David Lazar, passionate, excessive, riddled with contradictions and soaring ambitions, is a compulsive gambler. He is hopelessly in debt and stuck in a humdrum job that can't support his addiction. He is fighting to keep the wife he idolizes who cannot live with his gambling loses. Lazar is left with no other options but to fight back and find a way to succeed. Lazar takes control of life. He calls upon the expertise of his all-powerful friends--Nathan Rubin, the money obsessed CEO, and Solomon Lepidus, the man who can afford to gamble for fun. Basketball is Lazar's game, and he studies the teams, the plays and the betting. He uses the energy of his obsession to beat that very obsession, to become the most knowledgeable man in the country about college basketball. He builds a network of tipsters, produces a more accurate 'line' of point spreads than the Vegas experts, wagers--and beats them at their own game.

The Handicapper is the story of one of those rare instances in which an individual beats the system, and it tells in fascinating detail just how it was done. But it is more than that. It is also the story of a tormented soul, cursed by spiritual poverty, driven by an inner necessity to climb "Mount Gamble" only to discover that winning sometimes mean losing.