1/7/2023 0 Comments Newton kansan sportsI’ve bet up to $5 on horse races and dog races. I’m not saying do something or don’t do something, just be responsible. They’ll take your house, your car, anything else in hock, your savings – who knows, maybe even your wife and kids. With the corporate interests that run gambling today, they will just take everything you have. It was rarely done in Vegas (although as Lake Mead draws down to record lows, they did find one body in a 55-gallon drum). Whacking was mainly done to those who the Mob thought stole money from them or those muscling in on their territory. You whack someone, you’ll never get money from them. Whacking was always done as a last resort and only in extreme circumstances. Or in extreme cases, you might get whacked. You fall behind to the Mob, you might get your thumbs broken. Nothing is comped unless you are really high roller, spending six figures or more. Today in Vegas, the parking is $20 a day, the hotel rooms are $200 a night, a ticket to the show or boxing match is at least $500 and the buffet is $60 a head ($100 on the weekends). You spend enough in the casino, you often got a lot of things comped. They offered cheap hotel rooms, the $5 steak dinner with all the trimmings, free top-name entertainment in the lounges and cheap tickets to the shows and boxing matches. The Mob took less of the skim than the big corporations behind today’s gambling interests. On the other hand, there have always been these problems.Īgain, like in Vegas, when the Mob ran gambling, they often could be more consumer friendly. Yes there are people with gambling addictions who are going to suffer because it’s become much easier. The one question about all this will be the social ills. (Our in-house computer system back then was about eight-feet long by three-feet high by four-feet wide, could support about eight users and could do less than my older cellphones. But that was back in the day when it was quite a feat to get computer- generated anything. I don’t anticipate any attempts to start offering gambling on high school events, but at one time, even here at the Kansan, we used to publish point spreads on high school football that were devised by computer from our-then corporate overlords at the now-defunct Stauffer Communications. The powers that be in the high school administrations have been opposed to it, but in Kansas, still uses one venue attached to a casino for state championship events. The NCAA still opposes it and college sports were once rife with point-shaving scandals that even shut championship programs down. Pro sports were adamantly opposed to expanded sports gambling, until they started making deals with the sports books. The state wants more money, the operators of the state casinos want more and those fine on-line book makers want more. The reason for it is simple – everybody wants more $$$ and this looks like an easy way to get it. It’s as easy as a trip to one of the state-lottery run casinos or an app on your phone. Years in the making and somewhat a surprise, you can now indulge your inner- most Vegas or Atlantic City fantasies and put your hard-earned money down on who will win the Super Bowl, the NBA finals, the NCAA Final Four or tonight’s Kansas City Royals game. Ladies and gentlemen of Kansas, welcome to the wild wonderful world of sports gambling.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |