On the day of the Super Bowl, Bill Krackomberger spent a lot of time driving around, a lot of time looking at his phone, and a little time thinking about a painful bet on Christina Aguilera’s performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” three years ago.
Bill Krackomberger in more relaxed times.
Bill Krackomberger
It's just past 10 a.m. on Super Bowl Sunday as a green Cadillac Escalade pulls up to the main entrance of the Golden Gate Casino in downtown Las Vegas. At the wheel is a man wearing a black Kangol cap and a charcoal button-up rolled to the elbows, smartphone in hand and a laptop riding shotgun. The Super Bowl is just another day-at-the-office grind for Bill Krackomberger, one of the town's most prominent professional bettors.
His gaze fixed on the screen of the phone, Krack lets out a derisive grunt.
"Look at this — look at them all," he says with a Jersey accent while scrolling through a sea of texts.
Who do you like? Whattya think? You gonna fire?
"Ten, eleven, twelve I didn't answer. They think it's so easy and a license to fucking steal. Get a fucking job."
He's been through this before: acquaintances and nominal friends coming out before the big game to needle him for a tip. He understands it comes with the territory in a business that weds two of the most cherished interests of the typical American: money and sports. And while many of those texts will go unanswered, on the occasion that he does throw a bone to someone, it doesn't come with a price tag attached. Within the community of pro bettors — many of whom are part of large organized groups ("syndicates"), and most of whom sell their "plays" to the public on a subscription basis — this makes Krackomberger relatively unique. In a city of angles, he's out transparently for his own personal enrichment, and in this business that gives him an odd sort of purity.
And while he's for the most part a solo operator, he's still throwing a lot of money around. Krackomberger came to Vegas via North Jersey seven years ago because he wanted to bet on sports for a living. In that time, he's done more than OK for himself, notably winning nearly $500,000 in a 2010 football contest. In an era when advanced methods of predicting game outcomes — and opportunities to risk money on said outcomes — are more available than ever online, almost anyone can pretend to be a pro gambler. Krackomberger is actually living that dream.
Well, sort of. "I mostly hate Las Vegas; everything is wrong here," he says. "They promote all the wrong values. But hey, I have to make a living, and the only place I can make a living legally is here."
He allows himself a split second to ponder that reality before throwing the car into gear and pointing it toward the Las Vegas Expressway.
The Hard Rock sports book.
Hard Rock
Krack's Escalade isn't just his mode of transportation up, down, and around the Strip, it also serves as a mobile command hub to monitor all of the sports books in town. When oddsmakers post point spreads on games, they do so with the expectation that a given line will attract a similar amount of action on both teams (it's often said the point spread is "the great equalizer"). In that scenario, sports books will make their money on the "vigorish" or "vig" (the commission they collect on wagers) and not rely on the precarious and unpredictable balance of gamblers' wins and losses. However, it seldom plays out that way, meaning sports books are forced to adjust lines when one side starts to receive a greater chunk of the money being bet.
Super Bowl XLVIII between the Broncos and Seahawks has turned into a bonanza from a numbers perspective. Denver initially opened as 1-point underdogs after the conference championship games but were then bet hard and fast by recreational gamblers (commonly known as "squares") and pros ("sharps") alike, which resulted in a 3.5-point line swing, to Denver -2.5, as the books attempted to even out the betting. Most books had settled on that number by Monday of Super Bowl week, and there it remained through gameday morning.
Parked outside Caesars Palace, Krack is analyzing a laptop that is relaying odds from every significant sports book in Vegas. One of the numbers on the screen starts blinking.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" he blurts out, his finger wagging in front of the computer like a parent scolding a child. "South Point just went to three! Oh, I would have loved to get more of that."
His phone starts buzzing, and he's screaming into it almost before accepting the call.
"Damn, damn, yeah you see that? South Point went to three!"
Three is the most important number to both pro bettors and oddsmakers, as more NFL games — 15% of them from 2003–13 — are decided by exactly three points than any other margin. Oddsmakers are especially hesitant to move a line onto 3. Three-point spreads mean a lot of "pushes," and sports books don't collect commission on pushes. It's even worse for the books if they've already offered a different line earlier in the week. Let's say a bettor who'd locked in a Denver -1 bet was later able to take Seattle +3. If Denver had proceeded to win the Super Bowl by a field goal, our hypothetical bettor would have won her wager on Denver -1 and pushed Seattle +3, winning money from the casino without having to give any back.
Although Krack has seen the coveted Seattle +3 pop up at South Point, all he can do is watch helplessly and wait for the inevitable to occur. Sure enough, in less time than it would take to get to the betting window of the current sports book — much less one on the other side of town — the line is back to 2.5.
"You've got whales [high-stakes gamblers] with seven- and eight-figure credit lines laying six figs on Denver. So the book has no choice but to push the line to three," he says. "Then like jackals circling around a piece of meat, the sharp guys jump on the +3. And poof, it disappears."
Walking into Caesars to bet a card of propositions — "props," or wagers on specific plays and circumstances in a game, account for the majority of Krack's action on the Super Bowl — he snickers.
"This will be fun to watch, getting thrown outta here," he says, explaining that a lot of times his bets will be rejected by sports books simply because they don't want to get beat by him. "What they do is absolutely illegal. They let you bet bad numbers but won't let you bet good ones."
The book is buzzing with the energy of giddy frat boys and opportunistic tourists as he heads to the counter containing all the day's betting sheets and parlay cards. The parlay he's making contains three "legs," all of which will have to hit if he's to win the wager.
"We're going 'over' total fumbles lost, at one. No score in the first 5:30 of the game, and 'under' total touchdowns at six," he says, while simultaneously producing from his left pocket a roll of hundred-dollar bills. "It's all about attacking stale numbers on these cards; the lines you get on them were frozen a few days ago when they went to print, whereas the ones being shopped on the board have been adjusted by the books."
He counts out seven Benjamins, returns the stack to his pocket and takes his place in line. A few minutes later, he gets to the window and presents the card to the ticket writer, who barely misses a beat before yelling, "Approval!" A supervisor emerges a split second later, gives the card a quick once-over — and hands it back to the ticket writer without uttering a word. The card is scanned, money is exchanged, and a betting ticket pops out.
"With the amount of volume on the Super Bowl, that play gets through," Krack speculates over long strides through the casino in the direction of the parking lot. "On a regular-season game, it probably wouldn't. I was thrown out for 100 bucks last month!"
Krack says never lays down huge money at one of the prominent properties. "I just bet 700 bucks. But in reality I'm betting eight, 10,000, you know what I mean? Three hundred here, 500 there, 300 there. It's work! A lot of labor.
"Half the fun is winning, half is beating the number," he says. "You know what I love? Beads of sweat running down bookmakers' faces."
