Free Republic

Ohio State is good and Rutgers is bad. I’m not breaking any news here. But just how different the extremes are according to the betting market is staggering. Circa Sports in Nevada is the first sportsbook across the betting market to post odds for the college football Week 12 matchup between Ohio State and Rutgers, and boy these odds are a doozy. The Buckeyes opened as a staggering 50.5-point favorites against the Scarlet Knights at Circa Sportsbook in Las Vegas. According to our Bet Labs data, just 53 college football teams have closed as favorites of more than 50 points...

San Jose Sharks forward Evander Kane is being sued by a Las Vegas casino for failing to repay $500,000 in credit markers after gambling between playoff games last April. Court documents obtained by the Daily Mail claim that Kane, 28, received the eight markers from The Cosmopolitan valued between $20,000 and $100,000 on or around April 15, when the Sharks were in town for Games 3 and 4 of their first-round series with the Vegas Golden Knights. Kane has not repaid those markers, according to the court filing. The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas is also seeking a repayment of legal...

Dive Brief: Illinois State Sen. Martin Sandoval has resigned from his position as chair of the State Senate's Transportation Committee amid a federal fraud and corruption investigation related to state construction work, the Associated Press reported. The Democratic senator is still listed as a member of the committee, however, as of Oct. 15. The move came after the details of a federal search warrant revealed that the FBI last month combed Sandoval's offices and home for information related to architect Cesar Santoy; Santoy's architecture firm, Studio ARQ; red-light camera program company SafeSpeed; lobbyists; construction companies; and employees of the Illinois...

Gamblers wagered a record-breaking $445 million on sports in New Jersey in September, the largest monthly total in the state since legal sports betting began in June 2018. Tuesday's release of figures came as the rapidly growing New Jersey sports betting market challenges Nevada for nationwide leadership of the industry. The two states have toggled back and forth in recent months in terms of who takes in more sports bets, but Nevada still has the highest monthly totals, including nearly $600 million in March, the largest monthly amount in U.S. history.

The Colts' odds of winning the Super Bowl this season plummeted at sportsbooks after quarterback Andrew Luck announced his retirement on Saturday night. PointsBet moved Indianapolis's Super Bowl odds from 12/1 to 50/1, while the Colts' win total shifted from 10 to six. Additionally, PointsBet moved the Colts from favorites to win the AFC South to the worst odds to finish first in the division. The Colts' +600 division odds are behind the Texans at +140, Jaguars at +225 and Titans at +325.

U.S. casino operator Eldorado Resorts Opens a New Window. has agreed to buy Caesars Entertainment Opens a New Window. in a $17.3 billion cash-and-stock deal, including debt, the companies said on Monday. Eldorado will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Caesars for a total value of $12.75 per share, consisting of $8.40 per share in cash consideration and 0.0899 shares of Eldorado common stock for each Caesars share of common stock.

Baseball legend Pete Rose took a shot at his former teammate and Hall of Fame catcher Johnny Bench on Thursday during an appearance on “The Brian Kilmeade Show.” Rose fired back after Bench refused to budge from his view that the former Cincinnati Reds star should be excluded from the Baseball Hall of Fame for gambling on the sport in 1989. “It don't bother me but you know Johnny Bench is one guy who should thank God I was born,” Rose told host Brian Kilmeade. “Because he never would have made the Hall of Fame if I wasn't born.” Kilmeade...

BROWNSVILLE, Texas – Federal and local law enforcement agencies raided a series of car lots and homes in connection with a money laundering investigation involving a convicted Palestinian terrorist. Family members of the suspect had previously been tied to a network of underground casinos, officials say. On Thursday morning, federal agents along with investigators with the Cameron County District Attorney’s Office carried out a series of raids at a home in a luxurious neighborhood and at two car lots owned by George Z. Rafidi.

Although there are now twelve (twelve!) already-declared candidates opposing Donald Trump in 2020, the nation’s gambling gurus are still heavily favoring him for the win in the next election. In fact, as the Washington Examiner reported Wednesday, the entry of Bernie Sanders as #12 in the race didn’t even budge the numbers. In the latest batch of odds, released just after Bernie’s announcement, Trump is the overwhelming 3-2 favorite for reelection, writes the Examiner’s Washington Secrets columnist Paul Bedard, who spoke with the sportsbook manager at BetOnline.ag, Dave Mason.

The Super Bowl is a spectacle. Sure, on the field, the game looks pretty normal. It’s still two teams trying to outmaneuver each other for 60 minutes. Away from the field, though, everything is taken to an extreme level. That doesn’t just include the pregame ceremonies, halftime show or the week of craziness leading up to the game, it also extends into the gambling world.

Growing up in Tunica at the height of its casino boom, Roosevelt Hall felt his community had been dealt a winning hand. Lavish monuments to gaming — a gleaming high-rise tower, an Irish medieval castle, an art deco movie house — rose up amid the cotton and rice fields, flooding the impoverished Mississippi Delta county with tourists, money and jobs. But the 38-year-old bartender is increasingly hedging his bets on the future. Nearly five years ago, Hall lost his job when the county’s largest gambling complex, Harrah’s, closed due to a glut in the market. After securing another position at...

A KMBC 9 News photojournalist's camera caught someone using what appears to be a laser pointer directed at Tom Brady's face during Sunday night’s AFC Championship game at Arrowhead Stadium. The first instance caught on camera was on a hand-off from Tom Brady to Sony Michel in the fourth quarter. The previous play was a punt that appeared to be muffed by Patriots' receiver Julian Edelman but was later overturned. Laser researcher Charles Cobb, DDS, MS, PhD., said based on the size of the spot, it looks like the person was sitting far back in the end zone, possibly in...

Within months of the law’s passage, the state began borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars against the anticipated revenue. Bond documents claimed video gambling machines would raise $300 million each year to help cover the debt payments. It wasn’t until 2017, eight years after the legalization of video gambling, that the state came close to collecting that amount. By then, video gambling had brought in less than $1 billion to pay the bond debt — $1.3 billion short of what lawmakers anticipated. But the costs of video gambling had already exacted a heavy toll on the state.

Depending on who you talk to, the reinterpretation of the Wire Act by the U.S. Justice Department will either be no problem for Nevada — or a big problem. Gaming industry legal experts have begun analyzing the effects of the new interpretation of a 23-page opinion issued Monday by Assistant Attorney General Steven Engel of the department’s Office of Legal Counsel. The 1961 Wire Act originally was intended to block sports betting across state lines through telephone and wire communications as a means of deterring organized crime.

The U.S. Justice Department now says that all internet gambling is illegal.A November opinion made public Monday reversed a 2011 opinion on the Wire Act, which established the law as applicable to only sports betting. The DOJ claims that the 2011 opinion misinterpreted the statute and reinterprets the Wire Act to encompass all forms of gambling that crosses state boundaries. The opinion could have wide-reaching effects in states that sell lottery tickets online or where online gambling is legal. This number has increased in recent months following the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize sports betting in the U.S. last year....

After a mix-up at MGM National Harbor, one jackpot winner had to leave without her cash. Cynthia Obie won thousands on a slot machine at the Prince George’s County casino – but when the casino took down her Social Security number incorrectly, she lost it all. -snip Following regulations, before handing her the cash, MGM staff took her ID and personal information. But they misread her Social Security number by one digit. The person whose number they plugged into the database apparently owed the state of Maryland a lot of child support, and Obie’s winnings were immediately confiscated. “I’m like no all of my...

Monday was a rough night for FanDuel. The online sports book ended up paying out extra after Clemson trounced Alabama in the national championship game. FanDuel paid Alabama bettors in November In November, FanDuel announced that it was declaring Alabama the national champion and paying off futures bets made on they heavily favored Crimson Tide. Alabama was listed as a -280 favorite at the time, meaning gamblers would have to risk $280 to win $100 on a bet on the Crimson Tide. “It’s a way to reward our customers for betting on Alabama when the odds were really hard to...

LAS VEGAS (KUTV) — It only took 960 spins, but it paid off for one women at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas. The hotel tweeted that one lucky guest won $1,023,743 on her 960th spin playing on a Wheel of Fortune slot machine. LAS VEGAS (KUTV) — It only took 960 spins, but it paid off for one women at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas. The hotel tweeted that one lucky guest won $1,023,743 on her 960th spin playing on a Wheel of Fortune slot machine. The woman won the jackpot on Christmas Eve. The hotel did not...

Two nuns in California allegedly stole more than $500,000 from the school they had been at for years, which they spent in casinos and on vacations. Bank records show Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper and Sister Lana Lang had been embezzling funds from St. James Catholic School in Torrence for at least a decade, the Press-Telegram reported. But officials from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles told parents and alumni of the school that auditors have not been able to trace all of the money trail. Kreuper had retired as the school's principal earlier this year and she dealt with the school...

FBI agents raided the home of Atlantic City Mayor Frank Gilliam just before 8 a.m. Monday morning, the agency confirmed to NJ Advance Media. At least a dozen agents were seen going in and out of the Ohio Avenue home Monday morning, removing more than 10 boxes. An FBI spokeswoman at the scene said both FBI and IRS agents were involved in the search of home. “We can confirm that our agents were executing search warrant at the home of Mayor Frank Gilliam,” said Doreen Holder, a public affairs specialist with the FBI’s Newark office, declining to comment on the...