BETTORS, BOXERS, WISEGUYS AND WANNABES
by
Jeff Haney
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
Jeff Haney on Smashwords
Bettors, Boxers, Wiseguys and Wannabes
Copyright 2010 by Jeff Haney
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.
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Table of Contents
Lem Banker talks life, love and betting sports
Bidding farewell to a hockey handicapper who was always a favorite
Poker badass Tony Shelton has seen it all on the Vegas felt
Last call for Larry Grossman's betting show
Professional gambler Alan Boston: Living la vida 'pura'
Has Alan Boston finally reached the place where he can give up his obsession?
Nobody writes gambling as well as 'California Split' creator Joseph Walsh
Top sports book executive Art Manteris: For bettors, these are the good old days
Stardust memories: Looking back on a venerable sports book's glory days
Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman tees off on poker author
From the tables: Confessions of a card counter
Not on the Strip, but closer: Gambler's Book Shop turns down casino's offer
Class action: UNLV offers course on how to win at football betting
A basic strategy for tackling the NFL, or how to beat the football-picking chicken
Wondering why athletes and coaches don't leave bookmaking to pros
In baseball betting, dime is of the essence
All baseball lines are not created equal
Getting the most bang for your buck in future-book wagering
Las Vegas Hilton is best for baseball bettors
Bet here, not there, for reasonable house edge
Why sports picks for a fee rarely bring much return
Handicapping the odds on parlay cards around Las Vegas
Some ugly results in football handicapping contests
Sports-betting fund packs it in after successful run
A bettor's guide to sports books, accounting for odds and intangibles
Taking a hit: New blackjack odds further tilt advantage toward the house
Blackjack's 'Four Horsemen' ride again
MIT experts on the science of card counting
Just can't get a fair shake at Harrah's sports book
Criticism of sports book draws the attention of the Gaming Control Board
Refusal to honor an expired betting ticket gives sports book a black eye
This misleading Las Vegas gambling claim was a whopper
Poker decent, blackjack lousy at new Hooters
Art gallery exhibit features some legendary poker players
Cassius Coolidge's lovable dogs playing poker
Betting lines or not, Las Vegas does not need the XFL
Phil Laak: Iconoclast of the professional poker world
Peter Eastgate becomes youngest World Series of Poker champ
World Series of Poker FAQ, 2009 edition
Radio station shouldn't allow scam artists on the air
Touts handicapped by outrageous claims ... and outrageous grammar
Bizarre play cost books much less than outside media reported
Correcting outside media reports on football, Super Bowl wagering
Books, bettors catch Kentucky Derby Fever
One for the ages: Corrales stops Castillo in thriller
Much respect to De La Hoya for speaking his mind, but this time he's wrong
Manny Pacquiao: A good guy and a 'bad' man
Las Vegas' Wayne McCullough: 'Boxing saved my life'
More than one villain and no real solution in boxing
Bittersweet science: Did Mayweather and De La Hoya save boxing?
Lamon Brewster is actually against unified heavyweight championship
Examining the prospect of an NBA team moving to Las Vegas
Odds on those oddities you won't see on the gridiron
Spring training talk underscores baseball's hypocrisy
Pointing out the NFL's hypocrisy in staging a game in England
Jack Kerouac's fantasy baseball obsession, Beat-style
2006 year in review: Disappearing gamblers to the closing of the Stardust
2007 year in review: Memorable high jinks, happenings and scandals
2008 year in review: Wit, wisdom in the highs and lows
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Lem Banker talks life, love and betting sports
If there's one person whose name is synonymous with sports betting in Las Vegas, it's Lem Banker, famous for his gambling prowess, his celebrity friends and his straight-shooting opinions. For this column, I spoke with Banker during a difficult period in his personal life. He told the story of his greatest upset victory -- and his greatest love.
On their first date, the gambler and the beauty queen went to the races at Monmouth Park on the Jersey shore.
Delores Vicario, who went by Debbie, was a model in New York's Garment District and a showgirl at the Riviera hotel in Havana.
Lester Banker, who went by Lem, was still a small-timer, though he would go on to become the most celebrated professional sports bettor in Las Vegas.
"My whole bankroll was about fifteen hundred bucks," Banker says. "But I gave her a hundred-dollar bill to take up to the window. We probably broke even or lost a couple of bucks at the track, then we had a nice Chinese dinner.
"She was beautiful, of course. There were plenty of guys chasing her. But she liked the excitement I could provide because I had a convertible, and, oh, those whitewall tires were a big deal. "
Banker, who has made a handsome living analyzing betting propositions, felt like an underdog, especially as a Jewish guy trying to win over a young woman from an old-fashioned Roman Catholic family.
"After a while, a friend of mine said to watch for Saturday night," Banker says. "If she goes with you on a date on Saturday night, that means she really likes you."
On the Saturday in question, Banker got into a fight outside a tavern. He had to crack a guy's jaw, a bully who looked like Richard Widmark, the film noir villain. Debbie heard about the fight.
"I wasn't worried, though," Banker says, laughing about the incident more than half a century later. "I thought it just might turn her on."
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The idea was to visit Lem Banker on the eve of his 53rd football season in Las Vegas. Talk about some old times. Hear tales about the bettors, boxers, wiseguys and wannabes Banker has known. Ask Banker for his take on current issues as well: the imminent expansion of legal sports betting beyond Nevada, the two big prizefights coming up in Las Vegas, the decimated economy in his beloved adopted home city.
Banker, a longtime fitness enthusiast who works out regularly at age 82, was amenable. He likes to lift weights, hit the heavy bag, then sit around solving the world's problems, or at least a couple of them.
It was clear Banker had something else on his mind this time, though.
Almost as soon as a visitor arrives at his home, Banker produces an album containing photos of Debbie, looking graceful and elegant as a young fashion model.
"Let me show you these," Banker says. "This is the girl I married."
This has been a tumultuous year, Banker says. Debbie Banker died in May, one month after the Bankers' 50th wedding anniversary.
They were married in Las Vegas on April 11, 1959.
He got the girl.
"It's tough without her, very tough," Banker says. "She was a wonderful, wonderful girl, and a good cook also. Me, I'm lost in the kitchen."
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For Lem Banker, sports betting and other facets of life in Las Vegas are naturally intertwined.
He finishes a story about how he brought the form of baseball betting known as the "run line" to Las Vegas. (Betting the run line allows gamblers to lay 1 1/2 runs with the favored team or take 1 1/2 runs with the underdog at adjusted odds.)
"Charles McNeil from Chicago invented it, but I made it famous in town here," Banker says.
In virtually the next breath, Banker says he not only brought the run line to town, but he also was instrumental in smashing racial barriers in Las Vegas.
Before he was married, Banker boasts, he enjoyed going out on the town socially with Eartha Kitt, who performed at the old El Rancho in the 1950s. They met at a health club Banker ran on the Strip.
"I used to teach her exercise," Banker says. "She took a real liking to me. One day she asked me to take her to see 'Li'l Abner' at the Riviera. I had 'Big Julie' Weintraub with me, and I told him, 'We'll go to the show with Eartha. ' "
Because Las Vegas was still largely segregated, the city's establishment didn't quite know what to make of it, Banker said.
"It was reported that Eartha Kitt was seen at the Riviera, at the 'Li'l Abner' show, with two big white bodyguards," Banker says, laughing.
It wasn't just Kitt's "great figure," as Banker puts it in an understatement, that he found attractive. He also respected Kitt for her outspoken support of civil rights.
"That's the way I am," Banker says. "I always give the underdog a shot."
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"My father loved boxing," Banker says, explaining his lifelong fascination with the sport. "He wanted me to become a fighter. I did a little boxing in the Army. I used to go to all the fights. Now I watch them on pay-per-view."
It's not surprising Banker plans to bet the underdog in the two major fights to take place in Las Vegas before the end of the year. He likes Juan Manuel Marquez against Floyd Mayweather Jr. next month, and Miguel Cotto against Manny Pacquiao in November.
Banker still bets sports daily, but he makes much smaller wagers than he did in his heyday. "I'm not playing to win, I'm playing not to lose," he cracks.
Some of the biggest bets in Banker's career -- winners as well as losers -- have been on championship boxing matches. Banker avoids discussing specific dollar amounts, but does allow that when Gabe Kaplan saw the figure on his betting ticket on Larry Holmes against Muhammad Ali in 1980, Kaplan's eyes bulged out of his head.
"Kaplan was right in back of me in line at Caesars Palace," Banker says. "He said, 'You like Holmes that much?' I told him it was the best bet in the last 10 years."
Banker was sitting ringside before the Holmes-Ali fight when Kentucky Gov. John Y. Brown, attending with his wife, Phyllis George, asked Banker which fighter he liked.
"I say I love Holmes. And all of a sudden I notice a beautiful girl with a nice outfit on giving me a dirty look. It's Veronica, Ali's wife. Real quickly I say to her, 'Oh, I mean Ali. I love Ali!' "
Holmes won handily, but Banker couldn't stop thinking about his pre-fight faux pas.
"I knew them all," Banker says. "Rocky Marciano, Joe Louis, Sonny Liston."
Banker recalls going to Harlem with Joe Louis to watch Nipsey Russell perform and seeing Louis mobbed by fans who wanted to shake his hand and buy him drinks.
"He was the biggest hero you could imagine," Banker says. "When I was a kid I used to listen to his fights on the radio with my father. My father would have loved to have known I became friends with him later on."
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On Monday, Banker made a wager on the Miami Dolphins laying 3 points in their NFL preseason game against the Jacksonville Jaguars. Miami won 12-9, so the bet was a "push."
That result, Banker says, helps illustrate how sports betting has become tougher to beat. Years ago there were more regional differences in the point spread. The line on a game might be 2 points in Philadelphia, 3 points in Las Vegas and 4 points in Chicago, for instance.
A sophisticated bettor like Banker, plugged into a national network of gamblers, could take advantage of those variations in the spread to generate profits in the course of a season.
"If I had to start this all over again, I don't think I would be as successful," Banker says. "Getting the right price is so important. I used to have runners (betting contacts) all over the country, in New York, Florida, Chicago, California, so I could always get the best line. In that Miami game, I would have found a 2 1/2 somewhere. Now everybody's looking at the same number."
Bleeding every last drop of value from the betting line has been a key to Banker's success from the earliest stages of his gambling career.
"My father (Benjamin) was a very smart man," Banker says. "He wasn't a big gambler. He was a candy store bookmaker in Union City, N.J. He was a World War I veteran who lived through the Depression. He used to tell me, 'You'll always be a bum,' because I was girl-crazy and so forth.
"But he told me about the basics of handicapping. If a horse is a beaten favorite or has bad racing luck, watch him the next time out. One, he'll be running with cheaper horses. Two, he's not going to carry as much weight, maybe 108 pounds instead of 112. Three, most important, the public will overlook him so you'll get a better price, maybe 8-1 instead of 3-1. Those are the kind of things I've always looked for. Prices and value."
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Banker, who blames corporate greed and over-expansion for at least part of the economic mess in Las Vegas, remains bullish on the city's long-term prospects.
He approves of Delaware's decision to adopt legal sports betting and would like to see other states follow.
"People are going to find bookmakers regardless," he says. "I'd rather see them bet at a place where you get a (betting) ticket and you're assured of getting paid."
In which of his accomplishments, Banker is asked, does he take the most pride: The well-appointed home in an exclusive neighborhood? The small fleet of fine automobiles?
"No, no," Banker says. "I've made so many good friends. I came out here broke and I ended up with a wonderful girl. She quit her job and everything. She believed in me."
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It's time to go, but leaving takes a little while as Banker shows off a series of framed photographs.
There's Smarty Jones. Johnny Tocco. Checkers, Banker's late dog. Jack Dempsey.
They all have stories behind them, and Banker is glad to share them with a visitor.
He comes across another one of Debbie.
"My wife's a beauty," Banker says, but more to himself this time.
Las Vegas Sun, Aug. 26, 2009
Bidding farewell to a hockey handicapper who was always a favorite
I don't know how it is in other lines of business, but in journalism you continually field correspondence from utter wackos and complete lunatics. Now I just ignore them or press the delete button. As a younger man I would sometimes entertain them. I'm glad I did, because that's how Bobby Bryde came off initially. He sent me a one-line e-mail ripping me for something and signed it simply "b," as if I was supposed to know what that meant. I responded, and we gradually came to know each other pretty well. Bryde was whip-smart, cynical and witty as hell, and he had a big heart.
Unless you're in the small minority of gamblers who bet on hockey, you might not have heard of Bobby Bryde.
As Bryde would never hesitate to tell you in his inimitable way, he was not part of the city's gaming establishment, or what he considered the "inner circle" of well-known local sports betting figures.
The only thing Bryde cherished more than his outsider status was his reputation as a tough guy, a hard-liner, a rough-and-tumble, take-no-prisoners gambling iconoclast.
All of which he probably was. But I was lucky to know another side of his personality, too.
Bryde, a longtime Las Vegas resident, respected sports handicapper and internationally renowned hockey authority, died June 22, 2006, at Nathan Adelson Hospice after an extended fight with cancer. He was 49.
As the self-styled "Hockeymeister," Bryde published several books and numerous articles on NHL handicapping. He was often interviewed for his hockey expertise on sports-talk programs throughout the United States and Canada.
He was the most loyal reader of my gambling columns, yet when he disagreed with something I wrote he was also my harshest critic.
If he could, Bryde would no doubt call up and give me an earful for revealing this:
Beneath his blustery exterior, Bryde was the kind of person we need more of in Las Vegas. He was cerebral, intellectually curious, fiercely loyal to friends, kind and generous to a fault.
In a city where money too often breeds corruption, Bryde cared more about people as individuals than about the endless pursuit of the almighty dollar - even though he worked as hard as anyone and had earned the admiration of his peers.
I was always impressed by his thorough research in handicapping hockey, as well as "specialty" sports such as the Canadian Football League and the College World Series.
Yet Bryde had a wide range of interests and a broad expanse of knowledge beyond sports. It spanned subjects as disparate as literary fiction, old-time radio shows and the music of military bands.
In one typical exchange, I gave him my copy of "The National Football Lottery," Larry Merchant's ahead-of-its-time 1973 book on football betting.
He returned the favor with a collection of Kafka's short stories and novellas. (If there's a lesson there, I haven't quite figured it out.)
I'd sometimes watch hockey or football at Bryde's home, as part of a rogues' gallery of journalists, gamblers and oddsmakers he would invite over.
We'd marvel at the six or seven full-size TV sets in his living room that were rigged to pull down satellite signals from our neighbor to the north. Bryde was surely this city's most dedicated viewer of "Hockey Night in Canada."
When my son was born nearly five years ago, Bryde delivered a selection of, shall we say, unique baby gifts that included vintage posters of Phil Esposito and Bobby Orr. Later, my son got to know Bobby Bryde's as a place where he'd be greeted not only with candy or a cookie, but also by an inflatable dinosaur wearing a Flyers jersey - a permanent fixture at Bryde's front door.
I had known Bryde since the late '90s, but our relationship went in streaks and slumps. For long stretches, we'd talk every day. Then we'd go a few months without communicating - either because something I wrote in my column ticked him off or because we each got caught up in the mundane affairs of our busy day-to-day lives.
The past several months had been one of those fallow periods.
So I feel fortunate I was able to visit him a final time last week in the hospice to say goodbye. It was the day of the seventh game of the Stanley Cup finals. That seemed somehow appropriate.
I'm richer for having known Bobby Bryde. He was a genuine Las Vegas character, and I was proud to call him my friend. He will be missed.
Auf wiedersehen, Herr Hockeymeister.
Las Vegas Sun, June 26, 2006
Poker badass Tony Shelton has seen it all on the Vegas felt
For some veteran poker players and tournament officials, the World Series of Poker lost much of its charm when it moved from its old home at Binion's downtown to its new location at the Rio. I met with longtime World Series of Poker administrator Tony Shelton at the Starbucks at the Golden Nugget and he talked about a life devoted to gambling. When I watch the immature antics of so many of today's tournament players, I long for the return of the Man with the Patch.
The bustle of the World Series of Poker was only 5.7 miles away, but it might as well have been in a different galaxy.
At a coffee shop on Fremont Street, Tony Shelton was reflecting on the poker tournament he used to know.
For the better part of four decades, three of them with the World Series, Shelton has been a consummate Las Vegas poker industry insider.
Now semiretired, Shelton is known to a generation of poker players as a World Series dealer and supervisor. He also trained employees and ran the high-stakes cash side games that spring up at each World Series.
Shelton's World Series of Poker was a more intimate affair, a gathering of the gambling tribes hosted by Benny Binion at his Horseshoe club on Fremont Street.
"Old Man Benny liked it because he got to see all the old rounders from Texas, all his good old boys," said Shelton, his trademark walrus mustache and Appalachian drawl still prominent as ever. "We were like a small, elite cadre, the people who played it and the people who dealt it.
"We had no idea back then that one day every yo-yo in the world would get himself a baseball cap and some sunglasses and wear a hood and try to get on TV."
Though Shelton policed the biggest poker games in Las Vegas, routinely settling disputes by making decisions with tens of thousands of dollars at stake, he came from the humblest beginnings.
In the tiny Kentucky and West Virginia mining burgs where he grew up, the joke was that you could spot the richest guy in town because he actually had two pairs of Levi's.
"You hear all those horror stories about those places, and they're all true," said Shelton, 71. "My grandmother was an avid reader, so I was lucky we had books in the house."
Gambling was prevalent, whether it was flipping for quarters or playing 5-card stud for a few dollars. His father was a talented stud poker player, Shelton recalled -- but only until they started passing around the game's second pint of whiskey.
Shelton's first stop in Las Vegas came in 1959, when the Golden Nugget still had sawdust on the floor and 5-card stud was about the only game in town, but it took a couple of more visits before his connection with Vegas clicked.
He moved to Las Vegas in 1969, after he had saved up his stake playing poker at a hotel in Vermont, hustling bartenders, waiters and cooks in a soft game. One guy went broke but settled his gambling debt with a copy of "Steppenwolf" by Hermann Hesse and a pound of what Shelton described as high-grade marijuana.
"He said, I don't have any money but I think you'll really like this book,' " Shelton said. "He was right."
By then, Texas hold 'em had been introduced to Las Vegas, and Shelton became immersed in the poker scene.
In 1979, Shelton dealt at the World Series of Poker for the first time. He secured a recommendation from his boss at the Tropicana and was told to show up at the Horseshoe the next day.
His first assignment: a pot-limit Omaha cash game with blinds of $25 and $50, a big poker game by any standards, and huge at the time.
The lineup included Doyle Brunson, Puggy Pearson and other high-stakes gamblers.
"It was about six or seven of them," Shelton said. "Right there sits Doyle. Right there sits Steve Wynn. Right there sits Puggy. They said they were playing Omaha. At the time, I didn't know what Omaha was. I said, 'Mr. Brunson, how many cards do I give these people?'
"Well, everything stopped. Doyle sat back, he looked at me and he pushed back his hat. He said, 'Here's what we'll do, son. You give us each four cards. Deal 'em low, deal 'em slow and deal 'em off the top, and I'll help you run the game.' Doyle was a very nice man. If he had been a real (expletive) and said get this (expletive) out of here, I would have been finished before I started."
Shelton would go on to run tournaments in Lake Tahoe, Louisiana and Mississippi. Through 2007 he worked every World Series of Poker save one. "Something happened at the Four Queens that was odd and I got blamed for it," Shelton said, cryptically.
He returned to the tournament after a group of players, including Brunson, lobbied for him to run the big $2,000-$4,000-limit cash game.
He befriended many world champion poker players, including Jack Straus, who won the 1982 World Series title and was known for his heart and generosity.
One day Straus was walking down Fremont Street when a busted-out gambler came up behind him and asked to borrow $200.
"Jack reached in his pocket and pulled out two hundred-dollar bills and handed them to the guy back over his shoulder. He didn't even look to see who the guy was. He told me, 'Oh, hell, if I saw him he might think he has to pay me back. ' "
Shelton recalls the time Binion asked Sailor Roberts, the 1975 world champion, if he could play a few hands for Roberts in a no-limit Texas hold 'em game at the Horseshoe.
"Now, nobody could refuse Benny," Shelton said. "So Sailor says, 'Sure. ' He goes to get a coffee and smoke a cigarette. He comes back and Benny has all Sailor's chips in the middle. I don't know how much it was -- $10,000, $6,000, whatever. Sailor leans over and he says, 'Well, son, you got all my money in the center, whatcha got? '
"And Benny says, 'I don't know. I left my glasses at home. I just didn't want all these son of a bitches to think they could bluff me. ' "
Years later, Shelton was about 10 feet from the table when Chris Moneymaker bluffed Sam Farha out of a big pot and held on to win the 2003 World Series, almost single-handedly launching what has come to be known as the "poker craze."
"Sammy said, 'Tony, I made that one big mistake, but you have to give the man credit,' " Shelton said. "Sammy wasn't going to moan about it. His attitude was, 'OK, we'll play some more poker tomorrow.'
"Remember, none of us had any idea back then that because of some guy named Moneymaker this thing would get so big. We had no idea it was going to become Hollywood, none of us.
"For so many years it was hot, smoky rooms, dealing to rounders, pimps, drug dealers. And if you made a mistake dealing, Lord help you."
The Binions did have a creative solution for addressing incidents of verbal abuse in the tournament, Shelton said. He remembers a near-mutiny at a tough table with a female dealer who was losing control of the game.
"Ten minutes later, Jack Binion comes to the table," Shelton said. "He says, 'Boys, I can't have you giving my dealers a hard time. If you do it again, I'll send the Man with the Patch over.' "
They didn't have to be told that the Man with the Patch was R.D. Matthews, a friend of the Binions who was long reputed to be a Texas underworld figure.
Characterized by Shelton as "the man who handled the muscle in Dallas" and "a gen-u-wine tough guy," Matthews, who wore an eye patch, was notorious enough to merit a mention in the Warren Commission Report on the Kennedy assassination, where he was described as a "gambler" and a "passing acquaintance" of Jack Ruby.
After Binion threatened to send Matthews to the out-of-control table, "nobody said another word to the dealer," Shelton said.
Another time, the Man with the Patch approached Shelton as he was working the floor during a World Series tournament at the Horseshoe. Their ensuing brief conversation suggests that perhaps, after all, things aren't so different today from the way they were.
"He said, 'Tony, what about this poker? What's this all about? ' And I said, 'Well, R.D., it brings a lot of people into the old joint. These people come in, they play cards and they watch. Their wives come with them. They eat, they drink, they play the slots. It brings a ton of people to the joint. '
"He said, 'That's just what I wanted to hear. ' And away he went."
Las Vegas Sun, June 3, 2009
Last call for Larry Grossman's betting show
It's common for a reporter to ask an interview subject for his or her age. Most people don't mind revealing it, though some do. Larry Grossman deflected the question in the coolest way possible: He simply quoted a line from "My Back Pages." Nicely played.
In February there will be an empty space on the landscape of the Las Vegas gambling community.
Larry Grossman, a fixture on the radio for 16 years, plans to step down from his position as the host of "You Can Bet on It," the popular gambling program he created.
His final show is scheduled for Feb. 3, two days before the Super Bowl.
Although he is officially calling it an extended hiatus from radio rather than a retirement, Grossman said this week he has decided to put the "You Can Bet on It" format on the shelf.
"I've always been a believer that you have to listen to your heart, and my heart was telling me it was the right time," Grossman said at his Summerlin home. "I'd rather go out on top, while everybody still likes the show, than hang on too long."
Grossman's show, which airs 2-3 p.m. on KENO 1460-AM, has always been driven by its guests, including football handicappers, sports book managers and professional poker players.
Although football betting has been his primary focus, Grossman also reserved slots for wild-card guests such as authors and pop culture figures.
"We do a lot with sports handicapping, but it was never just a handicapping show," Grossman said. "If it was just football picks, that would have bored me. I'm more interested in how people analyze the games in different ways. It really becomes a cerebral exercise, and that's far more fulfilling than a pick in a particular game."
Among Grossman's many nonsports guests over the years were historian David Halberstam; Larry Kane, the author of a new book on John Lennon; and Abbie Hoffman's brother, who revealed Abbie had bookmakers and the Gold Sheet handicapping newsletter programmed into his speed dial.
"I'm interested in a lot of different people, and I thought if I found them interesting, then other people would, too," Grossman said.
Grossman does not reveal his age, but it's clear he's from the Baby Boomer generation that grew up with rock 'n' roll as its soundtrack.
In fact, asked for his date of birth, Grossman responds by quoting Bob Dylan: "Let's just say I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."
A fan of radio from an early age, Grossman, a Philadelphia native, remembers listening to Phillies games under the covers as a little kid.
It wasn't until he moved to Las Vegas in the late 1980s that he began working in radio.
Before then, Grossman, who said Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" changed his outlook on life when he read that splendid novel as a young man, pursued various ventures while living a Bohemian lifestyle.
He owned and operated a bookstore in Key West, Fla., for a time, worked in construction in Boulder, Colo., and was an investment adviser for a financial institution.
"I was always a person who truly followed my own spirit," he said.
While Grossman has spent 16 years in radio, he devoted no more than three years to any other job he has held.
"Remember, 'You Can Bet on It' was a dream thing," he said. "If you made a list of 10 potential careers and one was a radio show in Las Vegas talking about gambling, that's the one I would pick. It's not even close."
Grossman, one of the few people in town who conducts his business affairs solely on a handshake, established a strong reputation among gamblers for insisting on honesty and accountability from his guests.
He has no hidden motive in stepping down, Grossman said.
"The most precious thing we are given is time," Grossman said. "This life truly is a gift. Far too many people take it for granted and they think it's going to go on forever.
"I'm young enough where I can fulfill my responsibilities, and I owe it to myself to find out what's next. I need not to know what I'm doing next. To me, that's the essence of life."
An accomplished photographer, Grossman said after the Super Bowl he plans to spend more time on his artwork, hiking at Red Rock and traveling to Big Sur, Calif.
Asked if we'll hear him on the radio again, Grossman, the inveterate rock 'n' roller, cited a line from an old Buffalo Springfield song: "I won't be back till later on if I do come back at all."
Las Vegas Sun, Nov. 4, 2005
Professional gambler Alan Boston: Living la vida 'pura'
At least one of Alan Boston's quotations in this column had to be cleaned up for propriety's sake before it was published in the newspaper. Referring to a popular TV commercial that showed Steve Wynn standing on the roof of his high-rise resort hotel on the Las Vegas Strip, Boston's quote read: "I was rooting for him to fall off." What Boston actually said was: "I was rooting for him to fall off and fucking die."
High-stakes sports betting is alive and well in Las Vegas, professional gambler Alan Boston says.
It's just that the rest of the city makes him sick.
"Unfortunately, when the evil vermin scum casino corporations have so much power, nothing good can happen as a result," Boston said. "You get roads that take forever to be built, air quality that is way below standard, and nothing's being done about it. ...
"There's absolutely nothing good here -- except you can bet. So here I am."
Boston lives in Old Orchard Beach, Maine, seven months each year and spends the remaining five months in Las Vegas. He has been visiting the city since 1982, he moved here as a part-time resident in 1987, and he has been operating as a high-level pro sports bettor since 1994 or 1995, focusing on college basketball.
On Friday night, Boston will meet Nick Bogdanovich, the sports book manager at the Golden Nugget, in the championship round of the Leroy's Handicapping Challenge, a college basketball betting contest in its initial year.
Each contestant makes five selections against the point spread from Saturday's card, with the winner earning $5,000 cash and $5,000 for charity.
The action begins at 10 p.m. Friday in the Riviera sports book. The program also airs live on 920-AM.
In Boston, bettors and fans can get a look at the man reputed to be the best college basketball handicapper in the game, as well as perhaps the most acerbic critic of modern-day Las Vegas.
"With the government that's in power ... you see BLM land greedily traded for, houses built out into the mountains, the wilderness, even though (desert wildlife) was there first," said Boston, who pulls his punches about as often as Arturo Gatti and Micky Ward. "You get ridiculous traffic jams ... and all kinds of problems, but none of the culture that other big cities have, such as jazz, or museums.
"As far as any kind of a sense of good energy, there is none. When it was an old-fashioned hick town, it was much more pleasant."
Boston's feelings about corporate Las Vegas can be summed up in his reaction to the Super Bowl commercial that showed Steve Wynn standing atop his new building on the Strip.
"I was rooting for him to fall off and fucking die," Boston said.
Boston said he admired old-time gambling figures such as former Dunes owner Sid Wyman, who was known to give down-and-out bettors $100 to take a shot against the house.
That would never happen today, Boston said.
"They'd say, 'get out of here, you fucking broke,' " Boston said.
"I'm very old-school. ... Everything I say is from the heart. I believe what's old is pure, what's pure is right, and I think most change is bad."
Besides his beloved Hugo's Cellar and Andre's restaurants downtown, a couple of things keep Boston coming back to Las Vegas despite his stated distaste for the place. Sports betting is legal, for one. No worries about the "gray area" that hovers over the major bookmaking operations in the Caribbean and Central America.
And some Las Vegas casino properties still accept big action, said Boston, who routinely bets $10,000 or more per game.
"Plus it's so hateful here that I do nothing but work for five months," Boston said. "It keeps me focused."
Boston, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, had his road-to-Damascus moment as a young man attending games at the Palestra on the Penn campus in Philadelphia. A devoted fan of the game first, Boston soon became immersed in the gambling culture surrounding the sport.
"I knew all the point spreads, and (the gambling) just got into me," Boston said. "The things that happen in ballgames just became second nature to me."
Boston achieved a level of fame with his portrayal in Chad Millman's 2001 book, "The Odds," and a feature that aired last year on ESPN's "Outside the Lines."
Boston entered each project with reservations. He decided to work with Millman only after reading his highly regarded "Pickup Artists," about playground basketball in America, and was satisfied with the result.
He regrets the ESPN venture, though. Boston said he thought the program unfairly showed him at his worst, such as when he threw a pen across the room after a tough loss.
"ESPN pissed me off," he said. "I talked to them from the heart. I gave them a lot of great stuff, and they showed me acting like a puerile idiot."
Boston was hoping the ESPN exposure would lead to a position as an analyst, dissecting college basketball games with a gambler's eye, a la Hank Goldberg or Pete Axthelm.
It could have been a good fit, as executives with the sports networks realize college basketball telecasts draw gamblers, even if they don't promote the link explicitly.
"People aren't watching Long Beach State-Cal State Fullerton at midnight because they're alumni," Boston said.
When an invitation to the Leroy's contest came along, Boston was hesitant again. Ultimately he was swayed by the chance to work with Jimmy Vaccaro of Leroy's, another magna cum laude graduate of the "old school." He also hopes to generate donations to the organization Great Dane Rescue.
"This is an old-school, old-Vegas-style show," Boston said. "It's very pure. That's probably why I'm proud to be a part of it."
After this year's Final Four, Boston plans to assess his future. He'll put in one or two more seasons of heavy-duty betting, perhaps, then consider pursuing a new career as -- believe it or not -- a high school English teacher.
Although he's at the top of his game as a gambler, Boston has complicated feelings about his chosen profession.
"I'm not really proud of what I do," Boston said. "I regret that I kind of gave up my whole youth and young adulthood because I got into the gambling scene. I mean, I'm 46 years old, I'm not gay, and I've never been married. I see a shrink on a regular basis.
"I always craved independence, but now maybe I'm craving some normalcy in my life. Maybe settling down might not be a bad thing right now. ...
"That's why when I talk about teaching high school English, it would be to give something back, to do something much more important than what I'm doing. And that's where I'm at."
Las Vegas Sun, Feb. 25, 2005
Has Alan Boston finally reached the place where he can give up his obsession?
Since adolescence, Alan Boston used gambling as an escape from real-life issues and as a way to avoid relationships with people. For a long time, he didn't even want a pet. He ended up with his beloved Great Dane, Dewey, only after his former roommate got married and left the dog with Boston. In this column, Boston discusses a turning point in his life.
When Alan Boston talks about how he came to find "a good place," he does not mean his well-appointed house on a Las Vegas golf course or his summer home in Maine.
Boston has spent the better part of two decades handicapping and betting college basketball in Las Vegas, earning a national reputation among gamblers and oddsmakers. Yet he has always analyzed his own psyche as deeply as any Canisius-Siena matchup.
For once, he likes what he sees.
"If you had asked me at almost any time over the years, I would have told you I hate myself, I'm miserable, I'm unhappy," Boston says. "At a very young age, I started using gambling as an escape from life.
"There were times I was in a very bad place. Not anymore. I'm in the best place mentally I've been for a long time. I finally have peace of mind away from gambling."
As a result, Boston says, this year's NCAA Tournament will be the last he bets as a pro. After the championship game April 7 in San Antonio, consider Boston retired.
"I'm done. This is it."
Boston points across his living room to a couple of overstuffed loose-leaf binders on the floor, scribble-filled pages spilling out, looking like the accouterments of an eccentric but brilliant professor. These are the tools of an old-school gambler who came up in the game before computers, who proudly relies on "feel" in deciding which college basketball teams to bet on.
Boston knows his method -- knows Alan Boston himself -- is an anachronism in modern-day sports gambling.
"The computer programmers can't do what I do," he says. "I can supersede any number with my feel. Everything I need to know is in those notebooks, and now I'm not going to need them anymore."
The realization he was through as a professional sports bettor did not come to Boston as an epiphany. It was gradual, emerging from five years of psychiatric therapy and a lifetime of hard self-analysis.
But Boston can pinpoint when things began to turn around. It was when he began acting as a mentor to a young man in Maine who had a rough upbringing.
* * * * *
Boston will refer to him only as "Rob" or, more frequently, "the kid" -- although he's in his early 20s now, living in Florida, pursuing a career in golf.
They met about five years ago at a golf course in Maine, and both of their lives changed.
"He was the kid who greeted me and got my bag and loaded it into the cart," Boston says. "He always kind of moped around.
"We played golf one day and he acted like a selfish little prick. I told him to learn some fucking etiquette or we ain't playing again. The very next time we played, a friend of his missed a putt and then tried to putt again, and Rob said, 'Don't do that. Mr. Boston doesn't appreciate that.'
"I was like, this kid really listens. How cool was that?"
Soon after, Boston attended one of Rob's high school golf matches, and it became clear there was a connection between the two.
"He looked over and saw me, and I'm telling you, man, he just changed," Boston says. "His whole aura changed. The mopey kid was no longer a mopey kid. There was a glow. It sounds like bullshit but I totally know it to be true. He just stood proud.
"I learned everything at that moment. I know that now."
On the third hole, the golf coach introduced himself to Boston.
"He said, 'Rob's very happy you came.' I'm thinking, big deal, the kid's a good golfer. He said, 'Well, no one's ever come to watch him before.' And I was like, whoa. Oh. Well. That sucks."
Meanwhile, Boston was speaking with his psychiatrist about how he had always used gambling to run away from relationships, to avoid attachments to people.
At one point, the psychiatrist wanted to have Boston committed. ("I wouldn't have gone.") Boston, who said he suffers from depression, has also refused to take antidepressants.
"I'm an old-school manic," he says. "I want to feel everything. If I feel unrelenting misery, so be it."
Boston asked his therapist why he cared so much about the kid, and the therapist said because that's what fathers do.
"Now, late in life, when I finally let someone in, albeit in a paternal way, gambling is no longer relevant," Boston says. "I actually felt love. Once you do that it's a whole different world.
"I couldn't hug another guy. Now it's easy. I couldn't tell anybody I love them, and now I can. If the right woman came along, I'd probably let it happen instead of shutting them off.
"So after all that, what the fuck is gambling? It's bullshit."
* * * * *
Boston, who turns 50 in August, recalls watching an episode of "Maverick," the Western starring James Garner, as a kid and loving it.
"I laughed my ass off," Boston says. "What an amazing show. And when the closing credits came up, I remember thinking, wow, when I die all this good memory is going to be gone.
"Many of my therapy sessions have been driven by that. Why fall in love when you're going to die?"
Growing up in Framingham, Mass., Boston lost himself watching the trotters and pacers at Foxboro and betting football, especially after his parents
split up.
"I found peace of mind at the racetrack," says Boston, who today owns three harness racehorses, one based at Yonkers and two babies.
While earning his degree in the biological basis of behavior at the University of Pennsylvania, Boston immersed himself in the culture of college basketball betting, attending doubleheaders as many as three times a week at the Palestra.
He read the betting column in the New York Daily News and a novel by Robert Kalich, titled "The Handicapper," learning about semi-mythical figures called "wiseguys" and vowing to become one.
"I would always wonder how anyone could predict a winner in William and Mary-Virginia Tech," Boston says. "What the fuck is a wiseguy and how do they do it? Well, now I know. I did become that guy."
Boston came to Las Vegas for good in about 1988, honing his "feel" for how games played out against the spread at the Stardust sports book, then the gathering place for the city's top bettors and oddsmakers.
"Alan was always one of the most respected bettors we had," says Scott Schettler, who ran the Stardust book in the '80s. "Alan was always smart, almost frighteningly smart."
Loyal, too. When a change in direction in management left Schettler without a job at the Stardust, Boston produced a batch of T-shirts reading "Bring Back Scotty!" and handed them out to sports bettors, who were delighted to wear them in the sports book.
"It wasn't funny at the time, when they asked me not to come into the Stardust anymore," Boston says.
Last basketball season, Boston didn't do well betting. He almost quit. He even threw his loose-leaf binders away.
Less than a month into this season, he hit another rough stretch and again considered hanging it up. The turning point came when he picked DePaul as a 4-point underdog against Vanderbilt. DePaul lost by 6 -- but in overtime, and Boston felt in his heart he had the right team.
"That was a big 'feel' game," Boston says. "Right side, bad beat. Starting from that game I got more confident.
"The last two weeks were some of the best I've ever had. I'm going to go out a winner with this tournament."
He gestured again to the overstuffed binders on the floor.
"Last year, my roommate picked them out of the trash can and shipped them to me in Maine. That won't happen again -- because I'm going to burn them."
Las Vegas Sun, March 21, 2008
Nobody writes gambling as well as 'California Split' creator Joseph Walsh
I got to know Joseph Walsh, the screenwriter and producer of "California Split," my all-time favorite gambling movie. Walsh explained in detail how he had to battle studio executives to preserve his vision of "Split" as a movie hard-core gamblers would appreciate. The studio heads were pushing to dumb it down into a bland, formulaic Hollywood production. Luckily, Walsh had director Robert Altman and star Elliott Gould -- two real gambling men -- on his side.
They demolished the Mapes Hotel early in the year 2000, reducing the historic high-rise to a pile of debris by the Truckee River in downtown Reno.
Walking past the Virginia Street site just days after the implosion, I was moved to reach under a fence to grab a piece of the rubble for a souvenir.
The jagged chunk of brick still occupies a prime piece of real estate on my fireplace mantel, but not because I particularly care that prominent Americans such as Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra and President Truman used to stay at the hotel.
Rather, the Mapes is meaningful to me as the site of the classic, climactic scenes of the 1974 comedy "California Split," which still reigns as the ultimate gambling film.
Of course, it might be a stretch to use the word "climactic" in connection with the loosely structured character study, "California Split" screenwriter and producer Joseph Walsh was saying over breakfast at the Bellagio recently.
Unlike other Hollywood treatments of gambling, "California Split," directed by Robert Altman, does not conclude with an Old West-style showdown between the young hotshot and the old master. There's no world championship of anything at stake. No straight flush beating aces full.
Instead it chronicles the fledgling friendship of two gung-ho, reckless gamblers -- freewheeling Charlie Waters (Elliott Gould) and strait-laced Bill Denny (George Segal) -- as they try to stay in action and catch an ever-elusive winning streak.
A lifelong bettor himself, Walsh laced his script with realistic details about gambling that continue to ring true with moviegoers who are no strangers to the gritty dominion of bookies, racetracks and poker rooms.
"I was writing for all the gamblers of the world, people who are going to turn out and watch the movie and say, 'Oh, God, this man is in our heart and soul,' " said Walsh, a native New Yorker who lives in Northridge, Calif.
In other words, he wanted gamblers to watch the movie and think, "Charlie Waters, c'est moi."
Altman, a fellow gambling man who was coming off "The Long Goodbye" and "Thieves Like Us" at the time, was on board with "Split" right away, Walsh said.
Executives with Columbia Pictures weren't such an easy sell.
Several sequences take place in Southern California card rooms, where lowball draw poker was the main game and the lingo included strange phrases such as "smooth 7" and "rough 8."
The studio suits wanted to do away with that confusing stuff, replacing it with a dramatic hand in which four kings beat four queens.
"The answer is no," Walsh recalled telling the execs. "What you want in this movie is what I call 'reverse commercialism.' You guys work overtime to dumb your movies down. Reverse commercialism means the audience is going to follow the heroes because they care what happens to them.
"They care about their experience. They don't care if it's tied up in a nice, neat package, whether they win or lose the big prize. I don't have to dumb it down with four kings beating four queens."
Even worse was a meeting with MGM executives, who wanted to spice up Walsh's low-key, pleasantly shambling story with mobsters, gunfire, Dean Martin (!) and a big chase scene winding up at Circus Circus on the Strip.
Then there was a series of encounters with Steve McQueen, originally slated to play the Gould character. McQueen balked because he wanted to play a "hepper" role, Walsh recalled.
"First of all, I didn't have the heart to tell him nobody had said 'hep' for the last 20 years," Walsh said. "If he meant hip, well, to me the Elliott Gould character is one of the hippest of all time because he's so real. He's a free soul. He says what he wants, he does what he wants, he rolls with it. He's as genuine as it gets."
Walsh knew the negotiations were doomed when McQueen abruptly marched out, saying he had to go "buy alleyhats."
Walsh thought: Alleyhats?
Later, he realized McQueen meant he was going to buy some new hats for his wife, Ali McGraw.
Walsh, after watching "Mean Streets," also persuaded Altman to meet with Robert De Niro before they settled on Gould for the leading role.
Gould, a Brooklyn native, and Walsh, who grew up near 58th Street and Third Avenue, had been close friends -- and sometime gambling partners -- since they were teen actors in 1950s New York.
In Walsh's latest project, a book he wrote titled "Gambler on the Loose" that he plans to adapt into a screenplay, he describes his life at the nexus of show business and gambling. (Online, visit gamblerontheloose.com.)
A child star on TV and Broadway, Walsh took up sports betting at age 17. In one memorable episode, he and Gould ran $150 into thousands by betting on football and decided to celebrate with a trip to Miami. Their hot streak unceremoniously fizzled at the greyhound track, however, when they couldn't back a dog "even remotely interested in the rabbit."
The catalyst to write "California Split," Walsh said, was a meeting with a famous director -- OK, it was Peter Bogdanovich -- that ended badly one day in the early '70s.
"I was getting a couple of jobs in Hollywood, but it wasn't what I was looking for," Walsh said. "So I go up to meet with Bogdanovich in his office, and he's reading the paper. He points to a chair and says, 'Tell me about yourself. ' I don't get through the first line before the newspaper goes up in front of his face and I'm talking to the back of his newspaper.
"I'm about to punch a hole right through the newspaper and end my career in Hollywood. Instead I just walked out the door, sat down and asked myself what I knew better than anyone. And I knew so much about gambling. And nobody writes gambling well."
Not long afterward, Walsh, Altman & Co. were ensconced at the Mapes, filming "California Split" in a faux casino constructed for the movie, and gambling in the real casino during their downtime.
The movie's conclusion, in which Bill and Charlie part ways in the casino, was improvised by Gould -- although Walsh's scripted ending was equally ambiguous and bittersweet.
As written by Walsh, Bill and Charlie leave the Mapes and hail a cab. They pass two other guys on their way in who ask about the "action," which draws Charlie back to the casino. Bill, getting into the cab to head for the airport, asks Charlie what he's going to do with his life.
Charlie replies, "I'm going to take the best price I can."
* * * * *
Sidebar: Top 5 gambling movies
1. "California Split" -- The scene in which the characters played by Elliott Gould and George Segal make a drunken bar bet on whether they can name the Seven Dwarfs is one of several all-time classics.
2. "Deal" -- Starring Burt Reynolds and Shannon Elizabeth, this gem ... Ha! Just kidding! "The Hustler" -- Jackie Gleason's best role besides Kramden.
3. "Casino" -- Can't decide which is better: the scene where "everybody's gotta watch everybody else ... and the eye in the sky is watching us all," or the vise sequence.
4. "The Cincinnati Kid" -- OK, so the finale is highly unrealistic. Just roll with it.
5. "The Sting" -- Old-time gambling figure John Scarne was an adviser for the film, and his hands are shown doing some of the card manipulation.
Las Vegas Sun, July 11, 2008
Top sports book executive Art Manteris: For bettors, these are the good old days
It always grabs my attention when someone establishes a strong, if initially counterintuitive, argument that blows holes in conventional wisdom. In some quarters, the prevailing opinion has it that Las Vegas sports betting has gone downhill since the "old days," whenever they were. Here, Art Manteris, vice president of race and sports book operations for Station Casinos, takes on the nostalgia-mongers and makes a compelling case that sports bettors in Nevada have never had it so good.
Call it the "Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?" syndrome.
A segment of the Las Vegas sports betting population, caught up in the romanticism and lore of the city's history, tends to idealize the past, to pine for a time when gamblers were more dashing, bookies more daring and the scene more freewheeling.
Art Manteris appreciates the sentiments.
He just does not agree with them.
It's not that Manteris has anything against nostalgia. But when he compares today's Las Vegas sports betting with that of the 1970s, when he broke into the business, he makes the modern environment a prohibitive favorite.
Too many bettors, Manteris believes, get caught up looking for a "golden age" of rambling, gambling men that never really existed.
In other words, these are the good old days.
"I understand the feelings people have toward those days," said Manteris, vice president of race and sports book operations for Station Casinos. "I was part of it. I was there. But there is a 'pro' side to today's world that is underreported, in my opinion."
The advantages today's bettors have compared with their counterparts from the 1970s and 1980s lie in the areas of convenience, a wider variety of betting options and, in many cases, better odds, Manteris said.
Certain sobering truths are lost amid the classic tales of Las Vegas bookmakers who lived by the seat of their pants, largely unfettered by pesky governmental regulations, and of gamblers who bet not only with both fists but also with duffel bags full of cash.
Consider football parlay cards that paid out at odds of 100-1, maybe 150-1 if you were lucky, for hitting 10 of 10 winners. By comparison, typical Las Vegas parlay cards today pay out in the range of 800-1 to 899-1 on the same wager. In a column in September, we eviscerated the Laughlin Riverside for paying only 499-1, the worst current odds in Southern Nevada.
"I remember one year, right around 1980, when the Stardust went from 200-1 to 300-1 on 10-teamers, and that was on a ties-lose card," Manteris said in an interview at Red Rock Resort. "And that was big news."
Then there was the relative dearth of viewing -- and wagering -- options in sports books.