A two-point basket for a team down five sends gamblers into raptures. The joy of point spreads
So, how is March Madness going for you? Yeah, us too. Our bracket looks like it was hit with a snow plough as fancied sides like Baylor, Iowa and SMU all went down to underdogs on the opening day of games.
But March Madness is much more than a sporting event. It is also a festival of gambling, both legal and illegal. Think of it as America's Cheltenham, as office pools and online bracket competitions see millions care about teams they have never heard of from one year to the other.
But the real big bets go on, of course, in Las Vegas and some great footage shows a bunch of punters in the huge viewing 'theatre' of the Westgate Casino sports book go nuts over a very mundane play.
Ohio State, a 10 seed, upset seven seed VCU 75-72 but it was how that end result came about that thrilled the punters. Down 5 with seconds to go, VCU scored an ultimately useless lay-up two-pointer in the final play.
However, that reduced the winning marging to three, meaning that those who had bet on the margin of victory being under 3.5, the spread before tip-off, collected.
Never has a worthless end of game two pointer been cheered so loudly.
Hat-tip to Complez Sports
