An epic battle is brewing. The two opposing sides are readying themselves for the fray; recruiting foot soldiers, forging alliances, stockpiling ammunition. In recent weeks, powerful interests have thrown down the gauntlet, setting the stage for what promises to be one of the most riveting political and economic rumbles of all time. The issue at the heart of the conflict is the legalization of sports betting and the field of battle is the United States of America.

Some of the most interesting recent developments include:

• Bipartisan coalition unites to legalize online gambling – and tax it: Barney Frank picks up some Republican support for his bill to repeal the UIGEA. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) as usual shows himself to be a leading conservative voice for individual rights.
• NJ Gov. Corzine joins the fight to overturn the Federal ban on sports betting: The New Jersey Governor sees the Constitutional problems with permitting only four states to allow sports betting. A gubernatorial candidate from Massachusetts agrees.
• DoJ Tries to Block New Jersey Governor From Sports Betting Suit: The little lawsuit started by a state lawmaker in NJ has picked up steam, causing the Justice Department to desperately look for obscure legal reasons to prevent it from seeing a trial. Amazing in-depth coverage of this story at MajorWager.com
• GOP Senators come out against States rights on sports betting issue: Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) are taking the lead in the fight against sports betting, challenging Delaware and New Jersey’s attempts to regulate and tax sports betting. Many of their questionable arguments are skillfully rebutted by Delaware politician Peter Schwartzkopf here.
• NFL seeks to stop sports betting in Delaware: The No Fun League joins in on the fun, seeking an injunction to prevent the Delaware sports betting program from going into effect. The other major sports leagues and the NCAA also throw their weight behind the effort.

This is merely the first round in what promises to be a heavy weight fight that goes the distance. In the end, let’s hope the Constitution and the liberty of he American people get the unanimous decision.

It’s not just the temperature on the thermometer that is heating up as we enter into the summer months here in the U.S.; the war over the legality of sports betting has been growing hotter in recent weeks, setting the stage for explosive conflicts between powerful entrenched forces on both sides of the volatile issue.

Some of the incredible stories coming out in recent days:

• Federal prosecutors have seized $30 million of winnings from online poker players. Appealing directly to the banks used by the payment processing companies, the Feds have seized not the funds made by the poker sites, but the legitimate payouts won by U.S. based players. This should be a real wake up call for anyone who cares about their freedom and constitutional rights.
• The Governor of NJ has joined the fight to legalize sports betting in his state. What started as the David and Goliath story of a single state legislator against the U.S. Federal Government is quickly becoming an increasingly fair fight as various heavyweight lobbying groups and political players such as Governor Corzine enter the fray. Is it just a matter of time before other states take up the cause?
• The NCAA threatened to bar tournament games in the state of Montana due to its state-run fantasy sports league. Montana has responded with a rather weak attempt to appease the NCAA bullies.
• The WTO once again rules against the Unites States in a worldwide dispute over the online gambling ban in the United States. Unfortunately these rulings are consistently ignored by our government.
• The NFL is fighting tooth and nail to stop legalized sports betting in Delaware. The truth is that the NFL should be grateful for sports betting according to industry insiders. Meanwhile NFL owners just voted to allow NFL logos to appear on state lottery tickets.
• A guy got his hand chopped off for a gambling debt in NJ. Needless to say this kind of stuff doesn’t happen in the online gambling world where deposits are made up front.
• Finally, the state of Minnesota backs down on its ridiculous demand that the biggest Internet Service Providers block access for Minnesota citizens to certain gambling sites. This is the kind of thing they are doing in China my friends. Credit to iMEGA and the PPA for this small victory.

It’s an interesting time to be following the issue of online sports betting. The landscape could be very different by the start of the football season – though I wouldn’t bet on it.

Happy March Madness everyone, I hope you’re all doing better with your picks than I am! Here is a quick update of the latest news from the sports betting world:

• New Jersey sues Federal Government, claims sports betting ban is unconstitutional – this is huge! If this suit is successful it could legalize sports betting for all U.S. citizens. We’ll continue to monitor this story very closely.
• New Vegas casino offers in game wagering – the new M Resort has immediately become the gold standard for sports betting in Vegas. “All the sports lines will originate here,” M Resorts Chairman Anthony Marnell III said during a recent interview. “It used to be the Stardust set the lines. Now, it’s us.”
• Delaware budget contains legalized sports betting – the budget proposal for Delaware contains provisions for a state sponsored sports betting “lottery”. It looks like the local media is supporting the bill and we may see this landmark legislation pass.
• NCAA kills March Madness wagering in Canadian casinos – another example of U.S. entities using their economic and political power to take away the sports betting freedoms of foreign citizens.
• President Obama smiles on online sports betting – Carter Randel writes, “Barack Obama showed he shares the people’s disregard for online gambling laws by appearing on ESPN to make his own bracket picks.” Randel continues, “The President has acknowledged enjoying playing poker, has shown visionary use of the Internet in his campaign, and now flirts with online sports gambling on natiuonal television.” This could point to a brighter future for online sports betting in the U.S. under the Obama administration. I’m hoping for the best.

March Madness is upon us and the time is right for office pools, buzzer beaters and cinderella stories. I’ve scoured the web for the absolute best final four betting tips and strategies on earth and summarized them below for your wagering pleasure. Good luck and enjoy!

1. If possible, buy multiple pool entries and select a different champion for each entry.

   This seems pretty basic but it may not be obvious to most people just how greatly this strategy can benefit your odds of winning. Most pools use top-heavy scoring which greatly rewards entries that pick the championship team correctly. If you don’t get this one right, you’re almost certain not to win the pool.

2. If two teams are about equally likely to win the national championship and one of them is the local favorite, then go against the local favorite.

   This is mainly for office pool betting and it makes sense intuitively. Everybody likes to root for the hometown team, especially casual gamblers who only bet once a year. The pool entries will reflect this bias. Bet against the grain and you’ll be likely to jump to the top of the leader board if the local team gets knocked out.

3. Don’t fall into the fallacy that last year’s spoilers will be able to pull an upset again this year.

   You watched last year in amazement as an underdog beat the odds to defeat a heavily favored rival early in the tournament. Since it’s a good idea to pick some first round upsets, why not pick this team to do it again this year? Unfortunately the rest of your pool particpants will also remember this thrill-ride of a game and bet according to the same logic, consequently the benefit of getting a win with this pick is greatly reduced. In addition, other teams will be better prepared for the cinderella squad this year, no longer taking them lightly and hence preventing another upset.

4. Pick your tournament winner first and work backwards.

   Most people start filling out their sheets with the first round. This is a bad idea. By starting at the top and working backwards you reduce local biases related to the different regions – for example you may be more knowledgable about teams in your region and be swayed to focus on those matchups too heavily. Again, with the top-heavy scoring system, it’s more important to be accurate on your later picks than the first rounders.

5. Check the road record – pick teams that do well on the road.

   For most teams, every tournament game they play will be a road game. Look for teams that have had a favorable road record during the regular season. In a toss-up game where teams are evenly matched in all other respects, this can be a good criteria to decide which team to pick.

6. Use some non-mainstream ratings sites to help you chose.

   Don’t immediately head over to espn.com or look at the AP Ratings to decide your picks. Instead, check out some reputable ratings sites that are slightly off the beaten path. Some good examples are Massey Ratings and Greenfield’s Ratings.

7. Don’t over analyze your picks.

   This is supposed to be fun. Spend too much time on research and number crunching and you may miss that fact, especially when Debby from accounting walks away with the big prize…

Good luck!

I stumbled across this plain looking site with a funny name and was amazed at the wealth of advice it had on betting the NCAA tournament. On top of that, the owner of the site is advising anyone who benefits from the strategies posted there make a donation to charity rather than pay it to him! From Poologic.com:

“$250,000. That is my minimum estimate for profits made by the users of this site, assuming they played the recommended multiple-entry strategy. Please donate some of your winnings to the Jimmy V Foundation for Cancer Research”

Poologic Web Page

Updated March 03, 2007 @ 12:22 AM: It turns out that the guy behind this site is a professor at Yale and an expert in probability modeling (Update: the site was actually created by Tom Adams, Kaplan joined him later). You’d think such a smart guy could come up with a better domain name (I kid – I finally figured out that he was going for the pronunciation of “pool-logic” rather than “poo-logic”). More details in this Inc. Magazine article:

Edward Kaplan, a Yale School of Management professor, is an expert in operations systems, probability modeling, and mathematics. As an academic, Kaplan models the spread of AIDS and other diseases for public policy analysis, but in his spare time, set out to find a way to win his NCAA office pool. “We used to enter these things for fun, and always for bragging rights, [but] we would always lose,” he says. “We realized we were going about it randomly and not systematically.”

So Kaplan and a colleague hired a research assistant to pull basketball data from sports gurus’ ratings, regular-season records, and the Rankings Percentage Index (RPI) to create a complex web of relationships between teams, evaluate their strengths, and find a way to optimize points for a tourney bracket. Recently, he’s also been using Las Vegas odds to incorporate late-breaking information.

Kaplan calls his system “fairly complicated,” and says that with the opening-round play-in game, there are an estimated 18,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that’s 18 billion billion, as mathematicians say) options that his calculations examine.