The Odds: One Season, Three Gamblers, and the Death of Their Las Vegas
One gambler is a manic former cokehead with an Ivy League degree. The second is a college dropout trying to make a living at the only thing he enjoyed at school—gambling. The third, one of Vegas’s most respected bookmakers, is perilously close to burning out. The Odds follows the lives of these three professional gamblers through a college basketball season in a one-of-a-kind city struggling to reconcile its lawless past with its family-friendly makeover. With a wiseguy attitude and a faultles
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The Thriller on October 24, 2011
A masterful documentary of the sports gambling culture,
Chad Millman has written the book I had always dreamed of writing since my days in the Stardust sports book sharing nachos and hotdogs with the homeless, deadbroke souls who made it their home. I could not put this book down and read it in one night. It hit home with enormous impact since I knew in person or by reputation most of the main characters in book. I grieve for Joe Lupo and Alan Boston for their soon to be lost way of life. I have witnessed first hand the death of the Las Vegas Millman so touchingly pays tribute to and am grateful that Millman captured the last battle in the war in Vegas between Wiseguys and Bookmakers across the counter.
Even if one is not familiar with the subject matter, the book is still a must read. It is a roadmap of what pumps blood in the veins of young college educated affluent Americans in their spare time. An entire generation has become obssessed with gambling on the stock market and on sports and Millman interweaves the book with psychological insights on why people gamble and why risk takers who win are so revered in American pop culture. Lastly, Millman takes a shot at the hypocrisy of Congress and the NCAA. Reading about their attempts at stemming the tide of young sports bettors with legislation outlawing college gambling in Las Vegas (which accounts for less than 1% of the total wagering handle on sports betting) leaves one with the distinct impression that lawmakers are bumbling into a “New Prohibition” where government should be regulating and making taxes from sports gambling, instead of only protecting lotteries and casino gambling which gives gamblers no mathematical chance at ever beating the house.
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|Voracious reader on October 24, 2011
Just SUPER…..,
The Odds is a first hand look at what is going on in the sportsbook environment. Whether you want a view from the bookmaker’s perspective, the wiseguy’s perspective, or the casual sports bettor’s perspective, this book is terrfic. The bookmaker, Joe Lupo of The Stardust is one cool customer. He is under constant pressure to get it right as the manager of The Stardust sports book. Traditionally, the line comes out first from The Stardust, hence, the added pressure of being the focus of attention in Las Vegas sports gambling circles. He knows the details of every game from his collective sources of sports oddsmakers. This would make one cool movie…
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|Anonymous on October 24, 2011
Fast Food,
It’s an engaging read, but in the end it comes across as a frustratingly superficial write. As a tale of three diverse role-players in the Vegas sports betting scene, it gives us little in the way of character depth or development. As a tale of how one season pans out for these guys, we learn only the outline of their cumulative performance – some occasional snapshots. As a primer in how to make sports bets, only a tempting morsel is briefly revealed. As a history of sports betting in a crucial transition period -just a glimpse. Yet it still has a journalistic pull on our attention…almost despite ourseves, we really get involved in how two college basketball teams we’d hardly blinked an eye at in our lives fare head-to-head on a random night, and we do end up wanting our featured bettors to go home winners. Yet it’s hard not to feel this could have been so much better had the research been more thorough, the characters more closely followed, the history less skimpy. I read it in two sittings – goes down smooth as a Dove bar.
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