Saturday, January 08, 2005
'Adrenaline rush' comes with betting
BY SCOTT BLAKE
FLORIDA TODAY
Orlando-based truck driver Eddie Rago, a regular customer of International Sports Link on SunCruz Casinos' gambling ship at Port Canaveral, said he does not mind losing bets -- as "long as I have fun."
He called it "an adrenaline rush."
Tuesday, Rago bet $500 on that night's Orange Bowl -- college football's championship game between the University of Southern California and the University of Oklahoma.
At the time, ISL's over/under line was 531/2 -- meaning bettors could wager on whether the total points scored in the game would be higher or lower than that figure.
After seeing the low-scoring Sugar Bowl game Monday night, when 29 points were scored, Rago took the "under" bet on the Orange Bowl. Unfortunately for him, Oklahoma made some big mistakes, and USC's offense heated up, scoring 55 points to Oklahoma's 19. Goodbye $500.
Perhaps more gut-wrenching was the $1,100 Rago lost on an Indiana Pacers-Detroit Pistons pro basketball game in November. That was the infamous game in which a brawl broke out between players and fans.
Rago bet the "over" on the house's 180-point line. With Indiana ahead 97-82 (179 points) with 45.9 seconds left, the fight started, and officials ended the game without completing the final seconds. Goodbye $1,100.
He said one thing he likes about sports betting over casino games such as blackjack and roulette or slot machines is that "it takes a lot longer to lose the money," since he could wait hours or days for the outcome of a bet on a game.
Contact Blake at 242-3644 or sblake@flatoday.net
Duke looks at the impact of Net poker
By John Brokopp - The Thrifty Gambler
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The resurgence in popularity of live poker, fueled by the cable television shows, has served as the impetus behind another forum for the game: the Internet. The number of online poker sites has increased dramatically in the last several years and the number of people who play the game on line has increased proportionately.
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Gambling online occupies a very “gray” area of legality. The sites are owned and operated in all off shore locations, a majority of them in the Caribbean. The United States government and its agencies are addressing the issue, but thus far no resolution has been reached although it should happen within the next couple of years.
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In the meantime, people are playing online poker by the tens of thousands. It creates an entirely different experience than the poker rooms in “brick and mortar” casinos. The game may be the same, but the fact you are not interacting face-to-face with the other players makes the playing experience and some of the strategies very different. It can be a far less intimidating atmosphere playing the game in the comfort of your own home.
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If nothing else, the Internet is creating new legions of poker fans which ultimately break away from the Internet version and try their hand in live rooms against players they can see. In this respect, online poker is a veritable “training ground” for people who become captivated with the game and wish to take it to the next level.
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Professional poker player Annie Duke, winner of the $2 million World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions, addressed the Internet poker phenomenon when she was in Chicago last month for a special appearance:
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“It (the Interent) definitely has brought a lot more people into the game,” she said. “It has opened up a whole world of play. There are players in live rooms today who have come from the online world. There’s a fellow named Thomas Keller who plays on ‘Ultimate Bet’ who happens to be one of the most frequent players on that site. He actually branched out to live rooms at 23 years of age having really gotten his training online. Thomas won the $3,000 No Limit Hold’em event at the World Series.
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“So you do have the online world generating some very good young players, and that’s really the difference. Poker players for a long time really didn’t peak until they were in their 30s. And it’s really a sort of experiential component to poker just sitting at the table and understanding how cards flow and understanding how people act and having been there before. It takes a long time to get that kind of experience when you’re restricted by the physical limitations of how long it takes to deal out a hand until it’s over. In the live casino game, you can only get a certain number of hands out per hour and you can only play one table at a time.
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“You transfer that to online and all of a sudden people are playing four tables at a time and not only that, each table is dealing sometimes quadruple the hands that you can get in the real world. People can gain experience so much more quickly that’s it creating some players who are very good at a very young age. It’s really scary to think how good these people are going to be when they’re 35 if they’re this good when they’re 23 years old now. You just never saw incredibly good 23 year olds. It just didn’t happen because they just couldn’t get the experience in order to become that good.
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John G. Brokopp can be contacted
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at jgbjet@sbcglobal.net.
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