From the tables: Confessions of a card counter

Some of my professional colleagues asked why I committed card-counter suicide by going public. I told them to read the ending more carefully.

I don’t know how many times I’ve been banned from playing blackjack in casinos.

In the parlance of the game, I’ve “lost the count.”

I savored the irony when it happened for the 21st time (get it, 21?), but now I usually just say “dozens.”

Has Alan Boston finally reached the place where he can give up his obsession?

Since adolescence, Alan Boston used gambling as an escape from real-life issues and as a way to avoid relationships with people. For a long time, he didn't even want a pet. He ended up with his beloved Great Dane, Dewey, only after his former roommate got married and left the dog with Boston. In this column, Boston discusses a turning point in his life.

When Alan Boston talks about how he came to find “a good place,” he does not mean his well-appointed house on a Las Vegas golf course or his summer home in Maine.

Boston has spent the better part of two decades handicapping and betting college basketball in Las Vegas, earning a national reputation among gamblers and oddsmakers. Yet he has always analyzed his own psyche as deeply as any Canisius-Siena matchup.

For once, he likes what he sees.

“If you had asked me at almost any time over the years, I would have told you I hate myself, I’m miserable, I’m unhappy,” Boston says. “At a very young age, I started using gambling as an escape from life.

“There were times I was in a very bad place. Not anymore. I'm in the best place mentally I've been for a long time. I finally have peace of mind away from gambling.”

Sports book executive Art Manteris: For bettors, these are the good old days

It always grabs my attention when someone establishes a strong, if initially counterintuitive, argument that blows holes in conventional wisdom. In some quarters, the prevailing opinion has it that Las Vegas sports betting has gone downhill since the "old days," whenever they were. Here, Art Manteris, vice president of race and sports book operations for Station Casinos, takes on the nostalgia-mongers and makes a compelling case that sports bettors in Nevada have never had it so good.

Call it the “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?” syndrome.

A segment of the Las Vegas sports betting population, caught up in the romanticism and lore of the city’s history, tends to idealize the past, to pine for a time when gamblers were more dashing, bookies more daring and the scene more freewheeling.

Art Manteris appreciates the sentiments.

He just does not agree with them.

It’s not that Manteris has anything against nostalgia. But when he compares today’s Las Vegas sports betting with that of the 1970s, when he broke into the business, he makes the modern environment a prohibitive favorite.

One in a quintillion: Tips for filling out NCAA tournament brackets

Nine point two quintillion.

The number nine followed by 18 more digits.

Two to the 63rd power.

It sounds like a number from the realm of physics or astronomy, not sports.

It’s also the number of possible standard brackets that could be filled out for the NCAA Tournament, according to Las Vegas sports betting analyst R.J. Bell.

Verbal sparring as exciting as title bout

Two of boxing’s biggest names collided Saturday night at Mandalay Bay, exchanging stinging jabs and violent haymakers in an intense battle that had observers debating who got the better of it.

Oh yeah, and way before all that happened, Manny Pacquiao beat Juan Manuel Marquez in a pretty good 130-pound title fight.

Why March is a good month for Vegas books

If recent history is an indication, this month’s NCAA basketball tournament should provide a minibonanza for Nevada’s legal sports books.

A spike in profits for the casinos is expected to come not only from the increased handle the tournament produces, but also because books typically “hold,” or win, a larger percentage of the money wagered in March than at other times in the basketball season.

In short, the gambling public bets a lot more money on basketball in March — and loses it at a greater rate.

Why baseball oddsmakers are picking Detroit to pile up the wins this season

Eight major league baseball teams had better regular-season records than the Detroit Tigers last year, but oddsmakers figure that number will be reduced in 2008 — perhaps to zero.

For Steve Mikkelson, it was an easy call to project that Detroit will finish with more victories than any team other than the World Series champion Boston Red Sox.

When he posted baseball team season-win over/unders recently at the Grand Sierra in Reno, Mikkelson attached 94 victories each to the Tigers and the Red Sox, the highest number on the board.

Bloch and Ferguson: Two buddies and students of the game who went head-to-head for title

Cultivating a look that crosses an Old West gunslinger with a glam rocker, Chris Ferguson cuts an imposing figure in a poker room.

The black leather trench coat, the dark sunglasses, the long hair and beard, the cowboy hat. Even the famous nickname: “Jesus.”

Hershiser makes his name in poker tournament

On the way to his second-place finish in the National Heads-Up Poker Championship, Andy Bloch faced three consecutive World Series champions.

In the final round, Bloch’s opponent was Chris Ferguson, who won the main event of the 2000 World Series of Poker.

In the semifinals, Bloch faced Huck Seed, who won the main event of the 1996 World Series of Poker.

And in the quarterfinals, Bloch faced Orel Hershiser, who led the Los Angeles Dodgers to victory in the 1988 World Series ... of baseball.