Seven Signs
Do you have what it takes to call yourself a pro?
With the opening weekend of the NCAA tournament behind us, a majority of the casual fans will go back to enjoying college basketball from the confines of their neighborhood watering hole or living room. Memories were made and the indelible images of last second victory and excruciating heartbreak become a fabric of the most recent Las Vegas sojourn. After 4 days of living and breathing the gambler’s dream, only a select few can call themselves sportsbook aficionados. Here’s the official checklist to call yourself a true sin city regular (or degnerate) depending on your vocabulary.
1) You know the closest eatery to every sportsbook: Whether you’re at Mirage, Bellagio, or the Wynn, knowing exactly what your gameday meal consists of eliminates one decision from an already stressful day. Most importantly you know how long it takes to order and eat so you can minimize the amount of time lost from watching games.
2) Decisions on where to spend the day watching games are predicated purely on how far the sportsbook is from the parking garage and/or hotel rooms. No one wants a long walk when it’s 7:30 in the morning and your first order of business is to study the boards for that soft pointspread.
3) Like Shakespeare to the soliloquy, you’ve committed to memory the most important piece of information for the day: betting index numbers. The last thing you want is to be the guy in the room who walks up to the window and brings the line to a screeching halt because you don’t remember all 4 legs of your robin.
4) Not only have you come to know the name of each cocktail waitress, you also know her schedule (in a non-stalkerish kind of way). Familial ties exist because you know her kid’s birthday’s, dating history, and exactly where she grew up as a child. The first thing she tells your wife each year is how great she looks for her annual New Year’s trip.
5) It’s become a holiday tradition for you to bring each of the writers a holiday gift because afterall, you do spend more time with the staff during football season than you do at the office or at home.
6) Even after you head home to your respective corner of the globe, you believe handing winning tickets to people serves as a viable replacement for normal cash transactions. However, the ultimate byproduct of regular trips to Vegas is that you’ve stuffed your son’s stocking each Christmas season with a Cubs World Series futures ticket since he was 3…that was 46 years ago.
7) Before a new staff member becomes part of the race and sports community, you explain to him exactly how things are done at (insert casino here) and why this sportsbook will continue to observe tradition for years to come.
