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¶ Manhattan newsmen, a little late on the scene, nosed out the fact that twelve arrests of men taking bets on basketball, hockey and prize fights had been made in Manhattan's Madison Square Garden since Jan. 1.
Points & Profits. Since the Government closed the race tracks, the bookies (who formerly handled basketball bets only as a small sideline for the convenience of their horseplaying patrons) have gone after new business in a big way. Giving themselves much the best of it, as always, they devised a complicated give-&-take point system of basketball betting: if the odds on a game were 6-to-8, the better gave the bookie eight points if he wanted the favorite, got only six points if he wanted the underdog—but when the final score was "in the middle" (seven points difference), as five of this winter's 26 games in Manhattan's Madison Square Garden had ended, the bookies made a clean sweep of all bets. Any man with a mind to do some fixing could see the potential profits in such a setup.
Sucker's game or not, thousands of betters are playing it for all they are worth. For such places as Sammy Wolf's cigar store and betting commission house on North Clark Street near the river, Chicago's busiest betting spot, it is a post-racing bonanza. The average Saturday night handle at Sammy's runs about $100,000. On one side of the shop is a Western Union ticker machine, its burden of basketball, hockey and fight results magnified on a moving screen. On the opposite side, half-time and final basketball results are chalked up on a large blackboard as they roll in. Behind the counter, house men with Edward G. Robinson accents answer a battery of telephones.
Although they have caught on fast, the converted horse players are not without their complaints. Croaked one of Sammy Wolf's converts last week: "This basketball, it gives them all heart trouble. Ya see, a horse race, it starts, then bing, it's over in a few seconds. But the basketball starts, and boom, one team makes a basket. Boom, the second team makes a basket. Boom, the first team makes a basket. And this goes on for an hour. I tell ya, they're all getting heart trouble."