Gambling Thread

Holy fuck. Bama coach involved.

Fired Alabama baseball coach connected to suspicious betting activity involving his team — USA TODAY

 

What a wild story.

One thing is like to bring up.

Alabama doesn’t even have a lottery. There is NO legal gambling in that state.

Yet a college baseball coach clearing 475k in that state had an involvement.

Keeping it illegal doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.

 

How were they able to ID who the guy at the book was talking too? How were they able to know that the guy the coach was talking to wasn't just some buddy, who laid down a bunch when his friend said "yeah, our ace isn't going, he's hurt." The rest of the story on this will be something to hear.

 

As with everything else here, it’s complicated.

Parimutual wagering is legal at current and former dog tracks. Depending on the mood of judges on a particular day and the sheriff of a given county, you can find what are essentially mom and pop slot machine parlors that are theoretically playing bingo. And a tiny Indian tribe in southwest Alabama put a crowbar into that crack and opened up a Grand Canyon-sized loophole that gives them three full-sized slot machine casinos. They’ve done so well with that they’ve started investing in casinos in other states where it is actually fully legal and other non-gaming property investments. And they’ve bribed (excuse me, lobbied) their way into being a player in state Republican circles to preserve their virtual monopoly.

It used to be the church people blocking gambling expansion in Alabama. Now it is the Poarch Creek tribe and the Mississippi casino interests teaming up to block anything that doesn’t give them the lion’s share of any expansion proceeds.

 

Bearman was in VSIN this morning and reporter the bettor was a BetMGM player - a losing player, and that’s important here - but he was known to the book. That allowed him to get whatever down he could.

The key that he was as a losing player. BetMGM, six months in, was $11k in the hole to me in 2021 and they booted my ass and limited me to 63 cents a wager. But they’re notorious in taking high limits from losing players. (Note: I was up 11k at MGM but probably down 7k at other books during that timeframe on betting the other side.)

Coming up with a five-figure bet on college baseball and thinking it wouldn’t set off alarms is insane.

I used to move lines with $250 bets on Danish and Swedish soccer in 2020. I’d bet the under 2.5 goals and it would jump from -110 to -150 for the next bet. That’s off $250.

I did have a friend I would work with on some of these lines. If I could move a line with a $250 or $300 bet on under 2.5, he would then try and bet it back at over 2 if the line moved enough.

 

Slot machines are the devil but states and books make so much money off them. They bankrupt seniors who keep going - day after day - money that could help their children or grandchildren.

 

Alabama government doesn’t make an above-board dime off said bingo slots. That’s the maddening part. (Some of the Black Belt counties have skimmed a little in a convoluted web of alleged charity donations.)

Meanwhile, our would-be whale is a former high school baseball coach. These morons had better be lawyered up to the teeth.

https://www.al.com/alabama/2023/05/...igh-school-coach-to-place-bet-per-report.html

 

This is what I don't get in terms of how they thought they would get away with this. The handle on regular season college baseball reportedly is minuscule (one of the reports said FanDuel or someone took zero wagers on the LSU-Bama game). But hey, let's try to slip two huge wagers through, what could go wrong?

 

It's amateur hour-level thinking.

The 1994 Arizona State basketball point-shaving scandal was the same thing. Guys showing up in Las Vegas with huge sacks of cash to bet either for Arizona State or against them, depending on the game/spread.

The 1995 Northwestern basketball betting scandal was much more muted and didn't come out for three years. I was there for one of the games in question (as a fan) and, even at the time, it was surprising how bad Northwestern was in that particular game, even in a 5-22 season. They were lifeless and had no flow on offense. But their amounts were smaller -- $20,000 in handle on one side with one of the N'western players collecting $4,000 for not covering.

 

Plus, as I noted on the college baseball thread, the odds are horrible. LSU closed as a -245 favorite according to Darren Rovell. So a $10,000 bet only wins you about $6,500. If you're Bohannon, is that really worth blowing up your career and reputation over?

When this came out, the best case scenario for Bohannon would have been that he was talking to a buddy before the game, mentioned something about the change of pitchers, and the buddy threw a couple hundred dollars down on it. It's becoming more and more obvious that this was planned out — and stupidly planned out at that.
Also makes you suspect this might not have been the first time he's pulled something like this.

 

A good example of why legalized gambling is a good thing. The books have the ability to monitor gambling patterns.

Although I think the Black Sox scandal was sniffed out by bookies taking huge bets.