Reply #19: Here's the link to Lampley's article

[Awsi Dooger]

In the first sentence he claims he checked sportsbook odds in Las Vegas and on offshore sites: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/2005/05/biggest-story-of-our-live.html

"At 5:00 p.m. Eastern time on Election Day, I checked the sportsbook odds in Las Vegas and via the offshore bookmakers to see the odds as of that moment on the Presidential election. John Kerry was a two-to-one favorite. You can look it up."

Frankly, I'm astonished no one knew enough about gambling to challenge him and pointed out there are no election odds in Nevada sportsbooks. Or that offshore sites hardly stay open during an event. I damn sure would have, but when I finally heard about Lampley's claim months later I looked at the date of that article and I was on vacation in Alaska.

There were many high profile responses to Lampley's article on Mystery Pollster and elsewhere but everyone took on the other aspects of Lampley's article, such as bettors being "extremely scientific in their assessments." What a crock. I've worked in every aspect of the sports betting field since the '80s, both sides of the aisle, and it's an ongoing struggle to eek out a minor advantage. Oddsmakers put up a line and hope it doesn't zoom one way or the other. Bettors hope they don't get screwed at the end of every tossup result.

I would have liked to have seen Lampley's response if someone challenged him on the most basic aspect; what odds he looked at, since the two specifics he mentioned are blatantly impossible. My guess is someone told him after the fact that Kerry reached 2/1 favoritism, and Lampley embellished the tale to claim self involvement. After all, he's a sports guy who has covered dozens of big fights in Las Vegas. Understand I'm a Lampley fan. He went to the same high school I did in Miami and I love his politics. Be he got this one flat wrong.

This was the greatest Lampley sentence of all: "Oddsmakers consulted exit polling and knew what it meant and acknowledged in their oddsmaking at that moment that John Kerry was winning the election."

Incredible he can pass out garbage like that and people will think it's legit. Go to Tradesports tonight and you'll see how it works. There are running comments on the front page. On election afternoon those comments were brief exclamations about the early exit polls. On the Politics screen the shares were showing up in waves with people scrambling to buy Kerry shares. Oddsmakers had nothing to do with it. It was a bunch of clowns sitting in their living rooms, absorbing information and trying to profit from it through quick thinking and fast typing.

Remarkable that the most intelligent comment I've seen regarding political odds this cycle came yesterday from the president of Club for Growth, of all people. He was on CSPAN in the morning and correctly quoted the current Tradesports odds on whether Republicans would retain the House and Senate.