Sportsbook & Gambling Information

MIAMI (Reuters) - A former stripper once cleared of battering a customer with her enormous breasts sold one of her silicone implants on eBay to the same company that recently bought a grilled cheese sandwich said to bear the image of the Virgin Mary.

Internet casino company GoldenPalace.com won the bid for the infamous implant at $16,766 on Saturday, according to the eBay Web site and the seller, known professionally as Tawny Peaks. She advertised a 69-HH bra size before her implants were removed in 1999.

There was no word yet on what the online gambling company planned to do with the implant.

Last year GoldenPalace paid $28,000 for a 10-year-old, partly eaten grilled cheese sandwich with an image many likened to the Virgin Mary. The company sent the sandwich on a national publicity tour, encased in clear plastic.

Peaks has retired from the entertainment business, and put one of the implants up for auction last week. She said she was overwhelmed and exhausted by the flood of e-mailed bids.

"It's over and I'm happy," said Peaks, now a homemaker living in the Detroit area.

She won fame in 1998 when a patron at the Diamond Dolls nightclub in Clearwater, Florida, sued her, claiming he suffered a whiplash injury when she swung her breasts into his face. He said they were "like two cement blocks."

The case went to arbitration on "The People's Court" television show and the judge, former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, ordered a female bailiff to examine Peaks in private.

The bailiff found the breasts to be "soft" and to weigh about 2 pounds (0.9 kg) each. Koch ruled they were not dangerous and refused to award damages.

Peaks said she has since become "kind of a recluse."

"My old fans don't really know what I look like now," she said.

POLITICS & POWER
OTBs race to get upper hand

Almost every weekend, Joseph Zarrillo leaves his Bethpage home, drives six minutes and spends his afternoons placing bets at Nassau Off-Track Betting's new Race Palace, a plush, giant-screened multiplex for horse racing in Plainview.

Before the Palace opened last year, Zarrillo, 61, who works as an auto body repairman in Flushing, used to drive 25 minutes farther east to Hauppauge to Suffolk OTB's teletheater, the Racing Forum.

Zarrillo, a VIP customer who wagers at least $1,000 a day, said he switched locations solely for convenience. "Even from Flushing, its a hop, skip and a jump to the Palace compared to going to Hauppauge," he said.

Call it the battle of the expressway bookies. Long Island's two regional OTB corporations are waging a quiet battle for the hearts and minds of Long Island's horse bettors along a 15-mile stretch of no man's land, better known as the Long Island Expressway.

And so far, Nassau OTB, which took a large $15-million gamble to open the Palace in the former catering and rock and roll emporium, once known as the Vanderbilt, is a big winner.

Larry Aaronson, Nassau OTB president, said the Palace took in $57 million in bets in its first year that ended last month, making it the biggest branch in either county. Within three years, he projects the Palace handle, or volume of bets, growing to $75 million a year.

"This changes the perception of what OTBs are," said Aaronson. "This is a state-of-the-art facility and the word of mouth is bringing us repeat business."

The Palace, located off LIE exit 48, embellished on the building's original Art Deco design, with seven giant screens, an upscale steak house, and 80 carrels where betters can view TV monitors to get odds, handicapping data and, in some cases, even place bets.

Suffolk OTB, which in 2003 opened its own jazzed-up racing theater, had impressive early returns taking in $53.4 million in bets in 2003. But since the Palace has opened, Suffolk's Forum, located at exit 57, has fallen back, taking in $3.2-million less last year in the face of its more centrally located, more plush competition.

"They put the Palace in a place where you could practically reach out and touch Suffolk County," said Anthony Apollaro, Suffolk OTB president. "We knew all along we had customers from Nassau and New York City who came to us because we gave track odds. And now that the Palace is open, we can't put [electronic] bracelets on them to keep them from going."

Suffolk OTB officials say the Palace has cut into their betting handle by $10 million in the past year, which translates into a $1-million cut in profit. The Palace has also hurt branches along the county border - the Huntington branch has lost 20 percent in handle, and the Route 110 branch in Melville, 17.8 percent.

Aaronson said there was no intent to steal Suffolk's customers, only to give Nassau residents a place of their own. "This puts us on a level field and lets us get back Nassau players that were going elsewhere," he said.

To compete, Suffolk OTB has spent more than $200,000 to spruce up its own VIP room, even though it was only a year old. Apollaro also acknowledged Suffolk OTB's board of directors discussed battling Nassau mano-a-mano, but instead have decided to develop new branches in central Suffolk, rather than wage a costly border war.

However, the Suffolk board is considering seeking state legislation to get relief from the surcharge it now pays Nassau , worth $286,00 a year, since it has a teletheater of its own.

Yet there is no outright sniping because Nassau and Suffolk OTB's do business with one another. Suffolk does Nassau's printing and operates both counties' telephone betting. "There's no head-butting or tension," said Apollaro. "It's just plain old competition, which is good."

Both OTBs, two of the six statewide, also face many of the same problems - an aging and diminishing clientele and a state that every year takes a bigger chunk of betting proceeds for itself and the racing industry. That makes it harder for the local OTBs to give more money to their county governments. Suffolk OTB gave $3.4 million to its county last year, down from $5.7 million in 2003. Nassau OTB gave $14 million last year, down from $17 million in 2003.

Aaronson said both OTBs must more aggressively market themselves to attract a new generation of bettors.

"We're not in the betting business anymore," said Aaronson. "We're in the entertainment and hospitality business. And our job is to make people feel comfortable, have fun and want to come back."