LAS VEGAS (AP) – The nearly a quarter of a million dollars in winning bets reportedly placed at MGM Resorts last Sunday could be the largest loss of sports betting in Las Vegas history in bets made after that an event has started.
Seven longtime Las Vegas bookmakers can’t remember a bigger loss, reports the Las Vegas Review-Journal. But each bettor received successes in previous posts and said it’s a fairly common occurrence in the books.
According to an ESPN report, Sunday bets were allowed to be placed because incorrect start times were posted in some Korean and Chinese baseball games due to a manual entry error.
Almost all of the approximately 50 bets were placed at self-service kiosks at the Bellagio between 1:30 am and 3 am, when the games in question started at 1 am and 2 am
Bets included a $ 250, 10-stage parlay that paid out over $ 137,100.
The Nevada Gaming Control Board is reportedly investigating the matter. Every time there is a dispute over $ 500, the state books must contact the board, which conducts an investigation and issues a decision that the books must comply with.
“It has happened to all of us,” said Westgate sports betting director John Murray. ” I think every sportsbook has probably dealt with this at some point in time.
” We’ve had past post situations where our employees put in the wrong time or the wrong number or forgot to close something. It’s manual input and humans will make mistakes. ”
Robert Walker, USBook’s director of sports betting operations, remains obsessed with being published in the past during his tenure as director of sports betting for MGM Resorts from 1996 to 2008.
“I still haven’t gotten past some mistakes I made at The Mirage 20 years ago,” he said. ” There is no worse feeling than when you see a bet on a game that has already started.
“ They turned me on some half time before. If you don’t manually close the halftime line, they keep betting and that’s what they did. ”
Walker said a college football player once made a $ 3,000 halftime bet at Louisiana State late in the fourth quarter, when the bet couldn’t be lost.
“Once I saw that bet on the ticker in the fourth quarter, it mortified me,” he said.
The bookmaker blocked the collection while Walker went to the MGM Grand to explain his mistake to the bettor.
” He told me the story that they did not know and that they were fans of LSU. But you’re still watching the game, ” he said. ” But it was 100% my fault. They were guests of the casino, so at that point I took their side and it was a mistake that we had to eat. ”
