When it comes to sports, there's no place for sentiment at Caesar's. (Joe Posnanski)
LAS VEGAS ? Twenty-four hours of madness begins at the Mob Museum because ? well, where else would you start in Las Vegas? The Mob Museum is in an old courthouse, once the biggest and most impressive building in Las Vegas, now probably not big enough to fit the Poker Room at Caesar?s Palace. Here you can pretend to arrest mobsters on tax evasion, shoot a Tommy Gun and see the most complete photographic collection of mobsters with bullet holes. With the guided tour, I believe, you learn the proper way to stuff someone into the trunk of a car.
You can also take high-end multiple choice quizzes like this one:
Q: You should take:
1. The gun
2. The cannoli
There?s a sports display in the Mob Museum, which spotlights what you could call ?Great Moments in Mob Sports,? such as the fixing of the 1919 World Series, the New York college basketball point-shaving scandals and, basically, everything that happened in boxing before about 1962. There?s also a daunting little poem that sort of sets the mood for the craziest four sports days in Las Vegas.
Where there?s sports, there?s gambling.
Where there?s gambling, there?s money.
Where there?s money, there?s the mob.
Welcome to March Madness, Las Vegas Style.
* * *
Overheard: ?Yeah, man, I told her I wouldn?t lose more than $500. When I get home, she isn?t going to like me.?
Prop bets are big business. (Joe Cavaretta/AP)
* * *
If you could invent the perfect gambling sporting event ? the absolute perfect gambling event ? it would be the first weekend of March Madness. Think about it: It?s an almost unlimited cavalcade of sports betting. You have 64 teams of various levels and talents from all over the country. They play 48 games in four crazy days. There is passion and unpredictability. It?s funny: We so often write about the wonderful innocence of March Madness. Well ?
?Four days together,? says Todd Fuhrman, senior race and sports book analyst at Caesar?s Palace, ?it?s as big as the Super Bowl for Las Vegas.?
?Yeah, I would say as big as the Super Bowl,? says Jay Kornegay, vice president, race & sports operations at the Las Vegas Hotel & Casino ? LVH, as it is now known.
?It?s hard to compare, but it?s probably as big as the Super Bowl,? says Ed Malinowski, director of race & sports book at Stratosphere Casino.
?Bigger than the Super Bowl,? says Johnny Avello, executive director, race & sports operations at the Wynn.
Bigger than the Super Bowl. Understand, the Super Bowl as a one-day event is untouched in American sports. Someone years ago invented something called the proposition bet ? prop for short ? and this allowed people to bet on anything they want revolving around the Super Bowl, including whether the singer will get all the words to the National Anthem right. But this is the incredible thing about the NCAA tournament from Vegas? perspective: You don?t even need proposition bets. Oh sure you can GET them (because as I was told various times: ?In Las Vegas, you can get ANYTHING for the right amount of money?), but you don?t need them. There are so many games, and so many ways to bet those games, that the tournament doesn?t need gambling gimmicks.
The four guys mentioned above ? Fuhrman, Kornegay, Malinowski and Avello ? have different and impressive sounding titles. They are analyst, VP, director and executive director. But, when you cut the core, they are really four of the biggest oddsmakers in Las Vegas. Some call them bookies, which they accept with differing levels of annoyance; they are not really bookies who take or pay off bets. ?But,? Johnny Avello says, ?what are you going to do??
They (and their rather intense staffs) set the betting lines ? hundreds and hundreds of betting lines. They decide to make Marquette a 5 1/2 point favorite over BYU. They make Indiana a 50-to-1 bet to win the national championship. They set the over/under for the Vanderbilt-Harvard game at 122 1/2. They also make Luke Donald the favorite to win the Transitions, Giancarlo Stanton the favorite to win the NL home run title and the Columbus Blue Jackets 9,999-to-1 to win the Stanley Cup.
In other words, they feed the insatiable need that millions and millions of people feel to have a bet down, to place a wager, to ?make it interesting,? ? and no event pushes that need more than the NCAA men?s basketball tournament. For most of the millions, the need comes in form of five bucks and an office pool. But for tens of thousands, that is not enough. They come to Las Vegas. They mull around in theaters and ballrooms and nightclubs and sports books and on the street, and they watch basketball games on giant screens, and they bet the first-half over-under in the game between Long Beach State and New Mexico. The estimate is that before they leave, those thousands of people will leave $90 million in Las Vegas over these four days.
?The energy in this town is really something,? Jay Kornegay says. ?It?s amazing. There is really nothing else like it in Las Vegas. If you think about it, you can bet five or 10 dollars and then have two or three hours of excitement. Try to last that long at one of the tables.?
* * *
Overheard: ?I would give my right lung for Lehigh to cover.?
?Do you have a right and left lung??
?I don?t know. I?d give them both.?
Down on Fremont Street, the world's largest bracket flashes on Viva Vision. (Preffered Public Relations)
* * *
The end of the Kansas State-Southern Miss game is different from any sporting event I?ve ever seen. I am sitting in a theater in the Stratosphere ? where people normally gather to hear a singer named Frankie Moreno perform Eleanor Rigby or to watch a topless review called Bite ? and the place is now jammed with people staring at odds pages. It?s still early in the day, long before anyone has hit the jackpot or gone bust. There?s still a hopeful buzz in the air.
Everybody knows that gambling is a huge part of sports? appeal and has been since the first time two neanderthals punched each other. But at the events themselves, on television, in the game stories, that part of sports is muted. Announcers don?t talk about it, for the most part. Writers don?t write about it, for the most part. Even at events where gambling is the very reason for the event ? say, the Kentucky Derby ? the air is thick with glamour and beautiful clothes and mint juleps.
This muffling of gambling is so ever-present that you can be a non-gambling sports fan and hardly even think about it. I know many people who have no idea what those money lines on baseball games even mean.* The only times people tend to talk openly and loudly about gambling is during scandal ? when a point-shaving story emerges, when Pete Rose is banned from baseball, when someone makes some sort of odd underdog statement like, ?Those guys in Vegas may not think we have a chance, but we don?t play in Las Vegas, and we believe in ourselves, and ??
*Not that you need to know, but in case you are wondering about baseball money lines: Always think of $100. That?s the baseline. If the Yankees are playing the Royals, the Yankees might be minus-190. That means they?re the favorites ? the sort of tricky part is that the bigger the negative number, the more of a favorite they are. In this case, you would have to bet $190 to win an extra $100.
The Royals then might be +175. That would mean if you bet $100 on the Royals, and they won, you would win your money back plus $175 dollars.
I tell you this only because those lines might confuse you (they always confused me) and certainly not because you should bet on baseball. When I first took my wife to Las Vegas, she wanted the thrill of cashing in a winning sports ticket. And so with that utterly reasonable request in mind, and because she is married to a sportswriter, I took over. I place eleven $2 baseball bets for her. I bet the favorites in just about all of them (I probably bet the Royals for her, since she?s a fan). She didn?t care how MUCH money she won ? she just wanted to be able to go the window and claim her winning ticket. So I bet the most obvious games I could find.
You know the ending: We lost all 11 games.
So, people tend to downplay gambling in sports. And yet, it is incalculable how many billions of dollars are wagered each year in America on sports ? so incalculable that nobody even knows what counts as sports gambling. Is fantasy football sports gambling? Are NCAA office pools sports gambling? Is betting a few bucks on your golf match sports gambling?
The striking part of experiencing March Madness in Las Vegas is that it is so open. There is no pretending here. There is no stirring background music, no talk about the Gipper, no waxing poetic about the rebirth of spring. The end of the Kansas State-Southern Miss game is not really in doubt. Kansas State leads by five, and it has the ball, and there is less than a minute left. And yet, the place is going crazy. People are screaming like mad. Why? For the most obvious reason imaginable ? their money. Kansas State is a 5 1/2 point favorite. With 32 seconds left, Angel Hernandez hits a free throw to give the Wildcats a six-point lead. With 14 seconds left, Kansas State?s Jamar Samuels makes another free throw to make it a seven-point lead.
And the place goes absolutely nuts. It?s clear that three-quarters of the people in here have Kansas State minus the points in some bet or another. People tend to bet the favorites. More on that in a minute.
Then Southern Miss? Cedric Jenkins makes a three-pointer to cut the margin to four with nine seconds left. And the sound in the entire theater cuts off, like a speaker shorting out ? with the exception of like two guys, who jump up and start screaming. It?s crazy because the game itself is pretty much over. It would take a series of unimaginable calamities for Kansas State to blow a four-point lead with nine seconds left and the ball in their possession. We have been told so many times by so many athletes and coaches and analysts that a win is a win ? the margin doesn?t matter.
But, here, the margin is ALL that matters. For people who bet with some seriousness on sports ? one out of six Americans, according to a 2008 Gallup Poll ? this is so obvious that it does not even merit mention. But when you are used to watching sports outside of Vegas, where the cheers tend to rise and fall with the game itself, this sound for a team to cover the spread is a jarring sound.
Southern Miss does foul Rodriguez with six seconds left, which greatly improves the mood of the crowd. When he makes the first free throw, there is some happy murmuring. When he makes the second, there is a joy explosion, and when Southern Miss? Neil Watson misses what might have seemed to be a meaningless last-second three-point attempt, the place for a few seconds sounds like Wembley when a goal is scored.
Then, the sounds fade, and people start mulling around ? looking for a beer and the next bet.
When the spread's the issue, the viewers' reactions may seem strange. (AP Photo/Joe Cavaretta)
* * *
Overheard: ?How many women do you think are in here??
?I?d say the line is 6 1/2.?
?I?m betting the under.?
* * *
Boring beats the house. There are no hard and fast rules in Las Vegas ? this is part of what makes it Las Vegas ? but that rule generally holds. Boring beats the house. The predictable favors the majority of gamblers. See, most people tend to bet with their hearts, even if they don?t know it. They tend to bet based on the last thing they?ve seen. They tend to bet on the gut feeling they have, which (not surprisingly) is also the gut feeling that millions of other people have. They tend to get swept up with the emotion of the moment. When the New York Knicks were looking entirely useless at the beginning of the season, you couldn?t get people to bet on them to win the NBA title at 100 to 1. Heck, it could have been a million to 1 and who really cares? Then, Jeremy Lin came along, the Knicks got hot for like two weeks, the story swept the imagination, and the odds on the Knicks winning it all fell to 8 to 1.
That?s insane, of course. The TRUE odds of the Knicks actually winning the NBA championship were much, much, much higher than 8 to 1. But people get excited. They get fired up. They see the narrative building. They bet with their hearts. Someone on ESPN says something about a team being better than anyone thinks, and those guys in Vegas will see a money infusion. A rumor starts about a player being unhappy or a coach being on the hot seat, and those guys in Vegas will feel the difference.
It?s funny, the oddsmakers came to their jobs in such different ways. Avello, who has been on a hot streak lately, after picking Miss Wisconsin to win the Miss USA and the Pekingese to win the Westminster Dog Show, came to Las Vegas to deal cards, and he worked his way into it. Kornegay, who runs the biggest sports book in the world, started at the bottom by writing betting slips ? really writing those slips back in those days, in longhand, ?Bet on Washington to Win Super Bowl XXII, and so on. Fuhrman is sort of the Moneyball figure of Vegas odds; he came out as a financial analyst and has become known for his intensive number-crunching.
But, all of them know the same thing: If the favorites win and the expected happens, they will take a beating.
Oddsmaking is not at all what so many people think it is. When Malinowski, for instance, sets Baylor as a 7 1/2 point favorite over South Dakota State, he is not saying that he thinks Baylor will win the game by 7 or 8 points. He doesn?t have any idea how many points Baylor will win by ? or if Baylor will win at all. As Fuhrman says: ?If I knew who was going to win and by how much, I?d be on that side of the window. I?d rather be living on the beach in a $10 million house than crunching numbers.?
No, they are trying to set a line where they will get as much action as possible on both sides of the wager. And they have become very, very good at this. In a perfect world, most oddsmakers would like to get EXACTLY the same amount of money on both sides of the wager. In that case, there is no exposure for the house. The winners get their winnings, the losers absorb their losings, and the house gets the vigorish of 10% or so.
But, of course, there is no perfect world ? and one side of the bet ALWAYS gets more than another. And that side is usually the boring side, the obvious side, the favorite?s side. Many, many more people bet Kansas State to cover the 5 1/2 points than Southern Miss to stay within 5 1/2 points, because people tend to think that Kansas State is better than Southern Miss, and 5 1/2 points doesn?t seem like so much. Professional gamblers ? called sharps, wise guys, smart money and various other names by the oddsmakers ? don?t bet with their gut. Which is how they stay professional gamblers.
Thursday is a boring college basketball day. Kansas State covers. Marquette covers. Murray State covers. Vanderbilt, too. And the house takes a beating. ?Not exactly the day we envisioned,? Fuhrman admits. But he, like the other oddsmakers, knows something important.
On Friday, two No. 2 seeds fall and Ohio upsets Michigan.
This is what they all know: The boring never lasts.
* * *
Overheard: ?Who do you like in West Virginia-Gonzaga??
?Toss-up. Gonzaga scares me. Turns the ball over too much. Pangos and Harris are really good, and that kid Bell can really shoot it. And I don?t think Huggins has West Virginia playing that well, they don?t seem to be responding to him. But that game still scares me because of those turnovers.?
?Where is Gonzaga, do you know??
?No idea.?
* * *
Of course: It?s Las Vegas. The Pure Nightclub in Caesar?s Palace ? one of the trendiest spots in town, often filled with models and celebrities and, well, I couldn?t get in to find out ? becomes a $400-a-table sports bar with televisions everywhere. Down on Fremont Street, in what people often call Old Vegas, the world?s largest bracket flashes on Viva Vision, and the Hardwood Hotties and Dream Team Divas dance. Holsteins Shakes and Buns sells the bracket burger, which sadly is not shaped like a bracket, but does have cheese, egg, firecracker onions, lettuce, tomato, avocado, spicy mustard and barbecue sauce, which means you might need a large bracket to stand up afterward.
?Hey,? Johnny Avello says to me in the Wynn sports book, and he points. ?Look at her.?
At first I want to say that I?m a married man ? and I don?t say this only because there?s a chance my wife will read this ? but then I realize he?s not asking me to look at her because she?s hot. He?s asking me to look at her because she looks young. Really young. ?How old would you say she is?? he asks.
I try to look at her without looking at her, which is something guys have been doing for thousands of years and yet have never perfected. She does look astonishingly young. I try to joke about it. ?I don?t know,? I say. ?Fifteen??
?Yeah, that?s a problem for me,? Avello says. ?I?m going to go card her.? He walks over to the woman and, in absolutely classic style says, ?Hello, I was just wondering how old you are. I asked that man over there and he thought that maybe you were 15.?
Yeah, Avello utterly threw me under the bus. And yes, it turned out she was 28. Vegas.
There are a million moments ? gamblers up high, gamblers down low, beautiful people, loud music, hilarious sports arguments ? but one stands out. In Elvis? theater in the LVH (where Elvis Presley performed more than 800 times through the years) Syracuse and UNC-Asheville play the final tense moments of their thrilling game. Syracuse is a No. 1 seed. And the No. 1 seed has won its first-round game every single time since the field expanded to 64 teams. Every single time. Most of those games were not especially close, but this one is close, extremely close, scary close.
The place is packed, more than a thousand people, and it has been like every other place in town. Only, now, it is beginning to have a different and surprising feel. As mentioned, so much of Las Vegas is cynical and suspicious. Nobody wants to be the sucker. More to the point, nobody wants to LOOK like the sucker. There are places for the dreamy-eyed joy of sports fans ? Lambeau Field at kickoff, the first tee of Augusta National, Centre Court at Wimbledon, more or less any spring training baseball game ? places where you can get caught up in the wonder, the beauty, the charm of sports. Vegas, of course, is not one of them.
And yet, UNC-Asheville is scaring Syracuse. And the ref makes a shaky call. And the people in Elvis? theater starts to boo. Another shaky call. More booing. UNC-Asheville scores. There are enormous cheers.
And suddenly, maybe, it?s not about the money. There does not seem to be money at stake. Syracuse will not cover the 15-point spread, that?s obvious. The game will not reach the 147 1/2 over-under, that?s obvious, too. No, suddenly this has become a basketball game. Suddenly, this is a huge underdog trying to shock a huge favorite. Just maybe, for a few seconds, the lights don?t matter, the alcohol doesn?t matter, the food doesn?t matter, even the money doesn?t matter. Just maybe, for a few seconds, what matters is the competition and the wonder of March Madness, the beautiful unpredictability of the games people play.
In the end, Syracuse does hold on to win, and the mood shifts back into the ?What?s next? humming of Vegas.
?That was cool,? I say to Kornegay. ?It was like for a minute all anyone cared about was the game and the upset.?
?Well,? another guy walking by says, ?actually I was cheering because I bet the over in the second half.?
Source: http://joeposnanski.si.com/2012/03/19/madness-money-mayhem/?xid=si_topstories
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