New York Post - 13.03.2020

New York Post, Friday, March 13, 2020

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March Madness started Wednes-

day afternoon when NCAA pres-

ident Mark Emmert announced

that NCAA Tournament games

would be held in arena without

fans. That was followed by simi-

lar announcements that big con-

ferences would hold their re-

spective tournaments without

fans starting Thursday.

When everyone was thinking

the news couldn’t get any

worse, the NBA announced at

9:30 p.m. ET that it was sus-

pending the season in the wake

of Jazz center Rudy Gobert

testing positive for coronavirus.

On Thursday, the conference

tournaments, the beginning of

the baseball season and other

leagues went by the wayside.

“I’ve been in the business for

40 years and this is brand new to

me,” said Tony Miller, director

of race & sports at the Golden

Nugget. “It’s just a crazy time

and we’re trying to deal with it

hour to hour like everyone else.”

Dave Tuley writes for Point

Spread Weekly, VSiN’s digital

magazine for sports bettors.

should be refunded, and that

also goes for NCAA Tourna-

ment futures.

The NBA and NHL seasons

have been suspended until fur-

ther notice, with the start of

the MLB season being delayed.

The house rules for those are

more complicated. The sim-

plest to explain is that odds to

win those respective season

championships are still alive as

long as a championship series is

held this year, the same would

go for wagers such as MVP and

Rookie of the Year (which have

both been getting a lot of action

this year in the NBA). Division

and conference odds will de-

pend on if the leagues declare

winners of those titles.

The wagers that are most up

in the air at this point are NBA

Over/Under season wins and

NHL Over/Under season points

props. Most sportsbook house

rules declare that the full sched-

ule (82 for each) must be played

for action, otherwise all of those

bets would be refunded. That

includes ones in which a team

has “clinched” the Over or Un-

der (though some books will

still pay off on those, so please

check with your own book).

MLB is a little different as

many books give a little wiggle

room for rainouts, with only

160 games required, but we’re

a long way from finding out if

MLB will make up the post-

poned games or play a short-

ened season (again, check with

our own book if you’ve made

any of these types of wagers).

This unwelcome version of

As sports betting world

mostly goes dark, it

pays to know the rules

By Dave Tuley

L

AS VEGAS — The sports

world is often considered

to exist in a parallel uni-

verse from real-world prob-

lems, but it was dealt a double

dose of reality on Wednesday

and Thursday with the cancel-

lation of the NCAA Tourna-

ment and the suspension of

the NBA and NHL seasons

among others due to the coro-

navirus pandemic.

This has also had wide-

spread implications for the

fledgling legalized sports bet-

ting industry which was look-

ing forward to the start of the

NCAA men’s basketball tour-

nament (aka March Madness)

next week with the number of

states taking bets up to 16 with

Illinois and Michigan joining

the action this week.

“I cannot recall anytime ever

something like this happening

in so many sports,” longtime Ve-

gas oddsmaker Kenny White.

“Obviously we’ve had strikes in

different sports — the NFL,

NBA and Major League Baseball

— to shut down

seasons but noth-

ing to run over [to

multiple sports].”

Nevada sportsbooks won

$36.5 million from basketball

bettors last March from a total

of $498.7 million in bets, ac-

cording to the state’s Gaming

Control Board. Nevada doesn’t

separate college and pro bas-

ketball from its figures, but

GBC senior research analyst

Michael Lawton estimates 70

percent of that handle is on

March Madness, or around

$349 million.

New Jersey reported a

March Madness handle of $106

million last year with a win of

$10 million. With the growth

of the industry the past year,

those figures certainly were

expected to increase.

Many bettors, especially

novices, have been learning

the past two days about “house

rules” that determine if bets

have action or not. All advance

wagers on conference tourna-

ment games that were sched-

uled for Thursday are graded

“no-action” and refunded.

The lone exception was the

first half of the St. John’s-

Creighton game in the Big East

Tournament at Madison Square

Garden, which inexplicably

played the first 20 minutes be-

fore being postponed at halftime

with St. John’s leading 38-35. The

side/total/money-line wagers

for the game were no-action, but

first-half bettors on St. John’s +3

and Over 70¹/₂ were graded win-

ners while Creighton -3 and Un-

der 70¹/₂ were graded losers.

All future wagers on can-

celed conference tournaments

CHECK ALL

TICKETS!

LAST NCAA BETS

TO CASH: David Cara-

her of St. John’s drives

on Damien Jefferson in

the Big East Tournament

on Thursday. The game

was canceled at half-

time, but the Red Storm

first-half spread and

first-half Over were paid

at some sportsbooks

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