When the movie The Cooler<\/em> came out several years ago, I went to see it and could focus on little but the absurdity of the idea that a casino would hire someone with a supposed “unlucky aura” to stand near gamblers to make them lose. I remember walking out after and thinking how horrible it was, while at the same time hearing people gushing the opposite. I guess producers know their audiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Which brings us to Uncut Gems<\/em>. I thought the whole movie was stupid, but my wife, who once did some work in the diamond district in LA, told me the scene is really like that. OK, so let’s look only at the sports betting part of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Adam Sandler plays a diamond dealer who has a compulsive sports betting problem. The first bet we see him make is a 6-leg parlay that includes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n -The Celtics to win the opening tip<\/p>\n\n\n\n -The Celtics to win the first half<\/p>\n\n\n\n -The Celtics to cover the spread as a -1 favorite<\/p>\n\n\n\n -Kevin Garnett (who\u2019s in the film) to go over, separately, his posted points, rebounds, and blocked shots totals<\/p>\n\n\n\n (He also threw in what he called a “lightning bet” on the Celtics, a term I hadn’t heard before, but is the same as a spread or index bet. This is a bet where each point above or below the posted spread or total is worth a unit. For example, if the line is Celtics -7, if you bet $1K on a lightning bet, if the Celts won by 7 you’d push, by 8 you’d win $1K, by 9 you’d win $2K, and so on. If they failed to cover the spread by 1 point you’d lose $1K, by 2, $2K, and so on. The bettor usually specifies a limit on the max loss, which corresponds to the max win, which wasn\u2019t done in the movie.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let’s look at the parlay. I know of no book, legal or illegal, that would accept this parlay. For one thing, I’ve never seen a book that allows parlays on player props, let alone something like the tip-off. And that\u2019s not the only reason you couldn\u2019t get action on this bet. Another problem is that these propositions are correlated to some degree. Books shun correlated parlays, and for good reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To illustrate, when parlaying a game\u2019s first half total to the full game total, if your team covers the first half there\u2019s an enhanced chance it also covers the game total. To take this to an extreme, if the first-half total in a football game is 40 and the first-half score is 41-0, you\u2019d not only cover the first half, but the game as well, while getting paid parlay odds. The same dynamic applies to the first-half\/full-game pointspread bets included in Sandler’s parlay. It would be idiotic for a booking to allow this kind of parlay. If you find someone that will book a parlay like this, bet him relentlessly until he either puts a stop to it or goes out of business. There’s also a degree of correlation in the Celtics covering and its star, Garnett, going over his prop totals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As far as betting on the tip-off, I’ve seen some reviews scoffing at the idea of betting on something as seemingly random as that. The truth is, this is one of the bets where a sharp bettor can find an edge. Certain centers are more likely to win the tip. I remember a sports book that offered this prop and I bet the Clippers to win the tip almost every game, as its center, DeAndre Jordon, controlled the tip a high percentage of the time. I don’t know how many books still offer this bet, but if you have one, do some research and take advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The final bit of dramatic license comes at the end when Sandler sends his girlfriend to Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut to bet. This despite the fact that in 2012, when the movie is set, there was no legal sports betting in the U.S. outside of Nevada, let alone in Connecticut where there still isn\u2019t. Oh, and she just dumped a bag containing about $165K on the counter to make the last parlay and the book accepted it and paid it off when it won with no questions and no Cash Transaction Report (CTR).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite the sports betting faux pas, Uncut Gems<\/em> is getting some great reviews and there\u2019s Oscar talk. While the betting scenes distracted me from the rest of the movie, as one who\u2019s heavily involved in the industry, I’m probably an outlier in that respect. However, as sports betting becomes more and more mainstream, my distractions might become more common among viewers, and maybe producers should consider employing experts to clean up their scripts. One thing I’ve learned over my gambling career is that Hollywood producers couldn’t care less about making the mechanics of gambling scenarios in movies and TV shows accurate. They figure viewers are focused on the story and characters, and accuracy doesn’t matter. In the ’80s, there was a TV series called Crime Story that was filmed in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"CUT! By Blair Rodman","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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