Insane Parlay Card Fits March Madness Mood

There was a moment here Friday afternoon that ranks right up there with maybe my wedding day or the birth of my first child.

I’m sitting in heaven, known by some people as the Caesars Palace Race and Sports Book, on the second day of March Mania in a prime seat surrounded by a mob of excited people all intently watching four humongous TV monitors on the wall with four NCAA tournament basketball games going on at the same time. Think about watching four Oscar-winning movies all at the same time and all featuring Salma Hayek, your head on a swivel trying to take it all in.

The excitement, the anticipation, the payoff on a winning parlay -- tell me your wedding day topped anything like this.

Each game is hovering on the betting line, one moment teetering in favor of those betting with company money, the next, potential parlay disaster, every steal and basket punctuated by loud noise.

(I know I haven’t cheered that loud since hearing some of the ridiculous things said by the Boston Parking Lot Attendant the day he bought the Dodgers, knowing what wonderful column fodder he’ll provide until the day he leaves.)

The daughter who can’t get a date is also with me, rooting against two of my four parlay teams even though I’m picking up the tab for the hotel room, meals and transportation. And to think they’re so lovable when they’re first born. And then you start buying the diapers....

It’s Friday, so most everyone else in the world is working. Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah! They have referees mixing drinks here, so you know they don’t make mistakes. Waitresses they call “Goddesses” willingly serve you, which separates them from the wife.

They also have 21,000-square-foot villas, including private pool and putting green, for those who wager more than $8 million a year here. They seldom go unused.

Now I kind of have an agreement with the wife that I’ll hold myself to the ATM limit of $300 a day in Vegas, so at that rate, I probably wouldn’t qualify for the villa for another 27 years or so. I find sometimes wives can be so limiting in Sin City.

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NOW IF you’re going to be successful here, you have to operate under the principle that everyone is stupid.

I have trouble with that, of course, because some people picked USC over UCLA when it came to deciding where they would go to school, so you couldn’t call them stupid. But by and large, you take your general public minus USC grads, bet against them and you have a chance to survive here.

I learned this from a teacher, just maybe the smartest man I ever met, Chuck Esposito, the assistant vice president of Race and Sports Book Operations at Caesars.

Esposito’s brother, Joey, also makes a living dealing with stupid people, sending them off to jail as an assistant district attorney in Los Angeles, so we’re talking about a family here who knows stupid is as stupid does.

You want to talk about stupid: Esposito said Caesars had already taken in a large amount of money from folks betting the Dodgers would win the World Series this year. If I were him, I’d pass those names on to his brother, because I would imagine sooner or later he’ll be dealing with them.

Esposito sets the betting line here for eight casinos, and he said he takes into account the fact the general public is usually going to side with the favorites and the best-known coaches. As a result, he pads the spread, giving more points to the lesser-known teams with the lesser-known coaches to entice the public to even things out between favorite and underdog.

It never evens out, he said, so to beat Vegas, bet against the public, which likes the favorites and the teams with the well-known coaches.

My toughest decision, as it would turn out, would be trying to decide if the public considered Bob Knight a good coach.

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I DECIDED to do a five-team ATM special parlay Saturday so I’d never have to work again. I began with Nevada -- do you know the name of Nevada’s coach? The stupid public, of course, took Gonzaga, and I didn’t even need the points. Easy win.

“Be careful,” Esposito said. “Joints like this in Las Vegas are built by folks who like betting parlays. To be honest with you, you’d be better off making straight bets one team at a time.”

But how do you get rich?

“Don’t bet in the sports book,” Esposito said, and I noticed his brother wasn’t here. “You have to be extremely disciplined and do your homework to have a chance to win. The idea is for people to come here and just have a blast, maybe win some, maybe lose some.”

He sounded like Donald Sterling. I came here to win, so I took underdog Alabama over Stanford and won. Got eight points with Manhattan, good for a win, and won with underdog Syracuse. I was almost rich.

For my fifth selection, I tried betting UCLA, knowing no one would bet the Bruins and I’d get all kinds of points. But Caesars doesn’t take bets on the NCAA women’s tournament until the final eight teams have been determined.

That left me with either the popularity of St. Joe’s, or the notoriety of Knight, ultimately deciding the public would be sucked in by the General and his NCAA tournament experience. And if so, St. Joe’s deserved to be favored by a whole lot more, so I’d be getting a bargain with St. Joe’s, giving only six points to Knight.

Final score: St. Joe’s 70, Knight 65. Las Vegas wins.

“We’ll reserve a table for you when you come back next year,” Esposito said.

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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.