Last fall, through my web site, I was contacted by a publisher to write a beginners guide to gambling. I never imagined in a million years I would be a writer. In fact, I still consider myself to be a very "green" writer. What helped me with landing this book deal is my knowledge of casino games. Basically this book will be a guide for beginners who are new to casinos and the casino games. I felt it was important to educate the millions of new gamblers that are visiting casinos each year. If they would only educate themselves about the games they would be much better off.
I would like to thank John Woods for helping me with this project. Without his patients this book wouldn't be a reality. The book will be part of a series of books entitled "Everything ........". My book will be called "The Everything Guide to Casino Gambling". Look for the book to be out in the fall. Look for more details on the book release on this page. For now enjoy a preview of the Sports Betting Chapter.
The most popular form of gambling in the United States is on sporting events. At the time of this writing, the only state that legally accepts sports wagers is Nevada. A sports book is a sports wagering facility that functions as a business on its own or as part of a casino. The sports books in Nevada are averaging between $40 - $50 million dollars in bets on the Super Bowl alone. That’s only the amount of legal gambling done on that game. There’s so much more gambling done through bookies, friends, relatives, coworkers, etc. The estimated amount of money gambled on the Super Bowl is around $200 million dollars. The federal government believes that sports wagering is a business between $40 billion and $200 billion annually. This includes legal sports books and all “illegal” sports bets. In 1995 sports wagers in Nevada exceeded $2.1 billion and more than half of that is bet on football. What I’m going to cover in this chapter is the legal sports betting in Nevada casinos. I’ll explain how to read the big board in casino sports books plus cover the betting of baseball, basketball, boxing, football, hockey and horse racing.