It’s a football weekend. Yes the NFL draft is this
weekend. OffshoreInsiders.com has
posted betting odds
for the draft.

Who will be the second QB drafted? Brian Brohm -120, followed by Chad Henne
at +170 and Joe Flacco at +175. The field is +400. Virtually all projections of course have Matt
Ryan going first. The sportsbooks
odds are in line with Rivals.com rankings as well as most projections, which also
have Brohm going second at the signal calling
position.

One can even bet on which position teams will pick. The
Dallas Cowboys are rumored to be trying to trade up to draft Arkansas
running back Darren McFadden. Not surprisingly running back is the most likely
position they will draft first, but an interesting proposition is “any other
position” other than running back, wide receiver or cornerback at +200.

Which team will draft Illinois
ball control running back Rashard Mendenhall? The
Detroit Lions are even money, followed by Chicago at +250, and Houston at +275.

Philadelphia Eagles fans are chomping at the bit to draft
a wide receiver. Gamblers can wager in which round they will pick one. If you bet
not in the first four rounds and are right, collect +500.

One can wager which side of the ball the Indianapolis
Colts will draft. Will Chad Johnson be traded during the draft? When will the
Atlanta Falcons draft a quarterback?

Check out OffshoreInsiders.com
for more betting options for the NFL draft, American Idol Vegas odds, Stanley
Cup playoffs, and NBA playoff betting odds as well.

The Boston Celtics are overwhelming favorites to win the
NBA championship according to the latest Vegas betting odds as well as the more
accurate offshore
betting line.

Curt Thomas is Chief NBA Analyst for GodsTips of OffshoreInsiders.com. He
is also the only full-time NBA handicapper in sports betting. The fact Boston
is the favorite is no surprise, but Thomas expressed shock at how relatively
little respect Detroit gets at 9/4.

“With Richard Hamilton, Antonio MyDyess,
Chauncey Billips, Richard Hamilton, and Tayshaun Prince, the Pistons are the better team (than
Boston) from top to bottom,” says Thomas, though conceding that Boston’s Paul
Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Ray Allen are the “league’s best threesome.”

Last year’s conference titlist Cleveland is next at 9/1,
tied with Orlando, even though the
Magic finished a full seven games ahead of the Cavs in the standings.

Explains Grandmaster sports handicapper Joe Duffy, “We
look back no further than last year to see that LeBron James can carry the
Cavaliers, plus the blockbuster mid-season trade in which they got Ben Wallace
should pay off.”

At 25/1 Washington
is given little chance, but they at not as big of a dark horse as the Toronto
Raptors at 30/1 or the Philadelphia
76ers at 50/1. Coming up the rear are the Atlanta Hawks at 75/1.

“Athletic teams like Atlanta
give Boston trouble,” warns Cy McCormick of the online betting syndicate MasterLockLine.com

From its legal inception in 1931, Las
Vegas’ gaming and sports betting industry has been
built on the dreams and imagination of people who have had the courage to
question the status quo. But while many a daring dreamer has left his legacy in
this desert oasis, four men stand out.

Part 1: The Man Who Invented Las Vegas.

It was on the night of June 20, 1947,
that nine bullets from a .30-.30 carbine ripped through the living room window
of socialite Virginia Hill’s home on 810 North Linden
Drive in Beverly Hills.
The first shot crashed into the man’s head, driving the victim’s right eye from
his skull and hurling it 15 feet
across the room. The other shots quickly followed but there was no need.
Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, the era’s most infamous
mobster, already was dead.

Ironically, hundreds of miles away, in a desert outpost called Las
Vegas, Siegel’s gambling dream was alive and well and
just beginning to prosper.

Ben Siegel first came west in 1937 to California
to organize the mob’s lucrative narcotics, prostitution and bookmaking
enterprises there. A much-feared New York criminal who by his early 20s already
had committed several murders, Siegel had partners in crime including the
underworld elite, from Meyer Lansky – with whom he’d formed an execution squad
that predated Murder Inc. by seven years – to Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Dutch Schultz, Albert Anastasia, Legs Diamond,
Arnold Rothstein, Vito Genovese and Frank Nitti.
Except for his movie star good looks, Siegel fit right in.

By 1945 Siegel had used a combination of bribery and deadly force to
consolidate his power in California, buying off cops and politicians and
killing those who couldn’t be bought. Three years earlier, in 1942, he’d taken
over control of Las Vegas’ racewire services,
charging the hotels exorbitant fees for the racetrack information.

But Siegel had bigger plans for Las Vegas.

Early in 1946 he decided to build the largest and most lavish casino in the
world there. But it wouldn’t be just a casino. There’d be a hotel, too, with
carefully manicured grounds, a swimming pool, restaurant, bar and nightclub.
There’d be nothing like it anywhere on the planet and as soon as it opened on a
patch of inexpensive land at the desolate southern end of what would later be
called the Strip – Las Vegas Boulevard
– Siegel instantly would be transformed from mobster to mogul. He’d be America’s
king of gambling. It’d all be legit, too.

But the casino, which Siegel called the “Fabulous Flamingo Hotel,” was horribly
under funded. Siegel had invested his own ill-gotten fortune, about $1 million,
in what was estimated to be a $1.5 million venture. But the hotel’s plumbing
alone cost $1 million and building supplies, particularly steel and copper, were
scarce in post-war America.
Siegel paid extra to get them.

The tab for the project quickly soared to $6 million, an incredible sum at the
time. Siegel raised $3 million in stock sales and got the rest the Mob,
extorting $2 million through the sale of his TransAmerica
racewire service, an audacious move that later cost
him his life.

On Dec. 26, 1946, with Virginia
Hill at his side and Jimmy Durante in his nightclub,
Siegel opened the Flamingo Hotel. It was a terrible disappointment. Bad weather
had grounded many of Siegel’s celebrity friends in Los
Angeles and, as luck would have it, the casino lost
heavily the first night. Two weeks later, $100,000 in the hole, the Flamingo
closed.

On March 27, 1947, Siegel
reopened the Flamingo. For three weeks, the casino continued to lose money.
Then, finally, as it often happens for those who accept wagers, red turned to
black. In May, the casino cleared $300,000.

Three weeks later, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, 41, was
dead. But the town he built, the gambling and sports betting Mecca
known as Las Vegas, was just coming
to life.

This article was written on behalf of OffshoreInsiders.com
by Luken Karel for http://www.thegreek.com.

By the mid 1960s, Las Vegas was well on its way to establishing itself as the gaming and sports betting capital of the world. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t room for another visionary to challenge the status quo and expand the concept of those who had come before him. Of the many daring dreamers and schemers who have left their legacy in this desert oasis, here’s a look at one of the four men who really made an impact.

Part 2: The Man Who Bought Las Vegas.

Early in his life he was known as a swashbuckling aviator, a playboy who
romanced Hollywood actresses and Las Vegas showgirls, a shrewd and often ruthless businessman who parlayed an oil drilling bit into one of the world’s great fortunes, and the man who had designed a special uplift bra for the actress Jane Russell to wear in the motion picture, “The Outlaw.”

By his twilight years he had degenerated into a pathetic, paranoid,
long-haired, straggly bearded, reclusive billionaire so fearful of disease he avoided all human contact, spending most of his time alone in a darkened room, surrounded by boxes of Kleenex and covered only by a bed sheet. When the end mercifully came, April 5, 1976, at the age of 70, at 3,000 feet aboard an airplane out of Acapulco bound for Houston, his once sturdy, 6-foot, 4-inch frame carried a mere 90 pounds.

But somewhere between the genuine genius and the mystifying madness was the real Howard Hughes, the man who tried to buy Las Vegas and mold it in his image. The amazing part is that he nearly got away with it.

Hughes was a month shy of his 61^st birthday when he arrived in Las
Vegas by train from Boston and took up residency on the top floor of the Desert Inn, Nov. 27, 1966. Only six months earlier, Hughes had sold TWA, the fledgling airline he had first bought for $1 million in 1939, for $546 million. Meanwhile, his Hughes Aircraft Co., which produced weapons for the US government, was valued at $1 billion and his Hughes Tool Company would fetch an additional $150 million in 1972. There also was a Hughes helicopter division, Hughes Air-West, a television station in New York, an architectural firm, as well as substantial property holdings in California and the Bahamas.

Howard Hughes was a very rich man.

So when Moe Dalitz, the feisty owner of the Desert Inn, sought to make good on a promise from Hughes that the billionaire would vacate his hotel by Christmas, instead of moving out, Hughes bought him out. It
was the beginning of Hughes’ attempt to make Las Vegas his own private Monopoly board.

Under the umbrella of his huge conglomerate, Summa Corporation, Hughes quickly acquired the Frontier, Castaways, Landmark, Silver Slipper and Sands hotel-casinos in Las Vegas as well as Harold’s Club in Reno. Hughes also negotiated to purchase Caesars Palace, the Dunes, Stardust and Riviera in Las Vegas, Harrah’s in Reno and Lake Tahoe, and Harvey’s in Lake Tahoe. Pressure from the federal government in the form of possible anti-trust action against him probably prevented those
sales but Hughes consoled himself with 2,000 mining claims in the state, 30,000 acres of real estate, including most of the land around the airport, and another TV station.

Because of the hundreds of millions of dollars he invested in the Las
Vegas valley, money that revitalized a stagnant if not decaying industry, Hughes expected, and usually received, preferential treatment. Hence, his casinos were dutifully licensed despite the fact that Hughes refused to appear before gaming authorities, much less be photographed—something that hadn’t occurred since 1957 – fingerprinted or interviewed.

After four year, Hughes left Las Vegas, not only annoyed that he had failed to control every aspect of the city’s destiny, but melancholy and fearful that his many contributions to Las Vegas’ growth and prosperity might go unappreciated.

”So now I wind up a supposedly successful businessman who has wrecked his health and consumed the best part of his life in the process,” writes Hughes in Citizen Hughes, a biography by Michael Drosnin which
explores the eccentric billionaire through internal memos and notes in Hughes’ own hand. “I can’t help but feel I must have given something to this community.”

As I wandered through the vibrant streets of today’s Las Vegas, marveling at the gambling and sports betting wonderland it has become, I couldn’t help but think about the excitement that awaits on a เว็บไซต์พนันฟุตบอล.

Next, Part 3: The Man Who Played Las Vegas.

This article was written by Luken Karel on behalf of OffshoreInsiders.com for http://www.thegreek.com

Entertainment became linked with Las
Vegas in the 1940s when savvy city planners and casino
entrepreneurs rightly reasoned that even hard-edged gamblers would need an
occasional respite from the drudgery of table games and the challenge of sports
betting that had lured them to this desert outpost in the first place. Of the
many who came to sing, dance and tell jokes was one so
unique that he set the standard for the glitzy performances that have become
the city’s staple. He joins Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel
and Howard Hughes as the third of four men who helped make Las
Vegas the most unique city in the world.

Part 3: The Man Who Played Las Vegas.

Although classically trained and universally recognized as one of the foremost
pianists in the world, Walter Valentino Liberace, the recipient of six gold
record albums and two Emmy Awards, became even better known as the symbol of
Las Vegas entertainment, a flamboyant, over-the-top performer who represented
the scorned image of wretched excess often associated with many of Las Vegas’
stage acts.

It is perhaps ironic that Liberace, who first performed in Las
Vegas in 1942 and whose talent on the keyboards was
without dispute, nevertheless helped pave the way for a succession of marginal
performers who offered more style than substance to their audiences. Without Liberace,
there probably never could have been a Charo, a Lola Falana, or the slew of Elvis impersonators who continue to
earn their livings in the city that brazenly refers to itself as “the
Entertainment Capital of the World.”

But marginal musicians and singers weren’t the only beneficiaries of Liberace’s
conscious, if insidious, pushing of the Las Vegas
entertainment envelope.

In a city where reality is no closer than the next bus ride home and the
unexpected now has become the anticipated, illusionists such as David
Copperfield, Siegfried & Roy, and Lance Burton owe a measure of their
success, if not their very existence, to Liberace’s underrated ability to
transcend the boundaries of traditional entertainment.

And it’s something less than a stretch to suggest that the audience’s
acceptance of Liberace’s effeminate manner cleared the path for the
acquiescence of such long-running gender-bender acts as Boylesque
and La Cage.

Through it all – the ostentatious sequined gowns, the ever-present candelabra,
the gaudy gems, the spectacular pianos, the shtick that overwhelmed the music –
Liberace understood what he was doing.

”I’m the first to admit my stage costumes have become a very expensive joke but
I have fun with them and the audience shares that fun with me,” he said.

But Liberace, who died in 1987 at age 67, had a serious side, too. In 1976 he
created the Liberace Foundation for the Performing and Creative Arts which,
over the years, has funded over $5 million in scholarships to 2,200 students at
110 colleges and universities across the nation.

In 1979, Liberace also built the Liberace
Museum, a fantasyland for adults
comprised of a trio of buildings located in southeast Las
Vegas. Walking through the non-profit museum, one can
easily imagine how Alice felt when
she first peered through the looking glass. The museum, which is stocked with
mementos and items from Liberace’s professional and personal life (though it’s
not easy to tell the two apart) has little relevance to most people’s reality. In
other words, it fits perfectly in Las Vegas.

Liberace wasn’t a visionary in the mold of Siegel or Hughes but he was as much
an innovator, bringing a new, bolder type of entertainment to Las
Vegas that transformed the industry and attracted
people, many of who didn’t fit the prototype of the average gambler, to the
city. After one of his shows, these same folks would hit the slots and table
games and engage in sports betting, an unexpected but welcomed part of the
legacy that is Liberace’s enduring influence on Las Vegas.

This article was written on behalf of OffshoreInsiders.com
by Luken Karel for http://www.thegreek.com.

Las Vegas
always has been a city built on hopes and aspirations but only a handful of
true visionaries have had a unique and lasting impact of the growth and
direction of this desert outpost. Of the four pillars of Las
Vegas innovation, Benjamin “Bugsy”
Siegel, Howard Hughes and Liberace are gone but one architect remains, a man
who continues to reinvent this unique city to this day.

Part 4: The Man Who Reinvigorated Las Vegas.

Steve Wynn was still a couple of years shy of becoming a teenager in 1952 when
he stood on a dusty patch of desert highway called the Strip and listened
intently as his father, a Maryland bingo parlor operator, told him of his dream
of expanding his business there. Michael Wynn died in 1963 but his dream – and
then some – never left the mind of his innovative son. It would take 26 years
but Steve Wynn would realize his father’s dream.

Typically, Wynn’s first steps into gaming weren’t timid ones. In the early
1970s, using money he’d earned in the family business, Wynn purchased a parcel
of real estate adjacent to Caesars Palace
from Howard Hughes. The next year he sold the land to Caesars for a profit of
$760,000. He used the money to accumulate stock in the downtown Golden Nugget
and, by 1973, at the age of 31, was the youngest casino chairman in the history
of Las Vegas.

Wynn next turned his attention to Atlantic City,
paying $8.5 million for the Strand Hotel. He promptly demolished the Strand
and built another Golden Nugget which, in 1987, he then sold to Bally’s for a
record $440 million.

Flushed with optimism and with his father’s dream still kicking around in his
head, Wynn then returned to Las Vegas,
a city which, despite its gaming persona, still was in search of an identity.
Wynn defined it.

He did it by building The Mirage, a $630 million all-inclusive complex that he
promised “would have mystique, like a lady half-dressed.” It did.

The birth of The Mirage in 1989 redefined Las Vegas as the
ultimate tourist destination, the home of wondrous new sights and experiences,
where casino gambling and sports betting were the main but not the only
attractions. A tropic paradise of waterfalls and foliage, luxury
accommodations, gourmet restaurants, a rain forest, an exploding volcano, a
swanky shopping mall, rare white tigers, an aquarium with bottle-nosed
dolphins, and the city’s most spectacular – and expensive – show, Siegfried
& Roy, there never had been anything quite like
it. In fact, Wynn was forced to add a new term to the gaming lexicon just to
describe The Mirage. He called it a “megaresort.”

Suddenly, the Strip, which had not seen significant growth in several years,
was awash in megaresort projects. In the eight years
immediately after Wynn first unveiled his plans to build The Mirage, other
would-be entrepreneurs played follow-the-leader, adding 30,000 rooms and $3
billion worth of investments to the Strip.

The success of The Mirage spawned the Excalibur, the castle-configured casino
with 4,000 rooms. Then came Luxor, a pyramid-shaped property
next door to the Excalibur. Hardly content to watch others build, in October of
1993, Wynn added another property of his own, Treasure Island,
a pirate-themed facility adjacent to The Mirage. Two months later the city
welcomed the MGM Grand, with 5,005 rooms, the largest hotel, er, megaresort, in the world.

Wynn would later build Bellagio, on the site of the
old Dunes Hotel on the corner of Flamingo Road
and Las Vegas Boulevard
and, most recently, Wynn Las Vegas, his high-end signature property that now
stands on land where the Desert Inn once stood.

”Nevada’s advantage is… that we
have the creative genius of people like Steve,” said former Governor Bob
Miller.

Wynn, the architect of the modern Las Vegas gaming and sports betting
expansion, just smiled at the remark, comfortable with the presence (and
accolades) of elected officials. In fact, Wynn has golfed with many politicians,
including Arizona Senator Sen. John McCain, the presumptive 2008 presidential
nominee of the Republican Party.

So how did it feel to rub elbows with the power elite?

McCain never said.

The Big Ten Men’s Basketball Tournament in 2008 is like Adrienne
Barbeau: quite top heavy. The Wisconsin Badgers,
Purdue Boilermakers, Indiana Hoosiers, and Michigan State Spartans are all
nationally ranked and likely going the Big Dance.

For sports handicappers who believe in betting the
motivational factor, the Ohio State Buckeyes are one of the “last four in”
according to ESPN’s Joe Lunardi’s Bracketology.

The sportsbooks say that Purdue is the slight favorite to win
it all at 7/4, with Wisconsin
nearly neck and neck at 7/4. Michigan
State is only 7/2. If anyone has
had almost as much success in March Madness as GodsTips,
anchor of OffshoreInsiders.com, it is Tom Izzo, head coach of
the Spartans.

Despite all the distractions of the Kelvin Sampson firing,
the Indiana
Hoosiers are just 5/1 to earn the automatic bid. Purdue and Indiana have
the shorter odds as the tournament is being hosted at Conseco
Fieldhouse, home of the Indiana Pacers.

The Minnesota Golden Gophers will have to play their way
in to the 2008
Men’s College Basketball Tournament, but they are 14/1 odds to win it
all—the conference title that is.

Once highly regarded Illinois
is 20/1, the Iowa Hawkeyes at 22/1. Surprisingly ahead of both is perennial
doormat Penn State
at just 18/1. At 25/1 Michigan
is given little chance and Northwestern at 100/1 no chance. Odds are courtesy
of NewBodog.

Considering the Wildcats went 1-17 in conference play, perhaps the
bookmakers are being too generous.

The author, Joe Duffy, is former General Manager of the
Freescoreboard scorephone network and CEO of OffshoreInsiders.com,
the premier hub of world-class handicappers.