Cincinnati Bookies: It’s All About The Bengals, Bearcats, Reds and Pete Rose
Local bookies thrive in Cincinnati, Ohio, and with good reason. Bengals fans tend to be hardcore bettors. But bookies also take their fair amount of action on the Reds and University of Cincinnati Bearcats as well.
Finding a local bookie is easy as pie in Cincinatti with its abundance of sports bars and pool halls. These include the likes of Local’s Sports Bar & Grill, Knockback Nats, Rhinehaus, Tap House Grill, Rock Bottom and the Brass Tap, just to name a few.
Popular pool halls include House of Billiards, Western Bowl and Princeton Bowl.
Entering the 2014-2015 Football season, we have what should be a decent Bengals team that is priced at -110 to win OVER 10 regular season games, though they play in a tough division where Baltimore and Pittsburgh should be improved this year.
The Bearcats College Basketball takes center stage come January and especially around March Madness. They ranked #15 in the AP poll last season.
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In College Football, no matter where you reside in the great state of Ohio, the Buckeyes will always have a place in one’s heart even if they do play in Columbus.
There may not be a whole lot of prosecutions against local Cincinnati area bookies but this is the place where Pete Rose plied his trade as one of the best known sports bettors.
And since we are on the subject: “The Dowd Report” was the result of an investigation by lawyer John M. Dowd, set out to prove that Rose did in fact bet on baseball games. In his research, Dowd found that Rose was betting on approximately five to ten games every day in basketball, football, hockey and baseball, at about $2,000 a game. In one month, Rose lost more than $67,000, and he was often deeply in debt to bookies — at one point, he owed a Staten Island bookie $200,000. Dowd handed over his research to Giamatti in May 1989. It was comprised of 225 pages and seven volumes of exhibits, which included bank and telephone records, alleged betting records, and transcripts of interviews with Rose and other witnesses.
Bookmaking in the state of Ohio is a felony. Betting on sports is a simple misdemeanor and the odds of getting fined or imprisoned for placing a wager on a sporting event here is about the same as getting struck by lightning provided you’re not involved in a multi-million dollar sports betting ring.
Cincinnati bookies also cater to customers in Northern Kentucky where a crackdown on Internet gambling sites a few years ago has made it virtually impossible to place bets there online. Pay Per Head shops have been used heavily in this region as a result.
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
