The New York Stock Exchange erupted in cheers upon hearing of the demise of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who’s dalliance with a high-priced hooker is now part of the public record. Sports bettors with long memories likely share Wall Street’s sentiments.

Until Bill Frist snuck UEIGA through in the final 20 minutes of the 2006 Congressional session, attaching anti-gambling legislation that couldn’t get passed on it’s merits, Spitzer was the most effective regulatory opponent of online sports bettors and poker players. It was Spitzer who pressured the banking industry to the point where it became very difficult to fund wagering accounts with credit cards.

No love for the bullying Spitzer from this corner, but it is tough to celebrate when you think of his three lovely daughters and the ordeal that their hypocritical and self-righteous father is putting them through.

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Turning A Toothpick into a Lumberyard: A British fertilizer salesman collected 2,000,000-1 on a 50 pence (about a buck) wager. The natural odds on Freddie Crags’ 8-horse parlay were actually about 2,800,000-1, but William Hill has a million-pound cap on payouts.

Funding Crags’ Hit: Don’t Cry for William Hill, as greyhound trainer Graham Calvert lost over 2,000,000 pounds (yep, about $4 million bucks) to the bookmaking firm. Calvert is suing the company for allowing him to continue to wager on the phone after they agreed to ban him.

World’s Dumbest Industry? Andrew Beyer gives the latest rundown on the fratricide within the horse racing industry that keeps many bettors from being able to wager on the high-profile tracks they favor. Alienating the public with these turf wars will only escalate the descent of this rapidly declining sport.

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Heavy with Giants money line action, Nevada sports books decided to gamble instead of lowering the money line to even out their action, and the Giants outright victory in the Super Bowl cost them.

Las Vegas sports books not only failed to crack their hoped-for $100,000,000 handle on the Super Bowl, but actually lost over $2.5 million on the game, which attracted $92,000,000 in wagers at sports books in Nevada. Ken White suggests that had the Patriots held on for the outright win, sports books would have cleaned up on those money line bets, winning about $15,000,000 on the game.

Clearly props were a big winner for the house, as they always are. It is surprising that every sports book in town held the line on the money line. You would have thought that one group or property would have looked to offset some of their risk. I know some sharps would have been heavy on the Patriots money line had they been offered the incentive of a low price.

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In the last 17 years in Las Vegas, the only losing Super Bowl for the books was the 49ers blowout over the Chargers following the 1994 season. Matt Youmans of the Las Vegas Review-Journal offers the Nevada wagering totals on the Super Bowl since the state began tracking sports wagering handle. The preponderance of proposition wagering seems to make it unlikely that the books would lose another Super Bowl. It is worth noting that the three largest hold percentages have occurred in the last four years, showing how healthy the prop betting boom is for the house.

Update: Now after the game, the bookies are howling, claiming substantial losses. While Giants and under, as well as Giants outright, was surely a good result for a lot of small players, the big players were largely on the Patriots, with many professional bettors finding the Pats money line particularly attractive.

It will be interesting to see the results released by the State of Nevada on the sports books Super Bowl balance sheets. Is it the second losing year in the past 18? I predict a small winner for the books, with the proposition wagers offsetting side/total losses.

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The New York Times mentions the rarely mentioned, how some of the founding families of the modern NFL made their money in horse betting (the Rooneys of Pittsburgh) and bookmaking (the Maras of New York).

Sunday’s game may be the first 9-figure Super Bowl in Las Vegas. Nevada casinos are hoping for the first $100,000,000 wagering handle, spurred on by a New York team vs. a team going for a historic undefeated season. Of course the overall handle will be many times that.

Our Vegas radio buddy John Kelly’s hometown newspaper in Chicago shares his expertise.

We’ll have plenty of Super Bowl stuff, including prop information and analysis, later Friday and all weekend long.

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Sports books have a healthy hold on prop bets for the Super Bowl. And the biggest money makers for the books are the ones offering the most choices.

Player vs. player, over/under, and yes/no prop bets offer just two outcomes. They usually require the bettor to lay the equivalent of $1.10 or $1.15 to win a dollar. And while I’d never consider playing at a sports book that required you to lay -115 on sides and totals, with hundreds of unique yes/no or over/under props that can offer a bettor an edge, sports books making bettors lay -115 instead of -110 is acceptable.

These prices are often adjusted to have a money-line favorite or an underdog. For example, a prop may be -150 to the over and +120 to the under. That 30-cent difference between the underdog and favorite makes it roughly equivalent to a bet that requires you to lay -115 on either side. The -150/+120 is actually slightly more advantageous to the player than -115 on either side, but we’ll go into that some other time. These yes/no or over/under propositions at the equivalent of -115 or less are bets that can offer an edge.

For example, a look at the fresh offerings of a sports book that was very slow to post Super Bowl props shows an opportunity to bet New York Giants back Brandon Jacobs over or under 12.5 receiving yards. The bettor must lay -1.15 to win a dollar whether they think Jacobs will go over or under those 12.5 receiving yards. Laying $1.15 to win a buck, the bettor has to win 53.48% of the time to break even. That is a reasonable offering from a sports book, and if the bettor’s understanding of football is better than the linemaker’s, money can be won on those kind of propositions.

Multiple-choice props are far worse. The same sports book that has the Brandon Jacobs receiving yards bet has a prop on which quarter will see the most total points scored. The first quarter is +230 (2.3 to 1), which expressed as a probability suggests a 30.3% chance of happening. The second quarter is +125, suggesting a 44.4% chance. The third quarter is +215, suggesting a 31.7% chance. The fourth quarter is +180, which corresponds to a 35.7% chance.

The four possible offerings in to the “highest scoring quarter prop” have probabilities that add up to 142.1%. Therefore, the house edge on this prop is 42.1%, as opposed to a theoretical house edge of less than 5% on wagers at -110 and a house edge of about 7% on those at -115.

These theoretical edges can be overcome in sports betting with a superior opinion. But nearly every multiple choice prop is much harder to beat than the yes/no, over/under, or player vs. player props. Let others analyze multiple-choice offerings such as who is going to score the first touchdown. Focus most of your Super Bowl efforts on props offering just two potential outcomes.

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“Can you believe these junkies are betting on the coin toss?” is a comment you’ll often hear from media types before the Super Bowl. But in a country where millions of people buy lottery tickets every day, the Super Bowl coin toss is a great bet in comparison.

If you’re laying -110 on either heads or tails, you’re bucking a house edge of less than 5%, meaning the sports book offering the bet expects to win less than 5 cents on the dollar. Compare that to a lottery that immediately extracts 50 cents on every dollar and you’ll see what a far superior bet the Super Bowl coin toss is.

I agree that anyone who bets the coin toss is an action-craving idiot. But what does that make lottery players who play a game with a takeout that is ten times greater? Yet the same media outlets so critical of the coin toss bet promote the lottery incessantly via treating the results and winners as news items.

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I did a spot this week with the ABC affiliate in Providence via telephone. You can watch it here. The spot just skimmed the surface and my answer to the question on wagering volume on the Chargers/Patriots game was a huge (and doubtlessly high) guesstimate. But it is nice to see local markets taking an interest in sports betting. Incidentally, my final comment is a tip of the hat to Providence’s mobbed-up past.

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I’ll be on with John Kelly on the Leroy’s Sports Hour Tuesday at 2PM Las Vegas time (5PM Eastern Time) on Fox Sports Radio 1460AM in Vegas or ESPN Radio 630AM KPLY in Reno. Non-Nevadans can listen in right here on the interwebs.

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I haven’t offered more than a passing glance at a Racing Form past performance since June, so thanks to you guys who keep me updated with interesting horse notes like the following:

More than five years after the 2002 Breeder’s Cup pick six results was won in illicit fashion by past-posting the early legs of the sequence, the integrity of the parimutuel wagering system still leaves much to be desired. At a racing conference one gentlemen showed tangible proof that he was able to wager from Keeneland in Lexington, Kentucky on a race at the Fair Grounds in New Orleans more than 45 seconds after the race had started.

Check out the Race 5, 6, 7 Pick 3 on New Year’s Day at Aqueduct. $57,000 pool and only $2 had the winning combination. After scratches (sloppy track) there were only 8, 7, and 8 horses in the three fields, so you would think at least a couple of people would have hit it wheeling with one of the winning longshots, but only a pair of $1 tickets split the entire pool.

Given a forum in The New York Times, the inimitable Steve Crist blasts the corrupt and wasteful OTB system in New York.

That’s it. Your next horse racing update will be some time in the next 365 days or so.

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