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Why Las Vegas Is a Big City, Chapter the Millionth

In the dead week before the two teams arrive at the host city for the Super Bowl, gambling news fills the void of all those missing riveting interviews with long snappers. The easiest fish in the barrel to shoot, which is why I'm doing it right now, is to run down the long long list of Super Bowl prop bets, such as who's gonna be the MVP, how long the National Anthem will take, and so on.

The simplest and purest prop bet on the board is also the most revealing. It tells us why gambling requires a profound belief that mathematics is not a thing. Which team will win the coin toss.

In math and in language, a coin flip is used as an example of a pure 50-50 proposition. It's random chance whether the Chiefs captains will win the toss or the 49ers captains will (I'm not sure if there's a bet for the officials screwing up the toss, but there should be).

Not when the money's on the table it isn't. Chiefs winning the coin toss is minus 110, that is, the plunger must bet $11 to win back $10. Lo and behold, that's the same exact odds for the 49ers winning the toss. If bettors split on this proposition 50-50, the house gets back $11 for every $10 it must pay out. Of course, the winning bettors get their investment back, too, so instead of a ridiculous 10 percent return, the coin toss bet brings in a mere five percent of the total money pool.

Anyone who makes five percent return on a two week investment on Wall Street gets on the cover of "Forbes" or earns subpoenas from the SEC and the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York or both. At sports books legal or illegal, that five percent is baked into the cake of every wager, from even money to the longest odds on the board in any sport.

Anyone unwilling to take a little flutter on the Super Bowl, even if it's just buying a square or two in the office pool, lacks sporting blood. On those rare occasions I'm in Nevada, I love the sports book. That's because it takes three hours to lose money a ballgame, as opposed to three seconds at the table game. I am under no illusion my bets on sports will be right 55 or more percent of the time. My sportswriting career offers a long paper trail showing that ain't happening.

Damon Runyon wrote "All life is 6 to 5 against." Times change. Now it's only 11 to 10.

posted by Michael Gee @ 10:48 AM