Jeff Haney shares readers’ opinions on sports books

Monday, Aug. 27, 2007 | 7:13 a.m.

My Aug. 13 column, which played off the NBA betting scandal by detailing the challenges of getting down significant money on basketball games at some Las Vegas sports books in the modern, corporate age, struck a nerve with many readers.

The subject lines of some e-mail responses - which included "Crooked Gamers" and "Casino Greed" - might have been a bit over the top, but you have the admire the passion and spirit of the writers.

Those are necessary traits in a competitive arena such as sports betting, which many gamblers see as a sort of "mano a mano" duel against the oddsmaker with their bankroll at stake.

Other, more restrained missives - such as one titled "Bravo" - agreed with the column's premise: For big bettors, professional gamblers and the like, running into the maximum betting limits at sports books is just an occupational hazard, part of the game. But when little guys and nobodies like me find themselves restricted to laughably small limits at the sports books, it's time to rethink the role and the place of legal sports betting in Las Vegas.

The best response came from Henderson's Kelso Sturgeon, who expressed his growing disenchantment in an in-depth and heartfelt letter.

Sturgeon wrote:

"I moved to Las Vegas 12 years ago so that I could bet sports legally, which seems to me to be the American way.

"I should have stayed in Baltimore, where there are no questions asked and the limits are as high as you can afford.

"The sports book situation in Las Vegas is a joke in the absolute meaning of that word. In fact, I do not think it is a stretch to say that almost all the good bookmakers in Las Vegas - most of them formerly employed by the casinos - can no longer get a job in this town because they actually believed in booking, they were good at it and they made substantial profits for their hotels.

"One must now be a well-dressed, bean-counting butt-kisser with just half a brain. Good at running the salad bar? Well, your next job will be the head bookmaker here.

"That Las Vegas books now refuse to accept the risk of taking any substantial bets on sports is a shouting symbol of management incompetence. Most bookmakers have little idea what they are doing and absolutely no understanding of the relationship of lines and odds to making a profit.

"Most of those who head Las Vegas sports books are simply incompetent and lack the expertise to make money. Yes, there may be two or three exceptions, but they better never have a bad day."

Sturgeon, co-author of the 1997 book "The Complete Guide to Football Betting," then recapped some of what he learned while researching a new book on the worldwide sports betting market, including operations in the islands and overseas that deal to an international betting clientele, before turning his acidic thoughts back to Las Vegas.

"Something is quite rotten in this town when you have to sign a guarantee-to-lose contract before you will be permitted to make a $500 bet. The ineptness by these sports betting hillbillies and yahoos who manage the books is insulting.

"There is no doubt in my mind the sports books in Las Vegas created the offshore betting industry and I find it more than a bit ironic that the state passed a law saying Nevadans could not bet across state lines, period - as in, we don't want your bets and we want to make sure you don't make them anywhere else.

The current state of affairs is simply unacceptable."

Sturgeon signed off, "Peace, and keep firing."