November 9, 2007

The Friday afternoon installment of the Leroy's "Money Talks" football invitational handicapping contest takes place at Fitzgeralds on Fremont Street, on a stage in a well-appointed showroom normally reserved for country music celebrity impersonators.

And a cynic might say, judging by the results to date, the entrants in this year's contest have been impersonating actual football handica ...

Nah. Too easy.

We'll refrain from cheap shots, even if the contestants have posted a combined record of 101 wins, 112 losses and 11 pushes against the point spread (47 percent) heading into today's action.

After all, each of the 32 contestants put up $5,000 to compete in the single-elimination, bracket-style tournament, the highest entry fee for a sports handicapping contest in Nevada. It's also the most visible contest, with handicappers discussing their picks and their gambling philosophy in weekly presentations, free to the public, that air on sports radio stations in Las Vegas and elsewhere in the state.

In some ways, the field resembles a miniature World Series of Poker main event, an analogy drawn by Fezzik, the one-name Las Vegas professional gambler who lost in the first round of the contest with a 3-4 record.

It contains professional handicappers and full-time bettors like him , but also hopefuls from other lines of work. Paul Sonner, for instance, owns a chain of sports bars in the Reno area and has vowed to donate his prize money to charity if he wins.

"I give the recreational bettors an A-plus for putting their money up and going for it," Fezzik said. "They're willing to put up $5,000 and gamble. God bless 'em.

"Myself and the other professionals, I give us an F. We're the ones who are supposed to know what we're doing."

Last Friday's match up at the Fitz featured a pair of pros. Handicapper Jorge Gonzalez, who was born in Cuba 37 years ago but has lived in Las Vegas since he was a year old, went 4-3 in his seven picks to advance. He eliminated Ken "the Shrink" Weitzner (3-3-1), a former psychiatrist from Virginia who built up a sports betting Web site, sold it for a reported $2.4 million, then started another.

Winning streaks and prolonged slumps are all in the game for professional bettors, Weitzner pointed out, and almost anything can happen in a span of just seven games during a single weekend.

Getting hot at the right time goes a long way in determining the recipient of the contest's winner-take-all $160,000 prize.

"My dog could throw darts at the board and be right in the mix," Weitzner said, mixing a couple of common gambling metaphors (dart-throwing and a dog making selections against the point spread by choosing between two bowls of food).

Last week's evening portion of the contest, a second match up at the Riviera, further highlighted the field's diversity. (Several first-round matchups also took place at John Ascuaga's Nugget in Sparks to accommodate Northern Nevada entrants.)

Leroy's spokesman , Jimmy Vaccaro, hosting the program with John Kelly and Arne Lang, used an old Lee Pete line on Sal Selvaggio (4-3 including a best -bet winner), telling the young-looking 28-year-old he has socks older than he is.

Selvaggio, of Maddux Sports, a service in the Chicago area, is clearly from the new era of sports bettors. He says his most memorable winning wager was against a friend on a Nintendo Wii game. The stakes? His buddy had to gain 25 pounds.

His opponent in the Leroy's contest was former Bishop Gorman and Arizona basketball star Matt Othick (4-3 but a best -bet loser). A proxy delivered Othick's selections because Othick, a backer of the Broadway production of the Chazz Palminteri play "A Bronx Tale," was detained in New York.

After the segment at the Riv, Vaccaro invited members of the audience to the nearby Peppermill restaurant "for hamburgers." It was a nice gesture, one that might be difficult to sustain in the coming years if Vaccaro's ambitious plans for the Money Talks contest reach fruition.

A driving force behind the 3-year-old contest, Vaccaro aims to secure corporate sponsorship to back Leroy's and place the contest on national TV, ideally on Saturday mornings as a lead - up to the day's college football action.

"We're very pleased with the way the contest is going," Vaccaro said. "The following it has developed has been unbelievable. The amount of e-mails and phone calls we get about it has been incredible.

"It's getting bigger, but I still firmly believe we haven't touched our full potential. If we can get a sponsor and TV, we can take it to the next level."

Meanwhile, without TV, the trappings of the contest remain amiably low-tech.

After signing off from the radio broadcast at the Riv, there was Vaccaro, one of the most influential bookmakers in Las Vegas history, pulling raffle tickets from a hat - a baseball cap he had borrowed from an audience member. The drawing was to award some restaurant gift certificates to attendees.

By all appearances, Vaccaro was enjoying the spectacle, slowly and dramatically "squeezing out" the numbers on the raffle tickets as if he were a pai gow poker player, the better to prolong the suspense.

Jeff Haney can be reached at 259-4041 or at haney@lasvegassun.com.