The Daily Tar Heel Thursday, November 13, 19865
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gametime to bet," he says.
The telephone lines are busy in the
frantic hour before a game when
everyone is struggling to get his
money down. "A lot of times there
are so many people betting you can
never get through," says Chris, a
UNC junior who bets occasionally.
"You just have to keep hitting
'Redial.' "
Reggie and several other students
are prepared to win or lose money
themselves as bookmakers, but many
bets are made through a bookie's
agent.
"Only the bookie's agent is sup
posed to know the bookie," Bert says.
"The idea is for (the bookie) to
remain anonymous and not know
people, especially if someone owes
you a lot of money. You want to
be this shady figure in the
background."
The agent is in a curious state of
limbo between a maker and taker of
bets. Although he writes down bets
for his "bank," he also often makes
bets himself and loses whatever
commission he is entitled to.
Bert recalls one time when his
agent had lost $ 1,300 in a single week,
only to win nearly all of it back with
two $600 bets the agent placed for
himself. These bets became so not
able in that particular fraternity
house that pledges are sometimes
asked the names of the two $600
winning teams as a question on a
pledge test.
The agents' and bookies' week
usually starts Tuesday when they
pass out "spread sheets" to their
clientele. Each spread sheet lists
approximately 60 weekend games
along with the point spread in each
game. Bettors can wager whether a
team will beat the spread, and often
for professional football games
whether the two teams' combined
point total in the game will exceed
a certain number of points called
the "over-under" bet.
For example, suppose the Dallas
Cowboys are playing the Washington
Redskins in a professional football
game. The Redskins are six-point '
favorites, and the over-under is 41.
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If a bettor takes the Cowboys on
a regular bet, he will win when Dallas
either wins the game or loses by less
than six. If he takes the Redskins,
Washington would have to win by
seven or more points to "cover the
spread" and the bettor to win.
To bet the over-under, he would
decide whether or not the two teams'
combined score would exceed 41
points and not pay attention to the
winner. If he bet "over," and the final
score was 24-20 (44 points), the bettor
would win.
If Washington wins by exactly six
points, or the two teams totaled
exactly 41 points, it is termed a
"push," and the bookie keeps the
money. Pushes are how a bookie gets
a windfall profit.
"I remember last year we had a
Bradley-Tulsa basketball game, and
Bradley was favored by three,"
Reggie says. "There was $150 on one
team and $200 on the other, and
Bradley won by three exactly. We
had $350, just like that."
Safety net catches profits
Bookies have a safeguard if there
are few pushes during a week. They
charge a bookie fee on lost bets of
either 10 or 20 percent. For example,
if a bettor wins a $10 wager with a
campus bookie charging 20 percent,
he will get $10 more. But if he loses,
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Reprinted by permission of USA Today
are invaluable to campus bettors
he must pay the $10 plus $2 more
because of the 20 percent fee. All
transactions are made in cash except
the initial bet, which is on credit.
Reggie is a bargain for prospective
bettors with his 10 percent charge.
"A lot of people get irritated with
the 20 percent," he says. Often, agents
are the ones taking bets at a 20
percent rate, because the bookie they
work through charges 10 percent and
they want to take 10 percent for
themselves.
The fee is the steady source of
income for bookies and agents, a
fallback when no games hit the
spread. "A bookie is not making
money because everyone's stupid,"
Bert says. "All the bookie is techni
cally doing is transferring money and
collecting the bookie fee."
With a 20 percent bookie fee, a
bettor must win 60 percent of his
games to stay even. For instance, if
a bettor puts $20 on six games, wins
three bets and loses three more, he
will still be down $12 because of the
$4 charge on each of the three bets
le lost.
Very few bettors are that good.
"You're lucky to get 50 percent right,"
Reggie says.
Bettor's earnings already spent
Even if a campus bettor wins
money for a week, it is often eaten
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up by calls to long distance services
for quick scores or a subscription to
a tout sheet that supposedly gives the
inside picks. "If you keep a total,
when you think you're up, you're
really even," Bert says. "And when
you're even, you're down."
Bettors can place their $10
minimum wagers starting on Fridays
during football season with most
agents and bookies, although some
will accept calls earlier. Bets can be
placed throughout the weekend on
college and professional games, with
the week traditionally ending with
"Monday Night Football." Bert says
that if a wagered game isn't on
television, some of his fraternity
members will watch a channel for
hours that runs a tickertape of scores
across the bottom of the screen. "You
end up cheering at a blank screen,"
he says.
The Monday night game is usually
the most heavily bet of the week
because people try to recoup their
losses before Tuesday, which not
only begins a new week of gambling
but also is the day of reckoning.
Tuesday is payoff day, when
money is collected from the losers.
Winners are paid either Tuesday or
Wednesday, and the process begins
again.
Things don't always run smoothly.
Sometimes people who dig a large
financial hole are unable to pay on
time, making the bookie late on
paybacks. Bert was interviewed on
a Thursday and still had not been
paid for his $100 winning bets the
last week, because another big loser
couldn't pay up.
But the participants don't seem to
mind an occasional glitch. "It's really
addictive," Mitch says. "Anybody
who thinks it's not is crazy. Once you
get the disease, you search (to find
a place to bet)."
Pastime attracts affluent males
Gamblers on campus appear to be
an almost exclusively male group
with money and a strong interest in
sports. They often bet on television
games to make them more interesting
to watch, and on other games partly
because of a desire to justify their
sports opinions and partly because
they want to make money. Mitch says
that on a recent road trip, he and
a friend pulled over on the way back
to Chapel Hill to place a telephone
call to their bookie's agent.
"We called to bet, so when we got
back, we'd have something to do,"
he says.
Dr. John Silva, a UNC sport
psychologist, says the fascination of
gambling is based on chance. "People
get a sense of power when they can
beat the odds," he says. "It's having
a margin of control over the uncon
trollable. When you win, you're
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reinforced; when you lose, you're
challenged."
Certainly college students are only
a fragment of the population betting
on games. U.S. Justice Department
officials estimated a decade ago that
illegal sports gambling on teams was
a $20 billion to $25 billion business
annually; they are still holding to
those figures. In 1981, the National
Football League made its own
estimate that pro football was attract
ing $50 billion a season in bets.
College betting on team sports
appears to be on the rise. Last
December, 11 present or former
University of Nebraska students were
arrested in Lincoln on bookmaking
charges. Campus police said that one
student bookmaker handled
$112,000 in bets in 12 weeks. The
police also said their investigation
revealed that fraternity members
were stealing from one another to pay
off individual debts as high as $8,00fP
The Omaha World-Herald quoted
one Nebraska student bookie as
calling the arrests "the tip of the
iceberg" at the school. "It's no
problem for me to do $5,000 to
$6,000 worth of action a weekend,"
he said.
Dr. Silva says that gambling begins
with an emotional investment on a
team, followed by a time investment
spent watching the team and finally
with a financial investment betting
on the team. Bert agrees that most
serious gamblers he knows began by
betting small amounts on their
favorite team. "The way it starts for
most guys is just, 'Oh, what the hell,
111 put $10 on Carolina.' Then it gets
to be a hobby."
The money being wagered comes
from the students' own jobs, the
allowances their parents give them,
or occasionally, cash advances on a
credit card. Sometimes more drastic
measures are invoked when a student
is facing a large debt.
"You always know what happened
if someone suddenly sells his car,"
Chris says.
Gambling appears destined to
remain on the UNC campus for a
long while, due both to the leniency
shown by the law toward the "vic
timless" crime and the many die-hood-sports
fans attending the University
with a little cash and a contact or
two.
For the hard-core gamblers on
campus, novices making their first
bet are both a challenge and a
curiosity. "When you see someone
bet $10, lose for the first time and
then bitch about it,-you're like, You
haven't been through anything," Bert
says. "Yet."
Meanwhile, student bookies like
Reggie express no desire to leave their
' affluent hobby. "It's tempting to do
this forever," he says. "I won $1,000
last weekend."
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