Las Vegas Numbers Shopping 101

Since the college basketball season is winding down, now seems a good time to give a brief, basic tutorial on shopping for numbers in Las Vegas. It's my opinion that numbers shopping reaches its peak importance during the last 10 games of the college basketball regular season because pointspreads/power ratings reach their height of accuracy for any sport. What we'll review here is very basic, but it's required knowledge.

Thirty years ago, one had to do the legwork and literally visit about 30 sports books to survey either spreads or futures. With the consolidation of the last decades, that is no longer necessary.

Basically, the sports books for each company should have identical numbers at each separate location. Thus, visiting one CET sports book is sufficient to acquire CET numbers and visiting one CG (Cantor) sports book yields the same numbers as all CG locations and so on for all linked companies. The satellite books should have the same numbers as the "home" or "flagship" books.

The CG books can be found at the Palms, the Hard Rock, the Venetian, the Cosmopolitan, the M, the Tropicana, and other locations. William Hill (which subsumed the old Leroy's chain) numbers can be found at the Plaza, the D, the Four Queens, the Downtown Grand, the Tuscany, SLS, Hooter's, Binion's, and other locations. Shopping at any CET property yields CET numbers, and any MGM/Mirage property provides their numbers. Parking at Caesars, one can check CET, then hustle over the bridge to Bellagio to check MGM/Mirage. Checking one Station's Casino property is necessary, as is one Boyd property.

By simply knowing this, spread shoppers save a lot of effort. One still should check independent sports books, of course, as they often yield numbers outside the middle of the bell curve. A must-check list of independents would include the WestGate SuperBook and the Wynn.

While convenience is a factor, other variables should enter into your "shopping location list" compilation. Some satellite books do not, for example, keep the same hours as the flagship book for a particular company. Hours can change week to week and sport to sport, so this is homework the reader must do on his own. Sometimes an hour can be quite significant.

March Madness futures bettors who are unfamiliar with Las Vegas should benefit from this summary. If anyone has basic questions, I'll try to provide brief answers.