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Betting man: The MGM/Mirage's Robert Walker sets the point-spreads and creates the odds.
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Secrets of a Vegas SportsBooker
The MGM/Mirage's race and SportsBook manager tells all!
By Kent Andrade
Up on the big-screen TVs, in a smoke-filled room, a kid steps up to the free-throw line. A meaningless field goal in the last minute of the lowliest NFL game.
And 10 million bucks hangs in the balance. In the world of sports betting, a three-point basket made, an extra point after a touchdown missed--every moment counts, as unreal amounts swing from book to bettor and back again.
It weren't for such stress, Robert Walker, the race and SportsBook manager at MGM/Mirage, would have the greatest job in the world. Walker is the man who sets the point-spreads and creates the odds at Vegas' most respected book. Even with the stress, the man says he has nothing he'd care to complain about.
With eight years of experience at the MGM, Walker knows just about everything there is to know about the business of wagering. He began as a sports journalist in Washington D.C., before he moved to Vegas to attend UNLV. While at the school, a "help-wanted" ad in Gaming Today led to a job as a ticket writer at the Fremont Casino downtown, which attracts hardcore, sophisticated players. "You had to be on your toes when you set your lines for these guys--they knew their stuff, they were unbelievable."
Eventually, his supervisors started asking him what he thought of various games. "These guys were long-timers," he says, "so I figured I could move up pretty fast in this industry."
"We recognize the same people who are here all the time, so you move lines aggressively depending on how those people bet."
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So what's it like for you on the floor of the MGM?
It's hard. I never watch the second half of games. I set up the halftime odds and go home. I can't stomach these close finishes where six figures are on the line. I don't even want to know if we won or lost or how much--I just want the final score.
I do pay attention, of course. The fifth game of the Lakers-Spurs series just about killed me. The Lakers were favored by 4, and when Tim Duncan made that impossible shot with less than a second to go, I just about died. I turned off the TV-even my daughter asked "What's wrong?" The only way I knew the outcome was when I saw Shaquille O'Neal being interviewed after the game.
If anything, college football is even scarier. You have a lot of money pinned on 18- or 19-year-old kids!
How do you know if you're doing your job right?
There are a couple of ways. First, historical data--we know what our margins should be. You can compare yourself to previous years and previous administrations, but you also keep track of what's going on in the industry. To get the balance, we try to book high to the casino players and control the professional players. If we do that, we know we'll keep our margin over time.
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