Meet Birmingham-Born Charlton Bird – The Student Gambler

Charlton Bird transformed GBP 1,000 student loan into GBP 18,000 yearly income.

Faced with paying up to GBP 9,000 a year in university bills, Charlton Bird didn’t feel as though he had a choice, he had to find some way of reaching that sum from the GBP 1,000 he was getting from a student’s loan. Said Bird, “I was just sick of eating Sainsbury’s basic in first year. After rent it was all I could afford. So I started with GBP1,000 of my student loan and here I am today.

Bird, a student at Manchester Metropolitan University, got tired of trying to make ends meet for his first year, studying Business Management. He was influenced by new dorm mates, who were into gambling for peanuts, on internet betting in UK site.

Bird bets and banks GBP 18,000 in 1 year

Bird thought he could do a littIe better. “My uni friends were going into the betting shop and trying to win £400 from a £5 bet. I reversed the strategy and bet big to win a small profit”. With just GBP 100 to spare, he decided to venture into online sports betting by wagering on a horse race.
He said, “Yeah, my first bet was on Frankel, the horse, who’d never lost a race. I bet GBP100 and got GBP 20 back because the odds were so short, but it still felt good’.

Twelve months later Bird got back the original GBP 100 he wagered that very first time…almost 200 times over. Bird said “At the start it was GBP 100 singles, but once my profit was over GBP 2,000, I stepped it up a gear. Now it’s around a GBP 1,000 stake every time”.

Now, the student bets on most anything: American football, darts, table tennis, UFC or boxing bet> He’s won money on everything. Well, all except Basketball. He confesses that “It’s way too unpredictable! I believe that gambling is fine if you can control yourself, which is usually when you’re winning. It’s when you start losing that’s the problem; you need to know when to stop. I know my limits”.

Of defeats, dreams and betting

But the twenty year old, who is now studying in Berlin, revealed that although he managed to win GBP 18,000 in just over a year, it wasn’t all aces to get there. He claims to have lost thousands of pounds, “When I first started I was putting £800 on red just for the fun of it. I would have won a lot more by now if I hadn’t done that. Some days I’ve lost three or four thousand. And the next week I’ll win it back.”

Charlton, whose mother named him after the Manchester United legend, Sir Bobby, got his winning streak from that. With money gained from gambling, he used his biggest haul of GBP 6,000 to finance a stay in New York in 201, to do an internship.

He said “My target was to make enough money to take part in a student J1 VISA program in New York called work America. I spent last summer as a bartender and doorman on Park Avenue opening doors for millionaires”.

Luckily for Bird, the money hasn’t gotten to his head. Ambitious as he is, he hopes that upon leaving university he can go on to post graduate program, Mountbatten. The school fee is up to GBP 8,000.He admits that maybe this amount could be made by someone who has a regular work schedule.

As a student that has to study, write papers and take exams. He said “It’s not about how much you win, it’s about making sure you have the advantage. It’s about the probability being highly likely. I need to know stuff about every single player: injuries, statistics, manager changes, everything”.

Bird beats bookies by basing tips on statistics

Apart from having a winning streak and gambling his way through university, which luckily, isn’t going against UK gambling laws, Bird also has become famous because he gives great gambling tips and tricks. He has even set up a tipster page on Facebook. It’s his way of helping out his fellow students who have hard time too of making ends meet and who would also like to try a hand at gambling.

The 3rd year student keeps tips on managers, players and matches to have one over the bookmakers, with huge win accumulators, “I’m betting thousands. It’s all I need to know stuff about every single player: injuries, statistics, manager changes, everything.

In the UK, students at more than half of its universities need to fork out a hefty GBP 9,000 a year in tuition fees. So it’s no surprise that the numbers of undergraduates who want a way out from scraping scraps to pay tuition fees are looking for easier and more feasible ways out.