Columnist Jeff Haney: Books post a comeback in baseball wagering

Wednesday, June 21, 2000 | 10:10 a.m.

Jeff Haney's sports betting column appears Wednesday. Reach him at 259-4041 or haney@vegas.com

Las Vegas sports books marked the opening of this year's baseball season with an ominous warning.

If bettors continued to hammer the casinos the way they did for much of the 1999 season, sports book directors said, they would be forced to change the structure of baseball betting.

Instead of dealing the traditional 10-cent line, they threatened to switch to a 20-cent line, which is less advantageous to bettors.

(For example: A game with a 10-cent, or dime, line and a minus 140 favorite would offer plus 130 on the underdog. With a 20-cent line, the same underdog would pay only 120.)

While no Las Vegas books opened the season with a 20-cent baseball line, a "wait-and-see" approach was adopted by some.

But now, with 40 percent of the baseball season over -- nothing has changed.

Books that began the year with a dime line are still dealing a dime line. The few that started with a 15-cent line haven't budged either. The only 20-cent lines are offshore.

Perhaps this should lead gamblers to draw one conclusion about Las Vegas sports books:

In 2000, baseball has been very, very good to them.

"This has been one of our best (baseball) seasons of the last few years," said Marc Nelson, sports book director at the Fiesta hotel-casino, as he literally knocked on wood. "We are getting good action, and we have been doing very well."

That performance in baseball betting stands in sharp contrast to last year's, Nelson said.

"We were in the red for a large part of the season last year," Nelson said. "We ended up in the black, but only slightly, and we needed a strong finish to do it. There were weeks (last year) where it seemed the only ones picking winners were the (bettors)."

The Fiesta deals a 10-cent line, breaking it to 15 cents at approximately minus 165 (takeback plus 150) -- a structure that savvy baseball bettors consider quite reasonable.

The Las Vegas Club downtown, meanwhile, offers a dime line all the way to minus 200 -- which has attracted some new customers along with a bit of sharp action this season, according to sports book supervisor Ryan Dickey.

"We are certainly holding our own in baseball," Dickey said, "although we might not be doing as well as some other properties, because we're seeing a lot of smart players in here.

"As with any sport, there are a few people who are able to beat it consistently, and a lot of others who bang their heads against the wall trying to beat it."

Tighter baseball odds in 2000 have apparently aided the books' reversal of fortune. Absent this year are the monster one-way swings of 65 cents to a dollar that characterized the 1999 season.

In one notorious game last summer, the Braves were bet from a moderate favorite to a huge favorite in a game Greg Maddux went on to win -- with little or no buyback on the underdog.

"That was a very strange game," Dickey recalled. "I think everyone and their brother and their brother's dog was betting Maddux in that game.

"We've seen nothing at all anywhere near that wild in the lines this season."

And while summertime is the slow season in Las Vegas sports books, Dickey said the Las Vegas Club is "holding its own" attracting customers as well.

One reason is the book's unique "two-run line," a variation of the traditional 1 1/2-run line. Since 1981, the Las Vegas Club has given bettors the opportunity to take or lay two runs on a side, with odds adjusted appropriately.

"If anything, business has picked up in here (compared to previous summers)," Dickey said. "The popularity of the two-run line hasn't waned at all. We've done some advertising for that and the dime line, and we've had a decent response. We're seeing a lot of new faces."

In one sound bite, McCain discusses his efforts to persuade newspaper editors to stop publishing the point spread on games.

That, of course, is a laughably quaint notion.

Any person, anywhere in the United States, with a serious interest in sports betting can subscribe to one of several online services that provide up-to-the-second lines from dozens of sports books in Nevada, the Caribbean, Europe, Australia, Mexico, etc.

Millions of other recreational bettors enjoy free access to those same lines on the Internet, albeit with a delay of 30 minutes or so. Local newspapers' role in the dissemination of daily lines is minimal by comparison.

It's just more evidence -- as if more were needed -- that the bill's backers lack a fundamental understanding of how sports betting works.

The program premiered June 12 and will air again at 1:30 p.m. Saturday.