Vegas Insider Betting Blog

Will it be Kansas-Memphis or Memphis-North Carolina in the NCAA men's basketball finals? Remember, we expect that NewBodog will have the college basketball betting odds for the 2008 championship game shortly after we find out if the participants will be Memphis-North Carolina or Memphis-Kansas.

OffshoreInsiders.com will have a preview and you can also access the many free databases such as StatFox or Chalk Gaming

Tiger Woods is the underdog in the 2008 Masters Golf tournament. Well kind of. According to the betting line posted by BetUs Sportsbook, Woods is +120 when paired against "the field" meaning everyone else. The field is -160.

In addition to many proposition plays, said betting line is the cheat sheet of choice for Masters Calcutta betting according to golf handicapping guru Cy McCormick of MasterLockLine.com.

One can also have fantasy match-ups such as Phil Mickelson -140 to Vijay Singh or Justin Rose and Adam Scott paired against each other as a pick, with 15 cents juice.

Bookmaker allows bettors to pick by groups. Golfers are bracketed together by continent. For example, Adam Scott is +200 to win the Australian group, followed by Geoff Ogilvy.

In the South African classification, it's Ernie Els leading the pack at +150 with Retief Goosen next at +175. At +150, Padraig Harrington is the odds on choice in the United Kingdom/Ireland assemblage.

Apparently Woods is exempt from the American classification is his name is conspicuous by its absence, but Mickelson is +150, followed by Jim Furyk at +700 and Steve Stricker at +800.

Woods is even money at Bookmaker to win it all. Some tempting long shots include Sergio Garcia at +5000, Mike Weir at +300 and Justin Leonard at +7000.

For 2008 Masters betting picks, visit OffshoreInsiders.com   

The Big Ten Men's Basketball Tournament in 2008 is like Adrienne Barbeau: quite top heavy. The Wisconsin Badgers, Purdue Boilermakers, Indiana Hoosiers, and Michigan State Spartans are all nationally ranked and likely going the Big Dance.

For sports handicappers who believe in betting the motivational factor, the Ohio State Buckeyes are one of the "last four in" according to ESPN's Joe Lunardi's Bracketology.

The sportsbooks  say that Purdue is the slight favorite to win it all at 7/4, with Wisconsin nearly neck and neck at 7/4. Michigan State is only 7/2. If anyone has had almost as much success in March Madness as GodsTips, anchor of OffshoreInsiders.com, it is Tom Izzo, head coach of the Spartans.

Despite all the distractions of the Kelvin Sampson firing, the Indiana Hoosiers are just 5/1 to earn the automatic bid. Purdue and Indiana have the shorter odds as the tournament is being hosted at Conseco Fieldhouse, home of the Indiana Pacers.

The Minnesota Golden Gophers will have to play their way in to the 2008 Men's College Basketball Tournament, but they are 14/1 odds to win it all—the conference title that is.

Once highly regarded Illinois is 20/1, the Iowa Hawkeyes at 22/1. Surprisingly ahead of both is perennial doormat Penn State at just 18/1.  At 25/1 Michigan is given little chance and Northwestern at 100/1 no chance. Odds are courtesy of NewBodog.

Considering the Wildcats went 1-17 in conference play, perhaps the bookmakers are being too generous.

The author, Joe Duffy, is former General Manager of the Freescoreboard scorephone network and CEO of OffshoreInsiders.com, the premier hub of world-class handicappers.

From its legal inception in 1931, Las Vegas' gaming and sports betting industry has been built on the dreams and imagination of people who have had the courage to question the status quo. But while many a daring dreamer has left his legacy in this desert oasis, four men stand out.

Part 1: The Man Who Invented Las Vegas.

It was on the night of June 20, 1947, that nine bullets from a .30-.30 carbine ripped through the living room window of socialite Virginia Hill's home on 810 North Linden Drive in Beverly Hills. The first shot crashed into the man's head, driving the victim's right eye from his skull and hurling it 15 feet across the room. The other shots quickly followed but there was no need. Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, the era's most infamous mobster, already was dead.

Ironically, hundreds of miles away, in a desert outpost called Las Vegas, Siegel's gambling dream was alive and well and just beginning to prosper.

Ben Siegel first came west in 1937 to California to organize the mob's lucrative narcotics, prostitution and bookmaking enterprises there. A much-feared New York criminal who by his early 20s already had committed several murders, Siegel had partners in crime including the underworld elite, from Meyer Lansky - with whom he'd formed an execution squad that predated Murder Inc. by seven years - to Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Dutch Schultz, Albert Anastasia, Legs Diamond, Arnold Rothstein, Vito Genovese and Frank Nitti. Except for his movie star good looks, Siegel fit right in.

By 1945 Siegel had used a combination of bribery and deadly force to consolidate his power in California, buying off cops and politicians and killing those who couldn't be bought. Three years earlier, in 1942, he'd taken over control of Las Vegas' racewire services, charging the hotels exorbitant fees for the racetrack information.

But Siegel had bigger plans for Las Vegas.

Early in 1946 he decided to build the largest and most lavish casino in the world there. But it wouldn't be just a casino. There'd be a hotel, too, with carefully manicured grounds, a swimming pool, restaurant, bar and nightclub. There'd be nothing like it anywhere on the planet and as soon as it opened on a patch of inexpensive land at the desolate southern end of what would later be called the Strip - Las Vegas Boulevard - Siegel instantly would be transformed from mobster to mogul. He'd be America's king of gambling. It'd all be legit, too.

But the casino, which Siegel called the "Fabulous Flamingo Hotel," was horribly under funded. Siegel had invested his own ill-gotten fortune, about $1 million, in what was estimated to be a $1.5 million venture. But the hotel's plumbing alone cost $1 million and building supplies, particularly steel and copper, were scarce in post-war America. Siegel paid extra to get them.

The tab for the project quickly soared to $6 million, an incredible sum at the time. Siegel raised $3 million in stock sales and got the rest the Mob, extorting $2 million through the sale of his TransAmerica racewire service, an audacious move that later cost him his life.

On Dec. 26, 1946, with Virginia Hill at his side and Jimmy Durante in his nightclub, Siegel opened the Flamingo Hotel. It was a terrible disappointment. Bad weather had grounded many of Siegel's celebrity friends in Los Angeles and, as luck would have it, the casino lost heavily the first night. Two weeks later, $100,000 in the hole, the Flamingo closed.

On March 27, 1947, Siegel reopened the Flamingo. For three weeks, the casino continued to lose money. Then, finally, as it often happens for those who accept wagers, red turned to black. In May, the casino cleared $300,000.

Three weeks later, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, 41, was dead. But the town he built, the gambling and sports betting Mecca known as Las Vegas, was just coming to life.

This article was written on behalf of OffshoreInsiders.com by Luken Karel for http://www.thegreek.com.

By the mid 1960s, Las Vegas was well on its way to establishing itself as the gaming and sports betting capital of the world. But that didn't mean there wasn't room for another visionary to challenge the status quo and expand the concept of those who had come before him. Of the many daring dreamers and schemers who have left their legacy in this desert oasis, here's a look at one of the four men who really made an impact.

Part 2: The Man Who Bought Las Vegas.

Early in his life he was known as a swashbuckling aviator, a playboy who romanced Hollywood actresses and Las Vegas showgirls, a shrewd and often ruthless businessman who parlayed an oil drilling bit into one of the world's great fortunes, and the man who had designed a special uplift bra for the actress Jane Russell to wear in the motion picture, "The Outlaw."

By his twilight years he had degenerated into a pathetic, paranoid, long-haired, straggly bearded, reclusive billionaire so fearful of disease he avoided all human contact, spending most of his time alone in a darkened room, surrounded by boxes of Kleenex and covered only by a bed sheet. When the end mercifully came, April 5, 1976, at the age of 70, at 3,000 feet aboard an airplane out of Acapulco bound for Houston, his once sturdy, 6-foot, 4-inch frame carried a mere 90 pounds.

But somewhere between the genuine genius and the mystifying madness was the real Howard Hughes, the man who tried to buy Las Vegas and mold it in his image. The amazing part is that he nearly got away with it.

Hughes was a month shy of his 61^st birthday when he arrived in Las Vegas by train from Boston and took up residency on the top floor of the Desert Inn, Nov. 27, 1966. Only six months earlier, Hughes had sold TWA, the fledgling airline he had first bought for $1 million in 1939, for $546 million. Meanwhile, his Hughes Aircraft Co., which produced weapons for the US government, was valued at $1 billion and his Hughes Tool Company would fetch an additional $150 million in 1972. There also was a Hughes helicopter division, Hughes Air-West, a television station in New York, an architectural firm, as well as substantial property holdings in California and the Bahamas.

Howard Hughes was a very rich man.

So when Moe Dalitz, the feisty owner of the Desert Inn, sought to make good on a promise from Hughes that the billionaire would vacate his hotel by Christmas, instead of moving out, Hughes bought him out. It was the beginning of Hughes' attempt to make Las Vegas his own private Monopoly board.

Under the umbrella of his huge conglomerate, Summa Corporation, Hughes quickly acquired the Frontier, Castaways, Landmark, Silver Slipper and Sands hotel-casinos in Las Vegas as well as Harold's Club in Reno. Hughes also negotiated to purchase Caesars Palace, the Dunes, Stardust and Riviera in Las Vegas, Harrah's in Reno and Lake Tahoe, and Harvey's in Lake Tahoe. Pressure from the federal government in the form of possible anti-trust action against him probably prevented those sales but Hughes consoled himself with 2,000 mining claims in the state, 30,000 acres of real estate, including most of the land around the airport, and another TV station.

Because of the hundreds of millions of dollars he invested in the Las Vegas valley, money that revitalized a stagnant if not decaying industry, Hughes expected, and usually received, preferential treatment. Hence, his casinos were dutifully licensed despite the fact that Hughes refused to appear before gaming authorities, much less be photographed—something that hadn't occurred since 1957 - fingerprinted or interviewed.

After four year, Hughes left Las Vegas, not only annoyed that he had failed to control every aspect of the city's destiny, but melancholy and fearful that his many contributions to Las Vegas' growth and prosperity might go unappreciated.

"So now I wind up a supposedly successful businessman who has wrecked his health and consumed the best part of his life in the process," writes Hughes in Citizen Hughes, a biography by Michael Drosnin which explores the eccentric billionaire through internal memos and notes in Hughes' own hand. "I can't help but feel I must have given something to this community."

Gazing upon the gambling and sports betting wonderland that is today's Las Vegas, of this there can be no doubt.

Next, Part 3: The Man Who Played Las Vegas.

This article was written by Luken Karel on behalf of OffshoreInsiders.com for http://www.thegreek.com

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Las Vegas always has been a city built on hopes and aspirations but only a handful of true visionaries have had a unique and lasting impact of the growth and direction of this desert outpost. Of the four pillars of Las Vegas innovation, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, Howard Hughes and Liberace are gone but one architect remains, a man who continues to reinvent this unique city to this day.

Part 4: The Man Who Reinvigorated Las Vegas.

Steve Wynn was still a couple of years shy of becoming a teenager in 1952 when he stood on a dusty patch of desert highway called the Strip and listened intently as his father, a Maryland bingo parlor operator, told him of his dream of expanding his business there. Michael Wynn died in 1963 but his dream - and then some - never left the mind of his innovative son. It would take 26 years but Steve Wynn would realize his father's dream.

Typically, Wynn's first steps into gaming weren't timid ones. In the early 1970s, using money he'd earned in the family business, Wynn purchased a parcel of real estate adjacent to Caesars Palace from Howard Hughes. The next year he sold the land to Caesars for a profit of $760,000. He used the money to accumulate stock in the downtown Golden Nugget and, by 1973, at the age of 31, was the youngest casino chairman in the history of Las Vegas.

Wynn next turned his attention to Atlantic City, paying $8.5 million for the Strand Hotel. He promptly demolished the Strand and built another Golden Nugget which, in 1987, he then sold to Bally's for a record $440 million.

Flushed with optimism and with his father's dream still kicking around in his head, Wynn then returned to Las Vegas, a city which, despite its gaming persona, still was in search of an identity. Wynn defined it.

He did it by building The Mirage, a $630 million all-inclusive complex that he promised "would have mystique, like a lady half-dressed." It did.

The birth of The Mirage in 1989 redefined Las Vegas as the ultimate tourist destination, the home of wondrous new sights and experiences, where casino gambling and sports betting were the main but not the only attractions. A tropic paradise of waterfalls and foliage, luxury accommodations, gourmet restaurants, a rain forest, an exploding volcano, a swanky shopping mall, rare white tigers, an aquarium with bottle-nosed dolphins, and the city's most spectacular - and expensive - show, Siegfried & Roy, there never had been anything quite like it. In fact, Wynn was forced to add a new term to the gaming lexicon just to describe The Mirage. He called it a "megaresort."

Suddenly, the Strip, which had not seen significant growth in several years, was awash in megaresort projects. In the eight years immediately after Wynn first unveiled his plans to build The Mirage, other would-be entrepreneurs played follow-the-leader, adding 30,000 rooms and $3 billion worth of investments to the Strip.

The success of The Mirage spawned the Excalibur, the castle-configured casino with 4,000 rooms. Then came Luxor, a pyramid-shaped property next door to the Excalibur. Hardly content to watch others build, in October of 1993, Wynn added another property of his own, Treasure Island, a pirate-themed facility adjacent to The Mirage. Two months later the city welcomed the MGM Grand, with 5,005 rooms, the largest hotel, er, megaresort, in the world.

Wynn would later build Bellagio, on the site of the old Dunes Hotel on the corner of Flamingo Road and Las Vegas Boulevard and, most recently, Wynn Las Vegas, his high-end signature property that now stands on land where the Desert Inn once stood.

"Nevada's advantage is... that we have the creative genius of people like Steve," said former Governor Bob Miller.

Wynn, the architect of the modern Las Vegas gaming and sports betting expansion, just smiled at the remark, comfortable with the presence (and accolades) of elected officials. In fact, Wynn has golfed with many politicians, including Arizona Senator Sen. John McCain, the presumptive 2008 presidential nominee of the Republican Party.

So how did it feel to rub elbows with the power elite?

McCain never said.