Line of Work

The hotel rooms are sold out, the slot machines are singing, the high rollers are rolling and the buzz is in the air. Nothing invigorates the Strip like a big event, and the Super Bowl is the biggest of them all.

Never mind that the game is being played 1,500 miles away in New Orleans. For the millions who will bet up to an estimated $1 billion worldwide, this is where the action is, this is where it starts with the point spread. With the exception of the St. Louis Rams and the New England Patriots themselves, this is where the big players congregate.

And ultimately, this is where fortunes can be won or lost.

A look at the countdown to kickoff:

Sunday, Jan. 27

It sits far removed from the glittering edifices of the Las Vegas skyline, on the other side of McCarran International Airport, a dull, gray, three-story building looking no different than thousands of others in industrial parks all across the country.

Yet as the NFC title game between the Rams and the Philadelphia Eagles dwindles to its final few minutes, all eyes in those gambling palaces down the road are on this drab structure.

Inside, in the second-floor offices of Las Vegas Sports Consultants, four men--Cesar Robaina, Mike Seba, Tom Vanderhoof and Eugene Buonantony--gather around a table to hammer out a final figure that will reverberate through the sports and gambling world over the next seven days.

It’s called the line, the spread, the odds, the perfect number, a prediction not only of which team will win the game, but by how much.

Robaina is the odds manager at Las Vegas Sports Consultants. The company employs 14 oddsmakers, who zero in on the sports they know best. A crew of six from that group is put together for baseball, six for the NBA, five for college basketball. Seba, Vanderhoof and Buonantony are his pro football specialists.

The oddsmakers are licensed by the Nevada Gaming Control Board. Each must undergo an extensive security check to ensure they have no criminal past or ties to illegal gambling.

To come up with a line, each oddsmaker uses his own resources, which can range from detailed statistical breakdowns to impressions of team chemistry to personal contacts to gut instincts.

In Robaina’s mind, the most important factors for a team are its running game, its defense and the frequency with which it turns the ball over. But, he estimates, 35% of his final figure is based on intuition after analyzing the data.

There is urgency on this Sunday to get the line out to Sports Consultants’ 75 paying clients, who range from 85% of the Las Vegas sports books to the offshore betting casinos in the Caribbean to gambling outlets in nine other countries. Increasingly, there is competition.

The race to be first is not just a matter of honor--it’s a matter of money. A smart bettor will shop around.

“We don’t want people to migrate to another number before they see our opinion,” says Pete Korner, operations manager.

“We have always had the reputation of being the line originator,” says Tony Sinisi, a Sports Consultants oddsmaker. “What has happened is that the offshore casinos put out their own numbers now. God bless them, but we have a history doing this and we want our opinion out early so that people will know it is our true number.”

On this Sunday, the four oddsmakers meet in a room anchored by a bank of televisions tuned to sports channels, several computer screens ready to crunch numbers and reams of statistical analysis on the teams headed to the Super Bowl. The only clue as to the true nature of the business is a pair of framed movie posters: one is “The Basketball Fix,” the other, “The Day the Bookies Wept.”

The four agree without question that the Rams must be favored.

But by how much?

Seba says 13 points, Vanderhoof 14, Robaina 141/2, Buonantony 16 to 17.

Robaina, who has the final say, decides on 16.

“Since we knew [New England quarterback Tom] Brady was injured and we know more people will bet on the favorite,” says Sports Consultants oddsmaker Dan O’Brien, “if we have erred, it is on the high side.”

The line has been set and, within minutes, it spreads around the world through the conveniences of electronic technology.

This is the yardstick from which bets will be figured. It is not the final word, merely the starting point.

As the week progresses, the line may vary based on a multitude of factors, from the amount of money wagered on both teams to any injuries that might occur in practice to the whispered rumors: This team appears distracted, that team has been spending too many late nights on Bourbon Street.

But bettors know the difference between the Rams and Patriots, as decided by the gurus of oddsmaking, is now 16 points.

*

Monday

Betting lines have been around for more than half a century. It was, in the words of one long-since-forgotten gambler, “the greatest invention since the zipper.”

Without the line, why would anyone but the most die-hard Patriot fans bet on a team that, certainly on paper, looks inferior to the high-flying Rams? With the betting line, the great equalizer, everybody can back up their rooting interests with hard cash.

Over at the MGM Grand, the line is received from Sports Consultants on Sunday afternoon at 16. Robert Walker, director of the race and sports book at MGM, immediately moves it to 141/2.

By Monday morning, it settles in at 14.

“We took a couple of small bets [at 141/2] just to see what was out there,” says Walker, “and then we quickly went to 14. As far as I’m concerned, 15, 151/2 and 16 are dead numbers.”

The army of bettors who will flood into Las Vegas this week are divided into three categories by Walker and his counterparts, who take their money and hope they get to keep it.

* There are the squares--essentially the tourists and the casual bettors, those who come to town for the weekend and cautiously put down $20, or, if they feel really lucky, $50.

* There are the high rollers, the biggest casino customers. They arrive earlier in the week and engage in everything from sports betting to blackjack to high-stakes poker.

* And then there are the “wise guys,” but they have nothing to do with organized crime. Rather, they are the professional sports gamblers who come and go on the Strip just long enough to win or lose big.

Of these three groups, it is the wise guys who are most respected by the bookmakers.

“They are professionals who make their living doing this,” Walker says. “They will tell us if we have the right number.”

How do they know who is who?

“I can tell by the amount they bet and their betting pattern,” says Nick Bogdanovich, who runs the race and sports book at Mandalay Bay.

Depending on the amount of money wagered, it might take 1,000 squares betting the same way to move a line half a point. It might take only one wise guy.

Many sports books limit the amount of money a wise guy can wager. At MGM Grand, the wise guy can’t go over $50,000 for the Super Bowl, while high rollers are allowed up to $200,000.

Why the difference?

“If the casino player beats us,” Walker says, “he goes out and plays with the money on the premises. The wise guy takes our money out the door. He is of absolutely no value to us except to help us get the right number.”

So the primary job is to get the high rollers in the hotel. Super Bowl week, that is no problem.

*

Tuesday

The propositions have come out.

Or, as some people like to refer to them, the sucker bets.

During Super Bowl week, the betting action is about three times that of an average weekend during the NFL regular season, according to Ken Epstein, executive with the Coast and Plaza hotels.

And that increase can be traced to the general public, many of whom are not well-versed in the intricacies of the point spread.

Often, they flock to a series of unusual bets, which seem to grow in number and quirkiness every year.

The most unusual this year is a proposition by which bettors can wager which will be higher, Laker center Shaquille O’Neal’s free-throw percentage against the Dallas Mavericks today or the total points scored in the Super Bowl.

Sorry Shaq, but the Super Bowl total is favored.

Bettors also can take either side of such wagers as:

Which will be greater, Michael Jordan’s points and rebounds for the Washington Wizards today against the Indiana Pacers or St. Louis quarterback Kurt Warner’s pass attempts?

Who will score more points, Jordan or the Rams? Jordan or the Patriots? The same bet goes for O’Neal and for Kobe Bryant.

Yes or no, will any points be scored in the first 5 minutes 30 seconds of the game?

How will the last points of the Super Bowl be scored? A St. Louis field goal is the favorite at 7-2, a New England safety the longest shot at 40-1.

Most of the time, these wacky bets make money for the bookmaker. But, as any bookmaker will tell you, there are no sure things.

Art Manteris, now at Station Casinos, was at Caesars in 1986 when Super Bowl XX matched New England against the Chicago Bears. Manteris propositioned whether rotund Chicago lineman William “Refrigerator” Perry, who had occasionally gotten a goal-line appearance at fullback, would score a touchdown.

It certainly seemed like a safe bet. Perry hadn’t carried the ball in seven weeks and his coach, Mike Ditka, insisted Perry would never carry it again.

Manteris set the odds at 20-1. A huge volume of Perry money bet it down to 2-1.

And sure enough, Perry got the ball on Super Sunday and got across the goal line.

“Caesars exploded when he scored,” Manteris says. “We got killed on the bet. I was ready to kill myself.”

*

Wednesday

The line doesn’t budge.

All day long, bookmakers walk about, cell phones pressed to their ears, or sit in front of a computer, scanning the activity of other sports books around town, and reviewing updated team reports.

Everyone is awaiting a decision from Patriot Coach Bill Belichick, who finally announces late Wednesday that Brady will be today’s starting quarterback.

In a year where the differences are so pronounced between the two teams, the edge is so clear and the uncertainties so minuscule, the choice between Brady, a largely unknown, 24-year-old, second-year reserve when the season began, and Bledsoe, the proven veteran, provides the only momentary drama of an otherwise mundane Super Bowl week.

At the end of the day, though, “it really didn’t matter,” said Mandalay Bay’s Bogdanovich. “Everyone anticipated this would happen.”

But if the lineup question had centered on Warner, the league’s most valuable player, that would have been different. Very different.

“If for some reason Warner couldn’t play,” Bogdanovich says, “I would move the line seven points. The Rams would only be favored by seven, or maybe less.”

And if an injury suddenly sidelined last season’s league MVP, St. Louis running back Marshall Faulk?

“I would move the line a point,” Bogdanovich says.

Bookmakers do not move the line haphazardly.

Let’s say a sports book, in an attempt to lure additional bettors, drops the line from 14 to 131/2. Those who are confident the Rams will win by at least 14 may rush to the counter. To compensate, the bookmaker may move the line to 141/2. Now, those who figure it’s too high would line up to bet on New England. If the line settles at 14 and the Rams win, 24-10, the bookmaker has to pay those who took the Rams at 131/2 and those who took the Patriots at 141/2, while also giving those who bet at 14 their money back.

“That,” says Korner of Sports Consultants, “is the nightmare scenario.”

*

Thursday

Billy Baxter is a wise guy.

Starting as a pool hustler at age 14 in his native Georgia, Baxter has been a professional gambler ever since.

He does not fit the stereotype of a gambler sporting a garish pinkie ring and a cigar. Instead, Baxter looks so mild-mannered he could easily pass for an accountant or banker.

A three-time winner of the World Series of Poker, Baxter wagers about half a million dollars every Saturday on college football and another half a million on Sunday on pro football.

He won’t reveal how much he has won, but says he’s “having a good year.”

Having a good life as well, apparently. Baxter’s stately home is richly appointed with a spiral staircase, antiques and artwork. It is located in an exclusive area of the city, just down the street from houses owned by Mike Tyson and Wayne Newton.

His office, however, looks just like the offices of bookmakers and oddsmakers all over the city, crowded with sports books and stacks of material analyzing various sports.

Baxter’s Super Bowl wagering is long since over by this point in the week. When the spread opened at 15 at one sports book Sunday evening, Baxter grabbed it, taking the points and the Patriots for $80,000.

“I thought that line was a little high,” he says, “but come Sunday’s game, I’ll sure be holding my breath.”

He didn’t hold his breath before making the bet. Or look for advice.

“I don’t care what anybody else thinks about pro football,” he says. “I do my own line with pen and paper. It’s not that hard to figure.”

Even when it is hard to figure, Baxter doesn’t hesitate.

When his wife, Julie, was in the early weeks of pregnancy with the couple’s second child, he bet legendary Las Vegas bookmaker Bob Martin $20,000 that the baby would be a girl.

Baxter got his girl, and his $20,000.

Just last week, Baxter won $2,000 in man-to-man betting by wagering that the Nevada State Athletic Commission would deny Mike Tyson a boxing license.

Used to betting at the drop of a proposition, Baxter doesn’t think much of the limits put on wise guys.

“They’ll give you a $10,000 limit,” Baxter said, “but if people then bet $50,000 the other way, they’ll let you bet $50,000.

“Everybody’s afraid of losing their jobs these days at the sports books. These corporations that run them don’t want to hear bad news.”

How has Baxter, 61, lasted so long in such a risky business?

“The only reason I’m still here is that I don’t go on long losing streaks,” he said. “My best attribute is money management. When times do get bad, I cut back, rein it in and ask myself, ‘What am I doing wrong?’ So few survive the down times. I’ve had to ride out many a storm.”

And if he loses his $80,000 today?

“I’ll figure I put in a hard day’s work,” he says, “and let the chips fall where they may.”

*

Friday

The rays of the setting sun add a natural sparkle to Glitter Gulch, the old, original section of Las Vegas. Here stand the Golden Nugget, the Plaza and the Horseshoe, among the earliest buildings that transformed this area from a desert into a gambler’s oasis.

Hotel and casino owner Jackie Gaughan remembers when it was still largely desert. Now 81 and an owner of several downtown properties, he surveys his kingdom from a glass window as he eats dinner at his Plaza Hotel.

In his mind’s eye, Gaughan can recall a Las Vegas where the Flamingo Hotel, now in the heart of the Strip, “was like going out of town to play.”

Gaughan, who began as a bookmaker in Omaha, came to Las Vegas for military training at the start of World War II and never left. He knew Bugsy Siegel and other pioneers who built Las Vegas.

Gaughan smiles at talk of an $80-million handle for Super Bowl week.

“It’s all bookmaking,” he says. “Nothing has changed except the amounts and the computers. We used to do it on a pad of paper.”

As the game draws nearer, there is a bit of nostalgia in the air as natives prepare for the last big push of Super Bowl weekend by swapping their favorite betting stories from a more colorful past.

Such as the one about Bob Stupak, a local hotel and casino personality who walked into Little Caesars and bet on the Cincinnati Bengals.

They were 11-point underdogs to the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl XVI, but the Bengals beat the spread in that 1982 game, losing, 26-21.

Stupak walked out of the casino carrying his winnings--$1 million in cash--in a box.

As dusk falls on this Friday evening, Interstate 15, the long, asphalt trail linking Las Vegas with California, is filled with incoming traffic, the seemingly endless line of headlights providing a glare to rival that of the Las Vegas Strip itself.

Ninety percent of all Super Bowl bets will be made from here on.

“And those,” Bogdanovich predicts, “will be made by the squares.”

*

Saturday

The squares are out in force at Mandalay Bay, bringing with them their charts, their calculations, their intuitions and their beers.

There are well-dressed couples coming out of a show, stopping by to check out the odds. There are the serious bettors, who scan the floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall wagering board, carefully checking every sport, every game, every Super Bowl proposition, before targeting their money. There are the casual young bettors, who come in groups, drinks in their hands, baseball caps on backward. They reach in their pockets for leftover chips from the blackjack table or petty cash. They’d like to win, but even if they lose, they will have fun doing it.

Glenn Rothstein lives in Atlantic City, N.J., but he comes across the country for Super Bowl weekend.

“Atlantic City can’t hold a candle to Las Vegas,” he says. “We don’t even have sports books there.”

Carl Hoenle, a retired Las Vegas schoolteacher, is putting his money on the Patriots.

“Maybe $150,” he says. “Maybe an additional hundred. I remember back in 1969, everybody said the [New York] Jets couldn’t win [Super Bowl III]. I think these odds are ridiculous. Of course, I’m an old AFL guy. I still bleed for the AFL.”

The biggest misconception in oddsmaking is that the line is the bookmaker’s prediction of the final outcome.

“It’s a myth,” Walker says. “When we say the Rams will win by 14, what we are trying to do is to come up with a number that will get the most people to bet. Ideally, it would be an equal amount on either side.”

The 14-point line is pulling a lot of the squares’ money over to New England today.

“It’s an excessive line. It’s psychological, not factual,” Jack Holland of San Francisco says before placing his wager at Mandalay Bay.

Clay Bullock from Orange County also plans to bet. How much? “Depends how I do at blackjack,” he says.

Woody Rill from Chicago is ready to put down his money.

“I got a system,” he says. “I pray and then bet it all, baby.”

Sunday

It will be over today. Sometime before 8 p.m., the sports book counters will be crowded with joyous winners showing off their tickets, while the floors will be littered with the torn and crumpled tickets of the losers.

The wise guys will cash in, but not all of them.

“How many professional gamblers have chauffeurs?” Epstein asks. “Not too many. Playing this is like playing the stock market.”

Over at Las Vegas Sports Consultants, the page has already turned. Anybody have an idea who the favorite should be in next week’s Pro Bowl? How is that Final Four shaping up? Who looks like a sure pennant winner?

The lights never go out in Sin City. Not as long as the wise guys, and the not so wise, have money in their pockets and a sure winner in mind.

*

(BDEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

*

The Week in Las VegasTR

SUNDAY

* As the final seconds tick away on the Rams’ NFC championship victory, four oddsmakers are at work to set the opening line for Super Bowl XXXVI. They make the Rams 16-point favorites, but in hours the line at many major books is down to 141/2.

MONDAY

* The books wait for the so-called “wise guys” to make their bets, which will give them an indication as to whether the line needs to be adjusted. It does, and the spread is lowered to 14 points.

TUESDAY

* The proposition bets--geared more for the general public unfamiliar with the intricacies of point spreads--come out. So, who will score more points, Jordan or the Rams?

WEDNESDAY

* The line holds firm at 14 even after New England Coach Bill Belichick names Tom Brady--injured ankle and all--as his starting quarterback.

THURSDAY

* The wagering is long since over for professional gambler Billy Baxter, who bet $80,000 on the Patriots--with a 15-point spread--on Sunday. Baxter bets as much as $1 million a week on football.

FRIDAY

* The roads are clogged with incoming traffic as Las Vegas gears up for the weekend. Ninety percent of all Super Bowl bets will be made from here on.

SATURDAY

* There is plenty of day-before betting, most of it done by the “squares,” whose wagering amount is often determined by how well they do at the blackjack table.