LAS VEGAS – It was 1:30 a.m. and South Point Hotel sports betting director Chris Andrews was asleep at home when an unknown customer approached a betting window at the casino and wanted to bet 300 grand on the 49ers beating the Chiefs in the Super Bowl . A supervisor woke Andrews up to approve the bet, but the customer discovered he didn't have enough cash on hand.
Andrews got to work on Friday Stay tuned tomorrow for updates on “Mr. 300,000,” returning about an hour later with a cone from the hotel ice cream parlor and the money, he exchanged for South Point chips, this time choosing to bet $243,000 on San Francisco. Andrews chatted briefly with the man before wishing him luck.
Andrews and his right-hand men at South Point, Jimmy Vaccaro and Vinny Magliulo, have a combined 147 years of experience taking bets in Nevada – and a philosophy that comes from a time when relationships and a human touch ruled an industry that which changed quickly. For them, bookmaking remains a mix of art and science, with odds adjusted depending on what respected wiseguys are betting on. This means you can instantly assess someone and know if they are sharp or edgy.
Across the city, the big money was betting on San Francisco for this year's Super Bowl, while recreational bettors heavily favored Kansas City. But Andrews suspected: “Mr. “$300,000” was square, albeit an exceptionally deep budget, and his betting history confirmed this. He lost about $22,000 to South Point in the last Super Bowl, a colleague of Andrews reported. In other words, the colleague said, “He’s just a player.”
Betting six figures on a square “is like finding a diamond ring,” Vaccaro quipped in the back office of the sportsbook, where the South Point gave a reporter a rare opportunity to watch some of Las Vegas' most respected bookmakers in action during their busiest days watch weekend of the year.
The South Point doesn't have the bottomless advertising budget needed to get Peyton Manning or Jamie Foxx to sell its sportsbooks. It's not worth paying media stars like Bill Simmons and Pat McAfee to promote sophisticated match combinations that benefit the house. Instead, the hotel's decidedly old-school sportsbook, located about six miles south of the Strip, lures customers with decent odds, friendly service — and $1.50 hot dogs.
One of It is the city's last family-run hotel and is owned by Michael Gaughan, 80, who sat in the sportsbook office two days before the Super Bowl with a hint of mustard on his bottom lip from a lunchtime frank. He enjoys hanging out there, sitting next to a sign on the mini-fridge that says, “Don't Drink Dr. Root Beer.” Brown. They're just for Mr. Gaughan!” There's also a jar of Gray Poupon in the fridge, which Andrews keeps for a professional punter who once complained that the hotel only served yellow mustard.
Statewide, the vast majority of sports betting now takes place online, but Andrews said his sportsbook does about three-quarters of its business in person and still takes more bets than any other operator in the state.
Andrews marveled at the sight of the thousands of bettors passing through the casino to bet on the Super Bowl, reminding Magliulo: “We don't do this with advertising and other s–. Value, value, value. That’s our thing.”
Gaughan supports anything that can drive foot traffic, like serving $2 Budweisers on NFL Sundays or Andrews' idea of offering -105 odds on the Super Bowl point spread instead of the usual -110 – roughly a five dollar discount on every $100 bet.
Leading up to the first-ever NFL title game in Vegas, greed was a common topic of discussion in the back office. Businesses “want to kill the golden goose yesterday,” Gaughan said, grumbling that a Strip hotel was charging $160 for valet parking this weekend.
Five years ago, some Nevada casinos feared that the spread of legal sports betting would threaten their bottom lines. Now business is booming here like never before. Nevada took a record $185.6 million in bets on the Super Bowl – more than any of the 37 other states that regulate sports gambling. Andrews had expected to make around $10 million.
But even as sports betting is more popular than ever, Andrews and his colleagues are dismayed by much of what the industry has become: screaming advertising, misleading promotions, staggering profit margins. They comment on the “European model” of bookmaking that is taking hold across the country, in which customers who show winning tendencies aggressively restrict their bets, sometimes even down to a few cents.
“It's not gambling,” said Richie Baccellieri, a former South Point bookie who now works at the downtown Circa hotel. “Everyone just wants to trick the customer.”
The South Point welcomes big bets from Sharps so it can refine its odds accordingly. Last weekend, Bill Krackomberger, a burly, baby-faced professional bettor in a Kangol flat cap, showed up to bet several thousand dollars on Super Bowl props involving player and team statistics. Magliulo and Andrews chatted with him for a few minutes and offered to cook him a meal.
“This is the old Las Vegas,” Krackomberger told The Post. “I beat them in every Super Bowl and they still want to take care of me.”
Been taking bets since elementary school
Andrews, Vaccaro, Magliulo and several supervisors live in a small office next to the betting counter. The walls are covered with memorabilia from Andrews' beloved childhood team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, as well as a poster from the 1939 comedy “The Day the Bookies Wept,” about a racehorse who wins by drinking beer, and a letter from Harry M. to Andrews. Reid (D-Nev.), the late U.S. Senate Majority Leader. Congratulating him on joining South Point in 2016, Reid wrote, “The impact of your work in our community is admired and appreciated.”
Andrews, 67, sits in the middle of the office. Two of his four computer monitors display incoming bets color-coded by dollar amount. He stands in front of a grid of nine mounted television screens, one of which was dedicated to Turner Classic Movies until just before kickoff. While they were racking up millions of dollars, Andrews and his associates debated the acting in “Roman Holiday” much more animatedly than any other decision at stake.
Andrews learned the game and its customer service from his uncle Jack Franzi, a revered sports bettor who also wrote a small promotion in the back of a candy store. Andrews enrolled classmates in fifth grade and took bets in the stands as his high school football team defeated Joe Montana's team.
When Andrews was 14, Franzi was charged with interstate gambling after an 18-month investigation in which the FBI photographed him and his nephew at sporting events, out to dinner and playing mini-golf. After a judge dismissed the case, Franzi moved to Las Vegas and Andrews followed him after graduating from Robert Morris University. He spent his first year in Vegas, earning $45 a week by filling triple bet slips at Stardust, the questionably run establishment depicted in Martin Scorsese's “Casino.”
About 25 years later, as Andrews describes in his memoir “Then One Day…”, a former FBI agent approached him and his uncle at dinner and told Franzi that he had eavesdropped on his calls and copied his bets, admitting: “That was it, the best two football seasons I’ve ever had!”
Vaccaro, 78, works in a room in the corner of the office that has a desk and a massage chair. Vaccaro, a slender man with slicked-back white hair, once ran a more glamorous sportsbook in the Mirage, where he handled “some of the largest bets probably ever made in the United States,” said Matthew Metcalf, former director of Circa's sportsbook.
Vaccaro – whose older brother Sonny signed Michael Jordan for his first sneaker deal with Nike – is now more of an occasional consultant to Andrews, his friend since childhood. During moments of relaxation at the sportsbook, Vaccaro slides into the hotel's wellness area for a steam room, a bath and a quick nap. He seems to know every South Point employee by name, although he affectionately refers to everyone younger than him, including Andrews, as “kid.”
The 66-year-old Magliulo resembles a younger Robert De Niro, as others have noted. He previously ran the sports book at Caesars Palace and has known Andrews since the late 1970s. As they deliberate, Magliulo grabs a chair across from Andrews and speaks in a serious-sounding, hushed voice – about how they might adjust a sentence or whether cream of mushroom is a stronger lunch option than chicken pasta.
Like Vaccaro and Magliulo, Andrews met Gaughan early in his career. Gaughan's father, Jackie, was the first to set up a sportsbook in a Las Vegas casino, and Michael received his gambling license at age 25.
The South Point reflects the old-fashioned sentiments of its owner. “Mr. “Gaughan hates modernity,” said general manager Ryan Growney. The music that blares day and night in many Strip casinos is less noticeable at South Point. According to Growney, the nine budget restaurants lose about 1.5 million each month U.S. dollar.
When asked about some national sportsbooks making up to $30 per $100 bet, while South Point returns about $5 per $100, Gaughan shared a story from the early days of his career. He noticed that many riverboat passengers spent much of the trip sitting dejected after going broke at slots. Gaughan lowered the slot hold percentages so that customers would not run out of money until their boat docked.
Andrews and his colleagues spent little time in the days leading up to Sunday analyzing the football while adjusting their odds. “We let money dictate what we do,” he said.
As his (much younger) colleague Ashley Eck put it, “feel” can be more important to the job than number crunching. The biggest challenge isn't setting odds, but rather adjusting those potential payouts as the money flows in, incentivizing or discouraging certain bets so that, ideally, the house comes out on top no matter what.
While many of the largest online sportsbooks set and adjust their odds using algorithms and automation, some operators in Nevada still create and move their numbers manually. “The computer doesn’t tell us what to do,” Magliulo explained. “We tell it what to do.”
Andrews and Eck spent a few days before the Super Bowl making their few hundred bets. In comparison, DraftKings offered about 1,000 Super Bowl props. Major national operators also rely on match-play competitions that allow customers to stack props for a chance at a bigger payout. Although SGPs are much cheaper for the house, South Point does not offer them.
South Point opened Super Bowl betting with a few glaring errors, such as setting the odds of 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey scoring a touchdown at -400, meaning a $400 bet would only return $100. Professionals suggested the opposite side of this bet and thus changed the odds. “The smart guys were all over us,” Andrews said. At game time, a bet on McCaffrey finding the end zone (which he did) paid out almost twice as much.
It was all hands on deck on Super Bowl Sunday. Gaughan's son Brendan – the former NASCAR driver – and grandson John manned two of the sportsbook's 10 ticket windows. Supervisors arrived at 4:30 a.m. By kick-off, around 6,000 fans had attended free watch parties throughout the hotel. All 138 chairs in the sports betting area were occupied for hours.
Andrews, wearing football field socks under his Skechers, began fidgeting minutes before the game began for the first time all weekend. “I can’t say if I’m always nervous or never,” he said. The house would have a loss in the low six figures if San Francisco won and the total score was under 47.
Previously, Andrews and Magliulo had joked that squares were willing to bet on the first coin toss, even at odds worse than 1:1.
“What’s wrong with people?” Andrews asked.
“Instant gratification,” Magliulo replied.
Now Andrews shouted a profanity as the toss ended on heads, which, for whatever reason, bettors always seem to prefer. He, Magliulo and Vaccaro stoically watched the rest of the game while their colleagues enjoyed a selection of chicken wings, pizza and subs. A few employees discussed their own bets on the game, something Andrews said he had long since given up. (“I never want to be in a position where I have to choose between being there for myself or being there for the joint.”)
During overtime, with Kansas City trailing 22-19 and just yards from San Francisco's end zone, Andrews recalled that teams don't try to score an extra point after a game-winning touchdown in OT. That meant the final score was 25-22, the exact score South Point ended up with. Thus, any customer who placed a “teaser” bet – a notoriously ill-advised parlay bet that involves getting +6 or more on a team’s win, paired with an “over” or “under” Total Score Prediction – Paid.
Half an hour after the Chiefs lifted the trophy, customers were still waiting in long lines outside the sportsbook to collect their winnings – or to bet on next year's NFL champion.
South Point ended up taking in a little less than Andrews' predicted $10 million in the Super Bowl. But despite being eliminated in the teasers, the house came out on top in the game and did even better in the props. Equally important, many sports bettors migrated to the pits, where the blackjack tables were packed late into the night.
“Mr. Gaughan was happy,” said Andrews.