Where the Action Is

The King and I are seated in the back row of the Caesars Palace race book, shrouded in darkness, glancing at the massive television monitors on the wall in front of us, waiting for the start of the Breeders’ Cup--”the biggest day in horse racing,” the King helpfully reminds me.

We are in the last of the reserved seats. Yes, reserved seats. The Caesars race book and adjoining sports book are essentially oversized sports bars with betting windows--same sights, similar sounds, courtesy satellite and multiscreen technology--but when was the last time you had to book a reservation for beer and buffalo wings at Joe’s Sports Grill?

Reservations are required here--it says so, right on the metal plaque affixed to the desktop in front of each seat. Ordinarily, seats at Caesars are procured days in advance with a phone call placed to the book. But the King, being the King, did not call ahead. He showed up Saturday morning, an hour before the first post time, talked to his man behind the counter and talked his way into three reserved seats--although not premier reserved seats, the ones on the other side of the room equipped with handy individual television sets.

On short notice, there’s only so much the man behind the counter can do.

The seats, and there are hundreds of them, are arranged behind long rows of polished wood that resemble church pews, bowing before an altar of betting windows and a cineplex-sized megascreen that dwarfs four other big screens tuned to the action at Aqueduct, Laurel Park, Churchill Downs and Oak Tree at Santa Anita--and one more, for benefit of the all-purpose sports bettor, carrying the Alabama-Louisiana State football game.

Around the corner to the left sits the sports book, with more pews and more big screens and more gamblers cursing and cheering as the Ohio State-Michigan State game or the Penn State-Minnesota game or the Northwestern-Michigan game or the Miami-Pittsburgh game turns for or against them.

We sit in the outer reaches of this Short Attention Span Theater, football to the left of us, horse racing to the right, cocktail waitresses at the ready with free drinks to deliver. The King is scribbling numbers on the pages of his Daily Racing Form, provided free by the race book. The King also has a yellow slip of paper, a $50 food voucher, redeemable at the PostTime Deli, situated so close to our seats you could hit it with a wadded-up losing ticket.

“The only thing that makes the trip worthwhile,” says the King, who treks in from Los Angeles six or seven times a year, “is that the books are smarter than the tracks. Here, they let you in free. You’re going to get free food, free forms. The tracks aren’t smart enough to know they’d do more business if they let ‘em in free.”

And, for the preferred customer, the big sports and race books will provide free hotel lodging. General rule of thumb: He who bets big and bets often gets the best of the freebies.

“If you’re big enough,” the King says, “you can qualify for the ‘big room.’ You can perk all the way up.”

By workday, the King is known as Gary Margolis, an accountant with the Beverly Hills Sports Council, an agency that includes 130 major league baseball players among its clientele. He regularly associates with high rollers and heavy hitters but does not consider himself one. At the track, where he earned his sobriquet for dazzling friends with his ability to peg longshots, the King is more like a high-contact singles hitter: consistent, tough to strike out, but rarely wagers enough to truly go deep.

“I bet conservatively,” the King says. “And I go for longshots. That’s the fun of it. Anyone can bet the favorite.”

The King says he bets for “the glory more than anything. I feel I can do this better than anyone on earth. That’s what excites me--this is something I do really well.

“In fact, I would just play for nothing if people would believe I won.”

The King smiles.

“But there’s nothing like showing them some crisp $100 bills to make sure they believe.”

The King needs his court. And when it comes to captive audiences--fed, watered and perked to the gills--there is no place like a Las Vegas sports book.

‘The Excitement Center’

Vinnie Magliulo, manager of the Caesars Palace race and sports books, agrees to meet for an interview Sunday morning, “right after the 10 o’clock games kick off.” NFL Sundays are crazy, Magliulo says, but between kickoff and halftime, he should have a few minutes to talk.

Sunday morning at 10 o’clock, the Caesars sports book is rocking. Every seat is occupied. Every NFL game underway at the time is splashed across one big screen or several. The lines at the betting windows have finally begun to dissipate.

From behind the betting counter, Magliulo instructs a security guard to open the door next to the “$10,000 Minimum Transaction” window and show me inside to the “back”--as in, “Vinnie’s in the back, working on the halftime lines.”

In the back, things look no different than your standard-issue small-business office--cubicles with desks and personal computers, coffee machine in the corner--save for the panel of television screens that resemble security-camera monitors. Each of these monitors, however, is tuned to a different NFL game.

Here is where Magliulo and his staff set--and reset--betting lines on professional and collegiate sporting events throughout the day, every day. The lines are in constant flux, depending on the money being wagered on one side or the other, which is one reason the Nevada Gaming Commission prohibits the use of cellular phones and sports paging devices inside sports books. Armed with a cellular phone and a partner or two, a bettor can comparison-shop for the best line available at a given moment.

And the competition between sports books in Las Vegas is great, especially since the arrival of the hotel-run books in the mid-1970s. From 1950 to 1975, Nevada law banned hotels from operating race and sports books on their premises, keeping the industry literally in the dark--inside dank, smoky pool halls-with-sports-tickers, far from the niceties offered by the luxury hotels on the Strip.

Caesars opened its first modest sports book in 1980. “It was literally a kiosk,” Magliulo says. “It was a kiosk set up and approved to take wagers on the Larry Holmes-Muhammad Ali fight that was here on the property.

“And it was met with such success that right after that we began construction of the facility that you’re in now, which has undergone several renovations and now comprises over 30,000 square feet.”

The popularity of the sports book skyrocketed in the 1980s, triggered by two developments:

* The advancement of satellite and cable technology, enabling sports books to provide live television feeds of sporting events across the map. With the installment of a few big-screen monitors, the books were instantly transformed from mere money-changing stations to all-day entertainment centers.

* Nevada slicing its excise tax from 2% to 0.25% in 1985, which made sports bookmaking profitable for hotels.

From 1980 to 1990, the number of Nevada sports books rose from 30 properties handling $290 million in annual wagers to 67 properties handling $1.48 billion. By the end of the 1999 fiscal year, those numbers had climbed to 138 properties and $2.3 billion.

Similarly, nationwide sports gambling--conducted on the Internet or illegally over the phone--has exploded. Art Manteris, vice president of race and sports book operations at the Las Vegas Hilton, says he has seen estimates placing illegal nationwide sports gambling at a range of “anywhere from 25 to 100 times the Nevada sports betting handle.” Most media estimates have placed the figure between $80 billion and $100 billion a year.

The action inside a Las Vegas sports book is legal--a safe, if slightly insane, haven for the sports gambler, according to Magliulo.

“It’s the excitement center of the property,” Magliulo says. “It’s very enjoyable for the folks. You have the casual fan, the casual bettor, all the way up to those who use the $10,000 minimum window out there. So it certainly appeals to the complete demographics of visitors.”

And the “super books,” such as those at Caesars, the Mirage and the Hilton, aim to please.

There are limits to what one can wager at Caesars, “but of course, limits are flexible,” Magliulo says. “It depends on the event, naturally--the bigger the event, the higher the limit. And of course, we want to provide our casino guests and our property guests with higher limits if they so desire.

“If you’ve got a particular patron who has a multimillion-dollar credit line, certainly you want to afford them the opportunity to wager more than the limit may be.

“But, by the same token, we’re in the business to try to balance our books. So if there’s an opportunity for us to take a wager that exceeds our limit on a particular event and that helps balance our books, then that’s fine.”

Magliulo says “we’ve had folks wager in excess of a million dollars on a single event.”

So too claims Manteris.

“I can tell you this, and I am certain of this: The biggest bets in Nevada sports book history have been made at the Las Vegas Hilton,” Manteris says.

“We have these beautiful penthouse suites at the Hilton. They’re called ‘the Villas’ and they’re incredible facilities. There are three suites on top of the hotel that are 12,000, 13,000 and 15,000 square feet. And they’re as elegant as can be. I believe they cost $40 million or $50 million to build the three of them a few years back.

“So, obviously, the casino gamblers that stay in a suite like that are very high-end customers. You have to accommodate those customers in the casino, in the baccarat pit, and we try to accommodate them in the sports book.”

Stripped Down

Downtown, far from the madding crowds and “The Villas” and very close to Stoney’s Super Pawn Shop (“Gold, Diamonds, Jewelry. Maximum Loan Values”), is Binion’s sports book. You have to look to find it. It is tucked into the back of the casino, squeezed up against a tiny snack bar, and eerily quiet.

The book consists of a small betting counter, four regular-sized television sets and two white greaseboards. On the other side of the counter are a total of 19 chairs, each of them occupied by a bettor silently staring at the flickering screens. All activity in the book, such as it is, is drowned out by the clatter of chips being tossed onto an adjacent blackjack table and coins clink-clink-clinking into the tray of a nearby video Keno machine.

Unlike the big books on the Strip, there is no state-of-the-art electronic scoreboard to update betting lines and the scores of games in progress. At Binion’s, Brian Zugay, the assistant sports book manager, tugs at a pull-down greaseboard, erases a blue zero with his fingertips and replaces it with a blue “7,” courtesy Magic marker.

There are no $10,000 minimum windows here. Binion’s handles no more than $10,000 a wager for NFL games, $5,000 for college games.

“We’ve downscaled in the last year,” Zugay says as he stands in a cluttered cubbyhole that passes for the book’s nerve center. “We’re not as high-limited as we used to be.”

An ownership change, Zugay explains.

“It’s a different philosophy,” he says. “You have a bad day here and you could have some serious losses. The [new] ownership isn’t willing to lose that kind of money.”

So the action at Binion’s is smaller.

And so, so quiet.

“They have a lot more square action on the Strip,” Zugay says.

Square?

“A tourist,” Zugay explains. “The kind of guy who bets his favorite team--not what you would call a ‘handicapper.’ They have a lot more of those on the Strip.”

And squares, being less sophisticated with a betting ticket, tend to be more boisterous. They are the screamers on the roller coaster, whereas the serious players take in the rolls and the twists in an intensely focused silence.

“We get more regulars here,” Zugay says. “We don’t have nearly as many weekend bettors. People usually bet where they’re staying at, but this casino has only 400 rooms, not 4,000 like some of the hotels on the Strip. So we rely on locals who are serious about their betting. Our percentage of wise guy action is higher than on the Strip.”

Competition between the sports books is “fierce,” Zugay contends. “It’s cutthroat.” And the downtown books, generally being older and less geographically desirable, are absorbing the brunt of the body blows. According to statistics compiled by the Nevada Gaming Control Board, sports books on the Strip accounted for 59.6% of action handled in the state in 1998--a total of $1.4 billion. Downtown sports books, meanwhile, accounted for only 16% of the handle--a little more than $381 million.

The rapid rise of the Strip sports books “has hurt our business, no doubt about it,” says Jonathan Jester, manager of the downtown Las Vegas Club sports book. “It’s like having strike one or strike two against us . . .

“I don’t lose customers to the Mirage because of what we offer. We lose customers because of location. Tourists have a preconceived notion of ‘Downtown.’ ”

The Las Vegas Club has tried to fight back. Eighteen months ago, it built a new sports book, designing the book to look like an old-style baseball stadium, complete with green bleacher seats, a hot dog stand and murals of fans in 1920s bowlers and straw hats painted on the walls.

Cute decor, however, won’t cut it alone, so Jester runs weekly radio ads, has put up a Web site and offers what he calls “the highest football parlay odds in town. We stress that on the radio--’You can win more money on parlays than anywhere else.’ ”

Most of Jester’s customers are locals and regulars. “I can go around this room,” he says, “and know the name of half the 50 or 75 people here.” As for attracting tourists, well, there’s only so much a 415-room downtown hotel can do.

“It’s tough for us when places like Mandalay Bay and Excalibur have 4,000 rooms,” Jester says. “I don’t have that captive audience. And it’s worse for the stand-alones. They’ve either been sucked up or bought out or closed down.

“It’s very, very competitive, because every hotel now has a sports book. And a lot of hotels consider sports books--I’m not going to say a ‘necessary evil’--as something they have to have in order to keep patrons in the casino.

“Because if you don’t have one, they’re going to go next door.”

Parlay Floored

Joe Mariano is a tourist. Seated among the denizens in the Mirage sports book, he is easy to spot: the designer track suit, the New England accent, the anguished contortions as the second leg of a two-game parlay goes against him.

“Oh, no!” Mariano gasps as California fumbles near its goal line, Oregon State recovers and turns a three-point lead into 10.

“This is the worst thing that could’ve happened!”

Mariano buries his head in his hands.

California, his pick, is a 9 1/2-point underdog.

Moments later, on another big screen, Arizona State’s J.R. Redmond scores against USC.

Mariano sneaks a peak.

“Awright!” he exclaims as he sits up in his chair again.

The front end of his parlay has taken a turn for the better.

On the biggest big screen in the building, Tennessee is breaking a long run against Notre Dame.

“GO BABY! GO BABY!” Mariano yells, pounding the table in front of him.

His cover bet--low-risk insurance in case the parlay falls apart--is looking like a sure thing. Good news, but in a sports book, bad news is often not far behind.

California misses a chip-shot field goal.

“Unbelievable,” Mariano grouses.

California gets the ball back, drives deep into Oregon State territory, has a pass intercepted in the end zone.

“Look at that,” Mariano says with a disgusted wave of his hand. “He just heaves it up there! What a bum.”

The inevitable is starting to sink in with Mariano.

“The parlay,” Mariano says softly, shaking his head, scolding himself. “A sucker’s bet.”

Mariano knows better. He never bets parlays at home, in Boston, with his regular bookie. “I stay with single action at home,” he says. “But over here, you’re in Vegas, there’s the novelty of it. It’s tempting.”

Mariano visits Las Vegas two or three times a football season to hit the tables a bit, but mainly to hang out in the sports books.

“Atlantic City has no sports books,” he says. “So you have to fly out if you like football.”

Another trait of the tourist: When out West, they tend to do as Westerners do. With so much West Coast action at their disposal--Pac-10 games day and night, WAC games on big screens everywhere--they find they can’t resist.

Against their better judgment, they bet West Coast.

“Obviously, I know a lot more about East Coast teams,” Mariano says. “I don’t know much about West Coast teams, but Cal has been playing good. My girlfriend wanted in on a parlay, so I mention Cal to her. She said OK.”

Mariano laughs.

“I hope she wins in the slots.”

That’s usually where the couple parts ways whenever stepping into a casino--Mariano heads for the sports book, his girlfriend beelines to the slots.

Mariano has no patience for slot machines himself.

“No control,” he says. “Here, you have control over this. You can pick this team, that team. You don’t like the spread, you can bet the other way.”

Mariano is about to break even on this Saturday, Tennessee covering for the busted parlay.

“I broke even for the day, I’m a happy man,” Mariano says as he gets up to head to the cashier’s window. “It’s not a lot of money. But money never bought happiness, anyway. It’s only paper.”

Besides, Saturday night in a Las Vegas sports book is merely halftime. Still ahead is Sunday and a full slate of NFL games.

“The best bet tomorrow is the Eagles,” Mariano says, offering me a parting gift. “But, you know, nothing’s guaranteed.”

So true, so true.

The next day, the Eagles, five-point underdogs, lose to Carolina, 33-7.

Getting Its Props

Location, location, location. The Imperial Palace has it in spades--too much, in truth, for its own good.

The 25-year-old hotel and casino sits in the shadow of the twin giants, Caesars and the Mirage, with Treasure Island’s pirate skull glowering down the street and Paris’ phony Eiffel Tower only a short walk away.

(Yes, Paris does have a sports book. Except it is called Les Rendez-Vous Race & Sport, and it is phony too. An authentic French sports book would list soccer odds, no? Not here. No over-under for St. Etienne at Paris Saint-Germain anywhere to be found.)

The Imperial Palace sports book is up against it. Especially with a betting limit of $5,000 an NFL game, and less for other sports.

“These guys come in here,” says Jay Kornegay, manager of the Imperial Palace sports book, “and if I tell them that they can have $2,000 on the game, they go, ‘Well. I could get more from my paper boy.’ And I tell them, ‘I bet you could.’

“We have relatively small limits here. And you have to bet those limits. Now, if I was the director over at the Mirage, I would have higher limits because I have clientele that are going to give me $5,000 a game. You do have house players. But when you have house players that might give you $1,000 a game, you want to take $1,000.”

So, in order to compete, Kornegay and his staff must be creative. The Imperial Palace sports book offers a drive-thru window--”Place Sports Bets From Your Car!” the hotel’s neon message board exclaims--and more exotic, or proposition, wagers than you can shake a complimentary hoagie at.

“The Imperial Palace is the prop capital of the world,” Zugay says with admiration.

Adds Jester: “It never ceases to amaze me. I think last year, when the Bulls were going really bad, the IP had this prop: Which would be higher--a Phil Mickelson golf score or the Bulls’ total points for a game? They do some crazy stuff over there.”

Other proposition bets the Imperial Palace has offered:

* Who would score more on a given Sunday--Michael Jordan or the Dallas Cowboys?

Kornegay: “You had to figure around 30 points each.”

* Would Pittsburgh wide receiver Kordell Stewart catch a pass, have a rushing attempt and throw a pass--all three must happen--during the 1996 Super Bowl?

Kornegay: “He caught a pass, he got back there and had a rushing attempt, so the only thing that he needed to do was attempt a pass. So he did relieve [Neil] O’Donnell that year and he came in at quarterback. And this line--and we made a horrendous line on it--was ‘yes, all three would happen’ at minus-150. Meaning you would have to lay, based on $10, $15 to win $10.

“Everybody was betting the yes, like this was a gimme. The thing went to, like, $5--so instead of laying $15 to win $10 you had to lay $50 to win $10. So we really needed him not to complete all three.

“So he had the first two, and everybody knew it, and we had two Super Bowl parties--800 people in one party, 600 in the other. When he went back to attempt that pass and cocked his arm, everybody in the room yelled, ‘THROW IT! THROW IT!’ It didn’t matter if he completed it. All he had to do was throw it.

“But he tucked it under his arm and ran. Everybody booed and things were thrown, and that was it. That’s as close as it got.

“It was an unbelievable, great prop.”

* Would Denver Bronco backup quarterback Bubby Brister have a rushing attempt in the 1999 Super Bowl?

Kornegay: “Basically, the only thing that could happen was if he came in for [John] Elway at the end of the game and took a kneel-down. And we indicated that a kneel-down is an official rushing attempt, for minus-one yard.

“So, if you remember the Super Bowl last year, they really didn’t show it on TV, because they showed Elway coming off the field with less than 30 seconds to go, but Brister did come in and he did kneel down. So he did have a rushing attempt.

“One of our guests was very upset at that, because he bet the no, like a lot of other people bet the no. He accused me of calling the sidelines--because I’m from Denver, see--and calling [Denver Coach Mike] Shanahan and telling him to put in Brister for that prop. A direct line right to the headset: ‘Hey, Mike, can you put in Brister, because we really need this?’

“It was great. Everybody around this guy looked at him, like, ‘Are you kidding me? Jay’s got a lot of pull in this town, but I don’t think he’s got that much.’ ”

Book Reviews

The King is relaxing between races of the Breeders’ Cup, girding for his next foray to the betting window, basking in the amenities all about him, extolling the virtues, as he sees them, of Las Vegas sports books.

An over-the-phone bookmaker, he says, “will always know how you bet. He knows your habits--’This guy will always bet $100 on this kind of line.’ And he might add a half-point to the wrong side of the game because he knows that.

“Here, you don’t have to worry about a phone guy screwing you.”

Jason Goldberg, friend and weekend traveling companion of the King, nods.

“Coming here,” Goldberg says, “is a good escape for three days when they’re paying for your room and the food is inexpensive.

“In my life, I have a lot of work. On Saturdays and Sundays, I like to relax for a few hours and watch a game or two. I find it pleasurable. Especially when I win.”

What separates a top sports book from the run-of-the-mill outposts now littering the Strip?

“Space,” the King says. “You want a place that has a lot of space. And atmosphere. Definitely the atmosphere. You want a lot of TVs. And lighting is important. This place [Caesars] is dark--some people ask to use my desk light because they say they can’t see--but I like it.”

Goldberg: “The best sports book in Vegas is the Bellagio. It’s more upper class. I like the way it’s formatted. I like the big leather chairs . . .”

The King: “Those chairs are so comfortable. I fell asleep in one of them.”

Goldberg: “The Mirage is good too. They have a California Pizza Kitchen right in the middle of the sports book. You can watch your games right there while you’re eating pizza.”

Listening in from a few seats away, another player joins the discussion.

“The Bellagio is weird,” says Rick Barnette of Los Angeles. “It’s a nice setup, but they have funny cards.

“Stay away from the Circus Circus properties. They all have pretty poor books. You get the feeling they don’t like to do it. The facilities are not as nice, the lines are tight.”

Barnette is in the middle of a Saturday afternoon bath. He is on his way to losing $400 on the Breeders’ Cup, with a heavy slate of college football games going against him as well.

“I’m trying to figure why I like this so much,” Barnette says. “It’s an ego thing, I guess, but I also think it comes from me being so disillusioned with sports today. I don’t watch games in person anymore. There’s so much money being thrown around now, all these salaries are warped. You have teachers making only $40,000 or $50,000 and these jocks are making millions.

“So many of these athletes are making big money, I figure I might as well try to get in on it. I don’t have any favorite teams or players. Only the ones that make me money.”

A cynical view, perhaps, but one that keeps many a Las Vegas sports book filled to the brim.

“Even the colleges are getting warped,” Barnette says. “Schools are making millions off these kids. And if you get an injury, you’re tossed to the side.

“Everything’s about money today. That’s why I’m here. For the money.”

Barnette glances down at the note pad listing his wagers for the day.

“Except,” he adds with a tired laugh, “I’m giving it away today.”