The Well: youtalkfunny

[youtalkfunny]

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I read a story of yours, maybe a year or so ago when you talked about a group of guys just sitting around and making up lines. I often sit and wonder to myself, "how the hell are the linesmakers so good." I hear people say that it is all computers that are creating a raiders +8 line nowadays. How true is this? Or are people still responsible for the majority of lines?

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The story to which you refer was as true then as now: it was my recollection of how we made NFL lines at the IP in the 1990's.

Some of my more entertaining posts here.

I can only speak to how we made NFL lines, and props. The guys in the LVSC office, who grind out lines for sports like baseball and basketball daily, might very well use power rankings and computers. I've never worked there, nor personally known anyone who has, so I can't speak intelligently about that.

[youtalkfunny]

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Poker dealers make more than a sportsbook supervisor?

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Yes. And it's not even close.

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I worked for 4 years at an OTB in the midwest. Punching tickets and as a floor supervisor. I have a degree from UNLV in hotel management with casino op's emphasis. Do I still need to start off as ticket writer with these qualifications since it's all about "who ya know"?

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Probably. Despite your experience, you've never booked a bet in your life (pari-mutuel action isn't "booking", you're not faced with a decision of how much money to risk, or how strong your edge is, or how sharp the bettor is, etc). The only way to learn this, is to apprentice. There's no substitute for experience. Ticket writers watch and learn, and the bright ones who show for work every day, on time, get promoted.

Of course, I have no college, and I never understand why that makes people hesitant to hire me for jobs I can do standing on my head (I was once asked if I had a degree during an interview for a cashier position at a video store!), so I may not be the right person to ask about this.

I imagine that five years is an unusual amount of time to wait, like I did. It's just that nobody who had one of those positions would quit!

Kirk Brooks was running the IP book when I got hired. When he left to start up the Boardwalk, he took Kevin and Scotty with him. Jay got promoted to run the IP R/S book, and suddenly three supervisor spots were open. If this hadn't happened, I probably never would've got promoted. If it had happened years earlier, I would've been promoted years earlier.

(Speaking of Scotty and the Boardwalk, while he was there he came up with the historic "Most points: Michael Jordan vs Dallas Cowboys" Super Bowl prop--a very sexy prop that opened the door to cross-sports props. After a couple years of this prop, the NBA stopped scheduling Bulls games on Super Bowl Sunday, believe it or not.)

[Moneyline]

After reading the posts you linked to, I can't imagine IP used the 5-guys-shooting-the-breeze approach to cap games other than football. You didn't really cap NBA like this, did you?

Also, did you cap using the same method offshore?

Thanks for keeping this going.

[youtalkfunny]

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After reading the posts you linked to, I can't imagine IP used the 5-guys-shooting-the-breeze approach to cap games other than football. You didn't really cap NBA like this, did you?

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No, just NFL, and props. MLB, NBA, and NHL numbers we got from Roxy (LVSC).

The props had small limits, so they weren't worthy of assembling an entire committee. Each guy was responsible for certain props: I did the "Hockey Wednesday" props, and the horse matchups; Jeff was (and is) The Golf Guru; Jacko did NASCAR and tennis; Ed did the futures. If anything odd came up, Ed usually did it.

Ed looked at every number that Jacko and I made before it ever went on the board, as we were the junior guys. If he thought we had a bad number on something, we'd discuss it. If we could defend our opinions, fine--but usually, we'd tell Ed, "You're right, of course."

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Also, did you cap using the same method offshore?

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We made props and futures that way offshore (only two guys, not five). We didn't bother trying to be the first to release NFL lines, we'd just clone the numbers that everyone else had.

[youtalkfunny]

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More stories please.

Thanks!

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OK. Off the top of my head:

A well-dress young woman, lots of jewelry, walks up to the window. She asks about this week's Miami Hurricanes game. Miami is playing some scrub school that week, and is favored by 33 points. The woman pulls out a few bundles of hundreds, and says she wants to bet $20,000 (not "twenty dimes", as someone who knew what they were doing would say), on the over. We had to explain that the 33 was not an over/under (not that we'd dream of taking 20 dimes on an NCAA total). She passed.

***

At the Poker Palace, when I was young and stupid: Arizona's defense was known as the "Desert Swarm", and every Arizona game had a low total. One game, the total was 33½. As I was writing this number on the board, I decided to write
"33 1/3". I thought that sounded funny. The tickets still read "33.5", as the computer would only accept half-point increments.

Of course, someone had to take the fun out of it by trying to buy a half-point. I refused the bet, and moved the number to 33½.

///

Whenever I had to write something like "Super Bowl XXXVIII" on the board, I would instead write "Super Bowl 38 (Bobby hates Roman Numerals)". Ed would always erase it, and put up the Roman numbers (which are fine to use for any number smaller than 6, but then they get stupid).

***

While offshore, we had this one degenerate customer who would call every day, and bet as many games as he could until his entire balance was in action. As soon as a winner was graded, he was back on the phone, putting that money back into action. He just wasn't happy unless his available balance was zero.

On September 11, 2001, as MLB canceled all their games for a few days, and the NFL canceled their card that week, this guy was frantic. There was nothing for him to bet on. As we watched the clean up and rescue efforts, he spent the entire day emptying his balance on future bets.

///

At a B&M poker room, you get to know the names of your regular bettors. In the sportsbook, you don't. There's never any reason to ask a player's name. So the guys in the back make up nicknames that we use to describe these players to each other. Some that I recall:

--"The Penguin". This guy looked like Danny DeVito in the Batman movie. He even waddled a little.

--"Sloppy and Son". A father and son pair of degenerates, playing $5 parlay cards every day and hanging out in the book. Some days the father would be wearing the torn, dirty sweatpants that the son had worn the previous day, and vice verse.

One day, they put in enough bets between them to earn a single drink ticket. I later saw the father walking away from the bar with one drink, and an empty paper cup, obviously planning to share his free drink with his son.

--"The Chosen One." If this guy was ever speaking, it's a good bet that he was talking about how games are fixed. Not only are all the games fixed, but the players and refs know which SIDE of the game he bet, and rigged it accordingly to beat him.

--"Question Man". This one is self explanatory, isn't it? He worked downstairs in the pit, and stopped by the book at least once a night on his break. He never made a bet, but he couldn't leave without asking a dumb question. For example, he might point to the baseball scores on the board, and ask, "Did the Indians really score 13 runs in the first inning?" How do you answer something like that? "No, we're making up scores now and writing them on the board."

--We once had a meeting: two sports supervisors, two racebook supervisors, and Jay (who was head of Race and Sports), to make numbers for Kentucky Derby props. I was a racebook supervisor at the time, but I wanted to move over to sports. We made prices for props like, "Over/Under saddle cloth number of the winner", or "Winning Jockeys last initial: A-J vs K-Z". We made about a dozen props.

As we finished, I asked, "What if it's a dead heat to win? Let's suppose an odd-numbered horse and an even-numbered horse dead heat. Then what do we do?"

Everyone thought this was a dumb question. "Then it's a push. It's a tie."

I tried to explain to the sports guys (who each came into the meeting admitting that they knew little about horse racing) that there are no ties in horse racing. A dead heat is not a tie. If two horses dead heat to win the Kentucky Derby, they both get a blanket of roses, and they both go to the Winner's Circle to get their picture taken. They are both called winners of the Kentucky Derby.

The sports guys, and Jay, thought I was nuts. The other race guy looked like he might see my point, but he didn't rise to my defense.

The conversation meandered to other things, and as the meeting was about to break, I brought this up again. "Fellas, I wouldn't keep bringing this up if I didn't feel so strongly about it, but I think you're all wrong about this dead heat thing." At this point, the other race guy spoke up and told the sports guys that "Bobby may have a point here." The sports guys at least now considered that I wasn't crazy, but they still couldn't see how a tie could not be a tie.

Then, Jay's phone rang. It was Roxy. Jay asked him, "Hey, since you happened to call right now, what do you think of this?", and told him about our discussion.

Roxy immediately gave a suggestion that I thought was absolutely brilliant. Jay liked it too, and used it. On the board, and on all the sheets we printed up, we added the banner, "If the race finishes in a dead heat to win, ALL props will be graded as winners. Even if two 'odd' horses dead heat to win, the 'even' bet will also be graded as a winner."

As Roxy explained, "They've been running this race for 130 years and there's never been a dead heat to win. There's almost no chance this will cost you anything, but you'll reap a ton of publicity by putting this on your props."

This was a Solomon-like solution, that solved everything. We were all very pleased. Until...


...Grindstone and Cavonneer hit the wire together. Too close to call. We waited for the photo. And waited. And waited. "OMG, don't tell me the first dead heat ever is going to happen THIS year."

ABC went to commercial while the nation waited for the photo. That NEVER happens.

Jay came running from his office on the sportsbook side, over to the racebook. If you know Jay, he has a dark complexion, but he was white as a ghost as he walked by. This was his first year as Director of Race/Sports, and he was surely wondering if a dead heat would cost him his job.

Grindstone was declared the winner by a nose. I've seen the photo, and I still can't separate those two horses.

***

As the Breeders' Cup approached, I mentioned to my boss offshore that I'm really good at making horse matchups. Most bookies aren't. In fact, several guys at the IP tried their hands at making horse matchups, and I was the only one who didn't get destroyed by the Sharps.

My boss gave me the go-ahead to make BC matchups, and managed to find me a copy of the Racing Form.

This was the first time I ever made horse matchups for a big event without knowing anything about the horses. I've made matchups at small tracks with horses I'd never seen before, but usually for things like the BC or the Derby, I was always familiar with the horses involved, from working in the racebook. I didn't follow horse racing when I was offshore, so all these horses were strangers to me.

Making a horse matchup isn't hard: Use the morning line odds to find two horses that are considered comparable, then read their Past Performance chart to make a number. I tried to make three matchups for each BC race that day.

When I got to The Sprint, I matched up two of the favorites; then I matched up two of the 4/1 horses. Then I picked two 8/1 horses, and looked at their charts. One of these 8/1 horses was named Xtra Heat. I looked at the "finished" column, and this horse had won its last five races, and seven of it's last nine. The races it didn't win, it ran second or third.

"Why is this horse 8/1?", I thought. "What did it win, allowance races?" My eyes went back to the first column, which looked like this:

Grade I stakes
Grade I stakes
Grade I stakes
Grade II stakes
Grade I stakes
Grade II stakes
Grade III stakes

OMG. This horse has been competing at the highest levels, beating everyone in sight, and is EIGHT TO ONE??? This made no sense to me.

I went to my boss, and told him, "I really like this Xtra Heat in The Sprint."

My boss, a horseplayer himself, said, "Yeah, I like that horse, too."

I went on, "Xtra Heat is 8/1. I want to match him up against a 4/1 horse. All the sharp guys will pile on the 4/1, but I *want* them to bet against this Xtra Heat. If we put this up, we're not going to get balanced action. I don't want to do something like this, without your approval." The boss quickly approved the idea.

I made the 4/1 horse about -145. This prop got absolutely hammered. They drove the price up to about -480. We had a $500 max, and we had about an $8k decision on our hands. I knew we'd get unbalanced action, but I wasn't expecting that much! Suddenly, my ass is on the line.

Twelve horses went into the starting gate for The Sprint. When the gate opened, all twelve wanted the lead. They remained almost 8-across for the first furlong, until one horse emerged from the pack to take the lead going into the turn--and it was Xtra Heat!

Xtra Heat led all the way around the turn, all the way down the stretch, and got nipped at the wire by a nose, finishing second--but won our matchup by a mile.

I could not sit still. I was running around my office screaming, "I TOLD YOU SO!" to a bunch of clerks who had never seen a horse. I was the smartest man alive. I went into the boss' office to accept congratulations.

I only got out one "I told you so" before the tv reporter finished interviewing the winning jockey, and closing with, "Let's go over to Bob Neumeier, who has Xtra Heat's jockey Pat Day with him."

Neumeier opened the interview with, "Pat, your filly gave the boys all they could handle today," and let Pat Day respond to that.

I didn't hear Day's response. I said, "Filly? Filly? Filly???"

I spent the rest of the day saying, out loud to nobody, "Filly???"

[Rainbow Warrior]

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"Filly? Filly? Filly???"

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awesome...tyvm

[Performify]

Hate to ruin the story, but for those of us absolutely unfamiliar with betting on horses, can you explain the Filly significance?

I understand a Filly is a young female horse - is the meat of the story that you wouldn't have valued the horse at better than 8:1 if you knew it was a Filly?

[youtalkfunny]

That would be like seeing Annika Sorenstam at 8-to-1 to win the US Open (against the men), and thinking that's good value when you hear that Annika has won several tourneys in a row (against the girls) leading up to it.

In horse racing, as in other sports, the girls race against the girls, and the boys race against the boys. Once or twice in a lifetime, a filly comes along who can complete with the colts.

All of Xtra Heat's Grade I wins were against other fillies and mares. Xtra Heat was the only female in The Sprint that year.

I'm sure that the Past Performance charts mention the gender of the horse somewhere, but I never thought to look for it. If I had been even casually following the sport leading up to the race, I'm sure I would've heard some buzz about the filly who was going to try to take on the boys.

Bottom line, the bettors knew a lot more about this bet than the oddsmaker, and the oddsmaker got lucky.

[AvivaSimplex]

You should seriously consider writing a book of your stories. I just finished reading Horseplayers, which is a book by a guy who spent a year trying to handicap (he failed). Your stories are at least as entertaining.

You could even hire a ghostwriter if you didn't want to write it yourself--there are plenty of underemployed writers who could do it for cheap.

[B00T]

How often do you bet these days? Where are you at right now compared to your peak in handicapping? What changes did you most benefit from and what changes were the most significant in the industry compared to say, 5 years ago?

Do you do any fantasy sports leagues, are you into that kind of thing?