it goes. If you’re down, $5,000 or $6,000 dollars, you almost have to go after that or you start losing your stock options and RSUs. Everyone knows what you’re worth and so they will play you until they know they can’t get anything else.” Seriously. Is no one listening to Kenny Rogers anymore?!

According to Simon, if you’re winning, you’re getting respect. These guys really value the good luck of a roller. “You will always hear about the wins on the floor. If you’re rolling really hot, the whole floor knows about it, and they want it.”

No one really has a choice to play or not. “If you don’t, you will be treated like an outcast. You’d never want to be the asshole who says ‘No thanks, I don’t gamble.’” So as soon as rookies enter into these offices, the fancy world of high-finance and trading, they are shown how it all works. “Rookies have to play because everyone wants to steal their bonuses. There’s an idea of like, they haven’t earned it yet. I want it.”

Of course a certain level of debauchery is to be expected from Bay Street Boys. “There is definitely a lot of cocaine and prostitutes going around, that’s nothing, it’s just part of the lifestyle,” says Simon, “Plenty of these guys are either getting high at lunch or are strung out from the night before—but that isn’t even the problem, it might make the real problem [gambling] worse though.” After all, these guys really are just a bunch of modern day cowboys–out there, just trying to make a buck and secure the Canadian dollar. All that pressure needs to be released—like a clogged up drain that is just full of shit.

Back in the boardroom the man in the pink Hermes tie watches as the dice drops and settles. The sum of the dice is five. He had called high. He loses. In a second, he’s down a couple hundred more, just like that.

Follow Angela on Twitter: @angelamaries

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