Nevada Super Bowl Betting Results Good

In addition to New York, Nevada also won the Super Bowl this year. Nevada sports books (with the majority of the action of course in Las Vegas) pulled in just shy of 94 million dollars in wagers ($93.8 million), "winning" $5 million. The hold percentage was 5.4%, which beat the theoretical hold percentage on typical 11/10 straight wager sports bets of 4.54%. Part of that could be due to slightly more money wagered on the losing side of the point spread, but most likely that is due to the books actually coming up short on the point spread portions of the wagers, but making that money back on losing parlay and proposition bets, which have better hold percentages for the sports books.

The Las Vegas Sun article also touts that this year's handle was the second-largest Super Bowl handle in the last decade. Before too many champagne corks pop, do realize that what is wagered legally in Nevada is but a small fraction of illegal sports betting in the United States. My estimate that for the Super Bowl, the illegal betting was about ten times the legal betting, or about ONE BILLION DOLLARS (now put your pinky to your lips like Dr. Evil).

As part of the National Gaming Impact Study Commission effort, the FBI estimated that one billion dollars was illegally wagered each week of the NFL regular season. That study was published in 1999 - this is 2012. Yahoo has a decent overview article regarding sports wagering and the position that legal sports betting should be expanded in the United States. I agree.

If interested, other previous posts on sports betting are available for view, with my recommended choices here, here and here, with the first post discussing the softening view of the NBA to potentially expanded sports betting.

Tropicana Adding Cantor Gaming's Mobile Product

The Las Vegas Sun reports that the Tropicana is the latest casino to add Cantor Gaming's mobile wagering system. Cantor's system is already installed at the Palazzo and M Resort. I believe that Cantor has an agreement with the Hard Rock, but the system may not be installed yet. Cantor isn't exactly taking Las Vegas by storm, but they are making progress and picking up casino installations.

The Sun story reports the deal to mobile gaming for the Tropicana's upcoming revamped race and sports book, as well as other public areas, such as pool areas, restaurants and bars. This installation is part of the Tropicana's $165M renovation. The Las Vegas Review Journal reports the deal is larger - that Cantor will actually RUN the renovated Tropicana sports book when it opens this fall.

If the Review Journal story is accurate, Cantor running the sports book is a bigger deal. Selling a wireless network coupled with their proprietary games is one thing; taking the responsibility and potential liability of operating a sports book is another. Cantor, if successful, will provide new competition to Leroy's and Lucky's, the two major sports book operators in Nevada. Cantor's mobile gaming system would be a differentiator.

Cantor is the only mobile gaming system approved by state regulators, so they are in the first-mover position in this application area. If Cantor indeeds leverages this and also enters the sports book market, they could easily become a real threat to Leroy's and Lucky's. With regard to the other nascent mobile gaming providers, they are definitely in the rear and losing ground fast.

Las Vegas Sportsbooks "Win" Super Bowl

The Super Bowl scoreboard is final and so is the Las Vegas sportsbooks'. Las Vegas also won the Super Bowl, with winning (i.e. keeping) 8.3% of all the sports bettors' money bet. The details are in the linked Las Vegas Review Journal article. Due to the variances inherent in sports betting, there is a chance the house doesn't win. I discussed when that actually happened a couple of years ago with the Giants-Patriots Super Bowl in a previous post. The Review Journal article actually reports the handle and win percentage from the last 10 Super Bowls - you can see that there is a wide range of results. Over the last 10 years, Las Vegas sportsbooks had a win percentage on Super Bowl bets of 9.6%.

With typical spread betting, where the objective is to balance the amount of wagers on both sides, the theoretical win percentage is about 4.5%. What happens is that both bettors wager $11 to win $10. The winning bettor wins $10 plus gets his $11 back. The losing bettor loses his $11 and the sportsbook keeps the remaining $1. So 1/22 is 4.54%. But the sportsbooks are winning at a higher percentage. Why? There are a couple of reasons.

One is that the books don't exactly have even amounts of wagers on both sides. They will tend to let more wagers fall on one side or the other. If they can set a spread where the general public will bet more on the side that should have a lower probability of covering, the books will win more. They will lose more if the game doesn't go their way, but they are pretty sharp at figuring games.

Another reason is that sportsbooks offer other kinds of betting options that have a higher hold (win) percentage, parlays and propositions. Parlays are a means of having multiple bets where all have to be selected correctly in order to win. So, during the regular season, you may bet a few games, but if all of them are selected correctly, you would win perhaps $60 on your $10 bet as opposed to $11 on your $10 bet. But if you don't select all correctly, you lose. Sportsbooks do very well on parlays. Propositions are those kind of bets that seem more like coin flips if anything. You can bet on who wins the coin toss, who will score first, whether the first score will be a safety, etc. The sportsbooks also do well on propositions. The article touches on "ties lose" parlay cards, where if the books are smart (they are), they may place propositions on those cards where there is a very reasonable chance that one of the underlying propositions will land on the predicted number of the card such that all bets will lose and the sportbook wins all the money.

Add up all these things, and just like New Orleans, Las Vegas wins the Super Bowl.

Lack of Parity in NFL Increases Sportsbook Risk

The Chicago Sun-Times has a nice article on the lack of parity in this NFL season. The NFL has been touting the "any given Sunday" line for years, stating that any week any team can beat any other team. This year, that tagline has been shown to be completely inaccurate. Do you really think the St. Louis Rams or the Oakland Raiders have a snowball's chance in hell of beating the New England Patriots, Minnesota Vikings, Pittsburgh Steelers or Indianapolis Colts? Nope.

Now TV ratings are not suffering, but there has been some impact with regard to attendance at the home stadiums of the poor teams. The lack of on-site attendance will have a future impact with regard to finances of the poorer teams as although there is sharing of television revenue, the teams use attendance revenue to assist with singing bonuses, etc. So, in this case the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Sportsbooks also suffer from lack of parity. That's due to the particulars of spread betting. Bettors put up $110 to win $100. So, for example if the Raiders and Chiefs were playing, with the Chiefs favored by 3 points, if you bet the Chiefs, they would have to beat the Raiders by more than 3 points in order to win the bet. If they won by just 3 points, the bet would be returned and if they won by less than 3 points (or lost the game outright), you would lose.

The sportsbook makes money by taking $110 from bettors on both the Raiders and Chiefs. They take in $220, pay the winner their $110 plus the winnings of $100, and the sportsbook keeps $10, or about a 4.5% profit.

This system works to ensure the sportsbook makes money if you can get equal bets on both sides - in the example equal bets on both the Raiders and Chiefs. Point spreads are set to help ensure this occurs. When the two teams are evenly matched, the spread is low, with the converse when they are unevenly matched. In theory, you can set the spread large enough to attract equal action. In practice, that doesn't always happen.

This is the problem with the current lack of parity in the NFL. If some teams are just horrible, they are just not going to attract betting interest, unless the spreads are set to a dangerous level. Usually, a very high spread may be 13 points. With the current disparity, a game between between a top team and a bottom team might have to have a spread of 20 points or more to attract ANY betting interest on the poor team. So far, favorites are winning and underdogs (particularly of the poorer teams) aren't winning (even against the spread). If all the betting action is on the favorites and the favorites win, there aren't losing bets on the underdogs to finance paying the winners. That means the sportsbook has to pay out of their pocket, which means the sportsbook actually loses money.

Parity in the NFL isn't just good for the fans - it's good for the sportsbooks too.

Early 2010 Super Bowl Odds Posted

For those of you looking for pre-season guesses as to who will win Super Bowl XLIV in January 2010, SBR Global Sportsbook has posted early odds. They are:

Arizona 30/1
Atlanta 23/1
Baltimore 23/1
Buffalo 50/1
Carolina 23/1
Chicago 18/1
Cincinnati 63/1
Cleveland 75/1
Dallas 18/1
Denver 63/1
Detroit 150/1
Green Bay 30/1
Houston 40/1
Indianapolis 12/1
Jacksonville 40/1
Kansas City 63/1
Miami 50/1
Minnesota 14/1 (before Brett Favre's addition)
New England 4.5/1
New Orleans 18/1
New York (N) 11/1
New York (A) 40/1
Oakland 80/1
Philadelphia 10/1 (before Michael Vick's addition)
Pittsburgh 8.5/1
San Diego 8.5/1
San Francisco 63/1
Seattle 50/1
St. Louis 100/1
Tampa Bay 41/1
Tennessee 18/1
Washington 40/1

New England, Pittsburgh and San Diego are the early favorites, which make sense since Tom Brady is back for New England, Pittsburgh is the defending champion and LT and Shawne Merriman are back for San Diego. To me, Green Bay at 30/1 and Arizona at 30/1 seem like good bangs for the buck, but the oddsmakers aren't dumb.

The odds on both Minnesota and Philadelphia are likely to drop with the adds of Brett Favre and Michael Vick (aka Ron Mexico), respectively. Given that Detroit didn't win a game last year, I'm not so sure that 150/1 odds are high enough...perhaps 1000/1?

Delaware Sports Betting Bill Passes House

The Dover Post reports that the sports betting bill, finally passed the House on Friday. Earlier in the week, the bill had actually failed. The rumor has it that the state's casino operators were in opposition to the original bill, due to the higher gaming taxes and unclear path forward for table games. This blog described other issues with the original bill in a previous post.

The modified bill reduces the increase in taxes so that operators now only will have to pay 43.5% of their gaming revenue. That is a problem. The state should have kept the gaming tax rate at the 37% level. What Delaware is doing is not just adding new gaming options, but increasing the taxes on all gaming revenue.

Let's consider a fast food example to clarify the issue. You have a burger joint. You sell hamburgers, fries and soda. For those items, you pay 10% of the gross profit (price of items minus cost of ingredients). Now, the county health department will allow you to sell cheeseburgers and milkshakes. The price for this expansion is that you will have to pay an upfront fee of $10,000 every year to give you the right to sell cheeseburgers and milkshakes. Not only that, but the tax rate for all food items moves up from 10% to 15%. So, you see in this example, it doesn't really seem like that good of a deal for the burger joint. It isn't.

The original bill was worse, but that was defeated earlier this week. The modification is only slightly better. The increase in the gaming tax rate was reduced to 6.5% from 8%, so the casinos will be paying 43.5% on all gaming revenue. The annual sports betting license fee was cut a paltry half a million to $4 million. The best improvement was putting the table game approval path on a 75 day track to hash out details to present before the legislature.

Politicians seem to live in a world of "orthogonal tuning" when it comes to taxes and revenues. For example, if taxing an item at 20% generates 10 million in taxes, then to a politician it is obvious that raising the taxes on that item to 40% would generate 20 million. Easy! Not so. The politicians, although experts at laws, most of them being lawyers, seem to be oblivious to the law of unintended consequences. When tax rates increase, that has impacts on behaviors and responses. What the government might find in this case that the increase in the tax rate actually results in the decrease in tax revenue.

With regard to the sports betting bill, the casinos will have to operate more lean and mean to survive. As stated in the earlier blog post, the parlay game may not be sufficient to generate lots of interest. Initially, sure, as it is new, but if the game isn't really that good, interest will wane.

What if the casinos, in order to survive, even with table games and sports parlays, had to reduce staff? Is that what Delaware wanted? They might get more revenue from the casinos, but what if one of the casinos close? Will all the revenue move to the remaining casinos? Probably not. With the new legislation in Washington looking to regulate online gambling, it may be in a year or two people can play slots and table games from their home. Why go to a Delaware casino when you can play at home? The only thing the Delaware casinos will have to differentiate themselves is the sports parlay game, which may not be enough.

New Jersey Residents Favor Legalizing Sports Betting

Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind conducted a survey of New Jersey residents to get their opinions on making sports betting legal. New Jersey filed suit against the US stating the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) was unconstitutional and violated states' rights. You can refer to a recent post on this blog.

The topic is relevant, and the results are interesting. I would have assumed that, even if a plurality of residents favored legalizing sports betting, that a majority of conservatives would have opposed. That is not the case. With the sole exception of the question of online or internet sports betting, residents approved of the legalization of sports betting in casinos, racetracks and off-track betting (OTB) facilities.

Overall, men are in favor more than women, and liberals and moderates are more in favor than conservatives. But, all groups had a majority (and in some cases, strong) in favor of sports betting. Regardless of what the sports leagues may want, it appears that the people seem to approve of the concept.

The survey questions and responses, broken out by sex and political temperament are shown below, courtesy of the FDU PublicMind website.

a. Would you favor or oppose making sports betting legal in New Jersey at Atlantic City casinos?
	All	gender				ideology
		men	women		liberal	moderate	conservative
Favor	63%	69	58		70	67	56
Oppose	32%	27	36		27	28	38
Unsure	6%	4	6		3	4	6

b. Would you favor or oppose making sports betting legal in New Jersey at horse-racing tracks?
	All	gender				ideology
		men	women		liberal	moderate	conservative
Favor	63%	65	61		68	67	57
Oppose	30%	29	31		27	26	37
Unsure	7%	6	8		5	7	6

c. Would you favor or oppose making sports betting legal in New Jersey at off-track betting parlors?
	All	gender				ideology
		men	women		liberal	moderate	conservative
Favor	48%	51	45		52	51	46
Oppose	43%	42	44		42	42	45
Unsure	9%	6	11		6	7	9

d. Would you favor or oppose making sports betting legal in New Jersey by telephone and the internet?
	All	gender				ideology
		men	women		liberal	moderate	conservative
Favor	26%	30	23		34	27	23
Oppose	66%	63	69		63	65	70
Unsure	8%	7	7		3	7	6

(FDU PublicMind)

Delaware Sports Betting Bill Progressing

The legislation to authorize sports betting in Delaware passed a legislative hurdle this week. The Delaware House Gaming and Parimutuels Committee released the bill from their committee this week. Certain gaming interests, the NCAA, NFL and anti-gambling interests had been against expanding sports gambling, but the State's need for revenue to relieve a projected shortfall outweighed the special interests' lobbying. More detail on the bill can be found in the Forbes.com article.

The bill keeps the number of casinos at three, but increases the tax rate on slot revenue and institutes a $4.5M sports betting license fee, split among the three casinos. I understand the need for revenue, but increases in gaming taxes don't always translate to increased revenue. In addition, it is important that the casinos are able to generate a profit as well. They are the entities that are taking the business risk.

The sports betting license fee is a bit steep. Assuming the win % on sports betting is 5%, the casinos would have to generate $90M in wagers just to cover the license fee. That doesn't take into their costs of betting lines, sports book property, plant and equipment, advertising and labor costs. The sports bets provided had better be attractive in order to generate sufficient wagering interest. If Delaware just sticks to a sports lottery, requiring a parlay of two or more bets, that offering alone may not be sufficient.

Delaware needs to offer the full spectrum of sports wagers, to include the new pari-mutuel fantasy sports wagers. Fantasy sports is big business, and the three Delaware casinos are racetracks as well, very familiar with pari-mutuel wagering. Also, these tracks already have the proper pari-mutuel equipment in place, just requiring minor software modification to allow pari-mutuel fantasy sports wagers. With almost 30M fantasy sports players in the US, there's a large potential market. Since the population base within a 90 minute drive from Delaware is approximately 35M, there may be as many as 3.5M fantasy sports players as an addressable market by Delaware casinos.

With the pari-mutuel concept, the takeout is much higher than that for parlay bets or straight bets. Pari-mutuel takeout percentages are often 18% or higher. Assuming just a 15% takeout,
only $30M in pari-mutuel fantasy sports wagers would be required to generate the $4.5M to cover the annual license fee. Since the significant portion of the pari-mutuel infrastructure is already in place, this concept could be an easy and profitable portion of the overall sports betting offering.

To learn more about pari-mutuel fantasy sports wagering, see the YouGaming.com website.

New Jersey to Legally Challenge PASPA

In 1992, Congress passed the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA). It should have been called the Nevada Legalized Sports Betting and Illegal Sports Betting Monopoly Act. The law grandfathers four states that had some kind of legal sports betting to be able to allow sports betting, but restrict all others from having legalized sports betting. The four grandfathered states are: Nevada, Oregon, Montana and Delaware. Nevada, is by far the state with the largest amount of legal sports betting. Note that illegal sports betting wasn't hampered by this law. All the law did for 46 states was ensure the "Sopranos" didn't have any legitimate competition. How sweet of Congress to take care of the illegal bookies like that!

Congress knew the law was weak and had iffy Constitutional strength. The Department of Justice (DOJ) actually opposed this law on the grounds that it violated states rights. The reference to the DOJ is here. In addition, the DOJ highlighted the issue that the law allowed professional and amateur sports organizations to bring civil injunctions against states. Professor I. Nelson Rose in his article on PASPA mentions that the US Supreme Court has ruled that states can not be sued without their consent. Professor Rose makes the point that if a state can't be sued by an Indian tribe, what real chance would a sports organization like the NCAA have in getting their case allowed?

The law had never been officially challenged - until now. With state governments scrambling for cash, gambling is looking good. As gambling becomes more prevalent, competition for gaming dollars is heating up. Delaware, as mentioned in a previous post, is considering exercising its rights under PASPA and legalizing a sports betting game. This is causing concern among neighboring states which aren't allowed by PASPA to follow suit.

A New Jersey group comprised of gaming and racing interests filed suit challenging the constitutionality of PASPA in US District Court. The link to the Reuters article is here. It likely won't be decided for quite a few months, but the process is started. Will the DOJ fight the suit even though they are on record questioning the law's violation of states' rights?

I think PASPA should be declared unconstitutional and tossed. Then each state can decide if it wants to allow sports betting and get that betting that is currently unregulated going to bookies become above board, regulated and taxed. Everyone wins...except those with losing bets. Even if PASPA was declared invalid, that would not allow interstate sports betting. That would still be in violation of the Wire Act. This would allow intrastate sports betting. So, the betting books and pools would have to be contained fully within the state, similar to how sports betting in Nevada operates now.

If PASPA is declared invalid, it should increase the value of YouGaming's patents. YouGaming could offer very attractive games to these new markets. Fantasy sports is still growing and pari-mutuel wagering offers a higher intrinsic takeout compared to wagering typical of typical sports wagering.

What's the Best Betting Value in the NCAA Tournament?

So, who will win the 2009 NCAA men's basketball tournament? I haven't a clue, but it will be one of 65 teams. I know, that's a great insight - you can thank me later. Looking at the initial odds posted by the Las Vegas Hilton (referenced in a story in the Las Vegas Sun), there may be some teams that based on the odds relative to their seeding, might be worth a gamble.

I took a look at the odds posted for the various teams and mapped them to their seeding. I averaged out the odds per seed level and looked for teams that the posted odds were significantly above the average. Before I give you the possible values, here's the average odds per seed level:

Seed Avg Odds

1. 5.75
2. 14.25
3. 28.75
4. 47.5
5. 71.25
6. 56.25
7. 100
8. 175
9. 250
10. 200
11. 475
12. 175
13. 400
14. 200
15. 200
16. 200

You can see that there is a natural trend that the lower the seed, the higher the odds, except for the lowest seeds. The LV Hilton sportsbook has most of the teams with discrete odds, with a field entry for everyone else. The field entry for this tournament consists of all 14-16 seeds, plus Northern Iowa and Akron. I don't think the field entry is a value bet, even though you get a chance on 14 teams.

Notice that the 5, 9 and 11 seeds on average pay more than the next lower seeds. We'll look there and also look at other seed levels to determine if a team or two is being offered at a significant differential to the average odds for the seed level.

If we set a level of differential to identify those teams whose odds are 75% higher than the average odds of their seed level, here's what we get:

4/Xavier - Odds 100:1/Seed Avg Odds 47.5:1
6/Marquette - Odds 100:1/Seed Avg Odds 56.25:1
9/Siena - Odds 500:1/Seed Avg Odds 250:1
11/Utah St - Odds 1,000:1/Seed Avg Odds 475:1
13/Cleveland St - Odds 1,000:1/Seed Avg Odds 400:1

If we lower the value threshold to 40% higher than the average odds of their seed level, these other teams appear:

5/Utah - Odds 100:1/Seed Avg Odds 71.25:1
5/Illinois - Odds 100:1/Seed Avg Odds 71.25:1
8/BYU - Odds 300:1/Seed Avg Odds 175:1
10/Minnesota - Odds 300:1/Seed Avg Odds 200:1
12/W. Kentucky - Odds 300:1/Seed Avg Odds 175:1

This will be interesting to see if any of these make a Cinderella run, or, if the oddsmakers are right, they make an earlier exit than expected.

Delaware Looking To Parlay With Sports Betting

When the Delaware Legislature convenes next month, figuring out something to help their racinos counter increased gambling offerings from Pennsylvania and Maryland will be on their list of "to do" items.

How do you counter gambling? MORE GAMBLING! As Sarah Palin might say, "you didn't see that one coming, you betcha!"

Delaware is one of four states that is grandfathered under the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act to legally offer sports gambling. If bigger states offer more slot machines to keep their gambling citizens within state borders, how does a small state like Delaware compete? Offering something Pennsylvania and Maryland can't is probably a good idea. The Forbes.com link to the Associated Press article has more detail on the subject.

The outgoing governor is against the idea, but who cares? She's leaving so who gives a hoot about what she thinks? The incoming governor is facing a revenue shortfall to the tune of about 500 million dollars, and the increased gaming competition from nearby states isn't going to help. He could opt for the Beatles' "Taxman" approach, but that won't be too popular. But adding more gambling? A win-win! (except for the people that lose money gambling) The choice is, do you let those gamblers lose money in someone else's state, or do you want them to lose money in Delaware? If you're Delaware, that's a no brainer.

If Delaware adds sports gambling products that are popular and profitable, Delaware could totally counter what her neighboring states are doing. To those that are scratching their heads, yes, you can offer a sports betting product that loses money. Check out my recent posts regarding Montana Sports Action.

Gambling Analyst Crunches Numbers To Cast Doubt On NBA Donaghy Claims

On October 2nd, NBA Commissioner David Stern had a press conference to discuss the Pedowitz Report, which supports the assertion from the NBA that referee Tim Donaghy was the only referee gambling on games, he did not affect the outcome of games and he acted alone.

Well, affecting the outcome of games, Mr. Stern was likely referring only to the official scoreboard outcome, not the gambling outcome. If a referee doesn't do anything that has one team win that shouldn't (e.g. the "Tuck Rule" NFL playoff game), but does do things that impact the point spread result, I suppose you could claim that the referee didn't affect the outcome as the actual winner of the game didn't change. Gamblers, however, may not see things the same way.

RJ Bell of pregame.com did some analysis and found out some very interesting information. Here's a quote from his post:

"The first 15 games of the 2006-07 refereed by Tim Donaghy that had big enough betting to move the point spread by at least 1.5 points were UNDEFEATED against Las Vegas - meaning that the big-money gamblers won 15 of 15 times on his games. The odds of that happening randomly are 32,768 to 1."

For those not mathematically inclined, how did Mr. Bell come up with those odds? In spread betting, the theory is that the spread will be such that equal betting will occur on both teams. If that occurs, the assumption is that each team would have a 50% chance of prevailing, even if in real life one team may be much better than the other. The point spread tends to provide a positive handicap to the perceived weaker team. So, if each team has a 50% chance, then it is similar to a coin flip.

What are the odds of heads coming up on a single coin flip? 50% or 1/2. How about heads coming up on three straight coin flips? The probability is P = 1/2 * 1/2 * 1/2 or 1/8 or 1 out of 8. Another way to say this is that the odds of three straight heads is 8 to 1.

What Mr. Bell discovered is that for those 15 games refereed by Tim Donaghy that had such heavy betting on one of the teams, such that the spread actually had to be shifted by at least 1.5 points, the big-money gamblers were on the right side of the wager every single time. Think of it as you knowing heads will come up 15 straight times. What are the odds of that? P = 1/2 to the 15th power or 1/32,768. The odds of this are 32,768 to 1. The NBA Commissioner states that referees didn't impact the outcomes of games. That is not the same thing as not having an impact of any kind.

Tim Donaghy also made calls to another referee in this time period. RJ Bell looked into that and found 10 games refereed by that person had heavy betting on one of the teams such that the spread had to be shifted by at least 2 points. The big-money gamblers were on the right side of those wagers every time. The odds of that happening were P = 1/2 to the 10th power, or 1,024 to 1.

You really think that these gambling outcomes were random? What are the odds that 15 games by one referee went one way and 10 games by another referee went one way (in favor of the heavy betting action)? P = 1/32,768 * 1/1,024 or 33,554,432 to 1. What actually happened only had a 1 in 33 MILLION chance of happening randomly. Hmmm...you know what I think? I don't think this was random chance. Do you?

Casino Robbed? Yes, But Not By Ocean's 11...

A bit of an old story, but yes, a Las Vegas casino did get robbed. Actually, it was the sports book at the Las Vegas Hilton. The Las Vegas Sun story talks about the heist in the early morning of Friday, September 26th.

If you've been to the Las Vegas Hilton sports book, you know it's located next to the buffet. The robbery happened at 6:15 am, which is before the buffet opens for breakfast. This buffet isn't a 24-hour operation, which was probably known to the criminals. It could have been much more dangerous if this had occurred while there was a big line of patrons just feet away waiting to get in.

With all the security, it does seem improbable that casinos can be victimized in this way, but it did indeed happen. Now the sports book is near an exit, whereas the casino cage tends to be in the middle of the property, which likely made it (sports book) more attractive as a target.

Let this be a reminder to always be aware of your surroundings. Even casinos, with large security staffs and systems, can still fall victim to thuggery.