Baseball And Sports Betting Makes Cover of New York Times

"Baseball Executives Face the Odds" - that's the headline on the front page of the Tuesday edition of the New York Times.

"The mission for every general manager at the baseball winter meetings here is to help build a team into a World Series champion. Some teams have a legitimate chance. Some have almost no chance. If the executives want to know how their chances of winning a title are perceived by some sports experts, they have congregated in the right place.

"Past the famous fountains outside the Bellagio and across the hotel's marble floors is a casino that houses the race and sports book. In this pulsating 5,600-square-foot room with leather chairs and enough flat-screen televisions to satisfy a small town, the odds for winning the 2009 World Series flash in multiple colors on a huge board.

"While 30 major league teams will pursue free agents and consider trade possibilities inside the Bellagio over the next four days, some simple numbers will inform them of just how close they may be to winning it all. Those numbers, which range from 5 to 1 to 150 to 1, are continuously monitored and, depending on what kind of transactions unfold, may immediately change."

It's not just in Vegas though as most Gambling911.com readers know.

Super Book is one of a few online sportsbooks that offered early odds on which team would be winning the 2009 World Series.

There, like in Vegas, the early favorites included the Red Sox, the Cubs, the Yankees and Devil Rays.  Philadelphia had odds of +1000 for a payout of $1000 on every $100 bet (by the way, better odds than those found in Vegas).

"Perception is reality in our world because people bet what they think is going to happen," said Jay Rood, who is the race and sports book director for MGM Mirage, which operates the Bellagio's and nine other casinos' sports books here. "That's what we're dealing with: opinions. It's what your opinion is. We have to temper that with what we think is going to happen as well."