Tourist wins over $1M in less than 5 minutes at Las Vegas casino
MARCH 18, 2019, BY TRIBUNE MEDIA WIRE



LAS VEGAS – Talk about lucky – and on St. Patrick’s Day no less.

According to Hawaii News Now, an unnamed resident of the Aloha State struck it rich at the Plaza Hotel and Casino Sunday in Las Vegas, winning $1,029,529.13 off a penny slot machine.

But that’s not all.

The casino reportedly told KNSV the big winner had hit the jackpot after playing for less than five minutes.

The winning game was Monopoly Millionaire, according to the Plaza Hotel.

Sportsbook refunds Saints bets over uncalled penalty
by WAYNE PARRY, The Associated Press
Monday, January 21st 2019


ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — A sportsbook in New Jersey is refunding bets on the New Orleans Saints due to the widespread belief that the team was victimized by a blown call by referees during its loss Sunday in the NFC championship game.

PointsBet said Monday it will refund spread and money-line bets on the Saints, who lost the game after officials failed to call a penalty on a Los Angeles Rams defender who leveled a New Orleans receiver long before the ball arrived.

Rams cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman acknowledged after the game he should have been flagged for a penalty.


New Orleans Saints wide receiver Tommylee Lewis (11) works for a coach against Los Angeles Rams defensive back Nickell Robey-Coleman (23) during the second half the NFL football NFC championship game Sunday, Jan. 20, 2019, in New Orleans. The Rams won 26-23. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

"Came to the sideline, looked at the football gods and was like, 'Thank you,'" Robey-Coleman said. "I got away with one tonight."

The Rams went on the win the game and eliminate New Orleans from the playoffs.

The company announced what it calls a "Good Karma Payout" due to an unlikely event that swayed the result of a game.

PointsBet did not say how much the refunds will cost the company.

The Rams advanced to the Super Bowl, where they will play the New England Patriots.

The move is the latest attention-grabbing payout by a New Jersey sports betting operator as numerous firms vie for market share and attention in the fast-growing market.

In December, FanDuel paid off all bets on Alabama to win the national college football championship more than a month before the game was played. Alabama was routed when the game actually happened, losing to Clemson 44-16.

The same company also paid $82,000 to a New Jersey man who, due to an equipment glitch, was promised a wildly inflated payout on a football bet that should have returned only a meager payout.

WOW! LOL!
Made all that $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ and he pulls back a $100 chip. LOL!


Former NBA star Charles Oakley accused of changing bet at The Cosmopolitan Las Vegas
by MATTHEW SEEMAN, KSNV
Thursday, July 12th 2018

LAS VEGAS (KSNV) - Former NBA star Charles Oakley was arrested and accused of trying to change a wager at The Cosmopolitan Las Vegas over the weekend, according to the Nevada Gaming Control Board.

Enforcement agents arrested Oakley on Sunday, July 8, on suspicion of adding or taking away from a wager after the outcome was known, according to a statement.

The specifics on the incident were not released, and the Control Board says there will be no further comment.

TMZ reported Oakley tried to take back a $100 chip after realizing he would lose on a game.


TMZ
?
@TMZ
Charles Oakley Arrested In Las Vegas, Casino Says He Cheated http://tmz.me/QZtZkUv

10:30 AM - Jul 12, 2018

Charles Oakley Arrested In Las Vegas, Casino Says He Cheated
Charles Oakley is learning the hard way ... if you try to cheat a Vegas casino, you'll end up behind bars.



Oakley was booked into Clark County Detention Center on a charge of committing or attempting to commit a fraudulent act in a gaming establishment.

Vegas sports books not so lucky with Eagles’ Super Bowl win, big mystery bettor
POSTED 6:05 PM, FEBRUARY 5, 2018
BY ASSOCIATED PRESS

http://q13fox.com/2018/02/05/vegas-sports-books-not-so-lucky-with-eagles-super-bowl-win-big-mystery-bettor/

Man drives through doors of Skagit Casino, starts gambling
The driver was subsequently booked for a DUI.
Author: Bernard Ellouk
Published: 4:23 PM PST December 28, 2017


A man drove through the front doors of a Skagit Casino Wednesday night.

The crash happened just before 6 p.m. Witnesses say after the crash, the driver exited the vehicle and began gambling.

Just minding my own business when someone drives their car into the doors of the #Skagit Casino, gets out and starts gambling...

6:23 PM - Dec 27, 2017
8 8 Replies 20 20 Retweets 24 24 likes
Twitter Ads info and privacy
No injuries were reported and no structural damage was done to the building.

The driver, who was the only person in the car, was subsequently booked for a DUI.

Feds quietly seized millions from online casinos' money movers
‘Currency exchange’ didn’t bother to fight for $3.4M seized during a Seattle-based investigation
By LEVI PULKKINEN, SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF
Published 9:49 pm, Sunday, December 4, 2016


Federal prosecutors in Seattle have seized millions of dollars alleged to be tied to online gambling.
In the spring of 2011, a Seattle Police Department detective hit it big on Betus.com.
The undercover detective had joined the online casino and sportsbook as part of an investigation into companies that move its money. A Western Union check to the Philippines funded his gambling; a wire transfer into a dummy bank account paid by his winnings.
That sting operation enabled members of a Seattle-based U.S. Secret Service taskforce to seize $3.4 million from Thames Point Management, one of the money processors working with the casino. If those companies’ operators cared, they haven’t mentioned it – the firms didn’t bother fighting a civil action brought by federal prosecutors looking to keep the money.
The seizure represented a large portion of the $21 million collected in 2015 through forfeiture actions initiated by federal prosecutors in Western Washington. Despite its size, the Thames Point seizure passed without any announcement from the government.
Now, prosecutors are looking to keep another chunk of change seized from a related money processing firm, Axia FX. As with Thames Point, the Axia legal action does not involve criminal charges.
No criminal complaints or indictments have been filed in the matter, said Emily Langlie, spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Western Washington. Langlie said the investigation was undertaken in the district because there were gamblers using the sites there.
The action coincided with a higher-profile prosecution by federal prosecutors in New York. There, prosecutors continue to pursue criminal charges against men purported to be involved with three online poker companies, PokerStars, Full Tile Poker and Absolute Poker, also known as Ultimate Bet. Several have been sentenced to prison in the ongoing prosecution.
Neither Thames Point nor Axia appear to be tied to the poker companies, though several businesses identified as their customers were also implicated in the poker prosecution.
Court records indicate more than a dozen U.S. firms were investigated during the probe into Thames Point and, now, Axia. Investigators in California, Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Washington, D.C. appear to have found the firms to be tied to online gambling.
According to court papers, Axia, Thames Point Management and the other transfer services serve virtual casinos hosted on servers outside the United States. Online gambling is illegal in most states, including Washington, but the e-casinos appear to be flourishing.
Online gambling would be a pretty simple proposition, if the houses didn’t have to pay up when their patrons win.
Gamblers stake themselves by paying into accounts hosted by the casinos or third parties. To pay winners, the casinos make electronic transfers to a third party so that the money will appear to be “clean” when it is wired into a gambler’s bank account. The third party firms may also mail checks to winning gamblers to cash them out.
Writing in court papers, the detective said the need to transfer money into the United States has “spawned a market for illegal money transmitting business.” Axia, he said, is in that market.
Neither Axia nor Thames Point are licensed to transmit money, according to the legal action. Nonetheless, Axia is alleged to have moved money through a London bank to gamblers in the United States.
During the 2011 investigation, the undercover Seattle Police Department detective watched as his gambling winnings moved from a London bank to his account in the United States.
Investigators met with seven Seattle-area gamblers who had been paid out after betting on sports or poker on BetUs.com and Bodog.com. According to court papers, the gamblers each explained that Thames Point delivered their winnings.
On July 19, 2011, investigators seized seven bank accounts holding a total of $3.4 million. Federal prosecutors filed a forfeiture action three years later claiming the money was related to unlawful activity.
A certified letter was sent to Thames Point. Prosecutors didn’t hear back.
U.S. District Judge James Robart in May 2015 found that Thames Point had failed to respond to the lawsuit and issued a default judgment for the government.
Efforts by seattlepi.com to reach Thames Point at its London office were unsuccessful. Representatives at Axia also did not return requests for comment; unlike Thames Point, the currency exchange appears to have a function website.
Company materials reviewed by police in 2012 claim Axia trades more than $760 million annually, exchanging currency for about 10,000 clients. A Seattle Police Department detective reviewing the website noted that customer information was not encrypted or secure, unusual for a financial services company.
Like Thames Point, Axia appeared to be in the business of moving money into and out of the United States. According to court papers, gamblers are among the firm’s clients.
In one year, Axia transferred at least $36.5 million in what investigators believe to be gambling-related transactions involving U.S. bettors. They identified 16 American corporations as well as five international entities thought to be using Axia to move gambling money.
Federal prosecutors in Seattle have asked for a court order that would allow the government to permanently seize $755,238 captured during the Axia investigation.
The civil action, which is before U.S. District Judge Richard Jones, was served on Axia in late November. The company does not appear to have replied.

Seattlepi.com reporter Levi Pulkkinen can be reached at 206-448-8348 or levipulkkinen@seattlepi.com. Follow Levi on Twitter at twitter.com/levipulk.

Judge: Poker pro Ivey, pal broke gambling rules in $10M win
Wayne Parry, Associated Press
Updated 5:22 pm, Friday, October 21, 2016


ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — A federal judge ruled on Friday that poker pro Phil Ivey and a companion violated state gambling regulations in the way they won nearly $10 million at cards at an Atlantic City casino.
U.S. District Court Judge Noel Hillman determined that the pair did not meet their obligation to follow gambling regulations on four occasions in 2012 by having a dealer at the Borgata arrange Baccarat cards so they could tell what kind of card was coming next.
By shifting the odds in their favor, they violated the New Jersey Casino Control Act, the judge ruled. He threw out allegations by the Borgata that the pair had committed fraud, and the casino now has 20 days to outline the damages it says it suffered.
"Borgata and Ivey had the same goal when they entered into their arrangement: to profit at the other's expense," the judge wrote. "Trust is a misplaced sentiment in this context."
Ivey has won nine World Series of Poker bracelets. Lawyers for him and the casino did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday.
The Borgata claimed the pair exploited a defect in cards that enabled them to sort and arrange good cards. The casino says the technique, called edge sorting, violates state casino gambling regulations. But Ivey asserts his win was simply the result of skill and good observation.
The Borgata claims the cards used in the games were defective in that the pattern on the back was not uniform. The cards have rows of small white circles designed to look like the tops of cut diamonds, but the Borgata says some of them were only half-diamonds or quarters. Ivey has said he simply noticed things that anyone playing the game could have observed and bet accordingly.
The judge noted that Ivey and companion player Cheng Yin Sun instructed dealers to arrange the cards in a certain way, which is permitted under the rules of the game, after Sun noticed minute differences in them. But he ruled those actions did violate state Casino Control Act and their contractual obligation to abide by it in gambling at the casino.
Ivey and Sun, the judge wrote, "view their actions to be akin to cunning, but not rule-breaking, maneuvers performed in many games, such as a play-action pass in American football, or the 'Marshall swindle' in chess."
He said "Sun's mental acumen" in distinguishing the tiny differences in the patterns on the back of the cards was "remarkable."
"But even though Ivey and Sun's cunning and skill did not break the rules of Baccarat," the judge wrote, "what sets Ivey and Sun's actions apart from deceitful maneuvers in other games is that those maneuvers broke the rules of gambling as defined in this state."
___
Follow Wayne Parry at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC

Hawaiian woman wins $10.7M off penny slot machine in Vegas
by The Associated Press
Tuesday, August 23rd 2016



LAS VEGAS (AP) — A Hawaii woman has won more than $10 million playing the penny slots in Las Vegas.
The Wynn Las Vegas said the unidentified woman from Oahu won a total payout of $10,777,270.51 after betting $3 on a penny slot machine.

Wynn Las Vegas ? @WynnLasVegas
How would you celebrate if you were the lucky winner of a $10.7 million jackpot on one of our slot machines? http://wyn.lv/2btbglM
10:21 AM - 23 Aug 2016
Photo published for Hawaii resident wins $10.7M jackpot at Wynn Las Vegas
Hawaii resident wins $10.7M jackpot at Wynn Las Vegas
An Oahu, Hawaii resident walked away with a jackpot of more than $10.7 million on an IGT Megabucks Wynn Wheel machine around on Sunday at Wynn Las Vegas.
reviewjournal.com

New York sues to get DraftKings, FanDuel to return money
BY JONATHAN LEMIRE, ASSOCIATED PRESS
FRIDAY, JANUARY 1ST 2016




NEW YORK (AP) New York's attorney general has filed a lawsuit asking FanDuel and DraftKings to give back all the money they made in the state, the latest salvo in an ongoing clash with a pair of increasingly popular daily fantasy sports websites.
The amended lawsuit filed Thursday, just days before a key court date in the dispute asks the two companies to return the money to users who lost it during 2015 as well as pay a fine of up to $5,000 per case.

The sites have said they took in more than $200 million in entry fees from at least 600,000 customers in New York state.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman asserts that the companies are operating an illegal gambling operation within New York and has moved to stop them. He first filed a lawsuit in November and was granted a temporary injunction on Dec. 11 to stop FanDuel and DraftKings from operating within the state, but that decision was reversed hours later by an appellate court.

Both sides are set to argue Monday before an appellate panel as to whether the companies can continue to operate in New York as the case proceeds to a trial stage.

In the new filing, the attorney general zeroed in on user bonuses that he believes are deceptive, saying they offer hundreds of dollars in bonuses that would unlock only after users spent thousands on the site (that type of incentive advertising is a common practice in Las Vegas casinos).

Schneiderman also has argued that the companies, which both have aggressive advertising campaigns, misrepresent the chances of winning. In 2013 and 2014, only 11.7 percent of DraftKings users made money, according to the complaint.

Both Boston-based DraftKings and New York-based FanDuel have argued that daily fantasy is a game of skill, not chance, and insist that their operations are legal because they technically don't accept wagers and because their success doesn't rely on any particular result.

Neither company immediately responded to a request for comment Friday from The Associated Press.

The two sites have come under scrutiny in other states. They stopped operating in Nevada after the state's gaming commission declared what they did was gambling and would require licenses. Last month, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan moved to block the sites from operating in that state. Both have countersued.

The companies combined to take in more than $3 billion in 2015 and have established partnerships with some of titans of the sports world including ESPN, the NFL and Major League Baseball.

Woman's $8 million jackpot slot pull turns out to be just $80
By KOMO Staff
Published: Nov 4, 2015 at 2:23 PM PST



Woman's $8 million jackpot slot pull turns out to be just $8o.



ROCHESTER, Wash. -- A woman thought she'd hit the jackpot when the slot machine showed $8 million!

But, turns out it was a major machine malfunction. In reality, it turns out she won $80.

The Lucky Eagle Casino is now working with the manufacturer to figure out what went wrong. They've also reached out to the woman and apologized. Still, she says she feels cheated.

"They come and spend thousands and thousands of dollars with the hope of winning a big prize like I did. Then they come and carelessly tell you, guess what, the machine was malfunctioning, we cannot pay you,' " the woman said.

Casino officials said even if the machine showed $8 million, the max payout is $40,000.

The casino did pay the woman her $80 win.

Horse industry worries about plans to curb casino subsidies
By PHILIP MARCELO, Associated Press
Published: Sep 4, 2015 at 9:20 AM PDT


BOSTON (AP) -- Horse track operators and breeders are concerned the good times might be trotting to a close as some states move to rein in a lucrative subsidy that's helped prop up their long suffering-industry.

Twenty states divert a slice of casino and slots parlors revenue to help boost horse racing prize money, according to the American Gaming Association. Bigger purses, the thinking goes, will draw the top level horses and generate more track bets, helping revive the once-popular industry.

But facing budget deficits and out-of-state casino competition, some lawmakers are reassessing.

"Every local track and every local horsemen's group is always worried about that," says Christopher Scherf, executive vice president of the Maryland-based Thoroughbred Racing Associations. "Politicians see someone has money and they figure they can use it. That's what they do."

Generally, the racing subsidies call for diverting a percentage of table game and slot machine revenues to a state fund with strict guidelines for how the money is spent.

Massachusetts, for example, gives 75 percent of the money to the thoroughbred racing industry and the rest to harness racing. The two industries must then dedicate 80 percent to racing purses, 16 percent toward races reserved for Massachusetts-bred horses and 4 percent to health and retirement benefits for industry workers.

Such subsidies are a critical lifeline for racing, which has seen steady declines across a number of industry metrics, including the number of races and racing horse births and overall betting activity, according to data from the Jockey Club, a leading industry group.

Few tracks even keep attendance numbers anymore because the numbers of spectators has dropped off so dramatically, experts say.

Nevertheless, there was over $1.1 billion in prize money available in 2014, thanks in large part to the racing subsidies, which generated over $400 million toward purses that year, according to the Thoroughbred Racing Associations.

Louis Raffetto, a longtime racing executive, says the subsidy is a small price to pay to preserve thousands of jobs at tracks and farms.

"It's minuscule, in the grand scheme of things. The economic benefit is well worth those short dollars," says Raffetto, who is helping coordinate three "festival" thoroughbred race days at Boston's Suffolk Downs, starting with a Saturday race card featuring over $500,000 in prize money made possible by the state's new race horse development fund.

The move to curtail the subsidies is playing out in some of the earliest states to offer them.

In New Jersey in 2011, for example, Gov. Chris Christie ended a direct, $30 million subsidy to the racing industry from the Atlantic City casinos.

Lawmakers in West Virginia have also pared back the percentage of slot machine revenues diverted to the industry in recent years, leaving owners and breeders there anxious.

"We just don't know what they're going to do," says Karen Painter, who owns Blue Spruce Farm in Kearneysville with her husband. "We're dealing with people that don't always understand the contribution the equine industry as a whole has on the economy."

The debate has played out in Iowa, Indiana, Delaware and elsewhere too.

In Pennsylvania last year, state Rep. Todd Stephens proposed redirecting $250 million from the state's horse racing fund to public schools, noting that a Saudi prince and other wealthy foreign horse owners were among the beneficiaries of the inflated prize money.

"It's not government's job to pick winners and losers," Stephens said this week. "I generally oppose crony capitalism and corporate welfare-types of programs."

Animal welfare activists also dislike the subsidies, suggesting they encourage owners chasing high purses to keep running horses that are vulnerable to injury, a claim dismissed by the industry.

Sal Sinatra, president of the Maryland Jockey Club, which oversees Baltimore's Pimlico Race Course, home of the Preakness Stakes, says the industry risks losing the subsidies unless they can show lawmakers they're committed to investing in and growing the industry. "Otherwise, it just looks like you're throwing good money at bad," he said.

In Massachusetts, the subsidies have come to the fore because the owners of Suffolk Downs, New England's last thoroughbred track, want to redevelop the property, leaving the industry without a home.

Horse owners and breeders hope lawmakers allow them to use proceeds from the racing fund to build their vision of a new equestrian center and racetrack.

"Massachusetts is an extreme case. You've got all this money coming in and really nowhere for it to go," says Kathy Guillermo, of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. "It begs the question: Why are we continuing to sink millions of dollars in an industry that's shrinking?"

Daily fantasy sports land in gambling industry crosshairs
NEW YORK | BY LIANA B. BAKER
Sports | Mon Aug 3, 2015 10:58am EDT Related: SPORTS



Mike Petta played Internet poker until 2011, when most U.S. poker websites were shut down. Last year, the 31-year-old father of two quit his job as an accountant to play fantasy sports full time, spending thousands of dollars a night entering fantasy sports contests. Now, the gambling industry wants him back.

Playing from home in Livonia, Michigan, Petta is one of millions of Americans who draft virtual sports teams online and enter real-money competitions that last only a few hours. Investors have followed suit, making daily fantasy sports a multi-billion-dollar business.

The two fantasy sports startups which lead the industry, FanDuel and DraftKings, have both raised hundreds of millions of dollars in funding in the past few weeks, scoring valuations of about $1 billion each.

That's sparked some frustration at major gaming companies such as MGM Resorts International and Boyd Gaming Corp, as well as sports book companies such as William Hill Plc, which have told Reuters they want to see daily fantasy sports regulated like gambling.

"I make my living in the gambling industry, so I'm hardly opposed to gambling," said Joe Asher, CEO of William Hill US. "I think daily fantasy sports betting should be legal, just like I think traditional sports betting should be legal. But let's not pretend one is OK and the other is not. Drawing some artificial line between the two makes no sense as a matter of law or policy."

Daily fantasy sports companies now operate in at least 45 U.S. states, though some are mulling reviews on whether the activity should be treated as gambling rather than games of skill. Nevada's Gaming Control Board, the regulatory body that oversees gambling in the state, has started to analyze the legality of daily fantasy sports.

Companies that offer traditional sports betting, legal to some degree in only four states, are heavily regulated by gaming boards, need to follow anti-money laundering guidelines, follow strict rules on protecting player funds and pay special gaming taxes.

Proponents of the daily fantasy sports industry say that the Federal Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, a law meant to crack down on online poker, included a carve-out that exempted fantasy sports.

DraftKings' website says it is "100 percent legal." FanDuel's website says it takes "the legal status of the games it offers very seriously and does its utmost to ensure compliance with existing state and federal laws."

Lobbyists for the industry claim that anyone who has participated in FanDuel or DraftKings games would agree that, unlike gambling, a fantasy player has a major effect on the outcome through their knowledge and effort.

"They're not like games of chance, where no matter how skillful the player is, winning or losing almost always comes down to luck — whether it's the spin of a wheel, the roll of the dice, or the turn of the cards," said Jeremy Kudon, a partner at the law firm Orrick and lobbyist for the Fantasy Sports Trade Association.

COVETED DEMOGRAPHIC

Modern fantasy sports started in 1980 when a few avid baseball fans starting drafting teams at a New York City restaurant called La Rotisserie Francaise. Since then, they have mushroomed online with participants typically creating teams that span an entire season, in major sports including baseball, basketball and hockey.

Daily fantasy sports, where players draft teams in games played in just one evening, developed in the past few years. This has allowed fans to bet with a frequency that some critics argue is akin to sports betting or gambling.

"When you start offering daily fantasy contests, then you start to blur the line between skill and chance," said AG Burnett, chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, who is leading a review of daily fantasy sports. "When chance begins to govern the outcome more than skill, you have a form of gaming, and that's when the need for regulation kicks in."

FanDuel and DraftKings said in a joint statement for this story that they "are speaking with gaming industry representatives to educate them on the fantasy sports industry as our products are fundamentally separate from, and not competitive with casinos and gaming businesses."

Petta, who bets between $20,000 and $40,000 each night in 500 games he enters, sees it as a skill-based job. He does his research in the morning, poring over player stats and planning his nightly lineup. He then takes a break to look after his children, 1 and 3, and finalizes his virtual team before the games start in the evening.

"I know there is a lot of debate, with some people considering it gambling. But I can tell you there is a skill set, there is a strategy where you can get an edge or an angle and make this profitable," Petta said.

Petta is an outlier in terms of the time and money he spends – and earns, in the six figures. Most participants bet less than $100 per week on fantasy sports, and about 70 percent of them fail to win money regularly, according to a survey by research firm Eilers Research LLC published last month.

Yet Petta belongs to a demographic that the gambling industry, weary of retirees playing penny slots, is hungry for. A staggering 98 percent of daily fantasy sports players are male, according to Eilers. More than 90 percent of them are white. Fifty-one percent are between the ages of 25 and 35, and 59 percent have an average household income of $75,000 or greater.



LOBBYING

Regulating fantasy sports like gambling could help casino companies enter the market, and it could also give them an edge since they have experience dealing with gambling licenses and regulation.

Daily fantasy sports companies are now looking to protect their home turf. Kudon, the industry lobbyist, said he has met with lawmakers in a dozen states over the past six months, and helped pass a bill in Kansas in May that confirmed that fantasy sports are legal in that state. But there is a risk that some states will eventually decide to treat them as traditional sports betting, shrinking what has been a growing market.

So far, there has not been much lobbying from the gambling industry to restrict daily fantasy sports, mainly because the main trade group, the American Gaming Association, has formed a task force to study the issue but has yet to decide what its stance on it will be. Nevertheless, this has not stopped some gaming companies from speaking out, with some calling daily fantasy sports unlawful.

"It is not in the interests of consumers that established gaming companies, which are fully licensed and regulated, are the only market participants that cannot engage in the business," said MGM International's general counsel John McManus. "MGM Resorts International would like to see daily fantasy sports made legal and properly regulated, similar to our position on all forms of gambling."

Nevada's Burnett said he did not believe the Federal Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act legalizes daily fantasy sports, but did not ban them either, and that their legality was up to individual states.

"I don't have an opinion yet (on the legality)... The issue is not whether skill is present. It is whether the skill of the players determines the outcome of the game they are playing," Burnett said.

The controversy has succeeded in making some investors reluctant to back fantasy sports companies. ESPN, a unit of Walt Disney Co's was close to investing in DraftKings earlier this year but then passed. DraftKings CEO has said that the "adult product" did not fit with parent company's brand, but DraftKings did reach an agreement to advertise on ESPN's properties.



AMAYA JOINS IN

High-profile investors have poured money into both industry leaders. In DraftKings' $300 million investment round announced July 26, the funding was led by Fox Sports and also included Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League, the Madison Square Garden Company, the Raine Group and Wellington Management. FanDuel's $275 million funding round, announced July 14, was led by private equity firm KKR & Co LP and included Google Capital and the venture arms of Time Warner Inc and Comcast Corp.

"Once the sports leagues and media companies became involved, it sent a signal to both entrepreneurs and investors alike that this industry was only going to continue to grow," said Stephen Murphy, CEO of Boom Shakalaka, a new fantasy sports company founded out of Stanford's Graduate School of Business.

Some of the traditional players are now getting in on the action. Amaya Inc, which acquired online poker company PokerStars last year, has said it plans to come out with a daily fantasy sports product this year.

Even if some casinos keep out of daily fantasy sports, Petta claims they are not competing for his attention against FanDuel and DraftKings. "It does not change how often I go to the casino, I enjoy gambling every so often. My wife and I go on a Friday night when we have a babysitter," Petta said.

(Reporting by Liana B. Baker in New York; Editing by Greg Roumeliotis and John Pickering)

Gamblers' abuse claims test sovereignty of U.S. tribal casinos
By MICHAEL MELIA, Associated Press
Published: Jul 1, 2015 at 9:18 AM PDT



MASHANTUCKET, Conn. (AP) - For gamblers skilled at counting cards, it can be especially risky to play at America's tribal casinos: Those who have gotten caught tell stories of seized winnings, wrongful detentions, or worse.

Casino bosses everywhere have ways of making so-called "advantage players" feel unwelcome, regularly tossing and blacklisting them. But gamblers have limited options to press claims of mistreatment at Native American-owned properties, which generally are shielded from lawsuits in outside courts by laws recognizing tribes' sovereignty.

Now, a pair of lawsuits in federal courts is testing the principle of tribal immunity in cases involving allegations of abuse and bias in tribal justice systems.

The cases, in Connecticut and Arizona, involve crackdowns on advantage players who say they use card-counting or other methods that shift the odds in their favor, but generally are not illegal.

"You do not have a level playing field," said Stanford Wong, a Las Vegas-based gambling expert who advises readers of his newsletters to be aware that tribal properties are governed by their own laws. "In a tribal casino, there's no recourse whatsoever. You can't sue them in regular court. The odds are all stacked against you."

At the country's largest Indian casino, Foxwoods in southeastern Connecticut, three gamblers from China claim the casino wrongly seized $1.6 million deposited as "front money" and $1.1 million in winnings after accusing them of cheating at mini baccarat during a graveyard shift on Christmas Eve 2011. The gamblers said they used a card-monitoring practice called edge-sorting, which involves players being able to tell the difference between some cards because of imperfections on their non-playing sides.

The gamblers including Cheung Yin Sun, a woman known as the "Queen of Sorts" for her card-monitoring skills, said they were denied the lawyer of their choice in tribal proceedings that ended with a ruling against them by the tribe's gambling commission.

When the gamblers filed suit in federal court, the casino's owner, the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, argued it had immunity, and a federal judge in early June dismissed the suit. The attorney for the plaintiffs has asked for the case to be reopened and is considering an appeal.

In the United States, there are 493 Indian casinos and 1,262 commercial casinos. In 2013, tribal casinos generated $28.3 billion in revenue while commercial properties had $37.7 billion, according to the Casino City research firm.

The options available to gamblers who want to press a claim depend on the contracts between tribes and the host states, which typically grant rights to operate locally in exchange for a share of revenue. The state of Connecticut, which does not require the tribe to waive sovereign immunity, has seven gambling regulation officers assigned to Foxwoods, but their role is limited to testing of the slot machines whose revenue is shared with the state. The state has no oversight of table games.

While tribal gambling commissions answer to the same tribes that own the casinos, National Indian Gaming Commission spokesman Michael Odle in Washington said they operate independently. He said those alleging a lack of impartiality could make the same argument about federal courts handling cases involving the U.S. government.

George Henningsen, chairman of the Pequot gaming commission, said it's difficult to dispel allegations of bias because it's typically only losers who speak out about their experiences with tribal justice.

A handful of lawyers around the country with expertise in gambling disputes say the worst horror stories are at tribal casinos. While some hope to bring pressure to put tribal properties on the same legal footing as commercial casinos, one attorney, Bob Nersesian, said he is more focused day to day on helping the clients who call with claims of abuse.

In the Arizona case, advantage players filed suit after they were detained on suspicion of cheating in 2011 at the Mazatzal Casino, owned by the Tonto Apache Tribe. A federal judge in Arizona last year ruled that sovereign immunity did not apply because tribal officials involved were named in their individual capacities, but a federal appeals court is now weighing whether tribal immunity should apply.

One of the plaintiffs, Rahne Pistor, said the officers who detained him did not identify themselves as police and grabbed his genitals as they assaulted him.

"I simply had won more money than they liked," Pistor said, "so they kidnapped me, handcuffed me, forced me into an isolated back room in the casino and physically stole whatever money they could out of my pocket."

Nersesian, the plaintiffs' attorney in the Mazatzal case, said such disputes do not discourage advantage players from visiting tribal casinos. If anything, he said, they draw them out in greater numbers by showing the games can be beaten.

"It's more like somebody dying from a hot shot of heroin," he said. "As soon as that happens, the market goes up, not down."

Minnesota man's mistake leads to winning poker's top prize
By KIMBERLY PIERCEALL, Associated Press
Updated 10:57 am, Sunday, June 14, 2015


LAS VEGAS (AP) — It's one thing to outlast hundreds or thousands of poker players to win one of the World Series of Poker's 68 events and the Las Vegas tournament's coveted gold bracelet.

It's another thing entirely to win a game you've never played before.

Christian Pham of St. Paul, Minnesota, did exactly that Thursday, rising to the top of 219 players, including a few poker icons. By accident.

The 40-year-old professional poker player said he intended to play no-limit Texas Hold 'em but instead inadvertently signed up for a different game happening the same day: so-called no-limit deuce-to-seven draw lowball. The cost? A $1,500 buy-in.

"It's a totally different game. Different mindset. Different strategies," said Shawn Harris, Pham's dealer at the final table.


Essentially, the goal is to have the lowest poker hand, no straights or flushes, and if a player ends up with a pair, it's better if it's a pair of twos. Players can also draw cards.

The event was just one of 68, all offering a chance at a golden bracelet prize, happening in Las Vegas at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino throughout the 51-day World Series of Poker that started on May 27 and culminates with the closely watched Main Event.

Pham said he didn't realize his mistake until he was dealt five cards instead of the usual two. He panicked, then observed, leaning on helpful players who advised him what beat what.


"At first you suspect an act, but if it was, it was very good," said Chris Mecklin who was sitting next to Pham when the game's newbie realized he had made a mistake. He didn't know it would be a fortuitous one.

Mecklin said it became clear that Pham was an experienced player, just not in this game. When he won a hand with the best set of cards one can get in the game — a two, three, four, five and seven — he said Pham seemed confused that he happened to be holding the most desired combination of cards.

The next day, Mecklin signed into WSOP.com to check on the game's results.

"Imagine my surprise when I see the photo of the chip leader!" he said in an email.

Pham said the guidance from his fellow players at the table helped, and he studied up the night in between. In the end, he said it was his tournament acumen for when and how much to bet and manage his chips that got him to the top.

On Friday, he was $81,314 richer and held up his gold bracelet, the tournament's version of a Super Bowl ring, and stood on stage as tournament organizers and players stood for the playing of Vietnam's national anthem. Every winner of the tournament's 68 events gets to hear his or her anthem of choice.

Pham moved 15 years ago from Vietnam to Minnesota, where he delivered newspapers. He played his first cash poker game in 2008 and later won second place in a local tournament along with several thousand dollars.

He didn't think of poker as a way to make a living, though, and gave it up until 2012.

Then he won a $200 satellite tournament in 2014 that sent him to Caesars Palace in Las Vegas for the World Series of Poker's circuit main event where he won the gold ring and $214,332.

"After that, I thought this game might be very good to me," he said.

POKER PROS RAKE IN MORE CHIPS THAN CARNEGIE MELLON'S ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE PROGRAM DURING 80,000-HAND CONTEST
But Scientifically Speaking, Human Lead Not Large Enough to Avoid a Statistical Tie
By Byron Spice / CMU / 412-268-9068 / bspice@cs.cmu.edu
and Emily Watts / Rivers Casino / 717-507-3754 / emily@hornercom.com
Friday, May 8, 2015




Four of the world's best players of Heads-up No-limit Texas Hold'em amassed more poker chips than the Carnegie Mellon University artificial intelligence program called Claudico as they collectively played 80,000 hands of poker in a two-week competition that concluded today at Rivers Casino.
Though three of the four pros had higher winnings than Claudico, their $732,713 collective lead over the A.I. program was not quite large enough to attain statistical significance — in other words, the results can't be accepted as scientifically reliable. In all, $170 million was "bet" during the two-week "Brains Vs. Artificial Intelligence" exhibition. So despite the apparent lead by the humans, the competition ended in a statistical tie.
"We knew Claudico was the strongest computer poker program in the world, but we had no idea before this competition how it would fare against four Top 10 poker players," said Tuomas Sandholm, the CMU professor of computer science who directed development of Claudico. "It would have been no shame for Claudico to lose to a set of such talented pros, so even pulling off a statistical tie with them is a tremendous achievement."
In the final chip tally, Bjorn Li had an individual chip total of $529,033, Doug Polk had $213,671 and Dong Kim had $70,491. Jason Les trailed Claudico by $80,482. Each of the players is ranked among the world's top 10 professionals in Heads-up (two-player) No-limit Texas Hold'em.
"We know theoretically that artificial intelligence is going to overtake us one day," Li said. "But at the end of the day, the most important thing is that the humans remain on top for now," even though scientists don't consider the results statistically significant.
Claudico played 20,000 hands with each pro in the two-player game. No actual wagering took place during the exhibition, though the pros will receive appearance fees based on their performance from a prize purse of $100,000 donated by Rivers Casino and Microsoft Research.
"Thanks to the online stream, the pros had fans rooting for them from all over the world throughout the challenge, in addition to the local players visiting our gaming floor," said Craig Clark, general manager of Rivers Casino. "It's been very exciting to see this unfold over the last two weeks, and it was a pleasure to partner with Carnegie Mellon University and host these outstanding players."
Poker has become a major test of artificial intelligence, Sandholm explained, because it is an incomplete information game. Players don't know what cards their opponents hold and all players try to mislead their opponents by bluffing, slow play and other devices.
"Beating humans isn't really our goal; it's just a milestone along the way," Sandholm said. "What we want to do is create an artificial intelligence that can help humans negotiate or make decisions in situations where they can't know all of the facts."
Claudico's strategy was created using algorithms rather than trying to program in human poker expertise. The algorithms ran on the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center's Blacklight computer with just the rules of poker as input. The same sort of algorithms could also be used to create strategies for applications involving cybersecurity, business transactions and medicine. For instance, an AI similar to Claudico might help doctors develop sequential treatment plans for a patient, or design drugs that are less prone to resistance. Or, such an AI might help people negotiate their best deal when purchasing a house or a car.
An earlier version of the computer program, called Tartanian7, decisively won the Heads-up No-limit Texas Hold'em category against each opponent with statistical significance of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence's Annual Computer Poker Competition last July. The poker pros had a chance to observe Tartanian7's play prior to this spring's competition.
"The advances made in Claudico over Tartanian7 in just eight months were huge," Les said, a rate of improvement that suggests the AI might need only another year before it clearly plays better than the pros.
As it stands, Claudico is a good, but not top-notch player, Polk said.
"There are spots where it plays well and others where I just don't understand it," he added. Some of its bets, for instance, were highly unusual, in Polk's estimation. Where a human might place a bet worth half or three-quarters of the pot, Claudico would sometimes bet a miserly 10 percent or an over-the-top 1,000 percent. "Betting $19,000 to win a $700 pot just isn't something that a person would do," he observed.
But Claudico is a supremely cool player. Losing a large bet might rattle a person, changing the way subsequent hands are played. But Claudico never showed signs of being fazed, Polk said.
If Claudico's game play sometimes left the pros baffled, the computer science team, including Ph.D. students Noam Brown and Sam Ganzfried, were often equally puzzled. Claudico sets its own strategy, Brown noted, and that strategy occupies about two terabytes of data — far more than the CMU team could analyze.
The Blacklight computer was used throughout the event to compute a better and better approximation of game-theory-optimal strategy. The work with Blacklight was supported in part by an allocation from XSEDE, the National Science Foundation's network of supercomputing resources.
Sandholm expressed confidence that AI will soon be able to clearly exceed the play of top professionals, noting that he and his team already have ideas for improving the algorithms at the heart of the program. Plus, they now have 80,000 hands of data on how top professionals play the game — data the scientists can use to train, test and perfect the successors to Claudico.
The work continues Carnegie Mellon's pioneering research in artificial intelligence, which dates back to the first AI program in 1956 and includes the establishment of the world's first Machine Learning Department. CMU faculty members are among the world's leading scientists in computational game theory, market design, natural language processing, computer vision, speech translation, thought identification and collaboration among intelligent agents. CMU laid the groundwork for computer chess programs that ultimately defeated Grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997 and made significant contributions to the Watson program that defeated Jeopardy! champions in 2011.
The site of the Brains Vs. AI competition, Pittsburgh's Rivers Casino, opened in 2009 and has been named "Best Overall Gaming Resort in Pennsylvania" for five consecutive years by Casino Player Magazine.

Computer to take on world's best in Texas Hold 'em
By Associated Press
Published: Apr 24, 2015 at 10:52 AM PDT



PITTSBURGH (AP) — Carnegie Mellon University researchers are going all in, pitting a computer program against some of the world's best professional poker players.

Computer science professor Tuomas Sandholm and researchers Sam Ganzfried and Noam Brown are taking their poker-playing computer program, Claudico, to Rivers Casino on Friday. Claudico — the Latin word for limp, as in limping in to a bet — will take on Doug Polk, Dong Kim, Bjorn Li and Jason Les. They'll split a prize purse of $100,000 in a competition funded by the casino and Microsoft.

Getting a computer to beat humans in poker has been a goal for more than 10 years, Sandholm said. The numerous unknown variables are the perfect test for artificial intelligence. The machine must account for about 10 to the 161st power of variables — more than all the atoms believed to exist in the universe.

Les, 29, is a professional poker player but has a degree in computer science. He said he relishes the opportunity to play Claudico.

"I think in the early stages, the computer might have an advantage, but at a certain point the players can figure out what's going on and adjust," Les said. "But it's a strategy game. You bring a strategy to the table and the computer's strategy may be better than mine."

The competition continues the work of other Carnegie Mellon-trained scientists who have contributed to past artificial intelligence challenges, such as IBM's Deep Blue program that beat chess master Garry Kasparov in 1997 and IBM's Watson, which beat Jeopardy champions Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings in 2011.

Pasadena, California, resident Doug Polk said he wants to represent humans as best he can against the machines that will eventually beat them.

"I hope we can stand up for humanity and take this computer down," he said with a laugh. "I know computers will eventually be able to beat humans. But I hope we can make them go a few more rounds after this before they do, like Kasparov did."

The computer will play 80,000 hands of Heads-Up No-Limit Texas Hold 'em in the two-week tournament.

Court: Iowa casino doesn't have to pay $41M jackpot error
By RYAN J. FOLEY, Associated Press
Updated 7:14 pm, Friday, April 24, 2015


IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — When an 87-year-old Illinois grandmother bet a quarter in an Iowa slot machine in 2011, she thought she'd hit it big. The screen said: "The reels have rolled your way! Bonus Award - $41797550.16."

Pauline McKee and her daughter excitedly summoned casino employees to collect what they thought was a $41.8 million jackpot. But state officials later concluded the award was a computer glitch and that the Isle Hotel Casino in Waterloo didn't have to pay. And the Iowa Supreme Court ruled Friday that McKee didn't hit any jackpot — no matter what the screen told her. Her good fortune was actually worth only $1.85 based on how the symbols aligned on the Miss Kitty game, the court said.

Game rules said the maximum award was $10,000 and allowed for no bonus awards, Justice Edward Mansfield wrote for the unanimous seven-member court. The rules and pay table, which were available on a touch screen, amount to a contract between the casino and the player and it doesn't matter that McKee didn't read them, he added.

"Any message appearing on the screen indicating the patron would receive a $41 million bonus was a gratuitous promise and the casino's failure to pay it could not be challenged as a breach of contract," Mansfield wrote in a ruling that dismissed a lawsuit filed by McKee.

The casino could have been forced into bankruptcy if the decision had gone the other way, said one of its attorneys, Stacey Cormican. A $41 million payout would amount to about half of the gross revenue the casino generated last year.

Cormican said the ruling will ensure fairness in Iowa's large gambling industry.


"Casinos are required to post rules and follow those rules. If either the patrons or casinos could change the rules in the middle of the game, it would be absolutely chaos," she said.

She said such computer glitches are rare.

McKee, of Antioch, Illinois, was playing the penny slot machine with relatives during a family reunion when she thought she hit the jackpot. When she and her daughter summoned an attendant, casino officials started to investigate, giving her a $10 card to play while she waited and eventually comping her and her relatives' rooms.

The casino requested a review by the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission, which sent the machine's hardware and software to a laboratory for analysis.

Testing concluded the machine had given an erroneous bonus message. The game's manufacturer, Aristocrat Technologies Inc., warned casinos in 2010 that machines using that hardware were susceptible to displaying mistaken "legacy bonus" awards on the screen. A company bulletin told customers it was developing a new hardware system and recommended they disable legacy bonusing to prevent the error — something the Waterloo casino didn't do.

The commission concluded the casino didn't have to pay because of the glitch. A sign on the game warned, "Malfunction voids all pays and plays."

McKee sued in 2012. Her lawyers disputed that the machine malfunctioned, arguing that jurors should decide. A judge threw out the case before trial.

Gamblers' optimism? Casino money misses states' expectations
By MICHAEL MELIA, Associated Press
Published: Feb 16, 2015 at 8:30 AM PST



HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — For anyone betting on the Northeast's casino bonanza, the odds are long on projects hitting financial expectations.

In the last several states to open casinos — Ohio, Maryland and Pennsylvania — overall revenue is coming in below baseline forecasts, according to a review of state tax data. Officials blame miscalculations of spending habits and competition, but some also question how much the projected numbers reflected wishful thinking.

The casino industry has grown exponentially over the last decade as revenue-hungry states have moved to claim business that once went across state lines to Atlantic City, New Jersey, or the tribal-owned megaresorts in Connecticut. After Nevada, Pennsylvania has emerged as the country's No. 2 gambling marketing, overtaking Atlantic City, where four of 12 casinos closed last year.

As Massachusetts and New York prepare for a new round of casino building, they have added new levels of financial scrutiny, enlisting consulting firms to vet revenue projections. But the industry's growth in the Northeast's tight geography has made modeling more complex, and experts warn there are no guarantees.

"This isn't a science," analyst Alan Woinski said.

Projections are developed through so-called gravity models, premised on the concept that bigger casinos draw more people from farther away. They are used by developers and regulators to estimate how a property will perform based on factors including the affluence of surrounding towns.

The track record shows big margins for error. With access to the same data, developers regularly come back with higher projections than regulators who run the numbers themselves, especially when companies are competing for bids. A recent study by Cummings Associates, a Massachusetts-based consulting firm, found that projections done for the same project were, on average, 20 percent apart and, in cases where the casinos were actually built, almost always were proved too high.

Casinos generally remain big moneymakers, and some projects have far exceeded predictions, but state averages have been below forecasts that set expectations for tax revenue.

One of the biggest misses came in Ohio, where the state Department of Taxation weighed in on a proposed constitutional amendment in October 2009 with an estimate that casinos would generate at least $470 million in annual tax revenue. In 2014, tax revenue from the casinos totaled $267.5 million.

"In retrospect, we were guessing," said Mike Sobul, who was the tax department's director of research.

Sobul said the gravity model run by Ohio officials used industry assumptions that were overly optimistic, and, more significantly, officials underestimated how the recession would affect consumer spending. Sobul, who tracks the numbers now as a financial officer for an Ohio school district, said schools that once were expected to receive more than $80 per pupil statewide in casino money are now expecting about $51 per pupil.

In Maryland, casino revenue has been hundreds of millions of dollars short of a December 2008 projection by the Department of Legislative Services.

Even in Pennsylvania, the casino boom's success story, it took the addition of table games in 2010 to bring revenue beyond levels projected by a state task force that assumed they would offer only slot machines. Doug Harbach, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board, said the projections were not badly inflated.

"You have to take into account that the market in surrounding states now has much more competition," he said.

For all the attention to revenue projections, many industry insiders say the real test is whether banks, which conduct their own research, will loan money for a casino.

"If a bank is going to put up a hundred million dollars, that's a tacit show of feasibility," said Michael Ross, president of the Innovation Group in Winter Park, Florida, one of many consulting firms in the forecasting business.

Where some earlier states were often guided by in-house analyses, Massachusetts and New York have brought in more outside experts to conduct their own market research, assess the numbers from the developers and guide state officials who acknowledge their limited experience with the gambling industry.

Even so, estimates made during a bidding process can vary so widely that even rival developers say they are sometimes mystified. The chief executive at Connecticut's Mohegan Sun, which lost out to Wynn Resorts in a competition for a Boston-area casino license, said the Canadian consulting firm working with the Massachusetts Gaming Commission should have challenged their rival's projections for spending by international high rollers.

"I don't think enough questions were asked by the consultants," CEO Mitchell Etess said. "If you're in meetings with the gaming commission, and you get the sense they like Wynn, you're not going to ask a lot of questions."

Massachusetts Gaming Commissioner Enrique Zuniga said Wynn promised lower numbers overall but from a broader area. He said officials are well aware that projections are only estimates, and they look at many other factors, including details of the proposed property, the developers' established clientele and market research.

"We're not taking any numbers to the bank," Zuniga said

Gamblers must return $1.5M to casino because cards were unshuffled
By WAYNE PARRY Associated Press
Published: Feb 12, 2015 at 6:08 PM PST



ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) - Gamblers who won $1.5 million at a casino after realizing the cards hadn't been shuffled have been ordered to return the money.

State Superior Court Judge Donna Taylor has sided with the Golden Nugget casino in its long-running dispute with 14 gamblers who say the fault wasn't theirs and they should be allowed to keep their winnings.

At issue were games of mini-baccarat played in April 2012 using decks of cards the casino had paid a manufacturer to pre-shuffle but that hadn't been shuffled. Once players realized the pattern in which the cards were emerging they drastically upped their bets from $10 a hand to $5,000 and won 41 straight hands.

In the ruling, issued Monday and publicized by the casino on Thursday, the judge determined the games were illegal under state law because they didn't conform to gambling regulations specifying the way each game must be played.

"The dealer did not pre-shuffle the cards immediately prior to the commencement of play, and the cards were not pre-shuffled in accordance with any regulation," the judge wrote. "Thus, a literal reading of the regulations ... entails that the game violated the (Casino Control) Act, and consequently was not authorized."

She ruled that the gamblers must return any cash paid to them by the casino and any outstanding chips in their possession. The casino in turn must refund the gamblers the money they first put up to play.

The Golden Nugget was pleased with the court's ruling, casino general manager Tom Pohlman said.

"We believe it was the right decision," he said.

A lawyer for the gamblers did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the decision. A lawyer for the casino's partner, Landry's Inc., said he expects the decision to be appealed.

The Golden Nugget bought what were supposed to be pre-shuffled cards from a Kansas City manufacturer, which acknowledged in court it failed to shuffle them. The casino said its litigation with the manufacturer has been resolved but a confidentiality agreement prevents it from revealing details.

The judge's ruling was the latest in a long series of decisions that have seesawed between favoring the casino and favoring the gamblers. The owner of the casino, Texas billionaire Tillman Fertitta, originally decided to let the players keep their winnings, but that offer was contingent on them dropping other claims they made against the casino, which they declined to do.

The casino paid out about $500,000 in winnings for the disputed games. About $1 million in chips remains outstanding.

New Jersey to allow physical skill-based gambling
By WAYNE PARRY, Associated Press
Published: Feb 13, 2015 at 9:07 AM PST



ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — An Atlantic City casino is about to redefine casino gambling by introducing a new style of wagering: competition based on a physical skill rather than luck.

Executives at The Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa told The Associated Press on Friday that they've gotten permission from New Jersey gambling regulators to host a basketball contest next month in which players shoot free throws for money.

It's the first of what promises to be many skill-based events that let gamblers take greater control over the outcomes of their bets, rather than relying on a roll of the dice, spin of the wheel or deal of the cards.

"This is a first step, something we've never been able to do until now," said Joe Lupo, the casino's senior vice president. "A year from now, you'll probably see a lot more of these skill-based tournaments or even games on the casino floor."

Similar to poker, bettors are gambling against each other, not the house, as in blackjack or slots.

For a $20 buy-in, contestants compete in 90-second rounds for the right to play in the final round-of-16 in a bracket format. The top four finishers will split $10,000, with the winner getting $5,000. A valid Borgata players' club card is required to participate in the contest.

The program was approved by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement under its "New Jersey First" initiative to adopt and enact new gambling products before other states.

The Borgata, the state division and the American Gaming Association all said the March 21 tournament would be the first of its kind in the nation, based on physical skill. Although many companies offer real-money skill-based gambling, particularly online, and there is an element of skill involved in poker, this program is the first of its kind offered by a licensed United States casino, New Jersey officials say.

"It's purely a physical dexterity contest," said Eric Weiss, director of the gambling enforcement division's technical services bureau.

Other Atlantic City casinos are also free to propose similar real-money games for approval, though each must be evaluated individually by the state.

"It's smart for them to be creative and try to find new ways to provide what consumers want given the highly competitive nature of the region," said Chris Moyer, a spokesman for the American Gaming Association, the gambling industry's trade group.

Free throws will be shot from a 15-foot distance, at a 10-foot high basket using a professional regulation-size ball.

Lupo said anyone — of legal casino gambling age of 21 — can play, even professional athletes. So does that mean LeBron James could enter?

"Definitely," Lupo said. "In fact, I wish he would."

Like a safety in the Super Bowl? Stand in line in Vegas
By TIM DAHLBERG AP Sports Writer
Published: Jan 23, 2015 at 4:01 PM PST



LAS VEGAS (AP) - For some bettors, there's just not much value picking either the New England Patriots or Seattle Seahawks in a Super Bowl that is a tossup almost everywhere in this gambling city.

But betting on whether the Patriots run more plays than the number of shots Tiger Woods takes in the final round of the Phoenix Open? Now that's something both golf and football fans can enjoy putting a little action on.

Proposition bets will be huge once again in Nevada's legal sports books, where bettors can wager on anything from the jersey number of the player who scores the first touchdown to how far the longest kickoff return will be (over/under is 28.5 yards).

And, of course, the ever-popular bet on whether the first score of the game will be a safety. That one exploded on the bookies last year when the Seahawks scored a safety on Denver's first offensive play of the game.

"The game was five minutes old and we were already down $130,000," said Nick Bogdanovich, the oddsmaker for the William Hill US chain of sports books. "That was a disaster."

Not so much of a disaster, though, that the bookies didn't come back to score some big wins of their own. A Seattle blowout of the favored Broncos helped legal sports books make nearly $20 million on record wagering of $119.4 million on the game.

Bettors will win some of this year's props, too, and in a game that is basically a tossup they might get more action than usual. William Hill lists 690 different prop bets, ranging from the mundane (total points scored, 48.5 over/under) to the more exotic (Number of goals in the Barcelona/Villarreal soccer match).

Number of tackles by New England's Devin McCourty? There's a prop for that, with an over/under of four.

Think Tom Brady will throw more touchdown passes than the Minnesota Wild scores goals on Sunday? There's a prop for that, too, with the Wild a 3-2 favorite.

Or, on the more esoteric side, how about the number of goals in the World's Men's Handball Championship in Qatar versus the total receiving yards by Seattle's Doug Baldwin (11-10 odds, with handball minus 1.5 goals)?

"A lot of people have to have action throughout the game," Bogdanovich said. "As soon as the game starts they're cashing tickets. Every five minutes there's a prop decided."

So-called prop bets have proven lucrative in Nevada's legal sports books since their debut in the 1990s, and oddsmakers spend days following the conference championship games trying to come up with as many as they can. The only limit is Nevada betting regulations that restrict any sports book bets on things that actually happen on the field of play.

That includes the opening coin flip, which can be bet even up with a bet of $102 for a $100 payoff at the Westgate LV Superbook. But the Nevada books can't offer the more bizarre bets put up by online books that include everything from the color of Bill Belichick's hoodie (gray is a prohibitive favorite) to whether Katy Perry will wear a skirt/dress or pants during the halftime show (skirt/dress is a 4-5 favorite).

Betting at the online books is illegal in the U.S., but that hasn't stopped online bookie Bovada from putting up those odds. Those who can bet at Bovada can also wager on whether Idina Menzel will forget or omit a word in the national anthem (6-1 odds against) or the number of times "deflated balls" will be referred to in the NBC broadcast (over/under is 2.5).

For the prop bets you can legally wager on, though, the safety (1-7 against and 5-1 in favor) will almost surely be the most popular. That's after bookies took a beating in the past two Super Bowls, where the safety was the last score in one game and the first in the other.

"I'm not going to say it's a sore subject with us but it has become the most bet prop on the board," said the Westgate's Jay Kornegay. "It's guaranteed we're going to have some liability attached to that one come the day of the game."

Vegas Bookies: Patriots-Seahawks pick 'em for Super Bowl
By TIM DAHLBERG, AP Sports Writer
Published: Jan 18, 2015 at 8:41 PM PST


LAS VEGAS (AP) — The Super Bowl looks like a tossup in this gambling city, where more than $100 million will likely be riding on the game by kickoff.

A flurry of early money on the New England Patriots moved the game to pick 'em at most major Las Vegas books Sunday night after the Seattle Seahawks opened by as much as 2.5-point favorites.

Oddsmakers say they don't expect the line to fluctuate much over the next few weeks, with heavy betting anticipated on both sides.

"You're not going to see this one bounce around like you did last year," said Jimmy Vaccaro of the South Point sports book. "Last year the whole world was in love with Denver early and there was a crush at the (betting) window. But this game is going to stay right around Seattle a 1-point favorite or pick 'em the entire way."

Some books opened Seattle a favorite while Tom Brady and the Patriots were still piling on points in the rain late in the third quarter of a blowout win over the Indianapolis Colts. The line quickly got knocked down, though, as money came in on New England, including a $10,000 bet at the South Point.

"All smart guys looking to take a position early," Vaccaro said of the early money. "The line really went down quick."

At the Westgate Las Vegas Superbook, the opening line favoring the Seahawks by 2.5 points moved quickly even before the Patriots-Colts game was over. Shortly after the game was over, the line was already at pick 'em.

"Everyone remembers what they saw last," oddsmaker Jeff Sherman said.

The movement wasn't quite as dramatic as it was last year, when the Seahawks were also favored by 2.5 points at most books in the opening lines only to see the betting public go so heavily on the Broncos that Denver was favored by 2.5 points at game time.

Seattle ended up winning the game 43-8 and bookmakers had a big day, winning nearly $20 million on record legal betting of $119.4 million.

The over/under for the game ranged from between 49 and 49.5 points at most books. Like point spread wagers, bettors can lay $110 to win $100 on whether the total number of points will exceed or be less than that number.

This has been a banner football betting season so far for sports books in Nevada, the only place where full legalized betting is allowed in the country.

Records have been set every month, and Sherman said he believes this year's Super Bowl will set another betting record because the line is narrow and the teams are popular.

"I definitely think it can be a record," he said. "You have the defending Super Bowl champs who are as public a team as anyone. And New England is the same thing, they've been there for years."

For Sherman, setting the lines in the games may have been the easiest part. He and his fellow oddsmakers at the Westgate plan to spend Tuesday and Wednesday putting together more than 300 so-called "prop" bets on everything from which team will win the coin flip to whether one of New England's offensive linemen will score a touchdown.

Wynn sports book director Johnny Avello said he plans to offer a wide variety of props, too, which could help drive a betting record.

"I don't see any reason why it can't be broken," Avello said. "The only thing that would slow it down is that people are tired of the Seahawks and I don't think that will be the case."

Alleged robbery turns out to be casino visit
Okanogan woman jailed for making false statements
By The Chronicle As of Friday, February 21, 2014



#OKANOGAN — A crime that apparently didn’t happen landed a local woman in jail just after Christmas.

#Karen L. Beam-Davis, 62, was arrested at 1 a.m. Friday on suspicion of making a false report after claiming she’d been held up at gunpoint and forced to drive the robber to Oroville, Okanogan County Sheriff Frank Rogers said.

#Deputies investigated the reported kidnapping and robbery that allegedly happened at 9:40 p.m., Thursday.

#They were told Beam-Davis went to North Cascades Bank in Okanogan around 12:30 p.m. to cash a check for $330.

#When she left the bank and got into her car, a man armed with a .22-caliber handgun allegedly opened her door, ordered her to give him the money and drive to Oroville, Rogers said.

#Beam-Davis said she complied, drove the suspect around, and then dropped him off in Oroville.

#After that, she told deputies she drove back to Okanogan and arrived around 9:30 p.m. and then reported the alleged crime.

#She also said she could positively identify the suspect, Rogers said.

#“After taking the statement from Beam-Davis, the deputies felt something wasn’t adding up, so they went over to the casino south of Okanogan,” he said.

#They watched surveillance videos, and allegedly saw Beam-Davis, wearing the same clothes, walk into the casino at around 10:55 a.m. and not leave until around 9:15 p.m., just before she reported being robbed.

#Beam-Davis was contacted and interviewed again, and maintained she’d been robbed until she was shown photos of herself at the casino, Rogers said.

#She allegedly admitted she’d lost her money at the casino and then made up the robbery story.

#“When asked what she would have done if someone had been arrested, Beam-Davis stated she would just not show up to court to testify,” Rogers said.

Can you even begin to understand that you the one who works your butt off pays for others to take their FREE $$$$$$$$$ they got from you to the casino?

That we even had to ask the casinos in the first place to STOP cashing welfare $$$$$$$???

That it isn't a CRIME to spend FREE TAX WELFARE $$$$$$$$$ at the casino in the first place?

These are the same casinos who don't pay gas tax. Sales tax.
We as a state due to criminals in office who set those sweet deals up years ago miss out on hundreds of MILLIONS of tax $$$$$$$$$$ then the casinos have the GREED to cash welfare EBT cards?

Just unreal.

When it comes to our government just keep the money flowing with no stewardship because the working man will always keep paying for their actions.

Had enough yet?
Well ......... have you?



BTW. Two casinos will continue to cash the cards.





Tribal casinos in Wash. state to refuse welfare cards
By Associated Press and KOMO Staff
Published: Dec 31, 2014 at 7:25 AM PST



OLYMPIA, Wash. - Tribal casinos in Washington will no longer cash welfare cards under an agreement with the state Gambling Commission.

The commission said Tuesday that 27 of the 29 federally recognized tribes in the state have agreed to amend gambling agreements to ensure that all cash dispensing and point-of-sale machines refuse electronic benefits transfer (EBT) cards.

The state-issued EBT cards, also known as a "Quest Card," are intended to help the needy purchase food items at grocery stores.

The agreement is one of several the commission is recommending to the Legislature.

Seahawks favored over Cardinals in record Las Vegas odds
Posted on December 18, 2014 | By Nick Eaton





Seattle Seahawks at Arizona Cardinals

Never has a team as good as 11-3 been such big underdogs at home — by 9.5 points — than the Arizona Cardinals are for this weekend’s NFC West showdown against the Seattle Seahawks.

That’s what OddsShark said Wednesday, citing this week’s betting spreads from several Las Vegas sports books and going back to 1983. In fact, only one other time since then has an 11-3 team been a home underdog, let alone one expected to lose by nearly 10 points.

The Seahawks, trailing the Cardinals by one game in the NFC West, opened Monday in Vegas as 7.5-point favorites when they take the field Sunday at University of Phoenix Stadium. Now, four days before kickoff, sports books are favoring Seattle by anywhere from 7.5 to 9.5 points.

The NFL doesn’t usually work this way; the top team in the conference isn’t usually such a huge underdog.

A big reason is that Arizona is down to its third-string quarterback, Ryan Lindley, who will face the best defense in the league without help from running back Andre Ellington (on IR with a hernia). While Seattle’s own offense hasn’t been spectacular, Vegas bookies think Russell Wilson and Co. can score at least a touchdown more than Lindley against the Cardinals’ suffocating defense.

If the Seahawks win Sunday, they will take the NFC West lead and improve their chances for a first-round bye in the playoffs. Kickoff is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Sunday in Glendale, Arizona. The game will be televised on NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” and, of course, we will have full coverage on seattlepi.com.

Unreal. Last time I checked the game was played on the field but hey in Vegas that sun is really bright.



Manager lifts betting interest in Cubs
Updated: November 3, 2014, 9:22 PM ET
By Darren Rovell | ESPN.com


Given how much better the odds have gotten for the Cubs to win the World Series, some baseball fans might be asking what position Joe Maddon is playing.

Since it became clear that the lovable losers were going to land the former Tampa Bay Rays manager, the bets started rolling in for the Cubs to win the World Series, and in turn, the odds continued to rise.

The addition of Joe Maddon has made the Cubs a popular World Series pick at sports books.
Online sportsbook, Bovada.lv, lowered its odds for the 50-to-1 last Thursday all the way down to 20-to-1 Monday, as Maddon was introduced in Chicago.

"The movement of the Cubs World Series odds based on the hiring of a manager is unprecedented," said the Bovada's manager Kevin Bradley. "We feel like the impact of manager or head coach is felt the least in Major League Baseball. There are a few coaches in sports that would move the needle in terms of odds, such as [New England Patriots coach] Bill Belichick or [San Antonio Spurs coach] Gregg Popovich, but rarely are the best coaches free agents and they tend to stay with a franchise where they have a great relationship with the owner."

Bradley said that he isn't used to adjusting odds based on a managerial hiring, but the amount of money wagered on the Cubs left him no choice.

"They are already a huge liability," Bradley said. "They have taken four times more money than any other team."

At the Wynn in Las Vegas, the Cubs opened at 40-to-1 to win the World Series, but since word of Maddon's hiring started to leak it moved to 30-to-1.

Although some sports books in Vegas have the Cubs as low as 15-to-1, the Wynn's sports book manager John Avello thinks he has gone low enough for now.

"Maddon is an excellent manager and will most likely get the Cubs to the playoffs within two years," Avello said. "A World Series title over the next five years is certainly possible, but in the short term, it's difficult to make chicken salad out of chicken you-know-what."

The Cubs are owners of the longest title drought in all of baseball, having not won the World Series since 1908.

The below from .............
http://www.bettorsworld.com/pp/pro-sports-bettor.htm


**Note - the following article was originally published by Dave Compton back in the mid 90's. I met Dave through a website he used to run where he offered his football selections each week. Since starting Bettorsworld back in the mid 90's, I have had the good fortune of getting to know several extremely sharp sports bettors and others who make their living off the outcome of games, one way or another. Many have contributed to my sports betting education, but Dave would be right at the very top of that list. Thank You Dave!



Gamblers "Attitude"


I STILL get a TONof correspondence from many "real gamblers" who have been on this service for a long time AND also from many internet and other amateur guys who would LIKE to be more like their professional brethren.


I have written here many times about the frustrations I have felt in dealing with the great majority of internet numb-nuts who think they know all there is about football betting and sports wagering in general. Of the THOUSANDS of net people I have corresponded with since putting up this website, there are less than THIRTY people who I believe have the wherewithal and discipline to "make it" long term in sports betting.


So what's the deal?Why can't the general internet guy (or the public as a whole for that matter) get a grasp of sports betting?
Well, I have finally been able to distill this into a one word description of the difference in the guys who really can DO IT and the flakes who think betting sports for a living is "easy" and if they only had the time and the bankroll, they'd go out there and really show those guys how to contend for the big bucks (or at least a living wage).


It's ATTITUDE!


The real pro doesn't think ANYBODY owes him ANYTHING! He EARNS and SWEATS every dime he makes and NEVER blames anyone but himself for a loss.


The wannabe's ALL think they are OWED something and somewhere they've been dealt a poor hand by life, marriage, the IRS, the government etc.etc.etc.
The pro believes (and rightly so) that HE and HE alone is in control of his own good fortune and "luck".


The wannabe thinks that gambling might remedy those injustices that life has so cruelly visited upon him. After all, things have to balance out in life don't they?
The pro totally understands that there is nothing FAIR about life or living and he accepts and OVERCOMES that unfairness by his own mental toughness and wit.
The wannabe just CANNOT overcome that gnawing gut feeling that he has been "screwed" by life and he will NEVER have the confidence to conquer his rightous fear of failure.


The professional has INCREDIBLE discipline and patience and a remarkable (developed) ability to pick the spots where HE believes that HE truly has the edge over the book.


The wannabe has little patience and even less regard for his own money. He may be an excellent handicapper but he has NO CONCEPTof real money management or true discipline with his betting. He is destined to remain a $100 to $500 bettor FOREVER (unless he inherits some MORE money he can blow).

Here's the biggie:
The pro doesn't need the ego boost of boasting about his picks, his money or his big scores. He retains his anonymity and obscurity and EARNS his self esteem by VERY HARD WORK.


The wannabe's NEVER stop spouting about their great picks and their super scores and ALWAYS have a running narration about their big win last weekend OR how they were screwed by the refs or the weather or the coaches etc.etc.


That's why NONE of the people you see plastered all of the sports message boards are really prodessional sports bettors. They are ALL pretenders.

These two disparate personalities that define the difference in the real gamblers and the wannabe's can be completely summed up in just one word_ _ _ _
ATTITUDE !

This is what happens to bookies who are out in the sun to long ..........





Seattle Mariners reach top 10 of teams favored in Las Vegas to win next year’s World Series
Posted on October 30, 2014 | By Nick Eaton



The Mariners have not appeared in the postseason since 2001 and have never reached a World Series. (Otto Greule/Allsport/Getty Images)
What if we told you the Seattle Mariners have better odds to win the 2015 World Series than the Boston Red Sox or New York Yankees. Would you believe it?

On Thursday — the morning after the San Francisco Giants beat the Kansas City Royals for their third championship in five years — several Las Vegas sports books released early betting odds for next year’s Major League Baseball title. And the Mariners were right in the thick of things.

The M’s had 18-to-1 odds of winning Seattle’s first World Series next season, according to Bovada. Those odds were the eighth-best in the MLB.

Bovada’s favorites were the Los Angeles Dodgers and Washington Nationals, which each had 15-to-2 betting odds Thursday. Next were the Detroit Tigers and Los Angeles Angels (10-to-1 each), S.F. Giants and St. Louis Cardinals (12-to-1 each), and K.C. Royals (16-to-1). The division-rival Oakland Athletics had 20-to-1 odds.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Vegas, MyTopSportsbook.com said Thursday that the Mariners had 24-to-1 odds to win the 2015 World Series — tied for 10th-best in the MLB.

MyTopSportsbook.com compiles betting odds from several bookies. There, the Mariners had worse championship odds than the Dodgers (7-to-1), Nationals (8-to-1), Tigers (10-to-1), Cardinals (11-to-1), Angels (12-to-1), Giants (18-to-1), Royals (20-to-1), Orioles (22-to-1) and Oakland Athletics (22-to-1). The M’s were tied at 24-to-1 with the Cleveland Indians and Pittsburgh Pirates.

The Mariners — who haven’t appeared in the playoffs since 2001 — came closer to the postseason in 2014 than they had in a decade. Finishing with a 87-75 record, the M’s had just two fewer wins during the regular season than this year’s runner-up Royals.

Despite struggles throughout the season and down the stretch, the M’s entered Game 162 just a game behind the wild-card Athletics. Oakland’s win shut out Seattle, but excited Mariners fans got a much-desired reminder of what it’s like to watch playoff-caliber baseball.

Hey, with Robinson Cano, Felix Hernandez, Kyle Seager, Hisashi Iwakuma and others on the roster, maybe the M’s can make a real run for the Commissioner’s Trophy in 2015.

Slot machine saves German gambler as police arrive
Updated 6:27 am, Thursday, September 25, 2014



BERLIN (AP) — A gambler in Germany has been saved from prison by a one-armed bandit.

Police said Thursday that two officers carrying out routine checks at an arcade in the western city of Bochum late last week discovered that a man playing a slot machine faced an arrest warrant.

He had been ordered to pay a 710-euro ($910) fine or go to prison for 71 days after resisting police during a previous incident.

Police say that as officers informed the man that he faced arrest, the slot machine started to flash and the beaming 37-year-old won a 1,000-euro ($1,270) jackpot.

The man paid his fine on the spot — in cash.

Ben Affleck talks about card counting incident
Posted on September 17, 2014 | By Daily Dish



Ben Affleck has opened up about his card counting scandal, insisting he has nothing to be ashamed of.

Bosses at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas asked the star to leave their resort in April after they spotted him counting cards at a blackjack table.

Security officials were quick to dismiss reports suggesting the movie star had been banned from the venue, insisting Affleck was “a valued guest” who is “welcome back any time.”

The Oscar winner has now spoken out about the story in the new issue of Details magazine, confirming reports he was asked to step away from the table during a successful night of gambling.

He says, “That is a true story. I mean, that took place. I took some time to learn the game and became a decent blackjack player. And once I became decent, the casinos asked me not to play blackjack. I mean, the fact that being good at the game is against the rules at the casinos should tell you something about casinos.

“There’s a lot of hospitality, backslapping, when they think you’re gonna come in and dump money, and if they think you might leave with some money, it’s like, ‘You know what? Why don’t you try craps or roulette?’”

New Jersey loses 4th casino as Trump Plaza closes
By WAYNE PARRY, Associated Press
Updated 2:58 pm, Tuesday, September 16, 2014



ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — Beset by crushing debt, fleeing customers and run-down facilities, Trump Plaza on Tuesday became the fourth casino in Atlantic City to shut down this year.

The 30-year-old casino at the heart of the Boardwalk had been the town's worst performing for years. It won about the same amount from gamblers this year as the market-leading Borgata takes in every two weeks. And at pennies on the dollar, no one wanted to buy it.

Trump Plaza is the latest victim of casino contraction brought on by competition in neighboring states in the saturated northeastern U.S. gambling market.

Atlantic City began the year with 12 casinos; it now has eight. The Atlantic Club, Showboat and Revel also closed, and the Taj Mahal could be next on Nov. 13.

Theresa Volpe, a cocktail server at the Plaza for 26 years, is looking for a new job — along with about 8,000 others suddenly cut loose by Atlantic City's casinos since January. An unemployment assistance session will be held Wednesday at Boardwalk Hall.

"I don't know if we're going to have a difficult time because of our age," she said. "Someone in their 50s is not necessarily what they want. Friends have been on interviews and they never get called back."

Dealer Ruth Hardrick worked at Trump Plaza for 26 of its 30 years. She, too, is jobless.

"You think something will come along (to save the casino)," she said. "And it didn't."

Donald Trump told The Associated Press that he "will be taking a very serious look" at buying back the company after it declared bankruptcy this month and that the decision will come down to price. He said he would then have to determine whether Trump Plaza is "viable" and worth re-opening.

"I got out years ago, the timing was good, but I feel really badly about the people," Trump said. "I'll take a good strong look at it."

Trump owns a 9 percent stake in Trump Entertainment Resorts and went to court last month to try to get his name removed from the properties.

Trump Plaza had its heyday in the '80s and early '90s. Bedazzled with chandeliers, it hosted many a star-studded after-party when a big event like a Rolling Stones concert or a Mike Tyson prize fight was held next door at Boardwalk Hall. The casino even had a cameo in the film "Ocean's Eleven;" when George Clooney and Brad Pitt recruited actor Bernie Mac's character to help with a Las Vegas casino heist, they plucked him from Trump Plaza, where he was a dealer.

Unlike Revel, which opened just over two years ago and was considered new and luxurious before closing, or the still-profitable Showboat, shuttered by its owner in the name of reducing competition for the remaining casinos in town, the demise of Trump Plaza could be seen a long way off.

Gamblers have been abandoning it for newer, ritzier casinos for years. Its owners, Trump Entertainment Resorts, let it deteriorate in recent years, particularly after a sale for the bargain-basement price of $20 million to a California firm fell through last year.

Yomari Blanco, a housekeeper at Trump Plaza for 18 years, plans to file for unemployment this week, and may go back to school.

"It's really hitting me," she said. "You realize the reality that's coming right at you."

Jim Redmond is a 60-year-old from Montreal who loves Atlantic City and regularly stayed at Trump Plaza. He says its decline was obvious over the last seven years.

"It was so sad to see it get a little worse every year, he said. "They really seemed to give up about five years ago."

A glass-enclosed walkway over Pacific Avenue would be blistering hot under the sun because of the property's frantic cost-cutting moves. Air conditioning the area was one of the expenses deemed non-essential.

Illuminated letters advertising the casino's name on its front and back facades burned out and were never replaced. Restaurants have been shut down for months, and a self-serve kiosk to redeem player's club points near the parking garage was disconnected and covered in dust.

___

Associated Press writer Josh Cornfield in Trenton contributed to this report.

___

Wayne Parry can be reached at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC

Trump casinos file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy; seek concessions
By WAYNE PARRY, Associated Press
Published: Sep 9, 2014 at 10:46 AM PDT



Trump casinos file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy; seek concessions
A man rests in the shade outside Trump Plaza Hotel Casino in Atlantic City, N.J.



ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) - Trump Entertainment Resorts filed for bankruptcy Tuesday and threatened to shut down the Taj Mahal Casino Resort, which would make it the fifth Atlantic City casino to close this year.

The company owns Trump Plaza, which is closing in a week, and the Taj Mahal, which has been experiencing cash-flow problems and had been trying to stave off a default with its lenders. The company said the Taj Mahal could close Nov. 13 if it doesn't win salary concessions from union workers.

It's the fourth such filing for the struggling casino company or its corporate predecessors.

The company filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware, saying it has liabilities of between $100 million and $500 million, and assets of no more than $50,000. It missed its quarterly tax payment due last month, and says it doesn't have the cash to make an interest payment to lenders due at the end of the month.

It also says both its Internet gambling partners have taken steps to end their contracts with Trump Entertainment.

It said cost-cutting negotiations with the main casino workers' union have stalled, and that the company is preparing notices warning employees the Taj Mahal may close on Nov. 13.

"Absent expense reductions, particularly concessions from their unions, the debtors expect that the Taj Mahal will close on or shortly after November 13, 2014 and that all operating units will be terminated between November 13, 2014 and November 27, 2014," the company wrote in its bankruptcy filing.

If the company makes good on its threat to close the Taj Mahal, it would further rock an already shell-shocked casino market in what just a few years ago was the nation's second-largest gambling market after Nevada. Now, New Jersey has fallen behind Pennsylvania.

Three other Atlantic City casinos have closed this year, as the industry struggles with competition in nearby states. Atlantic City began the year with 12 casinos, but could end it with seven if the Taj Mahal closes. So far this year, the Atlantic Club, Showboat and Revel have gone out of business, with Trump Plaza closing next Tuesday.

The bankruptcy filing came a day after Gov. Chris Christie's administration told the state's casinos and horse tracks that they can legally offer sports betting - a move that defies a federal ban on it and is sure to be challenged in court by the professional and amateur sports leagues which have fought it thus far.

Trump Entertainment has struggled since the day it emerged from its last bankruptcy in 2010, having filed the year before. It came out of bankruptcy with $350 million in debt, and currently has more than $285 million in debt.

As of the end of July, the company employed 2,800 people.

The company has been trying to reduce expenses and debt, including selling its former Trump Marina casino for $38 million to Landry's Inc., which now runs it as the Golden Nugget Atlantic City. It also sold the Steel Pier for $4.5 million; a warehouse for $1.9 million, and its former corporate offices in a converted firehouse for $3.1 million. That building now houses the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority.

It has been trying for years to sell Trump Plaza. A deal to sell it to a California firm for $20 million last year fell through.

The company also said it has been in negotiations with Local 54 of the Unite-HERE union on cost-cutting measures it says it needs to survive, but that the union has rejected them. Bob McDevitt, the union president, said that Trump Entertainment wanted union members to surrender their health insurance and pension plans, something he rejected. McDevitt said that even if the union agreed to those concessions, they would only total $11 million per year, which would hardly make a difference in the company's finances.

The concessions would be on top of a separate $4 million round of union concessions the company won in 2011.

Donald Trump owns a 9 percent stake in the firm, but neither controls it nor has any involvement in it. He is suing the company to remove his name from the properties, which he says have fallen into disrepair and do not meet agreed-upon standards of quality and luxury.

If the Taj Mahal closes, Trump Entertainment would have no remaining properties and would presumably go out of business.

Look at the picture. If they had spent the money on slot machines paying off better then other casinos they would have brought the people in by word of mouth and those people don't give a rip how fancy the place is as long as it's clean and the machines pay off they will come. Simple business 101.



Atlantic City's Revel starts closing after 2 years
By WAYNE PARRY, Associated Press
Published: Sep 1, 2014 at 11:39 AM PDT



Atlantic City's Revel starts closing after 2 years
People walk on The Boardwalk past the closing Revel Casino Hotel, Monday, Sept. 1, 2014, in Atlantic City, N.J.



ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) - The most spectacular and costly failure in Atlantic City's 36-year history of casino gambling began to play out Monday when the $2.4 billion Revel Casino Hotel emptied its hotel.

Its casino will close early Tuesday morning.

Revel is shutting down a little over two years after opening with high hopes of revitalizing Atlantic City's struggling gambling market. But mired in its second bankruptcy in two years, Revel has been unable to find anyone willing to buy the property and keep it open as a casino. It has never turned a profit.

"It's kind of sad," said Andrew Tannenbaum of Edison, who has stayed at Revel a dozen times in the past year. "Compared to other casinos, this was a lot nicer. There wasn't the riff-raff here. But I think they overspent, went overboard and got in over their heads. When the Borgata opened, that should have been the last of the high-end casinos for Atlantic City."

Revel will be the second of three Atlantic City casinos to close in a two-week span. The Showboat Casino Hotel closed its doors Sunday, and Trump Plaza is closing Sept. 16.

So what killed Revel?

Analysts and competitors say it was hampered by bad business decisions and a fundamental misunderstanding of the Atlantic City casino customer.

"The timing of it could not have been worse," said Mark Juliano, president of Sands Bethlehem in Pennsylvania and the former CEO of Trump Entertainment Resorts in Atlantic City. "The financial climate while Revel was developing and when it opened were completely different."

Revel officials declined to comment.

The casino broke ground just before the Great Recession. It ran out of money halfway through construction and had to drop its plans for a second hotel tower while scrambling for the remaining $1 billion or so it needed to finish the project. When it opened in April 2012, it was so laden with debt that it couldn't bring in enough revenue to cover it.

The idea behind Revel was to open a totally different resort, a seaside pleasure palace that just happened to have a casino as one of its features. That included Atlantic City's only total smoking ban, which alienated many gamblers; the lack of a buffet and daily bus trips to and from the casino; and the absence of a players' club. By the time those decisions were reversed, it was already too late. High room and restaurant prices hurt, too.

"If there had been a range of new attractions and potential customers with enough discretionary income, I think that Atlantic City could have absorbed the new capacity," said David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. "That's certainly what happened with Borgata more than 10 years ago. But the market that Revel foresaw for its property just didn't materialize, partially because of the growing perception that the city wasn't ready for that kind of customer. At the same time, Revel didn't have a plan to successfully market to the traditional Atlantic City customer."

It also started at a huge disadvantage by not having a pre-existing database of gamblers to solicit, in the way that casinos owned by nationwide companies like Caesars Entertainment or Tropicana Entertainment can.

Customers found Revel's design off-putting as well, said Joe Lupo, senior vice president of the Borgata, whose upscale market Revel appeared to target. Entering from the Boardwalk, they had to take a vertiginous escalator up four flights to reach the casino floor. Once there, the property wound around a circular pattern instead of the linear layout of most other casinos.

"Revel struggled with the execution of plans to develop their market, as well as with their design and just a basic understanding of the Atlantic City visitor," he said.

Revel still hopes to find a buyer for the property after it has ceased to operate as a casino.

$21,000 Falls off Money Truck After Casino Pickup
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — Aug 19, 2014, 8:55 PM ET
Associated Press


Nearly $21,000 is missing after the cash fell from the roof of an armored truck that had picked it up from a soon-to-be-closed Atlantic City casino.

GardaWorld armored car services picked up the cash at Revel on Aug. 6.

An incident report obtained by The Press of Atlantic City ( http://bit.ly/VDsBgj ) says surveillance video showed the bag holding the cash on the rear driver's side roof as the truck left Revel. The bag was still on the roof when the truck pulled away from nearby Resorts Casino Hotel.

It's not clear where the bag fell off.

GardaWorld spokesman Joe Gavaghan says the company is investigating and cooperating with law enforcement.

Revel will close its hotel on Sept. 1 and its casino on Sept. 2 because of financial problems.

———

Information from: The Press of Atlantic City (N.J.), http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com

Atlantic City's Revel Casino to close in September
By WAYNE PARRY, Associated Press
Published: Aug 12, 2014 at 10:08 AM PDT



ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) - Atlantic City's newest casino is shutting its doors just over two years after opening amid high hopes of turning around the crumbling seaside resort's gambling market.

Revel Casino Hotel will shut down next month after failing to find a buyer in bankruptcy court, company officials announced Tuesday

The company said the $2.4 billion casino will close its doors on Sept. 10. It has never turned a profit.

The closure will mean the loss of more than 3,100 jobs.

"We regret the impact this decision has on our Revel employees who have worked so hard to maximize the potential of the property," Revel said in a statement Tuesday morning. "We thank them for their professionalism and dedication; however we are faced with several unavoidable circumstances.

"Despite the effort to improve the financial performance of Revel, it has not proven to be enough to put the property on a stable financial footing," the company wrote.

The company said its situation was compounded by a "considerable non-controllable expense structure" that financially burdened the property. It also said challenges arose in attempts to sell Revel.

The company said it cannot avoid "an orderly wind-down of the business at this time."

Revel said it still hopes to find a buyer through the bankruptcy process. But it acknowledged that if that happened, it would be after the facility had already shut down.

"We hope that Revel can be a successful and vital component of Atlantic City under a proper ownership and reorganized expense structure," the company said. "We will continue to endeavor toward a placement with such an owner, but there can be no assurance as to the outcome of the pending bankruptcy process."

The casino was due to be sold at a bankruptcy court auction last week, but that was postponed until Thursday to allow casino officials to study bids that were received. But after Revel's board met on Monday, the decision was made to shutter the iconic glass-covered casino at the north end of the Boardwalk.

Revel opened in April 2012 as the first new casino in Atlantic City since the Borgata opened nine years earlier, and carried great hopes for many that it would be the catalyst to jolt what had been the nation's second-largest gambling market back to life. Atlantic City has since slipped to third place behind Nevada and Pennsylvania, whose casinos touched off the New Jersey resort town's revenue and employment plunge in 2007.

Since 2006, when the first Pennsylvania casino opened, Atlantic City's casino revenue has fallen from $5.2 billion to $2.86 billion last year.

Revel has ranked near the bottom of Atlantic City's casinos in terms of the amount of money won from gamblers since the day it opened.

Its original owners envisioned it as a luxury resort that just happened to have a casino, and eschewed many staples of casino culture, including a buffet and bus trips for day-trippers. But that strategy - as well as the only overall smoking ban in Atlantic City - turned off customers, and Revel filed for bankruptcy in 2013, a little over a year after opening.

That led to new ownership and a "Gamblers Wanted" promotional campaign to emphasize the company's new emphasis on its casino.

But despite some improvement, Revel's finances never recovered enough, and it filed for bankruptcy a second time in June, warning that it would close if a suitable buyer could not be found.

Revel's most recent Chapter 11 filing listed assets of $486.9 million and liabilities of $476.1 million.

It will be the second of four Atlantic City casinos to shut down this year as the Atlantic City gambling market continues to crumble.

The city started this year with 12 casinos. The Showboat will close on Aug. 31, and Trump Plaza is closing Sept. 16.

CNBC reporting Revel is toast

if no bidders by Sept. reducing Atlantic City's capacity by 25%.

The space is diluted, heck even my hometown of Porkopolis

has a Horseshoe.

Caesars says it will close Atlantic City's Showboat casino
By WAYNE PARRY, Associated Press
Published: Jun 27, 2014 at 9:39 AM PDT



ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) - Casino contraction hit Atlantic City for the second time this year, as the parent company of the Showboat Casino Hotel announced Friday it will close the Mardi Gras-themed casino on Aug. 31.

Caesars Entertainment told The Associated Press on Friday morning the company will shutter the poorest-performing of its four Atlantic City casinos.

CEO Gary Loveman said in a statement that the "difficult decision" is necessary to protect the rest of its business in Atlantic City, where it currently owns four of the 11 casinos.

"While we regret the impact that this decision will have on our Showboat associates, we believe this is a necessary step to help stabilize our business in Atlantic City and support the viability of our remaining operations in the vicinity," he said. "Since 2006, revenue in Atlantic City has declined by more than $3 billion and competition in the city has increased. The dynamic in Atlantic City has led us to the difficult but necessary decision to close Showboat.

"We sincerely appreciate the service, dedication and professionalism shown by the employees of the Showboat over the years to provide our customers with incredible experiences," he said.

The closing will also shutter the casino's House Of Blues, one of New Jersey's most popular concert venues.

It will be the second casino to close this year in the nation's third-largest gambling market. The Atlantic Club closed in January, taken down in a bankruptcy sale by Caesars Entertainment and Tropicana Entertainment, who stripped it for parts and closed it to reduce competition.

And, Revel Casino Hotel has warned it might shut down if a buyer can't be found in bankruptcy court.

Bob McDevitt, president of Local 54 of the Unite-HERE casino workers' union, said he planned to spend the next few days talking with Showboat employees.

"I'm heartbroken and angry, too angry to respond in an effective way," he said.

Thursday night, when he revealed that Caesars planned to issue warning notices to Showboat workers that the casino might close, McDevitt called the company's threat to close a profitable casino "a criminal act."

For the first quarter of this year, the Showboat posted a gross operating profit of nearly $2 million. But that was down from a profit of nearly $8.5 million in the first quarter of 2013.

So far this year, the Showboat has taken in $66.2 million from gamblers, ranking it seventh out of Atlantic City's 11 casinos. That represents a decline of nearly 16 percent from the same period in 2013.

Caesars said the Showboat will remain fully operational until Aug. 31. Guests with reservations after that date will be assisted in finding new accommodations, Loveman said.

He also said the company will work with the casino's more than 2,100 workers to help them find jobs with other casinos Caesars Entertainment owns in New Jersey and elsewhere.

In addition to the Showboat, Caesars Entertainment owns Harrah's Resort Atlantic City, which ranks second to the Borgata in the amount of money won from gamblers each month, Caesars Atlantic City, and Bally's Atlantic City. It also owns a casino in neighboring Pennsylvania.

Perhaps sensitive to criticism over the shutdown, Loveman said Caesars remains the largest casino owner in Atlantic City and is working to improve the resort.

"Caesars is developing a new, state-of-the-art meetings facility adjacent to Harrah's Atlantic City, and is pursuing other opportunities to stimulate new visitation and growth, including recently overhauling the gaming floor at Bally's and investing in new dining options throughout the company's Atlantic City footprint," Loveman said.

The company has not yet determined what will become of the Showboat property and land at the northern end of the Boardwalk, next to Revel.

Judge: Casino not liable in unshuffled cards case
By WAYNE PARRY, Associated Press
| June 13, 2014 | Updated: June 13, 2014 5:00pm




ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — An Atlantic City casino does not have to pay $1.5 million won by a group of gamblers who realized the cards had not been shuffled, and can move to recover more than $500,000 it already paid them, a judge ruled Friday.

Superior Court judge James Isman ruled that because the cards had been unshuffled, that made the game of mini-baccarat in April 2012 illegal under state casino rules.

"We were 100% vindicated by Judge Isman's ruling," the Golden Nugget said in a statement.

A lawyer for several of the defendants declined to comment.

Fourteen players racked up $1.5 million in winnings over 41 straight hands when they realized the cards were coming out in a specific pattern. Many of them quickly upped their bets from $10 a hand to $5,000.

The problem was that a Kansas City playing card manufacturer that sold decks of cards guaranteed to have been pre-shuffled did not do so in this case. The company, Gemaco, admitted in court it had erred in providing cards to the casino. A Golden Nugget lawyer said a confidentiality agreement it had reached with the card company prevented him from commenting on the lawsuit's disposition.

The casino sued the 14 gamblers for the return of money paid out and seeking to be absolved of having to redeem the outstanding chips. The players countersued, alleging, among other things, that the casino illegally detained them.

The illegal detention claim remains pending.

A preliminary court ruling two years ago went against the casino, which said it would appeal. But hours later, owner Tilman Fertitta overrode his lawyers and said the casino would pay the remainder of the disputed winnings. That deal fell apart days later when some of the gamblers refused to dismiss their claims against the Golden Nugget.

"Remarkably, and despite this generous proposal, the gamblers and their lawyers steadfastly refused, and selfishly wanted more damages than just the gambling winnings," the casino said in its statement. "Instead of walking away with over a $1.5 million win, the gamblers must now return all of their gambling chips to the Golden Nugget. There are obvious lessons to be learned by all sides as a result of this incident. Unfortunately for the gamblers, it cost them over $1.5 million."

In Friday's ruling, Isman dismissed a racketeering count against the casino.

___

Wayne Parry can be reached at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC

Borgata casino lawsuit: Gambler cheated, won $9.6 million
By WAYNE PARRY Associated Press
Published: Apr 11, 2014 at 7:34 PM PDT







FILE - In this July 15, 2009 file photo, Phil Ivey looks up during the World Series of Poker at the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Laura Rauch, File)




ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) - An Atlantic City casino is suing a big-time gambler, claiming he won $9.6 million in a card-cheating scheme in baccarat.

The Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against Phillip Ivey Jr., considered one of the best poker players in the world.

The lawsuit alleges Ivey and an associate exploited a defect in cards made by a Kansas City manufacturer that enabled them to sort and arrange good cards in baccarat. The technique gave him an unfair advantage on four occasions between April and October 2012, the casino asserted in its lawsuit.

The casino claims the technique, called edge sorting, violates New Jersey casino gambling regulations. Its senior vice president, Joe Lupo, declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Ivey's lawyer declined to comment on Friday.

The lawsuit claims the cards, manufactured by Gemaco Inc., were defective in that the pattern on the back of them was not uniform. The cards have rows of small white circles designed to look like the tops of cut diamonds, but the Borgata claims some of them were only a half diamond or a quarter of one.

The company is also fighting a lawsuit from another Atlantic City casino, the Golden Nugget, claiming the firm provided unshuffled cards that led to gamblers beating the casino for $1.5 million. Gemaco did not respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit claims that Ivey and his companion instructed a dealer to flip cards in particular ways, depending on whether it was a desirable card in baccarat. The numbers 6, 7, 8 and 9 are considered good cards. Bad cards would be flipped in different directions, so that after several hands of cards, the good ones were arranged in a certain manner - with the irregular side of the card facing in a specific direction - that Ivey could spot when they came out of the dealer chute.

The lawsuit claims Ivey wanted the cards shuffled by an automatic shuffling machine, which would not alter the way each card was aligned.

A lawsuit filed in Britain's High Court by the Malaysia-based Genting Group, a major casino operator, makes a similar claim against Ivey. It alleges Ivey and an accomplice amassed almost $12 million by cheating at baccarat. In that case, Ivey has denied any misconduct.

Ivey has won nine World Series of Poker bracelets. He compares himself on his website to Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Muhammad Ali.

LOL!

Yes. I want my money back too! They distracted me with big breasted waitresses.

This will be an interesting case with a lot of Casino's watching it. I hope they do follow up stories.

I'd love to see the video so then I'd be able to possibly say OK you were definitely smashed and by law they had to stop serving you and letting you play.

Without the video personally I say to bad but hey that's just my personal responsibility side of me coming out. LOL!






Gambler sues Vegas casino, says he lost $500,000 playing drunk
By HANNAH DREIER Associated Press
Published: Mar 5, 2014 at 5:15 PM PST



LAS VEGAS (AP) - A businessman who lost $500,000 on table games at a Las Vegas casino on Super Bowl weekend is arguing that he shouldn't have to pay because he was blackout drunk.

Southern California gambler Mark Johnston, 52, is suing the Downtown Grand for loaning him money and serving him drinks when he was visibly intoxicated.

Nevada law bars casinos from allowing obviously drunk patrons to gamble and from serving them comped drinks.

Johnston's attorney, Sean Lyttle, says the Grand, which opened last November in the old part of Las Vegas, intends to pursue Johnston for trying to shirk his gambling debts. Johnston put a stop-payment order on the markers, or casino credits, the Grand issued, and is also seeking damages from the Grand for sullying his name.

Johnston says he was thoroughly drunk during the hours he spent playing pai gow and blackjack at the Grand. His legal team plans to rely on eyewitness testimony and surveillance video to prove that he was visibly intoxicated.

Johnston lives in Ventura and made his fortune in car dealership and real estate ventures.

The Grand issued a statement saying it does not comment on pending litigation.

The state Gaming Control Board is investigating.

"It's certainly an extraordinary case. This is not a story that I've ever heard before, where someone was blackout intoxicated where they couldn't read their cards, and yet a casino continued to serve them drinks and issue them more markers," Lyttle said. "It's a very heavy-handed and unusual approach that we haven't seen in this town in a long time."

Johnston arrived in Las Vegas with the woman he was dating on the Thursday before the Super Bowl. He drank in the limousine from the Las Vegas airport to the Grand, drank more during dinner with friends, and then says he blacked out.

The suit alleges that the Grand comped him dozens of drinks while he gambled away hundreds of thousands of dollars, finally sleeping off his drunkenness on that Saturday, which was Feb, 1. Johnston says he didn't learn how much he had lost until the next day.

Super Bowl fans bet record $119M at Nevada casinos
By HANNAH DREIER, Associated Press
Published: Feb 3, 2014 at 4:06 PM PST



LAS VEGAS (AP) — Sports fans bet a record $119.4 million at Nevada casinos on the Super Bowl.

Unaudited tallies showed sportsbooks made an unprecedented profit of $19.7 million on the action, the Gaming Control Board said. That's more than the past three Super Bowl wins combined.

The Denver Broncos started out as a 2.5-point favorite, but the Seattle Seahawks won 43-8.

Oddsmakers said Peyton Manning fans drove the unprecedented handle, flooding Las Vegas and northern Nevada with wagers on the favored team and its veteran quarterback, who was named the NFL's Most Valuable Player for the 2013 season the day before the game. Many believed Manning was primed for a big game after his record-setting year.

The previous record for the amount of bets placed, or the handle, was set last year, when gamblers wagered $98.9 million on the Super Bowl between the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers.

The last record for casino hold, or profit, was set in 2005, when sportsbooks won $15.4 million.

Some oddsmakers said they lost out on proposition bets, including whether a safety would be the first score of the game. Casinos paid out at 8-to-1 for the safety. Fans who bet that the first score would be on a safety cashed in at 60-to-1.

Still, casinos retained an average of 16.5 percent of the millions wagered, far more than the average hold during the past decade.

The 51 points scored in New Jersey exceeded the over/under of 47.5.

Nevada sportsbooks have lost only twice on the Super Bowl in the past 20 years, most recently in 2008, when the New York Giants beat the New England Patriots, costing casinos a record $2.6 million.

Meanwhile, sports betting has become increasingly popular, with the handle increasing during nine of the past 10 years in Nevada. Football is consistently the most popular sport to put money on, and the Super Bowl is the most important day of a sportsbook's year.

Oddsmakers released numbers for next year's Super Bowl before fans even had time to stumble back to their hotel rooms Sunday night.

Like the national anthem at 2:25? There's a bet for that
By Associated Press
Published: Jan 30, 2014 at 5:02 PM PST



NEW YORK (AP) - The Chicago Bears were such big favorites over the New England Patriots in the 1986 Super Bowl that bettors were reluctant to put their money on either team.

But many of them couldn't wait to place a few bucks on the chance Bears coach Mike Ditka might give William "The Refrigerator" Perry the ball on short yardage and let him try to score a touchdown.

Ditka did just that, and Perry made the move pay off. The defensive lineman scored a touchdown in the third quarter of a 46-10 blowout, and bettors who got up to 40-1 odds on the proposition bet scored along with him.

"That was the prop that put everybody on the map," Jimmy Vaccaro said. "We lost $40,000 on one bet and the guy across the street blew so much he wanted to go upstairs and jump off the roof."

Linemen still score touchdowns only rarely. But betting on the so-called "props" put up by Las Vegas sports books has become big.

At Vaccaro's South Point hotel sports book, gamblers can bet on some 300 different proposition bets, from who will win the opening coin toss to the 1,000-1 odds on either the Denver Broncos or Seattle Seahawks scoring a touchdown in the big game.

Find an offshore book to wager with, and the props become even more exotic. At the Bovada website, bettors can wager on things as diverse as how many times Peyton Manning will say "Omaha" during the game (over/under 27 1/2) to how long it will take Renee Fleming to sing the national anthem (2:25 is the book's guess).

"It's a higher number than we've offered in the past," said Bovada oddsmaker Pat Morrow. "But after seeing some of her performances we figured as an opera singer she would have a higher tendency of drawing out a note. We had to watch a lot of YouTube to make that line."

Prop bets have become a major part of Super Bowl wagering in recent years, making up some 30 to 40 percent of all betting. They may be even bigger this year as casual gamblers look for something to keep their interest in the game other than the 2½-point spread currently favoring the Broncos.

Last year, a record $98.9 million was bet legally on the game in Nevada, with untold millions more with illegal bookies and sports books that operate outside the U.S.

At the LVH sports book, bettors can bet on which coach will use the challenge flag first (11-10 odds on both Pete Carroll and John Fox) to most yards receiving between Doug Baldwin and Wes Welker (minus 15.5 yards for Welker).

The bets that reach across two sports are always popular, with the number of points scored Sunday by Oklahoma City's Kevin Durant (plus 7.5) up against Manning's total pass attempts. Another offers birdies made by Tiger Woods in the fourth round of the Dubai Desert Classic (plus 0.5) against the number of receptions for Denver's Demaryius Thomas.

Vaccaro said betting across sports became popular after some books posted a line in 1996 on the amount of points Michael Jordan would score vs. the Phoenix Suns against the points scored by the Dallas Cowboys later that day against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Jordan dropped 31 on the Suns, while the Cowboys won 27-17, and a lot of bettors cashed tickets.

"We actually wrote well over $100,000 on that prop," Vaccaro said. "All I know is I lost $25,000 on one bet."

We could all place bets on how long it takes a post to load on the hub. LOLOLOL!!!

Football betting more popular than ever in Vegas
By HANNAH DREIER, Associated Press
Updated 12:06 pm, Monday, January 27, 2014



LAS VEGAS (AP) — With the Super Bowl approaching, fans are talking trash, buying snacks, and, more than ever, placing bets.

Fans bet an unprecedented $99 million on the Super Bowl last year, and the Nevada gambling industry expects to break the record again Sunday, barring a snowstorm. Nevada sports books collected record amounts of football wagers during the tail end of 2013.

All of this is changing the role of the humble sports book, which casinos used to see as a low-profit perk that kept customers from going next door.

"It's not just an amenity anymore; it's not just icing on the cake, it's part of the meal," said Jay Kornegay, who runs the LVH sports book. "We've seen crowds like we've never seen before."

Professional gamblers and odds makers alike attribute the rise in wagering to the increase in televised games, and the increasing ubiquity of sports analysis.

Amateur gamblers are more likely to bet on a game they can watch, because the emotional journey is part of the fun.

The proliferation of sports podcasts, blogs and websites, as well as the debates that rage on social media, have all made fans feel more educated and confident in their opinions, according to Kornegay, who spent last week furiously working with four staffers to figure out hyper-specific data points like the number of receptions Denver running back Knowshon Moreno is likely to have.

Proposition wagers, in which gamblers bet on elements of the game aside from the final score, account for as much as 60 percent of Super Bowl bets in Nevada.

Johnny Avello, who runs the luxurious sports book at Wynn, where the chairs are made of fine leather and the carpet is thick enough to pass out on, believes the stigma is also falling away from the pastime.

Avello, who speaks with a Goodfellas-type Brooklyn accent even though he grew up in upstate New York, says this is the biggest change he's seen in the past decades.

"Even Al Michaels on (Sunday) Night Football will say, 'Wow, they covered the spread,'" he said, grinning in disbelief.

When casinos figure out how to attract fantasy sports players to the Strip, profits may soar even farther.

Some of this growth was hidden by the recession. People scale back on gambling before other discretionary spending, and the handle— the total amount of money wagered — plummeted in 2009. It was the only fiscal year of the past ten that saw a decline in sports betting.

Oddsmakers believe the previous Super Bowl record, set in 2006, would have been upended years before 2013 if not for the hard times.

Last fall, gamblers set records in September, October and November. In November, the last month for which statistics have been released, sports books handled $490 million in wagers.

On Sunday, the Super Bowl will be played outdoors at a site with cold weather for the first time, and the industry is worried that snow could throw off the handle when the Seahawks meet the Broncos, favored to win by 2.5 points, in New Jersey. Casual gamblers might be spooked, unable to predict how the weather would affect their favored team.

The surge in betting means that sports books are now expected to contribute to the bottom line.

So while casinos are throwing elaborate parties for Super Bowl weekend, selling table service and luxurious suites, don't expect to get so much as a free bottle of water at the sports book. At Wynn, a customer has to bet $150 before the book will think about giving out a drink ticket.

Books remain less profitable per square foot than table games, where the house always wins. An oddsmaker's goal is to neither win nor lose on the games, but to get equal money coming in on both sides — and clean up in commissions.

This commission, also known as the vigorish or juice, amounts to about 4.5 percent of the handle at most Strip sports books.

Don't start wringing your hands for the sports books, though. They've only lost twice on the Super Bowl in the past 20 years.

And they have another advantage. While betting is becoming more popular, the physical books are becoming smaller. That's in large part because of the demise of one sport in particular: horse racing.

In days past, racing aficionados would hang around the books and watch contests from morning till night, with new ones starting every four minutes.

For the past decade, football has represented nearly half of the sports book handle, with most gamblers buying their tickets well ahead of the games.

"If you walk in to any sports book, 99 percent of the time the place is mostly empty," said RJ Bell of Las Vegas-based Pregame.com.

Anjelko Markobis, 22, is one of the rare young men who still like to hang out in that smoky, mahogany environment. He spent a recent afternoon at the Wynn sports book. He switched between watching a soccer game he had $100 riding on and monitoring the shifting Super Bowl line on a huge LED screen, bantering with his friends about whether he should have placed his bet when it was still at 1.5.

Markobis used to spend his free time with Blackjack, but now focuses on sports betting, placing three major bets a week.

"It's more entertaining," he said, "to watch a game than sit at a table."

AC casino hopes for quick end to fake-chips probe
By Associated Press
Published: Jan 18, 2014 at 8:12 AM PST




ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) - An Atlantic City casino where someone may have used fake chips at a poker tournament hopes to learn on Saturday whether the suspended games should be allowed to continue.

The first event of the Borgata Winter Poker Open was suspended Friday for 24 hours by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement after suspicions about the games arose.

"The Division of Gaming Enforcement and New Jersey State Police are aware of a situation involving counterfeit chips," said Lisa Spengler a spokeswoman for the gaming enforcement division. "The matter is currently under investigation." She declined further comment.

Joe Lupo, senior vice president at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, said more than 50 other tournament events are not affected and will be played as scheduled. He said he expects the investigation to be completed by Saturday at noon.

"The integrity of our games and our operations is of the utmost importance to us," he told The Associated Press. "We are determined to investigate this incident thoroughly, and will work with law enforcement to prosecute any illegal activity to the fullest extent of the law in the event any findings are discovered."

Lupo and New Jersey State Police said no one had been arrested or taken into custody as of Friday night. Lupo said the casino regretted "any inconvenience or concern this causes our players."

"Within the next 24 hours, we believe we will have enough information to determine whether we can resume play, or must take another course of action," he said.

The event under scrutiny is the tournament's Big Stack, No Limit Hold 'Em event. It began on Tuesday and had a $560 buy-in. There were 27 people remaining in the contest when play was suspended.

Lupo said concerns arose during play Thursday night. The tournament was scheduled to resume at noon on Friday, but he said it was suspended before that could happen. He would not say what raised concerns about the integrity of the game, saying it was part of the ongoing investigation.

The 18-day series of tournaments is a regular feature at the Borgata. The casino's website said the championship event, which starts Sunday, Jan. 26., would include a $3 million prize guarantee.

The investigation does not involve Internet gambling, which began late last year and which the Borgata has dominated in the early going.

Victim of casino glut, N.J.'s Atlantic Club closes
By WAYNE PARRY, Associated Press
Published: Jan 13, 2014 at 8:54 AM PST



ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) - New Jersey's Atlantic Club Casino Hotel shut down early Monday morning, the victim of a glut of casinos in the northeastern U.S.

Once Atlantic City's top-earning casino, where then-owner Steve Wynn clowned with Frank Sinatra in commercials, bringing the legendary singer an armful of fresh towels, the Atlantic Club went out with a whimper. In the hours before the 12:01 a.m. closing, its restaurants and bars had all shut down, and many gamblers and employees had already left.

A few die-hards that stayed on the casino floor until the end, counting down its final five seconds as dealers who were suddenly unemployed burst into tears and hugged each other. Within moments, casino staff began stacking and counting chips and preparing to remove cash boxes from the casino floor.

"Where was our support?" asked Kathy Buonasorte, a cocktail server for 28 of the casino's 33 years. "They all left us. No politician helped us. No one came to save us."

On the sidewalk outside the casino, she hugged fellow server Beth DeLuccia, who she described as the first friend she made at the casino. Nearby, server Maureen Cohen had just finished her final shift.

"I served my last drink at 4 this afternoon," she said. "It was incredibly sad. Can you believe how pathetic it's going to be to come over (a nearby) bridge and see a closed casino?" She said people who used to work at the casino but hadn't been there for 20 years came back Sunday to say goodbye.

The employees were among the 1,600 workers who lost their jobs. By 9 a.m., hundreds of them had lined up in a long hallway of a union hall, hoping to score a $20 supermarket gift card and to secure help in filling out unemployment paperwork.

"It's a sad day," said David Rebuck, director of the state Division of Gaming Enforcement, who watched the shutdown process begin right after midnight. Dealers and security personnel set to work counting the take from the casino's final day. Overnight, workers were to read the meter on each of the hundreds of slot machines, empty the cash containers and secure them in the counting room. At some point on Monday, armored cars were to remove the remaining cash.

The hotel's safe deposit boxes had been emptied hours before the shutdown as the final hotel guests checked out, and front-desk cashier drawers were already removed, leaving gaping holes.

By Wednesday, crews from the Tropicana, one of two rival casinos who bought the Atlantic Club intending to put it out of business, will begin removing the slot machines and table games. The casino floor will be bare by the end of the month, Rebuck said.

Guests helped themselves to souvenirs as well, digging up or ripping out potted plants and even six-foot-tall trees from planters on their way out the door.

It was the first casino closure in Atlantic City since the Sands shut down in 2006. But that was intended to make way for a bigger, better casino that Pinnacle Entertainment planned, but never actually built.

Struggling for years against newer, bigger casinos in Atlantic City and in neighboring states, the Atlantic Club sought a buyer for the last few years but was unable to attract one. It filed for bankruptcy in November and was sold for a combined $23.4 million just before Christmas to Tropicana Entertainment and Caesars Entertainment. Tropicana bought the customer lists in addition to the table games and slot machines while Caesars bought the 801-room hotel, for which it has no immediate plans.

The Atlantic Club opened in December 1980 as the Golden Nugget, owned at the time by casino magnate Steve Wynn. Over the years, as the Atlantic City casino market expanded, the casino changed hands several times and went through a handful of names: The Grand, Bally's Grand, the Atlantic City Hilton, ACH and finally the Atlantic Club.

As newer casinos opened with 2,000 rooms and hot nightclubs, pools and spas, it was no longer so special. It lost market share to its local competitors, and the decline was hastened when the first Pennsylvania casino opened in 2006.

The Atlantic Club was more dependent than the others on convenience gamblers looking to play for a few hours, then drive or ride the bus back home. It struggled further as many of its best customers forsook it for gambling halls closer to their houses.

Its owners, Colony Capital LLC, a Los Angeles hedge fund, paid more than a half billion dollars for it in 2005.

It searched in vain for a purchaser for the past three years, before inking a deal in December 2012 to sell itself to the PokerStars website for $15 million. But that deal fell apart within months because of concerns over whether the website's management could qualify for a casino license in New Jersey amid an unresolved indictment against the company's founder.

Dealer Anthony Beauford, wearing a red Atlanta Falcons Michael Vick football jersey on his last day of work, hugged friends and well-wishers before tallying the chips on his table as they bade him goodbye.

"Don't say goodbye," he admonished them. "Just say, "See ya.' Cause I hope I will someday."

Nevada casinos lose $1.3 billion
Associated Press


CARSON CITY, Nev. — Nevada’s largest casinos suffered a combined net loss of $1.35 billion in 2013, marking the fifth year of losses since the Great Recession began.
But there was some good news in the annual abstract report released Friday by the state Gaming Control Board. The casinos’ combined revenue of $23 billion was up $99.2 million from 2012, representing a third straight year that revenue has increased.
Total revenue is the money patrons spent on gambling, rooms, food, beverage and entertainment.
While the casinos’ losses grew more than 11 percent from 2012, analysts say much of that it tied to a jump in expenses.
The last time Nevada’s biggest casinos posted a net profit was 2008.
The report looks at casinos that gross more than $1 million in gambling revenue.
The 263 casinos included in the report paid $804 million in gambling taxes and fees.

Jersey casinos to launch Internet gambling

Associated Press
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- New Jersey residents and visitors will be able to start gambling online on Nov. 26, after a five-day trial period to make sure the systems operated by the city's 12 casinos work properly.

The state Gaming Enforcement Division told The Associated Press on Friday that Atlantic City's casinos may begin a "soft play" period on Nov. 21 for invited guests. If all goes well, the casinos can begin full Internet gambling at 9 a.m. EDT on Nov. 26.

Gamblers would have to be physically located within New Jersey's boundaries to play. New Jersey will be the third state in the nation to offer online gambling, along with Nevada and Delaware.

"I think this is going to be a significant revenue stream," said Robert Griffin, CEO of Trump Entertainment Resorts, which operates two casinos here. "It has the potential to make up 20 percent of our revenue."

He said state regulators have not yet explained how the guests who are invited to participate in the trial period are to be selected, but said it would have to be a significant enough number to test the system's capabilities.

Online gambling is designed to give the struggling casinos new revenue, though some worry the in-person business will simply migrate to computers, leading to casino job losses. Atlantic City's casino revenue has plunged from a high of $5.2 billion in 2006 to a little more than $3 billion last year and could dip below that mark by the end of this year. Thousands of casino jobs have been lost already as many gamblers choose options closer to their homes in Pennsylvania, New York, and Maryland.

Regulations governing online gambling will take effect Oct. 21.

Nine of the city's 12 casinos have acknowledged lining up partners for Internet gambling, and a 10th is widely rumored to have selected a partner, as well.

The Tropicana Casino and Resort has joined with Gamesys Limited, which runs the jackpotjoy.com website. The four casinos owned by Caesars Entertainment -- Caesars Atlantic City, Bally's Atlantic City, Harrah's Resorts Atlantic City and the Showboat Casino Hotel -- are partnering with 888 Holdings.

The Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa is partnering with bwin.party for online gambling.

Resorts Casino Hotel has joined with PokerStars, the world's largest poker website, which had tried to buy the Atlantic Club earlier this year before the deal fell apart.

The Taj Mahal Casino Resort chose Ultimate Gaming, which began offering Internet gambling in Nevada earlier this year. Trump Plaza is widely reported by industry publications to have chosen Betfair, the British online gambling firm, although neither the casino nor the company would comment.

The Golden Nugget Atlantic City is offering its own brand of Internet gambling using Bally Technologies.

Revel Casino Hotel and The Atlantic Club Casino Hotel have not divulged their online gambling plans.

© 2013 The Daily Herald Co., Everett, WA