Behind The Scenes: Down to the Wire at the Book

By Spencer Hall
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The brain trust of MGM’s Race and Sports Book Robert Walker does not keep a clean desk, especially during the second biggest weekend of the year for Vegas when he’s working 16 hour days and setting the lines for all of MGM’s properties.
“I wouldn’t come to work without coffee. The ramen’s my daughter’s, but we all share the sunflower seeds around the office. The energy drink for the day is Vitamin Water,” he says, speaking quickly and keeping one eye on the lines streaming across the screen.
Walker says he’s been getting six hours of sleep a night. With Drake’s loss to underdog Western Kentucky today, he might get a bit more sleep tonight following a painful beginning to the tournament for Vegas sportsbooks.
“Yesterday, in the first set of games, the favorites went 3-0, and then in the last set the favorites went 4-0, and then the parlays start piling up for us. There’s not a whole lot you can do. I would say that yesterday most of the sportsbooks lost money.”
He did go on to say that the right people--the amateur gamblers in town for the weekend--got the money, which they’ll promptly spend in the restaurants, the casinos, and everywhere else they’re supposed to be spending money here. So it’s not all bitter almonds for Vegas this weekend.
Yet the overall dominance of favorites has not been great news for them. “It’s like a wave. You can see it when the favorites come through--they were 7-1 early and 6-2 late--we knew we were in trouble. You need some underdogs to break that up.”
As far as the betting patterns goes: there’s a usual preference towards favorites, with the largest bets thus far being $22,000 on a single game. Towards the second round, you’ll see the numbers swell, with six-figure bets on the final being a distinct possibility.
Walker, a former journalist turned bookmaker, didn’t seemed overly irked by the initial sour turn of numbers. “The first four days of this event are magical...it’s the only event where the first weekend is more exciting than the first.”
He leaned back in his chair, watching the numbers and then turning to watch UConn storming back against San Diego.
“Look. It’s gonna come down to the wire again,” he said, shaking his head and smiling, sneaking a look back to the screen where the numbers flashed and updated endlessly as bettors poured money into the system.
Spencer is covering the manic gamblefest out in Vegas. Follow his work for TSB here, and check out his Twitter feed. ↵