In mid-April, sportsbooks around Las Vegas started to post their lines for the opening weekend of NFL action. It was exciting to see what the market feels about those Week 1 contests (apparently, they're for the Raiders and against the Chargers, for one), but that's just 16 games. We need more chances to throw away our money.
Enter the Cantor Gaming group, the arm of Cantor Fitzgerald that operates the sportsbooks at several Vegas-area casinos, including the brand-new sportsbook at the Palms. The Cantor books are known for being non-smoking and offering tablets for live betting during games, but they took a step forward in our hearts in May by posting lines for a few more of those NFL games we like to throw money at. Instead of merely posting lines for the 16 games of Week 1, Cantor posted lines for the first 16 weeks of professional football.
We're trying something different for the Masters this year: That's right, we're adopting an official favorite golfer for the B.S. Report and Grantland! The big winner? Nick Watney, who recently beat Tiger in a match play tournament. He came on the podcast to discuss his Augusta chances, playing against Tiger, living in Vegas, whether his wife had ever practiced crying after he won a tournament, who was a bigger sellout for leaving Boston for L.A. (me or his cousin Heidi), and much, much more. You'll be rooting for him this weekend after listening.
O'Shea's Las Vegas Casino has been a bizarre contradiction for its entire existence, so it is no surprise that the casino's impending shuttering on April 30 seems both too soon and not soon enough. Anachronistic and out of place from the day it opened in 1989, O'Shea's will exit the world with the slightest of whimpers, but it will leave with one important question: Will the property replacing it be any more relevant?
Outside of the Super Bowl, no event inspires more throngs of people to pack Vegas sportsbooks than the opening two rounds of March Madness. And while the Super Bowl is just one ridiculous day, the bevy of betting that surrounds March Madness is a four-day marathon that starts, bright and early, at 9:15 a.m. Thursday morning. If Vegas is specifically that weird place in the world where you spend more time thinking about the appropriate time to transition directly from coffee to beer, March Madness is perhaps the quintessential Vegas experience.
It takes a lot to surprise Jay Kornegay. As the sportsbook director at the LVH (formerly Las Vegas Hilton) sportsbook, Kornegay's seen it all during his eight years at the helm of the city's bellwether operation — and made money for the casino in the process. When you run a book with the widest variety of futures and proposition bets available while simultaneously releasing those lines before anyone else in Vegas, you normally end up taking a lot of action. When we talked to Kornegay this past week, though, it was the absence of action on one particular line that shocked him. And that's just one of the five fascinating tidbits we took away from our chat with one of Vegas' foremost bookmakers.
1. Nobody's bet on the Charlotte Bobcats. Nobody. The LVH is renowned for having futures bets available before anyone else, so degenerates like myself descend on the book regularly to try and find a long-shot championship or conference championship winner before anybody else. And after the Mavericks followed years of disappointing playoff performances with a title win last season, it seemed like a sure thing that NBA long shots would be bet heavily in a weird, shortened season.
The Super Bowl is every sportsbook's biggest day of the year. The throngs that travel to Vegas to wager on the Super Bowl usually end up throwing down a couple more bets, though, which is why the LVH (formerly Las Vegas Hilton) put up a rather interesting set of bets this past week. If Giants-Patriots seems too boring or easy to handicap, well, how do you feel about betting on next year's Super Bowl?
That's right: One full year away from Super Bowl XLVII, you can choose to bet on which teams will make it into or win the big game in New Orleans. You can even bet on a particular conference, with the NFC opening up as three-point favorites alongside a total of 52.5 points.
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In my opinion, the Aria casino has the best sportsbook in Vegas. It's a lofty honor, because it's really not hard to create a fun time when you combine sports with betting, televisions, and drink service, and there are a lot of places on the Strip that manage to do so rather beautifully. In the end, picking a favorite becomes more about personal taste than about something absolute.
On Tuesday, I got to partake in one of the most satisfying experiences anyone can enjoy in Vegas: Cashing out your futures bets. After waiting five months for the bets I placed in August to play themselves out to a conclusion, I got to drive around town on Tuesday and pick up my hard-earned money.
Hey you, yeah you with all the disposable income. You know what stimulates the economy? Casual sports gambling! But we're not throwing you in the deep end without some floaties, here. The Triangle has contracted two of Vegas' most astute handicappers to help you navigate the choppy waters of gambling, going into this 14th week of the NFL season. Here's what they had to say.
Scheduling games on Thanksgiving might very well be the greatest thing the NFL's ever done. Can you imagine how boring the day would be without football? How lucky we are to avoid bonding with our families under the guise of watching Detroit get blown out by 40 points.
Until the Lions were recently dragged down by the rising tide of Millen, though, the perception surrounding the Thanksgiving Day host teams was that they gained a competitive advantage by virtue of hosting games on the holiday. Not only did they get to play teams that had to travel after a short week of practice, but they then got a nine-day break before having to play again -- basically an extra bye week. That seemed more valuable before the NFL implemented a Thursday night package as part of their NFL Network in 2006, but it's a question worth re-evaluating: Do the Cowboys and Lions really have an advantage by virtue of those Thanksgiving games?
Hey you, yeah you with all the disposable income. You know what stimulates the economy? Casual sports gambling! But we're not throwing you in the deep end without some floaties, here. The Triangle has contracted two of Vegas' most astute handicappers to help you navigate the choppy waters of gambling, going into this eighth weekend of the NFL season. Here's what they had to say.
Here in Viva Las Vegas headquarters at the Veer Towers, we get one question about twice as much as every other question combined.
"I'm coming to Vegas soon. Which sportsbook should me and my friends go to?"
It's time to start answering that question. Starting this week, we'll be providing capsules and reviews of the sportsbooks that line the Las Vegas strip. If you're just looking to place a bet somewhere when you're in Vegas, of course, this won't really matter. You can do that at any sportsbook. But if you're looking to figure out where you and your buddies should spend a Saturday or Sunday watching football, watch this space over the next couple of months.
Hey you, yeah you with all the disposable income. You know what stimulates the economy? Casual sports gambling! But we're not throwing you in the deep end without some floaties, here. The Triangle has contracted two of Vegas' most astute handicappers to help you navigate the choppy waters of gambling, going into this eighth weekend of the NFL season. Here's what they had to say.
Hey you, yeah you with all the disposable income. You know what stimulates the economy? Casual sports gambling! But we're not throwing you in the deep end without some floaties, here. The Triangle has contracted two of Vegas' most astute handicappers to help you navigate the choppy waters of gambling, going into this seventh weekend of the NFL season. Here's what they had to say.
Hey you, yeah you with all the disposable income. You know what stimulates the economy? Casual sports gambling! But we're not throwing you in the deep end without some floaties, here. The Triangle has contracted two of Vegas' most astute handicappers to help you navigate the choppy waters of gambling, going into this sixth weekend of the NFL season. Here's what they had to say.
