Managing Your Money : Don’t Bet on Gambling, but if You Must . . . : You might as well know the odds. The bottom line is, stick to sports. The lottery makes junk bonds look safe.

At some point in your musings about personal investments, the question may arise: Have I fully considered Las Vegas?

Rare is the financial planner who will advise a client to round out his portfolio with a session of $100-minimum blackjack or an over-under play on next Sunday’s Raiders game. Professional standards require investment advisers to act as though the Chicago Mercantile Exchange is less of a casino than the Tropicana.

But as long as people continue to gamble, they might as well do it with their eyes open.

At the outset, one caveat: We’re not talking about making money here. We’re talking about limiting losses.

Since the amounts bet and the potential payoffs vary all over the lot, it makes sense to think of the odds in terms of the percentage of all wagering that will be retained by the house, referred to by cognoscenti as “the hold.”

The hold ranges from 50% for the California Lottery--probably the worst type of bet going--to 16% to 20% for horse racing (depending on state law) to as low as 1% for craps or certain sports bets.

Sports, in fact, are far and away your best bet.

In gambling on team sports through the Nevada parlors called “sports books,” the typical bet is against a betting “line” established by oddsmakers such as Michael (Roxy) Roxborough.

The line is the number of points by which the betting public expects the favored team to win.

In football, for example, if the San Francisco 49ers are a four-point favorite over the Los Angeles Rams, the 49ers must win the game by more than four points for a bettor to collect.

A bet on the Rams pays off if they win outright or lose by fewer than four points. If the score lands right on the number--say, 49ers 24, Rams 20--it’s a tie. In most betting parlors, you just get your money back.

In setting his line, which is used by more than 80% of Nevada’s legal bookmakers and probably affects illegal bookmaking nationwide, Roxborough isn’t trying to predict the ultimate margin of victory as much as he is setting a price that will attract an equal amount of wagering on each team.

Sports books want the wagering in balance because they make their money not by picking winners but on the “vigorish,” or fee, they charge gamblers.

For most sports, you must bet $11 to make $10. That $1 difference amounts to vigorish, or house advantage, of 4.76%.

Once betting begins, the line moves in response to market demand. Heavy betting on the 49ers, for instance, will up their price; they’ll be favored by more and more points until money is attracted to the Rams. For bookies, the goal is a kind of market equilibrium.

Over the course of hundreds of games, the Las Vegas line on pro football games comes amazingly close to perfection. In his new book “Superbookie,” Art Manteris, who runs the sports book at the Las Vegas Hilton, reports that over the last three full National Football League seasons, favorites have “covered”--or won against the point spread--49.92% of the time, while underdogs have covered the spread 50.08%.

This phenomenon provides fuel for “efficient market” theorists who hold that whether it’s on Wall Street or the Strip in Las Vegas, the free flow of information will arrange prices in such a way that ignoramuses will do precisely as well as investors who believe that they have special knowledge.

The implication is that a dart-thrower--or a team of chimpanzees--can bet on sports as effectively as any savant. People who know nothing about football and just wager randomly will win almost exactly half their bets over time.

It also means that because of the vigorish, they will lose money at the depressingly predictable rate of 4.76 cents for each dollar bet.

Ah, but that’s just a theory. If you’re a sports fan, you know in your heart that you possess the insight it takes to beat those odds. You know how to factor in such intangibles as “momentum,” “motivation” and “pride,” along with weather conditions, torn ligaments and other more prosaic sports variables.

All you have to do to beat the vigorish and make money is pick winners 52.5% of the time. Roxborough offers some general advice about how to improve your chances.

“If you want to bet on a public team, bet early,” he says.

A “public” team is a popular favorite, such as the 49ers used to be with quarterback Joe Montana. You bet early to catch the line at its most favorable point, assuming that as more fans of the favorite jump in, the line will tilt toward the underdog.

The flip side of that rule is that if you like the underdog, wait until the last minute.

The bet-$11-to-win-$10 rule prevails for most football and basketball betting, but in some situations, competition drives the sports books to reduce the vigorish.

In baseball, the bettor usually risks $10.50 to win $10, for a house advantage of only 2.4%, while in boxing, it generally costs $12 to win $10 (9% vigorish).

Boxing is higher-priced, Roxborough said, “because we feel there are a lot of unknowns--we’re not allowed to inspect the physical condition of the athletes, for example.”

When it comes to unknowns, it’s hard to top horse racing, which offers a set of variables so complex they would baffle a computer. Jockeys, trainers, track conditions and the sheer number of horses make this a tough bet.

In horse racing, jai alai and other parimutuel sports, the odds are created not by oddsmakers or the casino but by the betting public. The odds on a particular horse go up or down based on how much of the betting pool is wagered on it.

“People who like racing think the general public is making stupid choices,” Roxborough says.

Here’s another venture, then, where specialized knowledge supposedly carries big rewards.

However, the penalty for failure is high. The house--in this case, the state--keeps 16% to 20% of all wagers.

You need deep pockets to stay in this game long, which may be why they call it the sport of kings.

A better bet, if you know what you’re doing, might be casino games, which include:

Craps. The house advantage in this dice game can be as low as 1%, but there is a lot of “churning”--that is, the game moves fast, with many opportunities to bet. You could easily make 100 bets in an hour at the craps table, while at the race track, post time would arrive only twice.

To bet sensibly, it helps to know something about the probabilities involved, such as that a seven will turn up 55% of the time--six times as often as a two.

The speed of the game means that a player can quickly turn a small stake into a big one by letting winnings ride. But the other side of the same coin is that rapid betting can mean rapid losing. That 1% house advantage may be small relative to other games, but it can grind your bankroll down before you know it.

Another hazard for some is the relative complexity of the game. Roxborough notes that most craps players in Vegas are older men who learned craps in the service during World War II or the Korean War.

Roulette. This most glamorous of casino pastimes is the epitome of a game of chance. The betting rules are fairly simple, no skill is involved and a beginner has just as good a shot as an experienced player.

The odds vary depending on the type of bet (lower odds for simply betting on red or black, much higher for putting it all on a single number), but the number that counts in the long run is the hold, which is typically a bit over 5%. That’s a pretty stiff house advantage.

Blackjack. More than most casino games, blackjack rewards skill and punishes ignorance. It’s important to know, at least roughly, the distribution of cards in the deck so that you don’t consistently yell “hit me” when your hand is worth 18. A knowledgeable player can make a small stake last for many hours before losing it all.

According to Roxborough, the house advantage against an average player is about 5%. Talented “card counters” who memorize the cards that have been played and instantly recalculate the odds as new hands are dealt can work the odds ever so slightly in their favor, perhaps by 1%.

But to take full advantage of favorable situations, the counter needs to bet heavily then and lightly at other times. Las Vegas dealers are taught to spot such a pattern, and casinos will blithely eject players they suspect of counting. (Personal investment success is not smiled upon in Vegas.)

Slot machines. The new electronic machines, including video poker, have reinvigorated a formerly tired part of the industry. Roxborough said slots now account for the largest share of Las Vegas casino earnings. The hold tends to be 2% to 3%. There’s very little premium on skill except on video poker, where it helps to know the basics.

Feeling Lucky Today? Event: Approximate Chances Winning the California Lottery “Pick 6” Game: 1 in 23 million Being Fatally Struck by Lightning in a Given Year: 1 in 3 million Picking 14 out of 14 Winners on a football Parlay Card: 1 in 16,384 Being Killed in a Car Accident in a Given Year: 1 in 5,000 Throwing Snake Eyes at Dice: 1 in 36 Winning a Pro Basketball Bet Against the Vegas Point Spread: 1 in 2 Making Money in the Stock Market in a Given Year (based on 65 years of the Standard & Poor’s 500): 1 in 1.5