EPISODE 27

I slept for maybe another 2 hours and after a shower and breakfast at the Studio Café downstairs, I headed over to one of my favorite places in any casino: the Sports Book.  While I have always been a mediocre blackjack player, I have always done well betting on baseball.  I’ve worked out a simple system that has always worked out to winning a little over 60% of the time.  That’s pretty good, if you realize that casinos are built to remove the money from your wallet at one rate while allowing you to win back a percentage of your wagers at a somewhat lower rate, but one that will still entice you to keep betting.  I recall being in Reno, Nevada in 1977 and having a drink with an employee of the Harrah’s chain.  He told me that the average gain vs. loss ratio the casinos operated under then meant that they paid out 85 cents on every dollar wagered.  This obviously meant that the House took in 15% of the gross and so it was in the House’s interest to make sure that while there would always be big winners and big losers, the battle for profits would be waged on the middle where the swings were less violent.  This is one of the reasons why blackjack is so appealing.  A well-prepared and observant player can even the odds so that over time, he or she will at very least avoid suffering large losses, or perhaps, might even win. 

Betting on sports is like this as well, provided you study your sport carefully.  While I enjoy betting on the horses, I have no affinity for it and so I have always bet small and lost small at the track.  Similarly, football (which I enjoy as a fan), hockey (which I played as a youth) and basketball (which I absolutely don’t understand at all) are bad for my financial health.  But I get baseball.  Even though I’ve been a diehard Red Sox fan since the 1967 season, when they lost the Series in 7 games to the St. Louis Cardinals, I know when to bet on my team and when to bet against them.

My system was simple.  I took 5 factors, weighed them equally and then made my decision whether to bet on the game.  Those were: which pitcher had the better record, which team had the better record, which team had the better streak over the previous 10 games, which team had the longer winning streak, and which team was playing at home.  After figuring out these variables, you calculated which team had the greater net advantage. 

For example, assume the following match up:

Pitcher                        Team Record          Last 10           Streak              Home/Away

Reds    9-3                  63-42                         7-3                  2 wins             Home

Mets    8-2                  51-54                         5-5                  4 wins             Away

The pitchers’ win/loss records are very close, so we throw this variable out.  However, the teams clearly have different records, so we award this category to the Reds.  The records over the previous 10 games are different enough to award that category to the Reds as well.  The Mets have a superior streak going, so that favors them and finally – the Reds get one for playing at home.  When you tally everything up, the Reds have take 3 categories to 1 for the Mets, with 1 category discarded.  Any time one team has at least a 2-point advantage it’s worth placing a bet.  That meant that given our hypothetical match up, I would be comfortable placing a small wager on the Reds.  If the spread between the two teams was 3 or even 4 points, then I might place a somewhat healthier bet.  A 5-point break usually meant I could go to the bank for a loan, using my calculations as collateral.

Of course, none of this nonsense means a thing during the playoffs.  A team gets streaky and nothing, but nothing beats a hot team. I learned this lesson by betting heavily on the NY Mets in ’88.  They had beaten the living hell out of the Dodgers all year, taking 10 out of the 11 games the two teams played against each other during the regular season.  The Mets’ pitching staff was amazing (Gooden, Cone, Darling), they won more games than any other team in the National League during the regular season and frankly, there was just no way they were going to lose.  But lose they did, in a very exciting 7-game series.  I got clobbered, my losses were somewhere around a grand and I swore that I would have to come up with a different system for betting on the playoffs.  Of course, I never did.  With no real betting strategy in mind and with the lessons of ’88 rattling around my head, I walked from the Studio Café over to the Sports Book.  Along the way, I passed a giant television set, one so enormous that it eclipsed the one in my room.  I made a mental note to mention this obvious oversight to the management.

‘Excuse me?  But I can see the wall in my room.  Would you please bring me the screen from downstairs to cover it?’

The Patriots were playing the Seattle Seahawks and they had a real shot to build on their winning streak from the previous season to achieve an impossible 19-0 record that went back to the previous season.  There was a rowdy group of men clutching bottles of beer and cheering lustily at every development on the field.  I watched as the Pats moved virtually unopposed through several plays and decided that for this east coast kid anyway, it was still a little early for football and brews.  I had a client who lived on the big island of Hawaii.  He used to tell me how he would wake up at 7:30 every Sunday morning so he could catch the kickoff of the 1PM east coast game, which began precisely at 8AM where he lived.  He’d then watch the second game, which began at a little after 11AM and by about 3:30 in the afternoon, he’d be launching into his third and final game of the day.  My life’s pattern had always revolved around hoping to see the Pats during the early game so as not to interfere with the dinner hour, which the 4PM game always seemed to do.  As for that Sunday evening games, well – I watched them almost as often as Monday Night Football: never.

The Sports Book at all of the casinos would wait each day for the odds to be sent from the Riviera, where they were set, and then the betting could begin.  I took a look at the numbers on the board and saw that the House was giving better odds betting on Houston over the Cardinals.  Oddly enough, in spite of being down 3-0 to the Yankees in the ALCS, the Red Sox were favored to win that night.  Having no logical betting strategy, I figured it might be worth the risk and placed $100 bets on the Astros and the Sox.  Having nothing else to do until I was due to get dressed for the meet and greet with the clients, I decided to walk over to the Bellagio and see what was hanging on the walls of the Gallery of Fine Art.

The next installment will be posted on March 10.

        If you'd like to read the book today, GO HERE.