Betting:
I just wanted to make a simple bet-- that Mark Webber will win the Driver's Championship in the 2010 season. I checked out nearly a dozen casinos on the Strip, even the sportsbook at Caesar's Palace, and no one took F1 bets. When I asked a lady at a sportsbook if I could bet on Formula One racing, she said: Yeah, you can bet on NASCAR. Groan.
You can bet on the WNBA, and even Canadian football, but you can't bet on F1 on the Strip.
So I then went to the Hilton on Paradise Road, several blocks east of the strip. It has the largest sportsbook in the state and is the only place I found that took F1 bets.
I arrived after the Belgian GP. I learned that I can only bet on races, not on the season. Plus, for each race, I can only bet from the Monday prior to the race. I couldn't make a bet even if I wanted to since the next race was two weeks away. Frak.
I was able to get the odds for the Spa race. Here is the breakdown below. (X) signifies how the driver finished the race.
Hamilton 8/5 (1)
Webber 2/1 (2)
Vettel, 5/1 (15)
Kubica 10/1 (3)
Alonso 12/1 (Ret.)
Massa 25/1 (4)
Sutil 50/1 (5)
Rubens 100/1 (Ret.)
Rosberg 200/1 (6)
Liuzzi 300/1 (10)
Hulkenberg 300/1 (14)
Schumacher 500/1 (7)
Buemi 500/1 (12)
Alguersuari 500/1 (13)
Kamui 1000/1 (8)
Petrov 1000/1 (9)
De La Rosa 1000/1 (11)
Glock 5000/1 (18)
All others 300/1
This is a non sequitur, but I saw this monstrous limo while searching for a place to bet.
Watching:
My hotel room did not have Speed so I woke up at 4:30 and ran downstairs to watch it at a bar. I went to a dozen places and the TVs were either pre-programmed or only had four channels. I finally found a place-- at the Paris sportsbook-- that had the race on. It was on a crappy projection TV and had no audio. To make matters worse, I argued with a security guard mid-race because he thought I was sleeping (I was alone in the entire sportsbook). Ugh.
2 comments:
You could always bet on the Pakistani cricket team.
@John L: Ha!
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