Free Republic

British bookies see a banner month ahead for Donald Trump. The Republican presidential candidate is the "red-hot favorite" to win the Iowa Caucuses (Feb. 1) and the New Hampshire primary (Feb. 9), says Graham Sharpe, spokesman for William Hill PLC, a leading British bookmaker. William Hill has Trump as the 1-2 favorite in Iowa and the 1-4 favorite in New Hampshire. "The Trump bandwagon shows little sign of a slowdown," says Sharpe.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/2016/01/28/donald-trump-president-election-odds/79481272/

The Carolina Panthers opened as a four-point favorite with most bookies for Super Bowl 50 on the strength of their 49-15 beatdown of the Arizona Cardinals and 15-1 regular-season record.

One of the three winners of the record-breaking Powerball lottery jackpot in the United States became wealthy overnight thanks to the generosity of her boss, one of the American Jewish community’s leading philanthropists. Shlomo Rechnitz, a health care magnate who owns 80 assisted living facilities throughout California, purchased nearly 18,000 lottery tickets for all of his employees, one of which happened to contain the winning numbers. The unprecedented $1.6 billion Powerball jackpot will be divided among three winning tickets purchased in Tennessee, California and Florida. Each ticket is worth $528.8 million, lottery officials said in California, one of 44 states...

New Jersey lawmakers have proposed expanding the state’s oversight of Atlantic City’s troubled finances, sparking outrage from local leaders who say they are already under heavy state control. Atlantic City’s budget and administration have been subject to approval by a state monitor since 2010, and an emergency manager has overseen the city’s day-to-day finances for the past year.

Representatives from DraftKings and the Fantasy Sports Trade Association attended a public hearing in Boston on Tuesday to debate proposed regulations aimed at ending “unfair and deceptive acts and practices that may arise in the gaming process.” While the daily fantasy sports (DFS) companies have previously expressed a willingness to work with legislators and law enforcement officials to create industry-wide regulation, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey's regulations might prove seriously damaging to their bottom line, especially if they end up being replicated in other states.

It was a metaphor for all to see on this fall's World Series pre- and postgame shows. An outcast for more than a quarter-century, Pete Rose appeared as a Fox Sports TV analyst -- on a set outside the stadium. Now Rose, 74, will remain officially on the outs for the foreseeable future, following Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred's denial on Monday of Rose's bid for reinstatement, 26 years after his lifetime ban based on evidence that he had gambled on the sport -- and on his own team -- as manager of the Cincinnati Reds. Manfred's ruling is...

New York Supreme Court Justice Manuel Mendez blocked popular daily fantasy sports companies FanDuel and DraftKings from offering contests in New York on Friday. According to the court ruling, both companies were found in violation of New York State’s laws against gambling, granting attorney general Eric T. Schneiderman’s preliminary injunction to shut down operation of the daily fantasy sports sites.

The Michigan Lottery set a record in 2014 with $2.6 billion in ticket sales, up 25 percent since 2005. People are spending more than ever on Michigan’s state-run gambling, and the biggest growth is in the instant ticket games, where participants rub off portions of the ticket to see if they've won. The games advertise prizes that go as high as $2 million. Instant ticket sales have increased from $662.5 million in 2005 to $913.1 million in 2014, a 38-percent increase. Almost all of the lottery proceeds go to fund public schools. The School Aid Fund received $743 million in...

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) did New York a huge favor earlier this month when he declared fantasy sports leagues a form of illegal gambling and ordered two of their principal organizers, DraftKings and FanDuel, to stop taking bets from state residents. Fantasy leagues are not games of skill, Schneiderman decreed, but rather games of chance, and therefore illegal under state law. And gambling is illegal for good reason: It can lead to addiction and all other sorts of social ills. What a relief. From now on, New Yorkers will not be tempted by the deceitful lure of...

In what may be the most troubling legal development yet for the Daily Fantasy Sports industry, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that the office of Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, has launched a probe into whether certain aspects of DFS violate federal law. Bharara is a truly feared figure in the gaming industry. On Friday, Apr. 15, 2011, in what became known as “Black Friday” to gamblers, Bharara unsealed indictments against three major operators of online poker websites for assorted criminal violations. The indictments included charges for conspiracy to violate the...

N.Korean Diplomats Caught Smuggling Cuban Cigars Two North Korean diplomats have been caught smuggling a large stash of top-end Cuban cigars into Brazil. The two were arrested at Campinas International Airport in São Paulo, according to the Brazilian daily O Estado. Both are trade attaches at the North Korean Consulate there. They had come from Cuba via Panama carrying 3,800 cigars worth W90-150 million in six travel bags (US$1=W1,133). Cigar smuggling is apparently a common sideline for North Korean diplomats in Brazil, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela who are under growing pressure from Pyongyang to earn valuta. Top-end Cohiba Cigars sell...

Nevada regulators have ordered daily fantasy sports sites like DraftKings and FanDuel to shut down, saying they can't operate in the state without a gambling license. The decision comes amid growing backlash by investigators and regulators over the sites, which have grown in popularity in the past year. The sites insist they are skill-based games and not chance-based wagers, and are therefore not subject to gambling regulations.

A House Republican chairman said on Thursday that he is likely to call a hearing on the new fantasy sports sites that critics say are skirting gambling laws. "My sense is that we will do a hearing," said Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. "There’s a lot of things on our front burner right now, but I think this is an issue that we ought to take a look at.”

Danny Chasteen and his girlfriend, Susan Rick, thought they had gotten their big break last month when Chasteen won $250,000 from the Illinois Lottery. Instead, they got an IOU. The Chicago Tribune reported that disbursements of Illinois Lottery winnings of more than $25,000 have been halted because the state doesn't have a budget. "For the first time, we were finally gonna get a break," Rick said. "And now the Illinois Lottery has kind of messed everything up." Under state law, checks for such winnings must be cut by the state comptroller's office and, since lawmakers have yet to approve a...

Two Republican senators running for president reintroduced a bill Wednesday that would effectively ban Internet poker and other forms of online gambling—legislation that has long been championed by casino magnate and GOP mega-donor Sheldon Adelson. Both Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio joined a handful of Republicans and one Democrat in reviving the Restoration of America's Wire Act, a measure that proponents say would "restore" the proper interpretation of a decades-old federal ban on some gambling operations by expanding it to include Internet gambling.

For 26 years, Pete Rose has kept to one story: He never bet on baseball while he was a player. Yes, he admitted in 2004, after almost 15 years of denials, he had placed bets on baseball, but he insisted it was only as a manager. But new documents obtained by Outside the Lines indicate Rose bet extensively on baseball -- and on the Cincinnati Reds -- as he racked up the last hits of a record-smashing career in 1986. The documents go beyond the evidence presented in the 1989 Dowd report that led to Rose's banishment and provide the...

A couple of friends have encouraged me to try trading binary options. They use trend-spotting software, and they have shown me how it works. They say they consistently make money--sometimes very good money. The times they have invited me to observe their trading sessions--neither trades all day--they have made significant amounts of cash. Their only warnings are to be careful of the broker I use, and not to go crazy. One showed me an article about a particular user of binary options trading software in which the writer said that almost all software programs can work, but, of course, to...

Maryland Jockey Club general manager Sal Sinatra said the owners of Pimlico Race Course and Laurel Park are considering moving the second jewel of the Triple Crown to Sunday to increase interest and attendance. The potential shift of the race to Laurel Park won't come as quickly, but is under serious consideration. Laurel Park is on a site that is roughly twice the size of Pimlico, and the facility is in far better condition than the track known as Old Hilltop. The Stronach Group, which owns both tracks, understands that money gained from state gambling might have to go to...

If the ghosts of Frank Sinatra and Liberace were still hanging around the Riviera Hotel and Casino on Monday morning, they wouldn't have found a seat at the bar. Crowds squeezed onto barstools and milled about the casino floor saying goodbye to "The Riv," a classic that spent 60 years on the Las Vegas Strip and closed at noon.