Gonzalo García-Pelayo's winning racehorse is named Going Wrong, and bets are 12 to 1 just before the race at the 🏵 tracks in Cheltenham, UK. The 450 euros that he has put down on the jockey in the green-striped shirt is 🏵 part of a "private investment fund" which relies on tipsters and earns him a 30-percent annual return. Just then, his 🏵 cellphone vibrates: it's a text from another tipster. In the match between Fernando Verdasco and Juan Martín del Potro, he 🏵 should bet against the Argentinean tennis player winning more than four games against the Spaniard. García-Pelayo then explains that he 🏵 is in the process of creating a new formula for tennis bets based on the theory that if the pre-match 🏵 favorite favorite loses the first set, he or she will win the second. If his studies prove conclusive, he will 🏵 program it on his computer, under "Favorite loses first set" so it automatically launches.
Next, García-Pelayo opened a nightclub in Seville, 🏵 where as DJ, he played Pink Floyd and Frank Zappa. He went underground after a judicial order closed the establishment 🏵 down on rumors that minors were using drugs in its backrooms. He moved onto the recording industry, discovering artists such 🏵 as Triana and María Jiménez. In total, he left his signature on some 130 albums, including some by Luis Eduardo 🏵 Aute, Gato Pérez and Joaquín Sabina. The latter singer dedicated a few lines to García-Pelayo in his well-known song, 19 🏵 días y 500 noches (or, 19 days and 500 nights), including: "Yesterday, the doorman threw me out of the Torrelodones 🏵 casino."
"We don't have anything against anybody," says the casino's communications director, his voice mingling with the sounds of chips falling 🏵 in the European Room at Torrelodones. "The Pelayos really are not part of our everyday conversations around here. They represent 🏵 just another story among the more than 18 million visitors we get here. We looked into whether they had some 🏵 sort of advantage over the other players, and we fixed the imperfections in the tables."
He tiptoes around the subject of 🏵 the expulsions. He doesn't know what the family's total winnings amounted to. He says they never - "no way" - 🏵 broke the bank. Jesús Marín, pit boss in the time of Pelayos, and current games director, adds, "They never played 🏵 a lot of numbers, and they always played the same ones. They usually won, but their story has been exaggerated. 🏵 It was immediately discovered that the roulette tables had a pattern; so first the wheels were switched from one table 🏵 to another, then the entire tables were replaced. They played three or four weeks in total."
The book mentions other wins 🏵 in Vienna (14 million pesetas in one night), Amsterdam (almost 13 million) and 40 million in Lloret de Mar, where 🏵 the movie was filmed. But apart from one old Casio calculator, little physical evidence of this past remains today in 🏵 the penumbra of Gonzalo's bedroom. After being repeatedly thrown out of the Torrelodones casino, he continued to visit the its 🏵 roulette tables through his string of "underground" players, which included Luis Mazarrasa, a journalist who later published his story in 🏵 EL PAÍS. There is something about the Pelayo clan that causes one to suffer a slight case of the Stockholm 🏵 Syndrome. They welcome every visitor as if he or she may be the beginning of something new; there is a 🏵 half-carved ham leg in the kitchen, and something about the smell of the house and the bookshelves full of movies 🏵 and albums activates that part of your brain where memories of childhood are stored.
