Have you seen the film "Bad Lieutenant"? It stars Harvey Keitel as a bent cop who, among other things, plays bookie to his friends on the force, conning them into placing what he thinks are bad bets while he bets their stakes against them with a mob bookie -- guess how he ends up. Point being, even the house can lose.
Anyway, I've had an offer of financial backing (no strings, score!), so I could easily raise the maximum bet to 10k now, maybe even 20k depending on how it goes. However, I'm still not sure if it's worth doing given the response. Need more punters!