In case you hadn’t seen it yet … here’s one of the betting sheets available in the Caesars sportsbooks for morning wagering on WSOP Final Table-days. You’ll notice the rule at the bottom, which says you can’t bet on yourself. And though a Caesars casino should be able to track this via a player’s Total Rewards cards, stopping it from happening seems about as effective as stopping people from using their cell phones in a sportsbook.
Why don’t they offer parlays? That’s where the real money in rigging a couple outcomes would come!
Neato. But I gotta wonder what will be more important in the future — these wagers, or the ability to show live-streaming video with hole cards. And if you can’t have both … what does this mean for the future of betting on skill games like America’s Got Talent?
A new two-table poker room is under construction at Ellis Island, the popular off-strip dive casino. Perhaps taking a cue from the new CantorGaming poker room at the Palms, the room is located inside a Leroy’s Sportsbook.
Leroy’s (owned by British online bookmaker and poker room William Hill) and Cantor are engaged in a quiet battle of licensed technology … as Cantor has devices allowing in-game sports-betting all across casino properties its in, and Leroy’s has Nevada Gaming-approved iphone and android apps that allow sports betting anywhere within state lines.
Won’t this be extra fun when you can make these kinda wagers on your mobile phone? Oh, wait, with Leroy’s app you can, anywhere within Nevada state lines, so the army of Aliens camped out at Area 51 should have no problem betting on Ben Lamb and/or Badih Bounahra without revealing themselves to all of humankind.
Nevada Gaming just approved some new wagers for the November Nine … some of which are obv, and others that may or may not be a little more silly.
The list of approved wagers, at house odds:
Player to Win 2011 World Series of Poker
Will There Be More Red or Black Cards in the First Flop at the Final Table
What Will the Final Winning Hand Be
Will Chip Leader at Start of Final Table Win Event (Yes or No)
Who Will Finish in Ninth Place
Total Number of Hands Dealt at the Final Table
One of the new things with this latest World Series of Poker (as significant as ESPN’s live coverage, imho) was the introduction of sports-book bets on WSOP outcomes. Think about how much effort went in to making that possible — first, changing the law such that Nevada sports books could expand their offerings to include non-athletic contests … then running specific bets through Nevada Gaming regulators … all so non-Caesars casinos could spread action on the WSOP? That’s not exactly the kinda thing done on a whim … especially when the introduction of “live” TV coverage adds a whole new element of necessary oversight for GCB enforcement.
The Wynn seems to be wanting to take the lead on spreading such non-athletic “exotics”, with Race and Sports Book Director Johnny Avello establishing himself as the go-to guru for entertainment-based wagers — having set for-entertainment-only odds (with remarkable accuracy) for the Oscars, beauty pageants, Dancing with the Stars … even fashion at the British Royal Wedding, and the breed of dog to win the Westminster Dog Show.
Read below for more official word on Wynn Las Vegas/Encore’s WSOP offerings:
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Maybe this is old news and the press release is buried somewhere in the slush pile … but it seems the WSOP has found a way to allow even more gambling, officially, on World Series tournaments. Last week the Nevada Gaming Control Board approved five separate, specific prop bets related to the WSOP. That means now any sports book in Nevada can set their own lines and take action on:
- Players from one of two groups of 13 to last longest
- Will at least one player from a box of 3 make the money
- Will a woman finish in the top 40
- Will at least one of a group of 7 men last longer than all women
- Age of the winner
Kinda a strange bunch of props imho … but hey, they do seem to support Rule #2 of Poker Life, which is, of course, “Never Stop Gambling.”
Should be interesting to see what kinda action Caesars wants to wrap around these newly approved fully legal prop bets … and what additional props show up in future lines.
All this became possible, btw, in January of this year, when Nevada Gaming approved and adopted amendments to Regulation 22, allowing the state’s casinos to offer wagers on events other than just horse races, greyhound races, and athletic events. So now, you can bet in Nevada on the outcome of non-sporting events such as The Academy Awards or American Idol … or whether or not one man out of a group of seven can outlast all women in a $1,500 no-limit hold’em tournament.
UPDATE: @OskarGarcia was all over this one last week, and noted that the Wynn became the first ever Nevada casino to offer non-sporting bets in their sports book with the above wager options on the WSOP. He also talks to a regulator who says this new practice should have big implications for betting on the November Nine.
The US District Court in New Jersey has dismissed the constitutional challenge to the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) filed by iMEGA, State Senator Ray Lesniak, and others. The dismissal was based on a lack of standing. The court’s memorandum opinion is here.
Congress, as the court points out, enacted PASPA in 1992 to limit the expansion of sports gambling in the United States by making it unlawful for a government to license or a person to operate a betting, gambling, or wagering scheme based on professional or amateur sports. The grandfathering provision provided an out for those states that conducted a sports wagering scheme prior to PASPA’s passage, and certain sporting activities are beyond PASPA’s reach. The plaintiffs in the iMEGA case claimed that PASPA’s limitations violated myriad provisions of the US Constitution, including the Commerce Clause, the Tenth Amendment (limiting the powers of the federal government), and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
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