TWENTY-YEARS OF SUPER BOWL SUNDAYS....VEGAS STYLE
For those of you who know me or have read my bio know Linda & I spent 20-years in Las Vegas. During that time I toiled in dice pits downtown & on the famed "Strip." Until a few years ago, when it was passed by the first week of March Madness, Super Bowl weekend was always the biggest "drop" for casinos all year. It wasn't the $90+ million that was wagered legally in Nevada sportsbooks, the drop I'm referring to was the hundreds of millions dropped into the drop boxes on casino table games.
I read about the 150,000 people who have descended on Indianapolis this weekend & I just smile. Super Bowl weekend in Las Vegas was a whole other level. Nearly 300,000 rabid gamblers would start coming in on Thursday afternoon & by Friday night, every crap table in town was packed, shoulder to shoulder. The table minimums were doubled or tripled. At Bellagio, I often had 10-12 markers going for one table alone. All twelve games in that pit would see marker action of at least $100,000, some tables approaching $1 million. The cash drops exceeded $50,000 per table as well. Money was everywhere, lines formed at the sportsbook's betting windows nightly. Every table at every decent restaurant in town was booked weeks in advance, only a powerful casino host or a $200 toke could get you a table without reservations. The showrooms didn't so such great business Super Bowl weekend, these people were there to gamble. And drink, I forgot the alcohol, bartenders & cocktail waitresses had their best tip weekend of the year normally. The dealers didn't do bad either, but they worked like dogs to get it & usually there was overtime for those of us who worked swing shift. Swing had 12-dice crews, graveyard had but 4, so if the games were still cookin' at 4AM, which was almost always the case, you stayed until your game went dead.
Since the actual game didn't start until 3:30PM on Sunday, standing at a crap table until 6AM was no big deal. So we'd just keep crankin' keeping the dice in the air, making money for the joint & filling our own pockets a little. I remember a player who came every year when I was working downtown. He'd stand by you betting the don't side, picking your brain for how you thought the Super Bowl would unfold. He went from table to table doing the same thing, he wasn't alone, it's about all anyone talked about that weekend. But for the guys/gals who agreed with his side, he'd come back by on the way up to the room with a handful of betting slips. He'd pass them out to dealers, boxmen & floormen who gave him a tip on a prop bet or made a compelling case for the game's over/under number. I loved that guy, I won three straight years with bets he gave me.
Super Bowl weekend was when I got my best gifts & tips. I had a regular player at Bellagio who brought me two bottles of Crown Royal Special Reserve(when it 1st came out) & half a case of Napa Valley wine for Linda. Had another player who asked me who I liked in the game & if he liked it too, I would get a $55 straight bet on that side. It paid $105 if/when it won. We had a player from way back at our days at Treasure Island(now called TI) who liked to take a few us out for ribs at Tony Roma's. I have no idea how many rib dinners Robert bought for us over the years, but we always looked forward to it. Some of Kansas City's finest gamblers would want to go to the bar after I got off work &I did it a few times, but after I clocked out, I wanted to get the hell out of there. I had other places to go.
One of those places was the Suncoast Casino, primarily a locals joint, about two miles from our house. Our usual crew would end up at the sportsbook bar to look over everything bettable one last time & to have a few beers. In all the years we went in there, I don't think we ever paid for a drink, the sportsbook writer would give us a handful of free drink tickets, all we had to do was tip the bartender. Of course the way we got those tickets was to bet for ourselves & a small wager for the writer. I remember one year one of the graveyard writers wanted all of his bets to be on the Raiders in Super Bowl 39. he didn't want any total or prop bet action, he knew taking Oakland was the right thing to do & he wasn't shy about telling you. As I recall, the Raiders were about a 3 1/2 to 4-point favorite & as you might remember, they got killed 48-21.
Having spent most of my dice pit career working for Mirage Resorts, I had some good seniority which I used to get Sunday-Monday as my days off. In '02, I moved to Saturday-Sunday off, so for about 8-years I got to enjoy the Super Bowl game outside of a dice pit. I remember the days of craning my neck trying to see Doug Williams throw 4 second quarter TD passes on a TV sorta pointed in my direction from a nearby bar, while I was stuck on the crap table doing my 1-hour stints. I can remember a lot of memorable moments in Super Bowl history I've seen in a dealers' break room or on a cocktail lounge television. If you were stuck at work during the game, at least no one was playing. The real players were at high roller parties in hotel ballrooms. At Bellagio we had three such parties. Your chances of getting into one of them was strictly regulated by how much you bet at the sportsbook & the dice tables. The three parties ranged from really nice, to awesome to unfreakin' believable depending on how strong a bettor you were.
Way back when, I used to hang out at Caesar's Palace, because before the days of the mega-resorts, they & the Stardust had the biggest action at the sportsbook. I remember the Bears-Patriots game in '86, Caesar's had two $10,000 minimum bet windows. They had a young lovely clad in a referee's shirt & cap moving up & down the line filling out IRS Form 16A, which is a Nevada-only IRS regulation. It was designed to stop money laundering, but that's a topic for another day. It keeps track of cash transactions of $10,001 or more. Anyone buying chips for more than $10K in a 24-hour period or making a wager of $10K or more is required to provide identification. The people lined up with briefcases, bank bags or plain old manilla envelops was frankly quite amazing. I watched 30-40 people make bets that day, from $11,000 to $220,000 & nearly every bet was on the Bears or the over, both winners. The most famous prop bet ever came from this game. Jimmy Vaccaro hung a prop was Wm. "The Refrigerator" Perry would score a touchdown at 20-1. A lot of action came in on this prop eventually lowering the odds to close at 2-1, but the damage was done, Perry scored & that touchdown cost millions.
When prop bets became big, about 1990, I'd visit a different sportsbook every night after work to grab their lists of prop bets. The Imperial Palace's Jay Kornegy was the first to put out a small pamphlet of props, usually 5-7 pages worth, back & front. Sonny Reizner at the old Castaways Casino sportsbook originated the prop bet, but Kornegy made it really big. You could bet on everything from who won the coin toss to the length of the National Anthem as it was sung by some celebrity. Got a hunch on how many punts a team would attempt? Is your hunch over or under the number the book posted? Who will score the 1st TD? Over/under totals by quarter, will anyone score in the last 2-minutes of either half, it was endless. You could even bet one QB's total completions against the total number of points Michael Jordan would score that day. It's LeBron James these days. Super Bowl 33 was my personal best. It was Denver versus Atlanta, won by the Broncos 34-19. The Broncos were favored by a touchdown & the total was 52 1/2. I had both plus five prop bets. This was the only Super Bowl where I actually showed a decent profit on prop bets. I had Atlanta's PK Morten Andersen to score first, a special teams touchdown, total punts, the 4th quarter over 13 1/2 & Denver backup Bubby Brister to get a carry. All five were winners, the last one was Brister taking a knee to kill the final seconds. Taking a kneel down is considered a carry by the NFL. Tim Dwight ran back a kickoff for a score which put the 4th quarter total over & made it possible for the game total to go over. Seven total wagers, everyone a winner. Never did it before & never did it since.
The best part of Super Bowl Sunday was the party we had every year at Frank's house. He was a co-worker of mine for 12-years & one of my closest personal friends in Nevada. He lived close & we hung out a lot. Joe & Dana, Kevin & Erica, Mike & Katrina, Paul & Josie were always there. Frank put on the best Super Bowl party, no take out, no frozen food, Frank was one helluva cook & he put out such a spread every year. Italian sausage with peppers & onions, chili, pasta, giant platters of shrimp,fruit, salads, cake, I don't even remember all the stuff he'd serve. Then there was the alcohol. Because of a rocky history associated with this group, designated drivers were a must & was strictly enforced. In addition to all the sportsbook bets in our pockets,we had squares' pots & prop bets that were aimed at our party. My all-time favorite was "Total beers consumed by Kevin & Rich from 1 hour before kickoff till games' end, over/under 35 1/2. I'm not proud of this, but the prop flew over early in the 4th quarter. Another prop was aimed at a certain wife who was always late, would she make it before kickoff(answer-never). We had an over/under on how many times a certain party-goer would mention his NY Jets even tho they weren't playing in the game. It was a lot of fun & every year since we've moved back to Missouri, we talk about how much we miss Super Bowl Sunday's at Frank's house. We'll be out there in August for his wedding to a lovely woman named Julie, so we'll have some time to whoop it up, but it won't be Super Sunday, nothing is.
This is not from one of our SB Sunday's at Franks, it's just so obscene I had to show it. White bread? Seriously? Enjoy your day, but be careful out there.
I read about the 150,000 people who have descended on Indianapolis this weekend & I just smile. Super Bowl weekend in Las Vegas was a whole other level. Nearly 300,000 rabid gamblers would start coming in on Thursday afternoon & by Friday night, every crap table in town was packed, shoulder to shoulder. The table minimums were doubled or tripled. At Bellagio, I often had 10-12 markers going for one table alone. All twelve games in that pit would see marker action of at least $100,000, some tables approaching $1 million. The cash drops exceeded $50,000 per table as well. Money was everywhere, lines formed at the sportsbook's betting windows nightly. Every table at every decent restaurant in town was booked weeks in advance, only a powerful casino host or a $200 toke could get you a table without reservations. The showrooms didn't so such great business Super Bowl weekend, these people were there to gamble. And drink, I forgot the alcohol, bartenders & cocktail waitresses had their best tip weekend of the year normally. The dealers didn't do bad either, but they worked like dogs to get it & usually there was overtime for those of us who worked swing shift. Swing had 12-dice crews, graveyard had but 4, so if the games were still cookin' at 4AM, which was almost always the case, you stayed until your game went dead.
Since the actual game didn't start until 3:30PM on Sunday, standing at a crap table until 6AM was no big deal. So we'd just keep crankin' keeping the dice in the air, making money for the joint & filling our own pockets a little. I remember a player who came every year when I was working downtown. He'd stand by you betting the don't side, picking your brain for how you thought the Super Bowl would unfold. He went from table to table doing the same thing, he wasn't alone, it's about all anyone talked about that weekend. But for the guys/gals who agreed with his side, he'd come back by on the way up to the room with a handful of betting slips. He'd pass them out to dealers, boxmen & floormen who gave him a tip on a prop bet or made a compelling case for the game's over/under number. I loved that guy, I won three straight years with bets he gave me.
Super Bowl weekend was when I got my best gifts & tips. I had a regular player at Bellagio who brought me two bottles of Crown Royal Special Reserve(when it 1st came out) & half a case of Napa Valley wine for Linda. Had another player who asked me who I liked in the game & if he liked it too, I would get a $55 straight bet on that side. It paid $105 if/when it won. We had a player from way back at our days at Treasure Island(now called TI) who liked to take a few us out for ribs at Tony Roma's. I have no idea how many rib dinners Robert bought for us over the years, but we always looked forward to it. Some of Kansas City's finest gamblers would want to go to the bar after I got off work &I did it a few times, but after I clocked out, I wanted to get the hell out of there. I had other places to go.
One of those places was the Suncoast Casino, primarily a locals joint, about two miles from our house. Our usual crew would end up at the sportsbook bar to look over everything bettable one last time & to have a few beers. In all the years we went in there, I don't think we ever paid for a drink, the sportsbook writer would give us a handful of free drink tickets, all we had to do was tip the bartender. Of course the way we got those tickets was to bet for ourselves & a small wager for the writer. I remember one year one of the graveyard writers wanted all of his bets to be on the Raiders in Super Bowl 39. he didn't want any total or prop bet action, he knew taking Oakland was the right thing to do & he wasn't shy about telling you. As I recall, the Raiders were about a 3 1/2 to 4-point favorite & as you might remember, they got killed 48-21.
Having spent most of my dice pit career working for Mirage Resorts, I had some good seniority which I used to get Sunday-Monday as my days off. In '02, I moved to Saturday-Sunday off, so for about 8-years I got to enjoy the Super Bowl game outside of a dice pit. I remember the days of craning my neck trying to see Doug Williams throw 4 second quarter TD passes on a TV sorta pointed in my direction from a nearby bar, while I was stuck on the crap table doing my 1-hour stints. I can remember a lot of memorable moments in Super Bowl history I've seen in a dealers' break room or on a cocktail lounge television. If you were stuck at work during the game, at least no one was playing. The real players were at high roller parties in hotel ballrooms. At Bellagio we had three such parties. Your chances of getting into one of them was strictly regulated by how much you bet at the sportsbook & the dice tables. The three parties ranged from really nice, to awesome to unfreakin' believable depending on how strong a bettor you were.
Way back when, I used to hang out at Caesar's Palace, because before the days of the mega-resorts, they & the Stardust had the biggest action at the sportsbook. I remember the Bears-Patriots game in '86, Caesar's had two $10,000 minimum bet windows. They had a young lovely clad in a referee's shirt & cap moving up & down the line filling out IRS Form 16A, which is a Nevada-only IRS regulation. It was designed to stop money laundering, but that's a topic for another day. It keeps track of cash transactions of $10,001 or more. Anyone buying chips for more than $10K in a 24-hour period or making a wager of $10K or more is required to provide identification. The people lined up with briefcases, bank bags or plain old manilla envelops was frankly quite amazing. I watched 30-40 people make bets that day, from $11,000 to $220,000 & nearly every bet was on the Bears or the over, both winners. The most famous prop bet ever came from this game. Jimmy Vaccaro hung a prop was Wm. "The Refrigerator" Perry would score a touchdown at 20-1. A lot of action came in on this prop eventually lowering the odds to close at 2-1, but the damage was done, Perry scored & that touchdown cost millions.
When prop bets became big, about 1990, I'd visit a different sportsbook every night after work to grab their lists of prop bets. The Imperial Palace's Jay Kornegy was the first to put out a small pamphlet of props, usually 5-7 pages worth, back & front. Sonny Reizner at the old Castaways Casino sportsbook originated the prop bet, but Kornegy made it really big. You could bet on everything from who won the coin toss to the length of the National Anthem as it was sung by some celebrity. Got a hunch on how many punts a team would attempt? Is your hunch over or under the number the book posted? Who will score the 1st TD? Over/under totals by quarter, will anyone score in the last 2-minutes of either half, it was endless. You could even bet one QB's total completions against the total number of points Michael Jordan would score that day. It's LeBron James these days. Super Bowl 33 was my personal best. It was Denver versus Atlanta, won by the Broncos 34-19. The Broncos were favored by a touchdown & the total was 52 1/2. I had both plus five prop bets. This was the only Super Bowl where I actually showed a decent profit on prop bets. I had Atlanta's PK Morten Andersen to score first, a special teams touchdown, total punts, the 4th quarter over 13 1/2 & Denver backup Bubby Brister to get a carry. All five were winners, the last one was Brister taking a knee to kill the final seconds. Taking a kneel down is considered a carry by the NFL. Tim Dwight ran back a kickoff for a score which put the 4th quarter total over & made it possible for the game total to go over. Seven total wagers, everyone a winner. Never did it before & never did it since.
The best part of Super Bowl Sunday was the party we had every year at Frank's house. He was a co-worker of mine for 12-years & one of my closest personal friends in Nevada. He lived close & we hung out a lot. Joe & Dana, Kevin & Erica, Mike & Katrina, Paul & Josie were always there. Frank put on the best Super Bowl party, no take out, no frozen food, Frank was one helluva cook & he put out such a spread every year. Italian sausage with peppers & onions, chili, pasta, giant platters of shrimp,fruit, salads, cake, I don't even remember all the stuff he'd serve. Then there was the alcohol. Because of a rocky history associated with this group, designated drivers were a must & was strictly enforced. In addition to all the sportsbook bets in our pockets,we had squares' pots & prop bets that were aimed at our party. My all-time favorite was "Total beers consumed by Kevin & Rich from 1 hour before kickoff till games' end, over/under 35 1/2. I'm not proud of this, but the prop flew over early in the 4th quarter. Another prop was aimed at a certain wife who was always late, would she make it before kickoff(answer-never). We had an over/under on how many times a certain party-goer would mention his NY Jets even tho they weren't playing in the game. It was a lot of fun & every year since we've moved back to Missouri, we talk about how much we miss Super Bowl Sunday's at Frank's house. We'll be out there in August for his wedding to a lovely woman named Julie, so we'll have some time to whoop it up, but it won't be Super Sunday, nothing is.
This is not from one of our SB Sunday's at Franks, it's just so obscene I had to show it. White bread? Seriously? Enjoy your day, but be careful out there.
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