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BY JEFF MILLER
We are here to gamble, to bet $100 on the Buffalo Bills, who are getting five points against the Dolphins.
We are in line with others plotting their own grand plans for the afternoon. Take the elderly woman in front of us. She's buying a pie crust.
This isn't a joke, no, this is your friendly, neighborhood grocery store, especially friendly if Drew Bledsoe keeps things close.
There is nothing easy about picking winners in today's impaired-by-parity NFL. But putting money on your picks? Legally? Or at least something close to it? That never has been easier.
You can board a jet and a half-hour later be in the Bahamas, where you can celebrate Bucs-Panthers staying under by drinking yourself over. If sitting still for 30 minutes is too much work, you can just sit at home in your underwear and place bets on the Internet, clicking until your index finger cramps. Or your wallet does.
''It's too easy for people to gamble now,'' says Larry Keith, vice president of gaming operations for the Crystal Palace Casino in Nassau, Bahamas. ``It used to be something you'd do a couple times a year, maybe go to Nevada or Atlantic City. Then it became something you could step out your back door and do. Now, you don't even have to stand up.''
You can go to the sportsbooks or the sportsbook can come to you. Take your pick, then make your pick.
A TANGLED WEB
The usual gimmick here is to call gambling the NFL's ''dirty little secret.'' But that's as absurd as the Cincinnati Bengals. There is nothing secret when the Dolphins' flagship radio station touts online wagering, nothing little when one cyberspace book -- Intertops -- claims to have accepted 250 bets per second in the half hour between the NFC and AFC championship games, and says there's nothing dirty about any of this.
Is there?
''Sports gambling breeds corruption,'' says Jeff Pash, an executive with the NFL. ``It undermines the values our games represent.''
Counters Internet sportsbook operator Michael Maerz: ``In the U.K., there are betting shops on every other corner. In the U.S., there are gun shops on every other corner. You tell me which one is worse.''
OK, to clarify, let's return to the grocery store, which doesn't actually offer parlays and teasers as readily as parfaits and tweezers. But this can be the first step toward putting more than your heart on the home team.
This is the closest Western Union outlet, and we need to wire $300 cash to a stranger at an unfamiliar address. Within 30 minutes of signing the paperwork, we indeed are taking the Bills plus-5. Leaving the grocery store, we are at home now. Alone. Just the two of us. A man and his mouse.
It's that simple, that fast. The sportsbook even credits the $29 fee Western Union charged for the transfer. Just like that, in roughly the time it takes to hear ''You've got mail,'' there's a $329 account that is a whole lot more reality than virtual.
We presumably have broken no laws, but we certainly have dodged a few obstacles. The money went to a man in Panama City, Panama, for an online book based in San José, Costa Rica. When someone phoned to confirm our interest in the site, the caller ID displayed a number in Davie. A call back was answered by a fax tone.
`OUT OF CONTROL'
Perhaps this is why it's called the World Wide Web. This also might be why one U.S. State Department official labeled Internet gambling ''the wild, wild West,'' and why a Harvard professor predicted its influence will be similar to how crack cocaine impacted the drug world.
''People have no idea how out of control this is,'' says Dave Robertson of the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling. ``Kids are all over this. They are selling drugs and selling their bodies to pay their gambling debts. This country could not exist in anarchy. And that's what we have on the Internet. It's a complete anarchy out there.''
How does this new anarchy sound? Just like an old cash register. Some estimates have online gamblers losing up to $4 billion this year. That's double the amount wagered in Nevada sportsbooks in 2001.
That's also three times the revenue of porn sites; sex, perhaps the world's most marketable product, can't even keep pace. It was Simon Noble, a founding father among dot-com bookies, who told Sports Illustrated four years ago: ``Gambling is the future of the Internet. You can only look at so many dirty pictures.''
Noble used to run the online division of Intertops, an Austrian-based bookmaker that established its website in Antigua in 1996 and claims to have averaged one bet every 10 seconds around the clock since. The company has more than 500,000 registered customers from 183 countries.
''Before this,'' says Maerz, Intertops' chief operating officer, ``I didn't even know there were that many countries.''
As online books go, this one has a good sense of humor that conveniently doubles as a great sense for business. Beyond the typical sports offerings, Intertops also has accepted action on Fox's Celebrity Boxing, the ratings of TV shows and the opening-weekend revenue of movies. Right now, their customers can put money on who will be the next pope.
This bizarre tangent beyond the sidelines began a few years ago when Intertops offered, at 100-to-1 odds, the possibility of an alien life form being discovered. The bet even called for official confirmation from the Pentagon. Of course, no one was desperate enough for action to make that wager, right?
''It was scary the number of bets we took,'' Maerz says. ``It was quite frightening to see the liability involved. There was a time limit, and we took the bet off when they shot some sort of rocket toward Mars, I think it was.''
Intertops' online operation began on the top floor of a three-story building. The company still has that space, plus a new three-story structure it had to build next door. Additional square footage apparently is a necessity when, in your first five years, you booked 20 million wagers.
IS IT LEGAL?
There is no question this industry is growing; the question is whether this industry is legal. In recent months, most U.S. credit card companies and some Internet payment systems have bowed to pressure from lawmakers by blocking charges coded as gambling. (In establishing the online account for this story, two credit cards were rejected.)
There also have been attempts to pass bills making online gambling a federal crime in the United States. So far, each has failed, though one currently awaits Senate approval.
Just last month, an American who ran an Internet sportsbook in Antigua began serving a 21-month jail sentence for violating a 1961 statute. Still, Jay Cohen's World Sports Exchange continues to operate in his absence. Cohen's co-founders, who decided not to return to America to fight charges, are running the site as fugitives.
''We think we are absolutely legal,'' Intertops' Maerz says. ``We're licensed and regulated here. We're not hiding from anything or anyone. If we weren't 100 percent sure we were legal, we wouldn't be doing this.''
Antigua, a West Indies island about 300 miles east of Puerto Rico, has a regulation-heavy reputation. In March 2001, the country passed new guidelines that turned its 10-page application for an online casino into 53 pages. Sportsbooks are subjected to weighty annual licensing fees ($50,000-$75,000) and credit investigations, and they must post bonds, some as high as $500,000. To discourage money laundering, another concern of lawmakers, any payout above $25,000 must be reported.
Because of its increased restrictions, Antigua has lost more than 80 online casinos in the past 18 months, most migrating to places such as Costa Rica, where the laws are relaxed. Antigua now has 39 licensed companies accepting action online; there are an estimated 200 such businesses in downtown San José alone.
''We should be aiming at regulation,'' says Ronald Maginley, Antigua's director of offshore gaming. ``Internet gambling is made out to be some boogie man, but it's not. The answer is regulation. People have to realize that the Internet was built not to be stopped. You cut off one thing, and there are 100,000 more waiting to be next in line.''
`I GAMBLED EVERY DAY,
LOST MILLIONS'
From the shadiness among the island palms we move to the shade of the island palms. The pool here is practically large enough to produce its own surf, and they are playing Bob Marley music. Someone is passing by on a parasail, flying toward a disappearing cruise ship, while someone else putt-putts between the legs of a phony flamingo. Inside, just a few steps away, a man is describing hell.
This is Nassau, the Crystal Palace Casino, where you can mix a little rum and Coke with your Rams and Colts. Luke is here from Miami with friends to celebrate his upcoming wedding. He is a recovering gambling addict in every respect but one. He is carrying a stack of betting slips.
''Do I have a grip on it?'' he says. ``I have to be careful. I probably shouldn't be here right now, I guess.''
A few years ago, betting with a bookie on the NFL playoffs, Luke lost $55,000 each on two early games and $75,000 each on two later games. He already was chasing a $300,000 debt. Soon enough, he divorced and stopped talking to his best friend for years, though he can't remember why.
''That was rock bottom,'' Luke says. ``My first rock bottom.''
There have been others, depths so ugly he won't share them, even though we aren't using his real name. The connection would be so obvious, he says, that too many people, including his fiancée, would figure him out and learn more than they need to know. He is originally from the Northeast and made good money once -- and still does decent today -- as a brokerage investor.
At one point, he would fly to the Bahamas four times a week strictly to bet on games. Other times, he would come here and stay for two weeks, running up seven-digit deficits. Those days, he claims, are over.
''I gambled every day, lost millions, and didn't realize how unusual that was,'' Luke says. ``You surround yourself with people doing the same thing you're doing, so it doesn't seem like anything strange is going on.''
He has tried Gamblers Anonymous and goes to Alcoholics Anonymous even though drinking isn't a problem. He says he certainly will stop betting after his marriage ''except for maybe putting a few bucks on a game here and there.'' Soon, there could be children on the way, and he definitely will stop then because ``having my kids around this would scare the hell out of me.
''The problem is you always think you're going to make the big hit,'' Luke says. ``That's what makes beating this so tough. You always remember the big score.''
He has never wagered on the Internet, he says, because he doesn't trust a sportsbook or a person he can't see. This, despite the fact one of his friends started an offshore site and is adding up to 1,000 accounts a day.
So, even if it is easier than flying over here, even if the bets are more exotic -- an online company in the United Kingdom took action last month on when the snipers would be caught -- and even if the cyber-bookies are more into writing computer code than breaking kneecaps, Luke feels better, more assured, more welcome walking into a sportsbook than logging onto a website or phoning a traditional bookie.
''You can't replace the experience of being in a place like this,'' he says. ``But people should be concerned about that online stuff. You might win, but you'll probably never get your money back. They're counting on you to not ask for it back. And if you do win and want your money, they'll pay because they know it's good word-of-mouth advertising. They also know you'll be back for more.''
He's right, because it isn't just the bettor who remembers the big score. The book does, as well.
Luke had not been to the Crystal Palace in 2 ½ years, a fact confirmed by resort records. But when he called to make reservations for this trip, a hotel official said, ``Hey, [Luke], where you been?''
When asked about the man sitting in the back row of the sportsbooks, the one squirming and squeezing all those white tickets, a casino employee knew him by name, his first and last.
''That's weird,'' Luke says. ``I don't recognize any of the people working here.''
We are here to gamble, to bet $100 on the Buffalo Bills, who are getting five points against the Dolphins.
We are in line with others plotting their own grand plans for the afternoon. Take the elderly woman in front of us. She's buying a pie crust.
This isn't a joke, no, this is your friendly, neighborhood grocery store, especially friendly if Drew Bledsoe keeps things close.
There is nothing easy about picking winners in today's impaired-by-parity NFL. But putting money on your picks? Legally? Or at least something close to it? That never has been easier.
You can board a jet and a half-hour later be in the Bahamas, where you can celebrate Bucs-Panthers staying under by drinking yourself over. If sitting still for 30 minutes is too much work, you can just sit at home in your underwear and place bets on the Internet, clicking until your index finger cramps. Or your wallet does.
''It's too easy for people to gamble now,'' says Larry Keith, vice president of gaming operations for the Crystal Palace Casino in Nassau, Bahamas. ``It used to be something you'd do a couple times a year, maybe go to Nevada or Atlantic City. Then it became something you could step out your back door and do. Now, you don't even have to stand up.''
You can go to the sportsbooks or the sportsbook can come to you. Take your pick, then make your pick.
A TANGLED WEB
The usual gimmick here is to call gambling the NFL's ''dirty little secret.'' But that's as absurd as the Cincinnati Bengals. There is nothing secret when the Dolphins' flagship radio station touts online wagering, nothing little when one cyberspace book -- Intertops -- claims to have accepted 250 bets per second in the half hour between the NFC and AFC championship games, and says there's nothing dirty about any of this.
Is there?
''Sports gambling breeds corruption,'' says Jeff Pash, an executive with the NFL. ``It undermines the values our games represent.''
Counters Internet sportsbook operator Michael Maerz: ``In the U.K., there are betting shops on every other corner. In the U.S., there are gun shops on every other corner. You tell me which one is worse.''
OK, to clarify, let's return to the grocery store, which doesn't actually offer parlays and teasers as readily as parfaits and tweezers. But this can be the first step toward putting more than your heart on the home team.
This is the closest Western Union outlet, and we need to wire $300 cash to a stranger at an unfamiliar address. Within 30 minutes of signing the paperwork, we indeed are taking the Bills plus-5. Leaving the grocery store, we are at home now. Alone. Just the two of us. A man and his mouse.
It's that simple, that fast. The sportsbook even credits the $29 fee Western Union charged for the transfer. Just like that, in roughly the time it takes to hear ''You've got mail,'' there's a $329 account that is a whole lot more reality than virtual.
We presumably have broken no laws, but we certainly have dodged a few obstacles. The money went to a man in Panama City, Panama, for an online book based in San José, Costa Rica. When someone phoned to confirm our interest in the site, the caller ID displayed a number in Davie. A call back was answered by a fax tone.
`OUT OF CONTROL'
Perhaps this is why it's called the World Wide Web. This also might be why one U.S. State Department official labeled Internet gambling ''the wild, wild West,'' and why a Harvard professor predicted its influence will be similar to how crack cocaine impacted the drug world.
''People have no idea how out of control this is,'' says Dave Robertson of the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling. ``Kids are all over this. They are selling drugs and selling their bodies to pay their gambling debts. This country could not exist in anarchy. And that's what we have on the Internet. It's a complete anarchy out there.''
How does this new anarchy sound? Just like an old cash register. Some estimates have online gamblers losing up to $4 billion this year. That's double the amount wagered in Nevada sportsbooks in 2001.
That's also three times the revenue of porn sites; sex, perhaps the world's most marketable product, can't even keep pace. It was Simon Noble, a founding father among dot-com bookies, who told Sports Illustrated four years ago: ``Gambling is the future of the Internet. You can only look at so many dirty pictures.''
Noble used to run the online division of Intertops, an Austrian-based bookmaker that established its website in Antigua in 1996 and claims to have averaged one bet every 10 seconds around the clock since. The company has more than 500,000 registered customers from 183 countries.
''Before this,'' says Maerz, Intertops' chief operating officer, ``I didn't even know there were that many countries.''
As online books go, this one has a good sense of humor that conveniently doubles as a great sense for business. Beyond the typical sports offerings, Intertops also has accepted action on Fox's Celebrity Boxing, the ratings of TV shows and the opening-weekend revenue of movies. Right now, their customers can put money on who will be the next pope.
This bizarre tangent beyond the sidelines began a few years ago when Intertops offered, at 100-to-1 odds, the possibility of an alien life form being discovered. The bet even called for official confirmation from the Pentagon. Of course, no one was desperate enough for action to make that wager, right?
''It was scary the number of bets we took,'' Maerz says. ``It was quite frightening to see the liability involved. There was a time limit, and we took the bet off when they shot some sort of rocket toward Mars, I think it was.''
Intertops' online operation began on the top floor of a three-story building. The company still has that space, plus a new three-story structure it had to build next door. Additional square footage apparently is a necessity when, in your first five years, you booked 20 million wagers.
IS IT LEGAL?
There is no question this industry is growing; the question is whether this industry is legal. In recent months, most U.S. credit card companies and some Internet payment systems have bowed to pressure from lawmakers by blocking charges coded as gambling. (In establishing the online account for this story, two credit cards were rejected.)
There also have been attempts to pass bills making online gambling a federal crime in the United States. So far, each has failed, though one currently awaits Senate approval.
Just last month, an American who ran an Internet sportsbook in Antigua began serving a 21-month jail sentence for violating a 1961 statute. Still, Jay Cohen's World Sports Exchange continues to operate in his absence. Cohen's co-founders, who decided not to return to America to fight charges, are running the site as fugitives.
''We think we are absolutely legal,'' Intertops' Maerz says. ``We're licensed and regulated here. We're not hiding from anything or anyone. If we weren't 100 percent sure we were legal, we wouldn't be doing this.''
Antigua, a West Indies island about 300 miles east of Puerto Rico, has a regulation-heavy reputation. In March 2001, the country passed new guidelines that turned its 10-page application for an online casino into 53 pages. Sportsbooks are subjected to weighty annual licensing fees ($50,000-$75,000) and credit investigations, and they must post bonds, some as high as $500,000. To discourage money laundering, another concern of lawmakers, any payout above $25,000 must be reported.
Because of its increased restrictions, Antigua has lost more than 80 online casinos in the past 18 months, most migrating to places such as Costa Rica, where the laws are relaxed. Antigua now has 39 licensed companies accepting action online; there are an estimated 200 such businesses in downtown San José alone.
''We should be aiming at regulation,'' says Ronald Maginley, Antigua's director of offshore gaming. ``Internet gambling is made out to be some boogie man, but it's not. The answer is regulation. People have to realize that the Internet was built not to be stopped. You cut off one thing, and there are 100,000 more waiting to be next in line.''
`I GAMBLED EVERY DAY,
LOST MILLIONS'
From the shadiness among the island palms we move to the shade of the island palms. The pool here is practically large enough to produce its own surf, and they are playing Bob Marley music. Someone is passing by on a parasail, flying toward a disappearing cruise ship, while someone else putt-putts between the legs of a phony flamingo. Inside, just a few steps away, a man is describing hell.
This is Nassau, the Crystal Palace Casino, where you can mix a little rum and Coke with your Rams and Colts. Luke is here from Miami with friends to celebrate his upcoming wedding. He is a recovering gambling addict in every respect but one. He is carrying a stack of betting slips.
''Do I have a grip on it?'' he says. ``I have to be careful. I probably shouldn't be here right now, I guess.''
A few years ago, betting with a bookie on the NFL playoffs, Luke lost $55,000 each on two early games and $75,000 each on two later games. He already was chasing a $300,000 debt. Soon enough, he divorced and stopped talking to his best friend for years, though he can't remember why.
''That was rock bottom,'' Luke says. ``My first rock bottom.''
There have been others, depths so ugly he won't share them, even though we aren't using his real name. The connection would be so obvious, he says, that too many people, including his fiancée, would figure him out and learn more than they need to know. He is originally from the Northeast and made good money once -- and still does decent today -- as a brokerage investor.
At one point, he would fly to the Bahamas four times a week strictly to bet on games. Other times, he would come here and stay for two weeks, running up seven-digit deficits. Those days, he claims, are over.
''I gambled every day, lost millions, and didn't realize how unusual that was,'' Luke says. ``You surround yourself with people doing the same thing you're doing, so it doesn't seem like anything strange is going on.''
He has tried Gamblers Anonymous and goes to Alcoholics Anonymous even though drinking isn't a problem. He says he certainly will stop betting after his marriage ''except for maybe putting a few bucks on a game here and there.'' Soon, there could be children on the way, and he definitely will stop then because ``having my kids around this would scare the hell out of me.
''The problem is you always think you're going to make the big hit,'' Luke says. ``That's what makes beating this so tough. You always remember the big score.''
He has never wagered on the Internet, he says, because he doesn't trust a sportsbook or a person he can't see. This, despite the fact one of his friends started an offshore site and is adding up to 1,000 accounts a day.
So, even if it is easier than flying over here, even if the bets are more exotic -- an online company in the United Kingdom took action last month on when the snipers would be caught -- and even if the cyber-bookies are more into writing computer code than breaking kneecaps, Luke feels better, more assured, more welcome walking into a sportsbook than logging onto a website or phoning a traditional bookie.
''You can't replace the experience of being in a place like this,'' he says. ``But people should be concerned about that online stuff. You might win, but you'll probably never get your money back. They're counting on you to not ask for it back. And if you do win and want your money, they'll pay because they know it's good word-of-mouth advertising. They also know you'll be back for more.''
He's right, because it isn't just the bettor who remembers the big score. The book does, as well.
Luke had not been to the Crystal Palace in 2 ½ years, a fact confirmed by resort records. But when he called to make reservations for this trip, a hotel official said, ``Hey, [Luke], where you been?''
When asked about the man sitting in the back row of the sportsbooks, the one squirming and squeezing all those white tickets, a casino employee knew him by name, his first and last.
''That's weird,'' Luke says. ``I don't recognize any of the people working here.''