TIPS ON DIFFERENT STRATEGIES TO AVOID ‘BUST’ WHILE PLAYING POKER

by Shane Smith
READ MORE FROM SHANE AT THE EXCELLENT GAMING WEBSITE WWW.GAMINGTODAY.COM

Many low-limit players chase the money pot at the end of the rainbow by pursuing jackpots and kill pots, not realizing they risk bankrupting their bankrolls in their quest for premium payouts.

You can evade the enticing traps of jackpots and kill pots by following these tips:

In jackpot games, be sure you know the rules and how much additional rake is taken from each pot to fund the jackpot. Because winning usually requires either aces-full or four-of-a-kind (or better) to be beaten by a better hand, people tend to overplay small pairs and suited connectors in jackpot games. If you enter more pots with these hands than you should, your stack takes a double hit.

Don’t allow a mediocre jackpot to lure you into playing too loose. I’ve seen players call double-raised pots with low pairs up front, in the hope of cracking the jackpot with quads, beaten by quads. I strongly advise you not to do that unless the jackpot is huge. In that case, former WSOP champion Tom McEvoy suggests you might see more flops than ordinarily the case because of the overlay the jackpot offers.

Consider playing tighter in games with a “kill.” Each card room has its own rules for declaring a kill pot. A disc with the word “kill” on it is placed in front of the player who either (a) won two pots in a row, or (b) won a big pot ($80, for example).

If you are the designated killer, you must place a forced bet in front of the kill button equal to the big blind at the new, higher limits. In a “full-kill” $4/$8 game, the limits rise to $8/$16 for the next hand. In a “half-kill” game, the limits rise to $6/$12.

The kill is in effect for that hand only – unless the same player wins again. In that case, the limits remain at the higher level until the “killer” loses a pot.

Is it our greed or just the nature of the game that it seems more players enter the pot when a kill-pot is being played? Perhaps it’s the contagious excitement that comes from playing a hand at limits that are higher than we usually would play?

I don’t have the answer to those rhetorical questions, but I do have the remedy for avoiding the agony of defeat while enjoying the thrill of playing at a higher limit: Only play your best hands.

Don’t get sucked into the action and you won’t get sucked out on when you miss your draws.
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ALL GOOD POKER DECISIONS ARE BASED ON INFORMATION

by T. Dana Smith READ MORE AT WWW.GAMINGTODAY.COM

All good decisions are based on information. The more accurate they are, the better your conclusions.

But several snags can tie your decisions in knots. In Confident Decision Making, Roger Dawson calls them “information drifts.” Using a typical poker game as a reference, see how many of these info-drifts have led you down the wrong path:

1. Availability. The more you’re aware of something, and the more readily available the information is to you, the more undeserved interest you give it.

2. Experience. You see things primarily in terms of your personal, professional or poker experience.

3. Conflict. We all have a natural tendency to reject information that conflicts with our basic beliefs.

4. Recall. It’s easier to remember information about things that are familiar.

5. Selectivity. Since we can’t remember everything about everything, we screen out information that doesn’t interest us.

6. Anchoring. If you lack expertise in a specific area, you latch your ideas onto thefirst information you hear, whether it is right or wrong.

7. Recency. We place greater emphasis on what has just happened than on historical occurrences.

8. Favorability. You usually look harder for information that supports your beliefs than for data that goes against your preconceived notions.

Now let’s look at how information drifts may deter you from making the best choices in a poker game. In a hold’em game, suppose you’re sitting in a front position with a pair of queens. The flop comes with three unsuited low cards and you bet. Two players call your bet, and the button raises. Do you fold, call or reraise?

If you usually make fast decisions, you could jump on the opportunity to force out the middle-position players with a reraise. But if a conflict drift distracts you, you might blank out the possibility that button holds low trips.

If you’re in recency drift, your emotions may tell you to punish the button because it bluffed you out of a previous pot. A new player might remember he’s read somewhere that high pairs win pots – anchor drift. Or maybe you think Button just holds A-K since players often raise with it – favorability drift.

Recognizing your info-drifts and making adjustments are keys to the doors of success. Use them to unlock the gambler’s edge.

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Poker Pros Network Launches

By Dan Katz – Article courtesy of www.pokernewsdaily.com

Industry conditions be damned. A new U.S.-friendly online poker network, the Poker Pros Network,  launched last week, hoping that its player-friendly atmosphere will attract casual and serious players alike.
The Poker Pros Network, owned by Costa Rica-based CMK Interactive, is currently comprised of seven online poker rooms and is new enough that cash game tracking site PokerScout.com does not yet have data on the activity at its tables. One interesting trait of the network is unlike most other networks whose member rooms are all basically the same save for color schemes, the Poker Pros Network seems to allow its rooms to have some autonomy. They all use the same software and participate in most of the same promotions, but each has its own personality.

For example, ManiacalPoker.com prides itself on adding a bit of crazy, a bit of whimsy, to its poker games. It hosts “all-in only” tournaments with million chip starting stacks, one minute blind levels, and chances to win fun prizes like a year’s worth of pizza deliveries. The site is also home to “Maniacs” who occasionally grace the tables with their presence, play erratically, and give away money and prizes.
CheapSeatsPoker.com, on the other hand, wants to foster a calmer atmosphere, specializing in micro-stakes games. Its cash game tables range in stakes from $0.01/$0.02 to just $0.25/$0.50 and tournaments have buy-ins of only $0.05 up to $4. There are also freerolls with tiny prize pools of $1 and $5.

NoTiltPoker.eu seems to have a lean towards the older player, promoting qualifiers for the $1,000 Seniors World Championship event at the 2012 World Series of Poker (WSOP) on its front page, something the other rooms are not advertising. The network as a whole appears to have qualifiers for the $10,000 WSOP Main Event.

The other sites on the network are PPNPoker.eu, LoungeLizardPoker.com, PPNLiveDealers.com, and PokerRoomUSA.com. PPNLiveDealers will launch this summer and will be unique in that, as the name implies, it will feature live and celebrity dealers. PokerRoomUSA is a subscription and free points-based poker room and does not share the same tables as the other six rooms on the network.

In a press release, Poker Pros Network CEO Chuck Kidd boasted one aspect of the network of which he is extremely proud, saying, “The most unique and exciting feature, of which only Poker Pros Network employs, is its one convenient cashier with several depositing options, including credit cards.”

The network offers round-the-clock live support and has game managers that monitor the tables. “Today’s online poker players have higher expectations,” said Kidd. “In anticipation, our developers went well beyond simply improving standards.”

The Poker Pros Network was in beta-testing mode starting in August but then went down for several months in order to iron out all the kinks. While the traffic still leaves something to be desired, player reviews have generally been positive, touting the network’s reliable cashouts, something that is strongly desired in this day and age of uncertainty surrounding player funds.

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“The Superuser” Delivers Summer Poker Reading Enjoyment

By Earl Burton – Read all about poker at the great poker website www.pokernewsdaily.com

With the glint of summer lurking just on the horizon, many poker fans might be looking for some literature that will entertain them while, at the same time, allow them to look inside the world of poker. For those that choose the fiction route, an effort from late last year might provide a reader with just what they are looking for.

“The Superuser,” written by Collin Moshman and Katie Dozier in 2011 and now available on Amazon.com to Kindle owners (for the ridiculously low price of $.99), is just the type of poker novel that aficionados of the game would enjoy (albeit the “poker novel” field isn’t a large one) and those not associated will still enjoy. Both Moshman and Dozier are well respected in the poker community, contributing several strategy guides on the game of poker. With “The Superuser,” Moshman and Dozier have stepped into the world of fiction and done so with a great deal of success.

The book is a murder mystery based ever so loosely on the “Superuser” scandal that has engulfed Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet over the past few years. As many well remember, that particular “Superuser” scandal erupted when it became known that a person inside AP and UB had a secret program that allowed them to see their opponents’ hole cards. With the book, however, Moshman and Dozier have taken a step beyond just a simple plot of a “superuser” on an online poker site and turned it into a full blown murder mystery.

The hero of the book is disgraced former cop/poker champion Grisham Stark, who has been effectively banned from the poker community after accepting tournament chips in an event he was playing. After a former associate, a mohawked pro known as “Predator” Jones (the reader will discover his backstory sounds too much like many in the poker world), believes that he was cheated in an online game, he hires Stark to find out if there actually anything nefarious going on. Stark is informed by Jones that there have been rumors of a “superuser” in the nosebleed stakes games and that there recently was a murder of the CEO of Jones’ sponsor site, Poker Ocean, which could be covering up the issue.

Through his investigation of the scandal, Stark uncovers several potential suspects for the murder and who could be the superuser. There’s the latest sponsored champion of the site, an attractive blonde who catches Stark’s eye, several of the businessmen associated with the company and potentially even the person (or persons) who hired him. Woven into Stark’s investigation of the murder of the Poker Ocean CEO is the convoluted machinations in the political spectrum of Las Vegas and Washington, DC, with a healthy dollop of the Las Vegas Police Department (whom Stark worked for and still has connections with) thrown in for good measure.

From the start of the book, “The Superuser” is a cracking read. By the time that a reader reaches the end of a particular chapter, there is suspense and drama provided that forces the reader to continue on with the book, something that is necessary for any good novel. The plotline that Moshman and Dozier have created provides plenty of entertaining twists, without revealing who the true “Superuser” is until the end, and their plotline is logical in how it works out (sometimes, especially with mysteries, there are situations that just don’t make sense). In addition to the excellent overarching plot that Moshman and Dozier have created, there are several additional subplots that add depth to the characters involved and present a reason to the reader for each character’s personality.

There are some downsides to the book, however. At over 120 chapters (some only a paragraph long), there seems to be no downtime for the reader to be able to grasp the information that is coming at them and allow the reader to potentially figure the case out (something that mystery readers like). With such short chapters, there sometimes isn’t the depth of writing that a reader would like in either fleshing out the characters or their particular situations. Finally, the characters occasionally seem to fall into those stereotypical roles (disgraced cop/poker player, beautiful female poker player, rigid businessmen, and crooked politicians) that can creep into a story, especially one about poker.

Even with some of the issues just stated, “The Superuser” is still well worth anyone in the poker community or otherwise to pick up for an enjoyable read during their summer downtime. For those that enjoy mystery novels, the story is well done and is an intriguing entry into the genre. For those that are a part of the poker world, the loose extrapolation of the AP/UB “Superuser” scandal – and the general look at the poker world – will be something that can be easily understood and, perhaps, live vicariously through a fictional event.

What will be interesting to see is if the characters from “The Superuser” (in particular Stark and his paramour) can continue to carry a potential mystery series. There have been some statements from Moshman and Dozier that this is just the first of a series of potential books, which should demonstrate whether there is an audience for the poker murder mystery format. For those that do purchase and read “The Superuser,” there will not be any disappointments this time around as it is an excellent novel.

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Frank Deford > VIEWPOINT

by Frank Deford
Courtesy of Sports Illustrated   www.si.com

How much longer will we put young men in jeopardy to play football?

Linebacker Junior Seau’s death reopens discussion about the dangers of concussions and their long-term effects.

Tom DiPace/APEven as the great, sad Junior Seau killed himself, more and more other old football players are joining in class action to sue the National Football League. They’re claiming, generally, that while the NFL understood — for years — how vulnerable its players were to head injuries, the league did not sufficiently warn players about the danger of concussions.

Nor did the teams first do no harm — instead, allowing players to go back into games when they should have been kept out of the action.

The league, of course, is backpedaling furiously to try to show that it now stands foursquare behind safety even, undeniably, as the players get faster and bigger and therefore more liable to concussions all the time. Like it or not, that is the nature of the game we Americans so love.

Just the other day I was talking to an old player — one of those thousand or so who are suing the league — and he told me two things: No. 1, he always would’ve rather hit another player than score a touchdown. Aha! But this too: that even though he personally is all busted up with a body he estimates is 20 years older than his actual age, if he had it all to do over again, he would do it all over again. That’s football.

But here is that larger truth so many people are avoiding: It’s not just NFL football that is dangerous. If professional players through the years have suffered injuries — especially to their brains — players have also suffered football concussions in college, in high school and all the way down to youth football. In fact, of the nearly five million adolescents playing football below the college level, it’s estimated that half have sustained concussions, a third of them on multiple occasions — and the human brain is not fully developed until the mid-20s.

Oh, this too from that player who would do it all over again: He will not let his sons play the game he loves. How many other fathers and mothers are coming to the same conclusion?

So never mind the NFL. When do lawsuits begin to pop up on those younger levels?

The very brutal nature of football is what makes it so uniquely popular to Americans, but how can you distill the violence from the game and sustain its enchantment? And if it remains so dangerous a sport — never mind liability — when will we reach a point, ethically and compassionately, when some major school, some conference, some high school association is the first to say: We’re sorry, but as much as we love to watch football, we can’t any longer countenance putting our boys in jeopardy, playing this brain game for our vicarious amusement?

The more we learn about head injuries, the more it seems that football is becoming like bullfighting. Only the bulls are young men.

Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/frank_deford/05/09/concussions-in-football/index.html#ixzz1uX6bvkj8

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After Further Review

Why concussion lawsuits won’t bring an end to football.

By Will Oremus
Article courtesy of www.slate.com

As a young athlete, Dustin Fink suffered 11 concussions while skiing and playing football and baseball. Three years ago, he began to suspect that the knocks had seriously damaged his brain. He kept getting headaches, had trouble sleeping, and started feeling depressed and emotionally unbalanced. For one awful moment, he says, he was on the verge of suicide.

Fink, the proprietor of the Concussion Blog, couldn’t help thinking that his symptoms were consistent with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, the degenerative brain disease that has recently been linked with the suicides of several former NFL players. Fink felt this way because he’s an athletic trainer. For years, he instructed high-school football players who’d suffered concussions to sit out for 15 minutes or so, then sent them right back onto the field—a protocol that was considered sound practice until about seven years ago. Now he can’t help but wonder whether he endangered the lives of the students he was supposed to protect.

No one knows whether the suicide last month of former San Diego Chargers star Junior Seau had anything to do with the concussions he suffered throughout his career. Seau’s high-profile death, however, has lent new urgency to the question of just how dangerous football is for those who play it. It has also made a relatively new and hypothetical question a little less hypothetical: Could football’s days be numbered?

Writing for Grantland, economists Tyler Cowen and Kevin Grier recently imagined a “doomsday scenario” in which the emerging research on football-related brain injuries leads to the demise of the sport as we know it. The chain reaction would start, they reasoned, with liability suits brought by former players against colleges and high schools, which may consider dropping the sport rather than risk more multimillion-dollar judgments. Those institutions that were reluctant to give up football would be forced to drop the sport by insurance companies, which would hike premiums or even refuse to insure schools against suits arising from on-field injuries.

But that pathway to football’s demise seems both unlikely and undesirable. To understand why, you first need to grasp how insurance works in the football world.

High schools, colleges, and other amateur organizations that sponsor football teams typically carry at least two types of relevant insurance policies. The kind of policy they take out specifically for sports is supplemental medical insurance. If brain injuries were like torn ACLs—immediate, painful, and expensive to treat in the short term—then insurance companies might consider hiking those premiums for schools that play football. But they aren’t. The brain lacks pain receptors, so even a brutal concussion usually registers only as a sort of foggy dullness in the mind. And the damage adds up over time, so that some of the worst symptoms—memory and hearing loss, depression, speech impediments, dementia—only reveal themselves years after a player’s career is over. By then, medical insurance is beside the point.

There’s also liability insurance, which covers all sorts of serious injuries that happen on campus or in the course of school-sponsored events. This isn’t usually sports-specific—it also covers the kid who falls off the monkey bars or the parent who slips on an icy sidewalk. And the number of immediate debilitating brain injuries attributable to football remains small compared with the catastrophic injuries that result from, say, school bus crashes. According to an annual study by researchers at the University of North Carolina, a total of 13 catastrophic brain injuries were reported in 2011 out of 4.2 million people who competed in football nationwide. But, again, that doesn’t count all the former players whose symptoms of brain damage crop up later in life.

That’s where the lawsuits come in. There are two major categories of football-related lawsuits winding their way through the courts: those faced by the NFL and those faced by public high schools. The NFL, for its part, is fielding concussion-related lawsuits from a total of 1,500 former players. The latest suit, brought by more than 100 players, cites the mounting evidence linking football concussions to CTE. The links between head trauma, CTE, and symptoms like depression aren’t yet rock solid, as my colleague Daniel Engber explains, but a series of studies has found that football players are far more likely than the general population to suffer memory-related diseases. A Boston University research lab has also detected signs of CTE in the brains of 14 of the 15 former NFL players they’ve examined.

Proving that football hits can lead to brain damage isn’t necessarily enough to win a lawsuit. Everyone knows football is a risky sport, and a player will likely suffer concussions over the course of a long career. In order to win a judgment, you have to prove negligence of some sort. As a consequence, the suits against the NFL allege that the league deliberately downplayed the medical risks associated with concussions.

As with the NFL, there’s an assumption that amateur players understand that football carries serious injury risks. Players often sign waivers indemnifying the school or club in case of serious injuries arising from normal football activities. A major difference between the lawsuits against schools and those against the NFL is that no one is claiming schools hid evidence of the long-term effects of concussions. Instead, lawsuits at the lower levels have focused on proving negligence on the part of coaches or administrators for not implementing safety measures that should have been obvious—hiring athletic trainers, for instance, or holding players out of action after they were concussed.

In many cases, even showing that coaches were negligent may not be enough. In Illinois, for example, state law makes public entities such as school boards, along with their employees, immune from liability for “ordinary negligence.” To win a judgment, the plaintiffs have to prove “willful and wanton” conduct.

That high bar helps explain why few schools have had to pay out big settlements. There have been exceptions. Coaches and administrators at a Kansas City school settled for $3 million in a case where the coach continued to allow a 14-year-old freshman to play and practice after a concussion, allegedly leading him to develop post-concussion syndrome. (The coaches and administrators were sued as individuals rather than in their official capacity, to get around the laws granting immunity to public entities.) And a San Diego school district paid $4.4 million just last month to a former player who suffered a head injury that left him unable to walk or speak. (California law doesn’t indemnify public entities for ordinary negligence.)

Still, most lawyers say football-related brain-injury cases remain tough to win. Randall Scarlett, a San Francisco-based lawyer specializing in brain-injury suits, says more and more parents of football players are approaching him. Scarlett, though, has yet to accept a case, because he believes the “assumption of risk” defense—the argument that players knew what they were getting into when they signed up for the sport—makes legal victory unlikely. Until states and scholastic athletics associations adopt tough, specific policies designed to limit concussions, it’s awfully hard to show that individual schools or coaches have violated them.

Fink, the athletic trainer, has become one of the leading advocates for tougher rules. He’s frustrated that athletic associations have so far made only minor changes, like altering the rules governing how teams can block during onside kicks. If amateur football is a sinking ship, these sorts of changes barely count as rearranging the deck chairs.

But Fink is understandably ambivalent about multimillion-dollar lawsuits serving as the main impetus for change. He says he’d never consider suing over his own injuries, as traumatic as they are, because authorities didn’t know any better at the time he sustained them. He says he’d hope for the same understanding from the players that he treated, should they end up with symptoms like his.

It seems obvious that suing coaches and trainers like Dustin Fink, while holding institutions unaccountable, can’t be the answer to reforming football. Going after individual high schools and colleges isn’t much better. If the evidence that even small hits can cause permanent damage keeps mounting, people will start to ask whether fielding an amateur football team constitutes gross negligence in itself.

The answer to that question should come not from the courts but from high-school athletic conferences, scholastic sports associations, and the NCAA. As the research rolls in, they need to take a hard look at the aspects of the game that inflict the most damage and implement rule changes accordingly. If football ends someday, it should only be because the powers that oversee the sport have tried everything to make it safe and determined that it can’t be done—not because lawsuits have spooked schools into giving up.

…San Francisco Giants reliever Guillermo Mota was suspended for 100 games on Monday, becoming just the third major league player penalized twice for positive drug tests.  The commissioner’s office said the 38-year-old right-hander tested positive for Clenbuterol. In November 2006, while with the New York Mets, Mota was suspended for the first 50 games of the next season.  Mota’s agent Adam Katz said in a statement that the Clenbuterol was in children’s cough syrup.  ”Players are responsible for what they put in their bodies. Guillermo understands that,” Katz said. ”A 100-game suspension for taking a children’s cough medicine that contains trace amounts of a prohibited substance, which is what happened here, is severe and unfair and does not reflect the intention of the Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program. We will appeal it.”

…Add 100 Game Suspension – Outfielder Manny Ramirez and catcher Eliezer Alfonzo are the only previous players to twice test positive. No player has tested positive a third time, which would result in a lifetime ban.

…Southern Mississippi running back Jamal Woodyard has been arrested and charged with felony second-degree robbery.  The Baldwin Country Corrections Center website says Woodyard entered the jail on Saturday and has been released on $15,000 bail. The 21-year-old from Fairhope, Ala., led the Golden Eagles with 732 rushing yards last season while averaging 6.7 yards per carry. He scored three touchdowns.  The 5-foot-8, 202-pound Woodyard suffered a knee injury during the team’s season-ending victory over Nevada in the Hawaii Bowl, and was expected to redshirt during the coming season.  Southern Miss coach Ellis Johnson said in a statement from the university on Monday that he’s ”been made aware of the situation regarding Jamal and will continue to gather the facts of this case.”

…Former NFL quarterback Ryan Leaf pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges that he broke into a Montana home and illegally possessed painkillers, part of a deal with prosecutors that recommends he spend nine months in a secure drug treatment facility.  The former San Diego Chargers quarterback and Washington State standout was shackled hand and foot and wore a black-and-white prison stripes as he told Cascade County District Judge Kenneth Neill that he needed treatment.  Leaf admitted that he broke into a home in Cascade County on April 1. He then admitted that a few days earlier, on March 28, he illegally possessed oxycodone that was not prescribed to him.  Leaf pleaded guilty to one count each of felony burglary and criminal possession of a dangerous drug. Under the agreement, County Attorney John Parker agreed to dismiss two other counts of burglary and drug possession.  Neill set sentencing for June 19. Parker and Olson are recommending a five-year sentence in the custody of the Montana Department of Corrections for the burglary charge.

…Despite an anundance of evidence to the contrary, the NFL is telling retirees about a medical study that says former players live longer than men in the general population.  While player safety issues related to brain trauma and other football-related injuries dominate the headlines, the study by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) found 334 deceased men in a sampling of 3,439 former NFL players. Estimates for the general population anticipated 625 deaths.  Players in the study participated in the NFL for at least five seasons from 1959 through 1988, and were observed by NIOSH through 2007.

…Add NFL Players – The study is a follow-up to a 1994 report the institute did at the request of the players’ union to, “investigate concerns that players were dying prematurely.” The latest findings, which contradict that idea, were published earlier this year in the American Journal of Cardiology and on NIOSH’s blog. The NFL sent a newsletter from NIOSH about the study’s finding to about 3,200 pre-1993 retired players on Tuesday.  The latest study found that players had a much lower rate of cancer-related deaths, with 85 dying from the disease as opposed to a projected 146 based on estimates from the general population. One reason for that could be low levels of smoking among athletes, but NIOSH did not attempt to contact former players about their smoking habits.

…More on NFL Players – Larger players, particularly defensive linemen, had a higher level of deaths from heart disease, 41 as opposed to an expected 29. There were 498 defensive linemen studied.  Offensive and defensive linemen, of course, are likely to have a higher body mass index, a measuring factor for obesity. Overall, though, the study showed that the risk of players dying of heart disease was lower than the general population, with 126 deaths while the anticipated number was 186.  I’m guessing that the Players Association will be presenting conflicting data soon.

…Amy Senser led a comfortable life as the wife of former Minnesota Viking Joe Senser, mother of four daughters and resident of an upscale Minneapolis suburb. Now, she’s facing prison after a jury didn’t believe her story about a fatal hit-and-run accident.  “She’s prepared for that possibility, but it certainly scares her,” defense attorney Eric Nelson told reporters shortly after a jury convicted her Thursday on two felony counts of criminal vehicular homicide.  Senser, 45, of Edina, is free pending sentencing on July 9 and plans to appeal. She was driving her husband’s Mercedes SUV the night of Aug. 23 when she struck and killed Anousone Phanthavong as he was pouring gas into his stalled car on a dark freeway exit ramp.  She testified that she didn’t realize until much later that she had hit anyone and is still struggling to accept that she killed him. Amy Senser didn’t acknowledge that she was the driver until more than a week later, and her silence fueled speculation about who was driving and whether alcohol was involved.

…Junior welterweight champion Lamont Peterson has reportedly tested positive for synthetic testosterone, according to Steve Carp of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The upcoming HBO-televised defense of his WBA/IBF 140-pound titles against Amir Khan on May 19th at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, is now in jeopardy. Khan and Peterson had agreed, as part of their rematch terms, to take part in a random drug testing protocol.  “Peterson was found to have synthetic testosterone in his system according to tests conducted by VADA in March,” Carp said on Twitter on Monday night, citing the drug-testing agency.  Carp said VADA head Margaret Goodman declined to comment on the test, but he noted that “VADA has dropped Peterson from its client list.”  “Peterson took a random drug test in mid-March that came back positive,” Carp reported. “The ‘B’ sample was tested at the end of April, also yielding a positive result.”

…NYY fans or perhaps a perverted Red Sox fan may be in luck.  Babe Ruth’s former Boston home is up for sale.  For just $1.65 million, you too can own the suburban home where Babe Ruth lived before the Sox traded him to the NY Yankees. Home Plate Farm in Sudbury, Mass is on the market for more than Ruth earned in his entire career. FOX Sports reports: The 5,000-square-foot, five-bedroom, 3 1/2-bathroom home on a two-acre plot has undergone extensive renovations since the 1920s, including ”a chef’s dream kitchen, richly detailed family room, a sunny master suite with vaulted ceilings” and more, the listing says.  But some of Ruth’s personal touches remain. One room even has burn marks on the floor where Ruth is said to have flicked his cigar ashes, Scott Adamson, of Coldwell Banker Residential brokerage said.  The property also includes a 5,000-square-foot barn with stables, office space, garage bays and a one-bedroom apartment with a full kitchen and bathroom.  I want to know what the Babe did with that 5,000 square foot barn!

…The Dallas Mavericks made it pretty clear how they feel about the contributions they got from Lamar Odom this year. Odom remained on the Dallas Mavericks’ roster through the end of their 2011-12 season, but he won’t get any of the team’s playoff money. A team source has confirmed that Odom, who was placed on the inactive list on April 8, will not receive a $14,000 playoff share. The decision was made by a vote of the Mavericks players. Odom, who was acquired from the Los Angeles Lakers in a December trade, averaged a career-low 6.6 points on 35.2 percent shooting from the floor in 50 games for the Mavericks. He was dismissed from the team by owner Mark Cuban at halftime of an April 7 loss to the Grizzlies. Dallas finished third in the Southwest Division at 36-30, and was swept out of the playoffs by Oklahoma City.

…Babe Ruth’s Boston home too expensive for you?  But you want that one of a kind piece of memorabilia?  Friends of the Program  a clever sports themed website has this for you instead.  “If you are in the market for a slightly used but still mechanically sound motorcycle that was really only driven on the weekends during extra-marital affairs that would eventually lead to you losing your multi-million dollar coaching job and becoming the butt of any number of motorcycle/sex jokes for a good month…then do I have a deal for you.  The motorcycle that Bobby Petrino and Jessica Dorrell wrecked outside of Fayetteville can now be yours for a modest bid (current bid is $2,550) .  The listing indicates that the bike is worth $16,000 but needs more than $18,000 in repairs (blonde girl in volleyball shorts sold separately). It also says that most of the damage is to the front end.  Bobby Petrino concurs with that assessment.”

…Many sports wags have predicted that in time, Kentucky’s latest NCAA hoop title will be forfeited.  They may be right.  According to the New York Times the NCAA is looking at top basketball recruit Nerlens Noel. Noel is rated the number one player by most recruiting services for the class of 2012 and to no shock he committed to John Calipari and the Kentucky Wildcats.According to Pete Thamel of the New York Times the NCAA sent 2 assistant directors of enforcement to Everett high school in Massachusetts. Noel spent his first two seasons at Everett then he finished up his final two seasons at the Tilton School in New Hampshire.  Thamel explains many reasons why the NCAA could be looking into Noel. The NCAA could be looking at Noel’s so called advisors Chris Driscoll and Errol Randolph. These are the guys that usually create problems for the athletes with the NCAA Driscoll was banned from the Tilton campus. Noel also flied to Kentucky and Louisville on unofficial visits. Unofficial visits cannot be paid by the school. So there is some question where the money came from. There could also be some questions about Noel’s academics. According to Tilton’s headmaster Jim Clements he is on track to graduate but still has work to do. He said he was no sure if Noel would qualify academically for a scholarship.

…Four Oklahoma Sooner football players have been suspended and may not be back for the upcoming season.  The players in question are three wide receivers: Jaz Reynolds , Trey Franks, and Kameel Jackson. Defensive back Quentin Hayes is the fourth member of the program to be suspended.  Reynolds, a junior wide receiver, was expected to be a key contributor for the Sooner offense this season. Last year, he racked up 715 receiving yards, and his 17.4 yards per catch led the team.  With three of the suspended players being wide receivers, the Sooner offense takes a tremendous hit, with just one receiver left on the roster who caught a pass last year.  It is not yet clear which team rule was broken, or even how long the players will be suspended, but it seems that at least some of the players may not be back.  Jackson announced two days ago that he would be transferring, and both Reynolds and Franks served suspensions last season as well.

…Douglas County sheriff’s deputies have searched the home of popular Denver Nuggets center Chris ”Birdman” Andersen.  Sheriff’s spokesman Ron Hanavan confirmed that the search took place Thursday as part of an investigation conducted by the department’s Internet Crimes Against Children unit. Andersen has not been arrested and Hanavan said no arrest warrant has been issued.  The department began investigating Andersen in February after receiving information from a law enforcement agency in California. Hanavan declined to release details, including the nature of any pending charges, citing an ongoing investigation. He says they’re asking that the case be sealed.  The Denver Nuggets had no immediate comment.

…Here’s the other side of that story. Andersen’s attorney, Colin Bresee, released a statement today stating that Anderson may be being extorted by a California woman.  In the statement, Bresee explains that the woman reportedly threatened Andersen with “retaliation” if he did not agree to her financial demands.  Here are the details from the statement:  “A female fan in 2010 mailed Mr. Andersen multiple letters and included several photos in which she was scantily clad. Chris and this woman communicated with each other and in 2011, this woman, who represented herself as 21 years of age, flew to Colorado, showing her required identification. After leaving Colorado, she became upset at his lack of interest. In 2012, she threatened to retaliate if he did not provide financial remuneration. ”  According to the statement, someone purporting to be the woman’s mother wrote in an email that ” ‘i (sic) want him to pay for everything on her Amazon wish list, 5K for her bedding stuff and her victoria secret wish list.”  “Professional athletes are routinely targeted by these types of individuals,” the statement said. “The media has been speculating that he’s a suspect and not a victim in a criminal investigation. Mr. Andersen has been fully cooperative with the authorities. The investigation is expected to take three weeks. We’re confident it will show that Chris did not engage in any criminal conduct.”

Top 3 Reasons to Cancel the NFL Pro Bowl

by Jim Quinn
Article courtesy of www.osga.com – protect your gaming rights – join the OSGA today!

The Associated Press reported that the NFL could suspend the 2013 Pro Bowl while the league determines the game’s future. There are a few reason to think that the game would be cancelled but the NFL insists these talks revolved around the ‘quality of the game’. That reason did not make our top three. The general consensus is that the NFL Pro Bowl is the worst “all-star” event there is . . . it’s just not a game made for the format. The NHL and NBA All Star games work because they are playground style games that do not require much preparation and planning and with baseball it is about pitchers throwing their pitches. Football is a different breed when it comes down to planning, preparation and schemes, and when the bodies are beaten and bruised from an entire season (unlike NHL and NBA who do it at the halfway point), the defensive guys aren’t going to be hitting anyone out there – who would?

“The NFL Pro Bowl gets about half the action that a regular Sunday ‘dud’ would get.”

For starters the game was moved to the week before the Super Bowl and many of the players that participate in the NFL’s premier event are not available for the game. In addition, many players do not participate if they are nicked up in any way, after all it is a voluntary game. And finally football is a violent game, so many players ‘mail in’ their performances to avoid the potential for injury. So if the players don’t really care, why should we as fans care about the game? Basically the NFL Pro Bowl has become glamour event more than a football game

Another reason is that nobody watches. The NFL is all about revenue and the declining viewer stats for the Pro Bowl make for less advertising dollars. The ratings for the 2012 NFL Pro Bowl broadcast on NBC Sunday night dropped 8.1% to a 7.9 meaning roughly 10.74 million people were watching. The game drew an 8.6 rating the year before on Fox. Each televised regular season game averages better than 17.5 million viewers. Less viewers every year means less revenue from advertising.

But really, the #1 reason that the NFL is thinking of cancelling the Pro Bowl? Nobody Bets on it.

We tapped several sportsbooks offshore for their take on the game. What was reiterated by most books was that since the game isn’t watched much and is bet accordingly. most of the action is public action – playing over the total – and while the actual volume of wagers isn’t bad, the volume in terms of dollars is not noteworthy. Diamond Sports gave us some great insight into the game. “Sharps may dabble here and there if the number gets out of hand with over bettors, but sides don’t get out of hand either way. You would see much more line movement both on the side and total than typical – but that movement reflects the notion that not much volume comes on the game so the moves are quicker, yet on less action.”

The DSI representative went on to say that during the regular season there are usually “6-7 games that are bet heavily, 4 bet moderately, and then there are 4 duds. The NFL Pro Bowl gets about half the action that a regular Sunday ‘dud’ would get.”

So nobody watches, nobody cares and nobody bets on the NFL Pro Bowl. Maybe it is time to just let the game go and hand out the awards at a banquet.

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MGM Resorts to launch social gaming site

By Staff Writer – igamingbusiness.com

American bricks-and-mortar casino operator MGM Resorts International has announced plans to launch a social gaming site over the next three months.

Las Vegas-based MGM Resorts launched its M Life customer rewards programme website in January of last year that awards players with a range of one-of-a-kind experiences and insider privileges and stated that its new social gaming domain would recreate the ‘Las Vegas Strip experience’ and exclusively feature its brands.

“I’m very proud of our efforts with M Life,” said James Murren, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer for MGM Resorts.

“We are seeing tangible benefits of capturing increased customer spend at our properties. We think this will continue and expand with the recent addition of our non-gaming amenities to our rewards programme. We’re very actively now cross-marketing our regional properties to drive market share and increase visits to Las Vegas and we expect this trend will only improve with the marketing relationship we have created with Ameristar.

“New growth markets in gaming will likely emerge and we have positioned ourselves internationally to effectively compete there and we’re very excited to say that this quarter, along with our partners, in the second quarter, we’re launching a social gaming site that recreates the Las Vegas Strip experience and exclusively features our brands.

“We believe that this product will be superior to what you currently see in the market and will be a strong customer acquisition and brand extension tool for us.

“And of course, we continued to remain aggressively focused on pursuing federal legislation for online poker and we’re keenly aware of what’s going on, on a state-by-state basis for those opportunities, which we think will likely emerge.”

This is a reprint from igamingbusiness.com
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WTO Proceedings Continue for Antigua and US Over Online Gambling

This article is reprinted from www.CasinoScamReport.com – a great place to visit

March 2007, the Dispute Settlement Body of the WTO ruled that the US had failed to comply with the 2005 ruling against prohibitions on Internet gambling. Later in the year, the WTO granted Antigua US$21 million in annual trade sanctions against the US as compensation for damages.

Back in February we reported about the ongoing dispute between Antigua and the United States in which WTO proceedings were filed, now again, just a few short months later, according to the Observer News, Antigua is continuing the battle with the States over online gambling.

Once again Antigua took it’s online gambling dispute with the United States to yet another WTO meeting last week, frustrated by the United States pursuit and prosecution of online gambling operators on its territory, Antigua alleges that the US is breaching international trade agreements and should face sanctions, according to the Observer News.

All the while, both sides in the ongoing cross-border online gambling dispute continue blaming each other for the lack of an amicable resolution at last week’s World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting.

A letter presented to the WTO Dispute Settlement Body, the Antiguan & Barbudan government noted that they are diligently attempting to “negotiate a settlement with the US” and called for the United States to “observe its international obligations in good faith and with due consideration for the rights of Antigua & Barbuda.”

But the back and forth blame between the two parties continues as the U.S. says it is Antigua & Barbuda to blame for hold-up in negotiations.

Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer has expressed disappointment that the United States has not done enough to settle a long outstanding Internet gaming dispute with Antigua and Barbuda.

The Prime Minister said, Antigua and Barbuda had put forward several options to settle the case but that “there has been no fairness in the proposals received from the United States to date.

“Antigua and Barbuda’s Internet gaming sector has been decimated by the actions of the United States, and we believe that we must be fairly compensated for those losses,” Spencer said.

Antigua claimed that it has lost US$3.4 billion a year due to the US action, but the WTO ultimately awarded US$21 million in damages against the US.

In the meantime, the US has continued to legally pursue companies that engage in online gambling in Antigua and other jurisdictions. The most recent indictment was brought against Calvin Ayer, founder of Bodog.com, in February of this year.

Reported by Maggie B., Casino Scam Report

Dark Shadows

By Justin Chang

Read everything there is about movies at the website www.variety.com

Few director-star partnerships are as consistently eccentric or malleable as that of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, but even loyalists will detect an odor of mothballs clinging to their eighth big screen collaboration, “Dark Shadows.” Outfitting ABC’s cult-worshipped, occult-themed soap opera with super-slick production values and a tone that veers unsteadily between kooky comedy and gothic horror, this bizarre but weirdly bloodless retro-camp exercise is neither funny nor eerie enough to seduce the uninitiated, and will court bemused reactions at best from the series’ still-estimable fan following. Pic’s pedigree could intrigue auds for a spell, but long-term B.O. bewitchment seems unlikely.

Though short-lived by soap standards, “Dark Shadows” (1966-71) garnered instant notoriety and lasting appeal by injecting supernatural elements into the popular daytime serial format. Decades before the ghoulish denizens of “Buffy” and “Angel,” “Twilight” and “True Blood,” series mastermind Dan Curtis introduced viewers to Barnabas Collins, a 200-year-old vampire played with insinuating grace by Jonathan Frid.

Burton and Depp have cited Curtis’ creation as a formative influence, and together with scenarist Seth Grahame-Smith, they have paid tribute to the show’s legacy in predictably whimsical, irreverent fashion. With a smirk and a wink, the filmmakers have inflated an enduring relic into an extravagantly empty postmodern artifact, an object lesson in the perils of camping up a property that had no shortage of camp appeal to begin with.

Gone is the atmosphere of grave, haunted solemnity that lent the series an irresistible conviction, despite its melodramatic trappings and rudimentary special effects. In its place are lavishly detailed sets, some mildly coarse sexual innuendo, and one joke after another predicated on the supposed hilarity of a Victorian aristocrat trying to navigate the era of disco and free love.

That would be Barnabas Collins (Depp), master of Collinwood Mansion, situated near the seaside Maine town of Collinsport. A prologue shrouded in the gray mists of 1795 reveals how Barnabas spurns a jealous witch, Angelique (Eva Green), who proceeds to send his true love (Bella Heathcote) to a watery grave. She then turns Barnabas into a vampire, burying him in a coffin until some very unfortunate construction workers dig him up nearly two centuries later.

It’s 1972, technically a year after the TV show ended, which is the film’s way of signaling that, unlike prior bigscreen spinoffs (1970′s “House of Dark Shadows” and 1971′s “Night of Dark Shadows”), this will be a reinvention rather than a continuation. After a nicely haunting credits sequence set to the Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin,” the first of many period-specific tunes, young governess Victoria Winters (Heathcote again) takes a position at Collinwood, only to find that the venerable clan, led by formidable matriarch Elizabeth (a fine Michelle Pfeiffer), has fallen on hard times.

Fortunately, Victoria’s arrival coincides with the resurrection of Barnabas, who sets out to restore the Collinses and their failing fishery to their former luster. Pretending to be a distant English cousin, the vampire moves in with Elizabeth and her feckless brother, Roger (Jonny Lee Miller); her impudent teen daughter, Carolyn (Chloe Grace Moretz); and Roger’s troubled young son, David (Gully McGrath). Also in residence are child psychiatrist Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter), a major series character upstaged here by a loud ginger wig; and hired help Willie Loomis (Jackie Earle Haley), whom Barnabas makes his personal Igor.

All this unfolds with a peculiar absence of tension, creepiness or mounting drama, and most of the supporting characters seem to be present as a matter of name-checking obligation. In keeping with Burton’s morbid-to-the-max aesthetic, melanin is in short supply; even the non-undead characters look unreasonably pallid. That also goes for Angelique, still alive, beautiful and bent on either winning or destroying Barnabas after all these years; Green plays the character with memorably witchy flair, projecting a mix of brassy humor and diabolical attitude the rest of the film only intermittently achieves.

Burton’s Collinwood is not an unpleasant place to pass the time. Bruno Delbonnel lenses the cavernous mausoleum of a set (designed by Rick Heinrichs) to look at once foreboding and inviting, and Danny Elfman’s score provides a gentle, spooky caress. Yet the creative spirits haunting the place are strained and self-conscious; the largely mirthless fish-out-of-water jokes — as when Barnabas overreacts to a Karen Carpenter TV appearance, or politely disembowels a bunch of hippies — strand the film somewhere between Austin Powers and Addams Family. The result is a picture too rude and out-there to reproduce the show’s particular pleasures, yet too stilted and tame by contempo standards to deliver much of a bite.

Through it all, Depp gives a typically committed, exquisitely deadpan performance, looking quite at home with his claws, matted-down hair spikes and heavy eye-shadow, and turning the character’s archaic diction into a form of baroque music. As often happens when he gets his freak on, the actor seems lost in a private world, channeling ghosts whose frequency he alone can detect. Up until an f/x-laden climax that desperately conjures everything from “Rebecca” to “Death Becomes Her,” Depp just about holds it all together, unsurprisingly emerging as the pic’s most reliable element.

Frid, who died April 13, is one of several series vets making brief cameos in a party sequence also notably attended, and fronted, by Alice Cooper.

Camera (Technicolor), Bruno Delbonnel; editor, Chris Lebenzon; music, Danny Elfman; music supervisor, Mike Higham; production designer, Rick Heinrichs; supervising art director, Chris Lowe; art directors, Jason Knox-Johnston, Neal Callow, Dean Clegg, Philip Sims, Christian Huband, Richard Selway; set decorator, John Bush; costume designer, Colleen Atwood; sound (Dolby Digital/Datasat/SDDS), Tony Dawe; supervising sound editor, Julian Slater; sound designers, Slater, Tom Sayers; re-recording mixers, Michael Semanick, Tom Johnson; special effects supervisor, Joss Williams; visual effects supervisor, Angus Bickerton; visual effects, MPC, Method Studios Vancouver, the Senate, BUF, Mattes and Miniatures; stunt coordinator, Eunice Huthart; fight choreographer, James Grogan; associate producer, Derek Frey; assistant director, Katterli Frauenfelder; casting, Susie Figgis.

MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 112 MIN.

With: Jonathan Frid, Kathryn Leigh Scott, Lara Parker, David Selby, Alice Cooper.

Contact Justin Chang at justin.chang@variety.com
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God Bless America

by John DeFore
Read more from John DeFore and other fine writers at the Hollywood Reporter
www.Hollywoodreporter.com

Director/screenwriter – Bobcat Goldthwait

Cast – Joel Murray, Tara Lynne Barr, Larry Miller, Geoff Peirson, Melinda Page Hamilton

Producers Sean McKittrick, Jeff Culotta, Sarah de Sa Rego, Jim Goldthwait-

A violent tirade against the many ills afflicting American culture, Bobcat Goldthwait’s latest provocation God Bless America starts off with most right-thinking viewers in its corner but will lose many well before the end. That’s not due to its vigilante visions or intellectual elitism but because — especially unforgivable in a film calling for smarter discourse — it explores its themes so poorly. A niche theatrical run might draw fans of Goldthwait’s previous work, this effort isn’t likely to get as much help from critics as those sometimes did.

The film is kept afloat mainly by sad-eyed Joel Murray, whose performance operates on a deeper, more thoughtful level than everything around him. He plays Frank, a Syracuse salary man who can’t help channel-surfing through the decline of Western Civilization: Not-quite veiled stand-ins for Bill O’Reilly, American Idol, and various reality TV shows are sapping his will to live, and a doctor’s report that he has an inoperable brain tumor pushes him over the edge.

He’s just about ready to swallow a bullet when he decides to take one hateful TV icon out with him. His (comically clumsy) killing of a reality-series high school princess attracts the attention of Roxy (Tara Lynn Barr), who convinces him he shouldn’t stop there. The two become platonic May/September partners in crime, jaunting cross-country in a stolen Mustang and killing everyone from the deeply evil (a hate-spewing evangelist) to the merely annoying. (A scene in which inconsiderate moviegoers are gunned down was lost on a few attendees of the first press-and-industry screening, who kept texting throughout the film.)

The movie never seems interested in plausibility, but lazy plotting (the killers have their pictures on TV early in the spree, but nobody ever notices them) and an unconvincing performance from Barr keep it from achieving even a Heathers-like believability within its own universe. What’s left are hollow scenes of vicarious vengeance against perpetrators of real-world vapidity and hypocrisy.

The film’s larger failing isn’t aesthetic but moral. In their early scenes together, as the two rattle off vast categories of people to kill, viewers will see what the movie never overtly confronts: Once you start killing (or, for the rest of us, mentally judging) faceless categories of people who annoy you on a certain level, it’s awfully hard to find the threshold at which annoyance is forgivable.

As Roxy talks giddily about eliminating people who give high fives or like country music, you have to wonder: At what point will she get around to calling for the death of filmmakers who can’t follow through on an interesting idea?

UFC on Fox ratings dip; Fertitta not worried

By Kevin Iole | Yahoo! Sports

The UFC’s television deal with Fox may ultimately turn out to be the vehicle which lifts mixed martial arts to mainstream acceptance, the same way the NFL and the NBA are regarded. The early television ratings, though, show a troubling trend, declining precipitously in each of the UFC’s three appearances on Fox.

The first UFC on Fox show, featuring a heavyweight championship bout between Cain Velasquez and Junior dos Santos on Nov. 12, 2011, did 5.675 million viewers, according to the Nielsen ratings.

UFC on Fox saw its ratings decline. The second, with a light heavyweight contender’s match between Rashad Evans and Phil Davis as the main event, did 4.661 million on Jan. 28.

And on May 5, UFC on Fox 3 did 2.418 million total viewers and finished last in its time slot. It did win its primary demographic – people 18-49 – but in terms of overall audience, it finished below Shark Tank and CSI.

The UFC fight was essentially trounced by the pay-per-view boxing card that same night headlined by Floyd Mayweather against Miguel Cotto. Sales figures are not available yet but are expected to be around 1.5 million buys.

UFC co-owner Lorenzo Fertitta isn’t panicking and said it’s important to recognize that the Fox deal is a long-term proposition for the company.

“Would we like to see the numbers be trending differently? Yes, of course,” Fertitta said. “But we’re not concerned and we don’t think it’s an overall reflection of our business. There are reasons for it. If you think about it, for the first [Fox] fight we had a massive amount of promotion within the NFL on Fox. And we led with our big show, the heavyweight championship, so of course, we were going to draw a much broader range of viewers.

[Related: Kevin Iole: Pickings are slim for Floyd Mayweather Jr.'s next ring foe]

“The fight in January in Chicago actually performed pretty well, even though it was a little below the first one. It was still super solid. This last show, I’d say it was a moderate performance. Really, what we’re looking at is, ‘How did we rank within the competition compared to what was going on that night?’ And in hindsight, going on Cinco de Mayo may not have been the best thing to do.”

Fertitta pointed out the UFC was competing not only with the Mayweather-Miguel Cotto pay-per-view fight that night, but also with Cinco de Mayo celebrations, the opening of “The Avengers” movie and NBA playoff games.

Despite the competition, the UFC ranked first in the 18-49 demographic in its time slot. (The Mayweather fight didn’t count, because pay-per-view shows aren’t tracked by Nielsen.) The UFC had 1.471 million 18-49 viewers Saturday. Even that, though, was significantly less than in the first two Fox cards. On Nov. 12, the UFC drew 3.776 million 18-49-year-olds and on Jan. 28 it was 3.072.

By way of comparison, the rebroadcast of the Manny Pacquiao-Juan Manuel Marquez fight on Nov. 19 did 1.09 million overall viewers and 711,000 viewers on HBO among 18-49-year-olds. That was for a fight that had happened seven days earlier, when people already knew the result and which came on a network that has roughly 30 million homes compared to more than 110 million homes on Fox.

The live viewing of the April 28 boxing match between Bernard Hopkins and Chad Dawson on HBO attracted 1.57 million total viewers and 919,000 in the 18-49 demographic, despite being in 80 million fewer homes than UFC on Fox 3.

Fertitta said he was pleased with the viewership of UFC on Fox 3 and believes it helped further the company’s goal of building stars.

“If The Avengers did [a box office of] over $200 million for the weekend, unfortunately for us, there were a great number of our potential viewers sitting in a movie theater somewhere,” he said. “Or, they were out that night celebrating Cinco de Mayo. Listen, I’m not trying to make excuses. Hats off to HBO and Bernard Hopkins. That’s a great job and a great number they pulled. But when you say, ‘Are we concerned,’ I’d say no. We’re excited.

“We had a situation where 2.5 million people, which I would say is still a substantial number, got to see what I would say was a tremendous product. All four fights were great fights and in the main event, Nate Diaz showed he’s potentially a breakout star who down the road could move the needle for us on pay-per-view. The playbook is playing out for us exactly the way we wanted it to.”

There is a lot of validity in Fertitta’s explanation, but the decline is troubling on another level. The knowledge of MMA among the general public is much greater than it was in 2008 thanks largely to the UFC’s efforts to promote and educate fans about the sport.

Yet, an Elite XC show on CBS on July 26, 2008, which featured a main event of Robbie Lawler against Scott Smith, did 2.62 million viewers. Neither Lawler nor Smith was ever considered stars or top-level attractions, but that card, held nearly four years earlier when the sport wasn’t as widely accepted, did more viewers than UFC on Fox 3.

That’s an issue that has to trouble Fertitta.

UFC president Dana White banked on viewers who bought the Mayweather pay-per-view card on Saturday also tuning in to watch the fights on Fox, which aired first. But many people who buy pay-per-view aren’t aware they can change the channel and come back, so they didn’t switch to the UFC even if they’d been inclined to do so for fear of losing the $70 they paid to see Mayweather.

“Before I was involved in the pay-per-view business and understood the ins and outs, I was always scared to death to change the channel,” Fertitta said. “We will work on this and look at it, but we’re not unhappy. We got a tremendous amount of exposure for a kid like Nate Diaz. We’re going to build him the way we built Jon Jones. Two years ago, nobody knew who Jon Jones was, and now, a couple of weeks ago, we did a very good [PPV] number for his fight that I think really crossed over and where the non hard-core fans were talking about it.

“It’s a learning process for all of us, but we’re not at all concerned. We feel things are progressing according to plan and whatever issues we have are things that aren’t insurmountable and which we can fix.”
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Nick Diaz Counsel Responds to NAC’s Opposition of Preliminary Injunction Request

By Tristen Critchfield
Courtesy of the great mma website www.sherdog.com

Counsel for Nick Diaz has responded to the Nevada Athletic Commission’s opposition of its motion for an injunction against the UFC welterweight’s temporary suspension.

The document of opposition, filed through the Nevada attorney general’s office earlier this week, claimed that Diaz can’t take legal action until the NAC makes a decision regarding his disciplinary complaint. It also states that Diaz isn’t likely to succeed “on the merit of his arguments” and that his temporary suspension hasn’t caused the type of harm worthy of court intervention.

Diaz’s response, filed through attorney Ross C. Goodman to Nevada district court on Friday, argues that the NAC has requested “an unlimited power of interim suspension” through its opposition brief. The 12-page document disputes the NAC’s claim that Diaz has failed to “exhaust his available administrative remedies” and claims that “the issues raised in [Diaz’s] complaint are ripe for adjudication.”

“[Diaz’s] complaint puts in issue the [NAC] administrative procedure itself, and therefore the doctrine of exhaustion of administrative remedies has no application,” Goodman wrote. “Further, there exists no administrative remedy for the Commission’s failure to convene a prompt hearing or to seek relief from an administrative agency in respect of that same agency’s violation of a licensee’s statutory and due process rights.”

Diaz — a medical marijuana patient diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in his home state of California — tested positive for marijuana metabolite following his UFC 143 loss to Carlos Condit at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas on Feb. 4. Diaz was suspended by the commission on Feb. 22 pending a disciplinary hearing. Goodman has previously asserted that Diaz’s suspension should have been addressed within 45 days of Feb. 22.

Goodman also claimed that Diaz’s potential success in future disciplinary proceedings has no bearing on the current situation.

“The issue is not whether [Diaz] or the Commission is more likely to be successful in connection with the underlying disciplinary proceedings. The issue is whether [Diaz] is likely to succeed on the merits of his claim commenced in this court — sufficient to ground the preliminary injunctive relief sought,” he wrote.

In addition, Goodman argues that the NAC has yet to produce any evidence that could refute Diaz’s claim that the suspension has caused the fighter irreparable harm. In closing, the document reiterates Diaz’s request for a preliminary injunction against the NAC, which would give the Stockton, Calif., native relief from his ongoing suspension as well as any future disciplinary action by the commission. Diaz’s complaint is expected to be heard in court on May 14

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Amir Khan pursuing no-contest

By Dan Rafael | ESPN.com

Golden Boy Promotions, on behalf of former unified junior welterweight titleholder Amir Khan, is moving swiftly in an effort to have the result of Khan’s split-decision title loss to Lamont Peterson in December overturned to a no-contest and the belts returned to Khan in the wake of Peterson’s failed drug test.

Golden Boy attorney Arnold Joseph wrote letters on Friday to Alfred Grant, deputy commissioner of the Washington, D.C., Boxing and Wrestling Commission, asking the fight result be changed to a no-contest.

Joseph also wrote to Daryl Peoples of the IBF and Gilberto Mendoza Jr. of the WBA, the organizations that sanctioned the world title bout on Dec. 10, asking for the titles to be returned to Khan.

Peterson failed a March 19 random urine test when his sample came back positive for synthetic testosterone, a banned substance. The results came to light on Monday and ultimately forced the cancellation of his rematch with Khan scheduled for May 19 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.

Peterson has admitted to taking the banned substance, but his attorney, Jeff Fried, said Peterson took it under the supervision of a doctor for medical purposes — an abnormally low testosterone level. However, Peterson, who admitted to having testosterone pellets implanted inside him, did not disclose it to the Nevada State Athletic Commission or to the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association, which was overseeing the random pre-fight testing that Peterson asked for and Khan agreed to.

The reason the result of the December bout in Washington — Peterson’s hometown — is in question is because Peterson admitted to taking the testosterone about a month before he faced Khan — even though Peterson’s drug tests came back clean after that bout, likely because the tests conducted by the Washington commission are less sophisticated than those conducted by VADA.

“Since the disclosure of the (March 19) test result, Mr. Peterson, through counsel, has not only admitted that he had a performance-enhancing substance implanted in his body, he has admitted that the substance was administered to him in November of 2011, less than one month before the bout and consequently, as will be explained later in this letter, was in his system at the time of the bout,” Joseph wrote to Grant in a letter obtained by ESPN.com. “In light of the admission by Peterson that he had a performance-enhancing substance implanted into his body prior to the bout, we request that your commission overturn the decision in the bout and declare it a no-contest.”

Joseph further wrote: “(Peterson’s) doctors reported that subcutaneous testosterone pellets were administered to Mr. Peterson on November 12, 2011 and that they account for the positive drug test on samples taken from Mr. Peterson by VADA on March 19, 2012. It should be noted that Mr. Peterson did not alert (the WBA), the IBF or the District of Columbia Boxing and Wrestling Commission to his alleged condition or the insertion of these testosterone pellets prior to or after the bout.

“Logic dictates that if remnants of the testosterone inserted on November 12, 2011, were present in Mr. Peterson’s system on March 19, 2012, and accounted for a finding by VADA that there were illegal substances in Mr. Peterson that were consistent with the administration of an anabolic steroid such as testosterone, then the substance was most definitely in his system on December 10, 2011.

“In light of the above, we submit that Mr. Peterson had a performance enhancing substance in his system prior to and during the bout, and as a result thereof, the bout result should be overturned and the outcome should be changed to a no-contest.”

Joseph wrote similar letters to Peoples and Mendoza, both of which were also obtained by ESPN.com. In those letters, Joseph concluded by asking that the belts be returned to Khan.

The IBF and WBA are both reviewing the situation.

“We are reviewing all of this and we are still in the process of collecting information,” Peoples told ESPN.com. “The IBF has no authority to overturn a decision. I have been in contact with the D.C. commission to see what their position is and they will get back to me.”

Mendoza told ESPN.com that he was “still waiting for all reports before issuing a decision in Khan’s case.”

Khan (26-2, 18 KOs), of England, is livid with Peterson (30-1-1, 15 KOs) and wants the result changed and his titles back.

“He’s a fake and I’d tell him that to his face,” Khan told ESPN.com in an interview on Wednesday night, a few hours after the fight was canceled. “Lamont Peterson is a fake and a fraud who cheated his way through. Now he will always be remembered as a cheater just like (former welterweight titlist) Antonio Margarito (who was caught trying to fight with loaded hand wraps). We used to have a lot of respect for Peterson. But now, I think he’s let all of the boxing fans around the world down for what he’s done.”

Khan added: “Of course, the first fight should be declared a no-contest. That was his first world title fight, he was at home and he would do anything he could to win.

“I hit him with everything in that fight and he kept getting stronger and stronger. He was recovering so fast after all the punches he was getting caught with. People were saying they had never seen him like that and now we know why.”

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Lamont Peterson issues statement

By Dan Rafael | ESPN.com

In the immediate aftermath of the Lamont Peterson-Amir Khan junior welterweight title rematch being canceled on Wednesday because of Peterson’s failed drug test, his team didn’t have much to say.

In fact, numerous emails and phone calls went unreturned. I would imagine Peterson’s people were trying to collect their thoughts and figure out what to say and how to explain why, during a random urine test conducted on March 19 in Los Angeles, Peterson (who had asked Khan to undergo random testing during the buildup to their fight) tested positive for synthetic testosterone.

That is a banned substance in Nevada, where the major HBO bout was scheduled to take place on May 19.

The results of the test came to light just this week, and with Peterson unlikely to be licensed in Nevada — where these results are taken very seriously — Golden Boy Promotions canceled the show. It was just too close to the fight to go through with a hearing early next week when Peterson was almost certainly going to be denied a license anyway.

Even though Peterson said the reason he took the synthetic testosterone was because of a legitimate medical issue — abnormally low testosterone — he and his team missed the point: Taking a banned substance is not allowed. And if you do take it for a legitimate medical reason, it is incumbent on the athlete to disclose that to the Nevada commission and attempt to obtain a medical exemption. Period, no exceptions. Peterson didn’t do that, either. In other words, it’s like closing the barn door after the horse has run away.

On Thursday morning, the Peterson camp finally released a statement regarding the cancellation of the fight.

You can read the full statement below, although I will take issue with one point it makes: that Peterson has never failed a drug test in his 18 years of boxing. Well, that’s not true.

He did flunk a drug test on March 19, and that is the reason the fight is canceled. Here’s the full statement:

“Team Peterson is very disappointed and distraught by the decision to cancel the May 19 rematch against Amir Khan. This is an extremely difficult decision to accept. We have always taken the position of providing factual information rather than responding emotionally to rumors and innuendoes. We did everything that was asked of us in efforts to comply.

“To support our stance we provided the Nevada State Athletic Commission with a significant amount of factual medical data in response to these allegations. Lamont did a battery of test this week and saw a number of independent board certified physicians. They all had the exact same conclusion as the doctor that initially treated and diagnosed Lamont’s medical condition. It began as a confidential medical matter between a patient and his physician. Unfortunately, it has now become a public issue in efforts to clear the name and reputation of this young man.

“As a condition for this rematch, Lamont demanded that Olympic-style random drug testing be implemented. He has been a true advocate for making boxing drug-free and fair. In his 18-year career (10 amateur and eight professional) Lamont Peterson has never failed a drug test and has always complied with the rules beyond this isolated and explainable occurrence.

“We still stand behind the fact that he did nothing wrong and he was more than ready to go through with the May 19 fight. He is a man of tremendous character and will. His work ethic is second to none, and in every sense of the word he is a true champion, in life, as well as in the ring.

“We will vigorously pursue the truth with regards to this matter and continue to fight to protect this young man’s character, credibility and all he has accomplished. Once all the facts have been reviewed we have no doubt that he will be vindicated.”

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An Intimate Evening With Santana: Greatest Hits Live – Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow

Article courtesy of www.accessvegas.com

WHO: The legendary Carlos Santana will perform An Intimate Evening with Santana: Greatest Hits Live – Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow.

For 40 years and as many albums later, Santana has sold more than 90 million records and reached more than 100 million fans at concerts worldwide. To date, Santana has won 10 GRAMMY® Awards, including a record-tying nine for a single project for 1999’s Supernatural (including Album of the Year and Record of the Year for “Smooth”). In 1998, the group was ushered into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Among many other honors, Carlos Santana has also been cited by Rolling Stone as No. 15 on their list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.” His last CD, Guitar Heaven … The Greatest Guitar Classics of All Time (Arista), was released in late September 2010. Celebrating that chart debut, Santana joined the ranks of the Rolling Stones as the only musical act in chart history to score at least one Top 10 album in every decade beginning with the 1960s.  Guitar Heaven … is Santana’s 29th Billboard Top 200 charting release, 12th Top 10 album debut and third Top 10 debut over the last five years.
WHAT: An Intimate Evening with Santana: Greatest Hits Live – Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow

A special series of headlining shows by one of the greatest guitarists in rock history who will perform in an interactive intimate venue allowing fans to rock with him throughout each evening.

House of Blues Las Vegas at Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino has been uniquely reconfigured for the special Santana show. Fans within a few feet of the music legend can select from several intimate locations within the venue, from a limited number of exclusive VIP packages including meet and greets, limited edition photos, specialty dining/beverage packages and stage-side specialty dining.

WHEN: An Intimate Evening with Santana: Greatest Hits Live – Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow

Show time: 8 p.m.

Show dates for 2012:
·         May 2, 4, 5 & 6
·         May 9, 11, 12 & 13
·         May 23, 25, 26  & 27
·         May 30, June 1, 2 & 3
·         Sept. 12, 13 & 15
·         Sept. 19, 21, 22 & 23
·         Oct. 31, Nov. 2, 3 & 4
·         Nov. 7, 9, 10 & 11
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Comme Ça To Captivate Guests With Patio Launch Of Riviera Nights – Introduce Seasonal French Small Plates Menu

Article courtesy of www.accessvegas.com

Comme Ça at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas will launch Riviera Nights, an unparalleled dining and lounge party experience on Thursday, April 26. Set on the restaurant’s stunning patio, the weekly soiree will introduce a selection of French small plates and a signature sangaree.

Available from 8 to 11 p.m. every Thursday night, patrons will enjoy the striking views of the iconic Las Vegas Strip showcased from Comme Ça’s breathtaking patio. A French house DJ will be on-hand to spin the hottest tunes under a canopy of neon red lights glimmering from the ceiling.

Guests may indulge their appetites with an array of seasonal French dishes created by acclaimed Chef David Myers and Executive Chef Brian Howard. Items to include Roasted Tomato Tart with basil, nicoise olive and arugula; Roasted Baby Beets with smoked salmon, horseradish, mustard and rye; and Dungeness Crab Salad with crispy garlic and burnt orange.

The special menu will also feature Myers’ award-winning brasserie’s handcrafted 18A libations, such as the Clover Club, which is a flawlessly balanced mix of gin, fresh lemon, homemade grenadine, sugar and egg white. A perfect fit for the spring and summertime atmosphere, a signature sangaree will be added to the famed prohibition-themed bar menu. Comme Ça’s sangaree will put a Parisian spin on the classic cocktail blend made with wine, St. Germain liqueur, ginger syrup, club soda and fresh fruit, then garnished with nutmeg and served over ice. Patrons may also take advantage of Riviera Nights’ wine special, which will offer bottles of Comme Ça’s house rosé wine, specially priced at $30.

About Comme Ça

Comme Ça at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas is acclaimed Chef David Myers’ second location outside of his popular West Hollywood flagship. Inspired by France’s vibrant neighborhood brasseries, the rustic chic Adam D. Tihany-designed restaurant serves up hearty brasserie classics including handcrafted cocktails. Comme Ça is situated within P3 Commons at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, an innovative neighborhood of restaurant experiences that convey the makings of the perfect dinner party. Not only welcoming and highly personal, but also spontaneous with a delightful sense of discovery, the P3 culinary collection
embodies a synergistic approach to the modern face of Las Vegas dining. At Comme Ça, dinner is served Monday through Thursday from 5:30 to 11 p.m.  Friday through Sunday lunch is served from noon to 5 p.m. and dinner from 5 to 11 p.m.

In 2011, Comme Ça received the Wine Spectator “Award of Excellence;” “Best Restaurant” by Desert Companion and 944 Magazine; and “Best Power Lunch – Las Vegas” by Worth magazine.

The acclaimed French brasserie also received an “A” in every category by the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Comme Ça’s famed ‘Penicillin’ was selected as “Best Cocktail” by Vegas Seven weekly newspaper. For reservations, call 877.893.2001 or 702.698.7910
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YOUR LAS VEGAS BUCKET LIST

BY JOHN PRZYBYS
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

It’s a bizarre irony of living in a city packed with so much to do, but face it: How many things – uniquely Las Vegas-type things – have you always intended to get around to doing but, somehow, just never found the time?

It’s OK. It’s happened to all of us. Problem is, though, that all of those Las Vegas-centric activities we’ve never gotten around to doing can – over months, years, even decades – begin to weigh on our minds and prevent us from achieving our full potential as true Las Vegans.

So we consulted a few notable Las Vegans to ask: What are the things that a true Las Vegan has to do at least once?

From their responses, we’ve compiled a sort of bucket list, not in the sense of “expensive” or “faraway” or “adventurous,” but, simply, activities that all of us who fancy ourselves Las Vegans should do sooner rather than later.

Note that our working definition of “Las Vegas” is a loose one, encompassing not only the city of Las Vegas proper but the Las Vegas Valley in general. Note, too, that none of the Vegas-defining activities we suggest is physically hazardous or asks you to violate your principles (even if we do love magician Mac King’s presumably joshing notion that “you can’t consider yourself a Las Vegan unless you’ve hidden a body in the desert”).

GO OUTSIDE.

Las Vegas is known for its indoor amusements. But true Las Vegans know that the Las Vegas Valley’s outdoors offer some pretty amazing things to do, too.

For instance, says Mark Hall-Patton, Clark County museums administrator, real Las Vegans know Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area from more than taking a quick spin around its scenic loop.
Rather, Hall-Patton says, “you’ve got to get out of your car and hike around a little bit.”

Only then can you experience Red Rock Canyon as true locals do – with fresh air in your lungs, the sound of silence in your ears and the kiss of wind on your cheeks.

And when you do get around to taking that long-postponed, Vegas-defining hike, Hall-Patton and other contributors suggest Red Rock’s Lost Creek trail, an easy, kid-friendly trek of just less than a mile that offers great scenery, a few petroglyphs and, if the season is right, a waterfall.

“Maybe you shouldn’t do that in mid-July, but especially in the fall or winter when the falls are actually flowing, it’s great,” Hall-Patton says.

Real Las Vegans also know that the valley offers amazing opportunities for wildlife-gazing. Gary Waddell, veteran KLAS-TV, Channel 8 anchor/reporter, says every Las Vegan should make at least one trip to Boulder City to check out desert bighorn sheep at Hemenway Park.

Desert bighorn sheep – Nevada’s state animal, Waddell notes – “are there almost every afternoon,” he says.

At the other end of the valley, Waddell suggests driving to Blue Diamond Park for a look at wild burros, Nevada’s most irascible animal (OK, not an official title, but still).

“They’re not always there, and you can’t always see them,” he says, but they often can be seen around the baseball diamonds.

Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, west of Las Vegas off of West Charleston Boulevard.

Hemenway Park, 401 Ville Drive, Boulder City.

Blue Diamond Park, off Route 159, Blue Diamond.

TOUR HOOVER DAM.

Hoover Dam is Southern Nevada’s version of the Empire State Building: Just as so many New Yorkers never make it to the top of the latter, an amazing number of Southern Nevadans never make it inside the former.

“Hoover Dam is one of those things that I think we take for granted because we live here,” says Alan Feldman, MGM Resorts International senior vice president of public affairs. “And to see it – to just experience it – it truly is one of the great wonders of the world.”

The new Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, which opened in October 2010 about a quarter-mile downstream from the dam, offers even more incentive for locals to finally visit the Vegas-defining structure.

“You should do the (dam) tour, but now you should walk the bridge,” Hall-Patton says. “I have, and it’s spectacular. The view of the dam is just amazing.”
Hoover Dam, off U.S. 93 southeast of Las Vegas.

RIDE A THRILL RIDE ON TOP OF THE STRATOSPHERE TOWER

The Stratosphere has become the most distinctive feature of Las Vegas’ skyline. And besides offering locals a great view of the valley that they call home, the tower is, itself, home to some pretty freaky amusements.

“There are scary rides all over the world, but there’s nothing that high and that genuinely frightening,” says King, whose blend of magic and comedy can be seen at Harrah’s Las Vegas.
When he took his first jaunt on the Big Shot – which takes riders straight up and then, quickly, straight down – “my understanding was that it was a slow cranking up, then you’re in a free fall,” he says.
“So we were just waiting for the click, click, click of a roller coaster, then a drop. But it just took you directly to the top.”

The results were both frightening and memorable, King says, and something every Las Vegan should experience at least once.

The Stratosphere, 2000 Las Vegas Blvd. South.

CATCH A SUPER SUMMER THEATRE PRODUCTION AT SPRING MOUNTAIN RANCH STATE PARK.

“I used to perform in those,” novelist Vicki Pettersson says. “I love those.”

Pettersson – author of the best-selling “Signs of the Zodiac” urban fantasy series, whose new series, “The Celestial Blues,” kicks off with the release of “The Taken” on June 12 – performed with the Rainbow Company back then.

But even now, Pettersson says, “I try to get out there every summer.”

“You’ve got to do that, with the picnic and the blanket and the whole thing,” Feldman agrees. “You feel like you’ve come to a completely different place. The quality is outstanding and, especially on a summertime evening, it’s so beautiful out there.”

Spring Mountain Ranch State Park, west of Las Vegas off of West Charleston Boulevard.

CRUISE THE STRIP FROM ONE END TO THE OTHER.

Ideally, we would add, on a warm summer night and in a convertible.

With all due respect to Maryland Parkway and Sahara Avenue and Fremont Street and all of our other historically significant streets, the Strip is the patch of pavement that defines Las Vegas, and every Las Vegan worthy of the name should spend some time taking in the Strip’s colors, energy and vibe on four wheels.

Sure, cruising the packed roadway might take a while. So, Pettersson jokes, “just pack a lunch cooler in the back” and enjoy the ride.

HAVE A DRINK AT THE PEPPERMILL’S FIRESIDE LOUNGE.

Artist Tim Bavington notes that director Martin Scorsese – and others, both famous and not – have made good artistic use of the Peppermill’s retro-classy vibe.

The rest of us, meanwhile, have made – or should make – use of the Peppermill’s Fireside Lounge as a place to relax with a few friends and enjoy the magical combination of a flaming pond and a well-made drink
.
Doing so, at least once, is a must for a Las Vegan, Bavington says. And while the Peppermill also is a fine place to dine, “really, it’s a drink and the Fireside Lounge,” he says.
The Peppermill, 2985 Las Vegas Blvd. South.

HAVE A FROZEN CUSTARD AT LUV-IT.

Nothing against Baskin-Robbins or Dairy Queen or other purveyors of frosty treats in the valley, but Luv-It, Las Vegas’ favorite simple frozen custard stand, long has been a unique pleasure for locals.
Yet, stopping by for a treat has become so routine for so many of us that we often forget how Vegas-centric a trip to Luv-It is.

So, Feldman says, “you’ve got to have that on the list.”

Luv-It Frozen Custard, 505 E. Oakey Blvd.

SEE “JUBILEE!”

Every Las Vegan should “see a showgirl show” at least once, Pettersson says.

Problem is, if you’ve kept putting off your vow to catch a classic Las Vegas, showgirl-packed revue, your options have diminished greatly over the past decade or so.

So, now’s as good a time as any to catch “Jubilee!” at Bally’s, which provides audiences with the sort of show that long was, but no longer is, a staple of Strip entertainment.

Finding a showgirl show is a lot harder than it used to be, says Pettersson – who, by the way, danced in the show herself for about a year – “but I’d put that on my bucket list.”

Beth Lano, KNPR-FM, 88.9 announcer and a musician who now is playing in the orchestra of “Phantom – The Las Vegas Spectacular,” agrees, saying, “You can’t really call yourself a Las Vegan if you haven’t seen ‘Jubilee!’

“Showgirls are a vanishing breed,” Lano says. “I think they should be put on the endangered species list.”
But, she adds, “Jubilee!” is “vintage Vegas.”

Bally’s, 3645 Las Vegas Blvd. South.

CATCH A UNLV RUNNIN’ REBELS BASKETBALL GAME.

Sure, college basketball games are played all around the country to rabid hometown fans. But John Gremo, a chef/instructor in the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ hotel college, would argue that no college basketball game is like a Runnin’ Rebels basketball game.

Gremo is a UNLV grad who has been attending basketball games since 1989. He was there during the team’s national championship days and says the party atmosphere today is reminiscent of that heady period.
“I’ve been to other arenas,” Gremo says, but a Rebels game at Thomas & Mack Center “is rocking. You’ve got the cheerleaders, the fireworks, all of it.”

Thomas & Mack Center, 4505 S. Maryland Parkway.

EDUCATE YOURSELF ABOUT LAS VEGAS’ CULTURAL DNA.

As Las Vegans, we’re heirs to our city’s cultural history, and knowing something about our collective past is a requirement – even a responsibility – for us all.

So, our consultants suggest, learn about the mob, atomic testing and neon, if only to educate visitors about three of Las Vegas’ most intriguing influences.

The Mob Museum – officially the National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement – is “so well-presented and so well thought out,” Lano says. And, Mayor Carolyn Goodman says, “there’s not a person that has been through that hasn’t said, ‘Wow.’ ”

Lano adds that Las Vegans are lucky to have two easily accessible national museums – the National Atomic Testing Museum is the other – that explore two historically significant, particularly for locals, facets of our history.

Then, Goodman says, the Neon Museum downtown, “features some classic signs from Las Vegas,” including signs from long-deceased resorts, all of which are “part of our history.”

The National Museum of Organized Crime & Law Enforcement, 300 Stewart Ave.

The National Atomic Testing Museum, 755 E. Flamingo Road.

The Neon Museum, 821 Las Vegas Blvd. North.

Contact reporter John Przybys at jprzybys@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0280.

Totals Report

MLB TOTALS REPORT

Team                                     Total     Home     Away

Arizona Diamondbacks 18 – 16        12 – 7     6 – 9

Atlanta Braves                 19 – 14         6 – 6    13 – 8

Baltimore Orioles            17 – 17       8 – 11    9 – 6

Boston Red Sox               22 – 11      12 – 5    10 – 6

Chicago Cubs                   15 – 18       7 – 12    8 – 6

Chicago White Sox          15 – 18      8 – 8     7 – 10

Cincinnati Reds              14 – 18      8 – 9     6 – 9

Cleveland Indians          17 – 16     7 – 10     10 – 6

Colorado Rockies           18 – 14    11 – 6        7 – 8

Detroit Tigers                  14 – 19     9 – 8       5 – 11

Houston Astros              20 – 13    10 – 7      10 – 6

Kansas City Royals        15 – 17      7 – 9        8 – 8

Los Angeles Angels        11 – 22      6 – 11      5 – 11

Los Angeles Dodgers     16 – 16       8 – 9       8 – 7

Miami Marlins                16 – 17      10 – 3      6 – 14

Milwaukee Brewers      21 – 12       11 – 7      10 – 5

Minnesota Twins           16 – 17       9 – 8        7 – 9

New York Mets              20 – 13      5 – 10     15 – 3

New York Yankees         14 – 19      8 – 11      6 – 8

Oakland Athletics          13 – 21       7 – 12     6 – 9

Philadelphia Phils         20 – 15       9 – 7      11 – 8

Pittsburgh Pirates          8 – 23        3 – 13     5 – 10

San Diego Padres          15 – 18      10 – 12     5 – 6

San Francisco Giants    15 – 18       4 – 10    11 – 8

Seattle Mariners            16 – 20       6 – 9     10 – 11

St. Louis Cardinals        17 – 16       12 – 3      5 – 13

Tampa Bay Rays           15 – 18       6 – 9        9 – 9

Texas Rangers               14 – 18      4 – 10      10 – 8

Toronto Blue Jays         17 – 17       11 – 4       6 – 13

Washington Nationals 14 – 19       7 – 9        7 – 10
Updated Sun May 13 10:30 PM EDT
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NBA Playoff Angles

By Marc Lawrence
VegasInsider.com

NBA Playoff Payoffs

To the unsuspecting gambler, the NBA often times simply means “Nothing But Agony.” To the informed, however, it represents a “Nice Bankroll Advantage.”

Knowing the difference is half the battle. Having substantively sound edges in your favor is the other half, especially during the postseason.

With the 2011-12 NBA regular season now in the history books, let’s take a look at how this season’s 16 playoff participants have fared in the post season over the last 21 years.

Listed below is a chart containing each team’s SU (Straight-Up) and ATS (Against–the-Spread) performance record in all playoff games since 1991, along with a key BEST and WORST playoff ATS trend for each team since 1991.

Let’s have a look…

Eastern Conference
Team        SU Record… ATS Record… Best Angle…                 Worst Angle

Boston       72-67            68-68-3           8-2 ATS away off loss             1-12 ATS fav > 2 off one win exact

Indiana      81-76            85-66-6          7-0-1 ATS off loss                     0-5 ATS home off ATS win

Miami        71-68            65-70-4        10-1 ATS off DD loss rds Two & Three        xxx

Philly       38-50             42-45-1           6-1 ATS DD dog                        0-6 ATS Game Two off loss

Western Conference

Clippers   11-4                12-13              4-0 ATS home off SU/ATS loss       1-6 ATS away off SU/ATS win

Lakers   153-100         121-124-8        9-0 ATS dog off loss                          1-11 ATS off BB losses, last as fav

Ok City     63-67             59-68-3       11-3 ATS Game Two off loss              1-12 ATS off ATS win

Spurs      129-98            119-101-7      9-1 ATS Round Four vs opp off win  1-8 ATS dog vs opp off BB SU/ATS losses

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Lucky’s  Division Futures

By VI News
VegasInsider.com

Odds to win 2012-13 Pro Football Divisons from Lucky’s Race & Sports Book

NFC East
Philadelphia 7/5
N.Y. Giants 8/5
Dallas 11/5
Washington 7/1

NFC North
Green Bay 1/2
Detroit 5/2
Chicago 7/2
Minnesota 15/1

NFC South
New Orleans 5/9
Atlanta 2/1
Carolina 4/1
Tampa Bay 15/1

NFC West
San Francisco 5/13
Arizona 7/2
Seattle 4/1
St. Louis 10/1

AFC East
New England 1/3
N.Y. Jets 7/2
Buffalo 5/1
Miami 9/1

AFC North
Baltimore 6/5
Pittsburgh 3/2
Cincinnati 12/5
Cleveland 11/1

AFC South
Houston 1/5
Tennessee 7/2
Indianapolis 10/1
Jacksonville 10/1

AFC West
Denver 8/5
San Diego 11/5
Kansas City 5/2
Oakland 3/1

MLB Power Rating from Statfox

Go to www.statfox.com for the most complete set of stats

Team Power Ratings
To calculate a hypothetical line, divide the higher rating by the lower rating. Multiply this result by 100 and add 14 to the result for home field advantage.
Group By Division

Rank Team Rating
1 TEXAS 146
2 ST LOUIS 143
3 LA DODGERS 121
4 TAMPA BAY 120
5 ARIZONA 115
6 WASHINGTON 115
7 DETROIT 115
8 NY YANKEES 113
9 SAN FRANCISCO 111
10 PHILADELPHIA 109
11 BALTIMORE 103
12 LA ANGELS 102
13 ATLANTA 100
14 KANSAS CITY 100
15 TORONTO 99
16 MIAMI 98
17 OAKLAND 95
18 MILWAUKEE 92
19 HOUSTON 92
20 CINCINNATI 92
21 CHICAGO CUBS 90
22 BOSTON 90
23 COLORADO 89
24 NY METS 87
25 CLEVELAND 86
26 SAN DIEGO 86
27 SEATTLE 85
28 CHI WHITE SOX 82
29 PITTSBURGH 70
30 MINNESOTA 67

League Power Rating Averages

League Rating
AMERICAN CENTRAL 89.8
AMERICAN EAST 105
AMERICAN WEST 106.9
NATIONAL CENTRAL 96.5
NATIONAL EAST 101.8
NATIONAL WEST 104.5
Overall 100.4

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MLB Betting Notes

May 7, 2012
By Micah Roberts
VegasInsider.com 

O’s and Nats continue to surprise
There are all kinds of happenings currently going on in baseball to give everyone a thrill such as Bryce Harper stealing home, Albert Pujols finally hitting his first home run of the season and the Dodgers playing with passion, but the top story through the first month of baseball has to be the party going on in our nation’s capital of Washington D.C.

Both the Nationals and Orioles are in first place!

D.C. hasn’t had a lot to be excited about from their sports team over the last decade other than their hockey team. It’s a great sports town, but they haven’t had much to cheer about. The Redskins have been mediocre, the basketball team has been at the bottom of the standings forever and their baseball parks have only been filled when the Yankees, Red Sox and Phillies come to town.

But following Sunday’s action, Baltimore and Washington are both in first place and it has the area focusing once again on baseball. The Orioles (19-9) last won the American League East in 1997 and have only finished better than fourth once, a third-place finish in 2004. They’ve finished dead last in their division for the last four seasons.

For the Nationals (18-10), they had their best season last year finishing third, one game under .500, but had finished last in five of the six seasons prior since the franchise moved from Montreal. If we throw in the Senators record before they became the Twins, the last time DC finished first was in 1933, and the only time they ever won a World Series was in 1924.

Now granted, it’s still early and the combination of the Orioles starting pitching and the Nationals 24th ranked hitting (.238) could do them in rather quickly, but this is exactly what is so great about baseball. It’s about the possibilities and hopes of all the fans and players believing that something good could happen from a place filled with long lost memories.

The Orioles silenced many of their critics by winning five of their last six games, and doing so in New York and Boston, the so-called “Deans of the AL East.” The theme coming into last week was ’we’ll see what the O’s are made of this week’ and they then proceeded to play inspired ball in the most intimidating parks of baseball. The Boston series was perfect microcosm of the shifting of powers within the division with the Red Sox failing in two extra inning games at home and the upstart O‘s taking it to them with inspired play.

The Nationals made a statement in a similar way slaying their nemesis, the Phillies, from their short existence and doing so using the Phillies model of success. The Nationals aren’t going to score very many runs. They currently have only posted 96 runs on the season, the fourth least in baseball, but it’s the pitching that carries them daily. The Nats pitching staff has the best ERA (2.59) in baseball, almost a half a run better than the NL’s second best in St. Louis. Their current dominance nightly on the mound almost has the feel of the Phillies squad from the last few seasons.

The Orioles currently lead the AL in ERA (2.78) which comes as a major surprise and is the reason where they’re at right now. Their starters could use a boost from Zach Britton when he comes back, but it’s been the bullpen that has been igniting wins and shutting down their opponents. Baltimore’s bullpen has the lowest ERA (1.41) in all of baseball with an 8-2 mark and has allowed only four home runs, which is the best in the AL.

Again, it’s only May and it might be too premature to talk about a DC area World Series, but the thought of it alone is exciting. Nothing against the Yankees, Rangers, Red Sox and Phillies, but a DC World Series would be huge for the game and also give hope to all of the teams around the league that can’t seem to penetrate the evil empire’s death star.

Harper Legend Grows

As if being on the cover of Sports Illustrated as a high school player, being the number one overall draft pick and having one of the quickest bats speeds ever wasn’t enough to fuel the legendary status of rookie Bryce Harper, the kid pulls out his best Ty Cobb-Jackie Robinson impression and steals home. It didn’t matter that the Nationals eventually lost Sunday night to the Phillies because the entire baseball world got to see what a gamer Harper is. His baseball instincts and knowledge of the game seem to be just a little bit higher than most veterans. He plays the game with a cocky confidence and arrogance in a good way that reminds some of the way Pete Rose played.

The play came after getting hit by a pitch from Cole Hamels, who was sending the kid a message about respect or ‘know your place rookie’ or something like that, it was pretty obvious. After going first to third on a Jayson Werth single, Harper was watching the motion of Hamels throwing to first in an attempt to keep Werth closer with two outs. On Hamel’s next deliberate toss to first, Harper was gone and beat the throw home. It was a heads-up play contrived on his own and a play we rarely see in baseball. It’s definitely the stuff legends are made of.

The Best Prices to Bet

The most profitable line this season out of all baseball games played has been playing any game at plus-115 no matter who or where it is. Sides at +115 have gone 22-16 for a return of +930, including 12-4 at home at +980.

The minus-120 favorite has gone 27-14 this season with a profit of +1020 by simply being laying the number whether it’s a home or away team, although the home side is a little better alone at +560.

If you took all road teams at +145 and +160, you’d be up +1580 at a 15-6 record.

The point of all this is to take a shot with a few underdogs in the higher price range while also valuing the small favorites a bit more. Of course, this stuff all cycles around and we’ll likely be looking at an entirely new landscape next month. However, taking plus-money and laying low prices at the best numbers is how the professional bettors stay in business during the summer. .

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Pitchers Report – May

By Marc Lawrence
VegasInsider.com    
The running of the Kentucky Derby each year signals MLB enters its 2nd month of play. And with it a handful of surprise teams take center stage. The key to sustaining will be success, or lack of it, from the pitching staffs. With that thought in mind, let’s zero in on pitchers that will look to keep their team in the race and those that may pull up before they hit the wire.

Listed below are hurlers that have enjoyed a two-to-one or better success ratio in team starts the last three seasons during the month of May. On the flip side, we’ve also listed pitchers that struggle in May team starts, winning 33% percent or less of their efforts. To qualify pitchers must have made a minimum of 10 starts, with at least one start each May over the last three years.

I’ll be back next month with June’s Good Month Pitchers. Until then, enjoy…

GOOD MONTH PITCHERS:

Cueto, Johnny – 12-4
Notes – The Cincinnati right-hander was very sharp in April, with right hand hitters batting a plaintive .127 against him. Cueto uses a low to mid-90′s fastball and tilted slider that he expertly changes speeds with.

Gallardo, Yovanni – 12-5
Notes – Gallardo is the ace of the Milwaukee staff and challenges hitters with a 90-95 MPH fastball and has a late-breaking slider. His curveball spins tightly and has excellent downward movement and he’ll mix in the occasional change to give hitters something different to look at. Gallardo has not been up to his usual standards just yet, having troubles with left-hand batters. Possibly in May, his rhythm will return.

Hamels, Cole – 13-3
Notes – Hamels is an underappreciated hurler who great command. The Phillies lefty mixes two and four-seam fastballs in the low 90′s and thanks to Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee, has developed a nasty cutter he can work both sides of the plate with. When he throws his two-strike changeup, batters swear it seems to back up, like Hamels has it on a string.

Johnson, Josh – 10-5
Notes – After a rocky start, Johnson has begun to find a groove utilizing his hard slider and fastball combination. If the Marlins top pitcher can regain his command, he will start missing more bats (opponents hit .337 against him in April) and be the top thrower Miami needs to compete in the NL East.

Kershaw, Clayton – 12-6
Notes – One of the best lefty’s in baseball has developed the skill to command his four-pitch repertoire. Still only 24 years old, Kershaw can throw strikes when he needs to spot any pitch where he wants. His continued growth has seen his ground ball-to-fly ball outs skyrocket this season.

Lester, Jon – 12-6
Notes – Normally, Lester is one of the finest early season pitchers in the American League, but his walks were up significantly for April (until his final start of the month vs. Chicago) and that number will have to come down in May to match previous win totals. Reports have his delivery a little sped up causing more pitches up and away.

Lowe, Derrick – 13-5
Notes – Lowe might not be as old as Jamie Moyer, but he seems to have been around as long. Lowe will be 39 years old on June 1 and no longer has the velocity with his sinker/slider combo package from his younger days and has more balls hit with pace even low in the zone. Strictly fifth starter material and at his age, will be more effective early in the season than late, when the innings take their toll.

Peavy, Jake – 11-5
Notes – Is Jake Peavy finally healthy? It sure seems that way as early returns have a 6-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio and opposing batters are hitting just .162 versus the White Sox right-hander. The fastball is not the same as younger days, but the snap on breaking pitches has made for lunging swings with little or no contact.

Porcello, Rick – 10-4
Notes – Though just 23, Porcello has not accelerated at the same pace as Kershaw, leaving Detroit fans yearning for more. For a guy 6’6 with a rangy body, his career 4.8 strikeouts per nine innings is unremarkable. The Tigers hurler needs to trust his mid-90′s fastball more to become the pitcher he should be.

Price, David – 9-4
Notes – Have you noticed that four of May’s top performers are left-handed? The last in alphabetical order is Tampa Bay’s prized possession, David Price. The Nashville native has a nice loose delivery from the three-quarters arm slot and has lively late-moving fastball that occasionally touches 96-97 MPH.

Verlander, Justin – 13-5
Notes – Arguably the best pitcher in baseball who is at the peak of his skills, Verlander has old-school power pitchers durability and often will have greater velocity late in games with his electric fastball. The Detroit ace also is intelligent and keeps hitters off-balance by varying his pitch patterns.

BAD MONTH PITCHERS:

Floyd, Gavin – 4-11
Notes – The White Sox right-hander is very close to a .500 record-wise for his big league career, despite always giving the appearance of having better stuff. Floyd, actually has three dependable pitches, but has a tendency to run hot or cold for a series of starts. May has traditionally been a “cold” month for him.

Hernandez, Felix – 5-13
Notes – King Felix deserves his fair share of the blame for his rumpled record this month; however, this is not all on him. Except for a couple of surprise seasons in 2009 and 2007, Seattle has not been a good team and their schedule over the past several years in May has featured many of the heavyweights in baseball, contributing to his second-rate record.

Masterson, Justin – 4-12
Notes – The Jamaican born right-hander has been on shabby Cleveland teams for the most part. Masterson is a rare side-armed starter and tosses a heavy sinker along with a low 90′s fastball. Where he gets into trouble is when he cannot control the movement of his pitches, leading to walks and lineups that are lefty-laden. To start the month, lefties are hitting .281 against Masterson.

Weaver, Jered – 6-12
Notes – It is almost inconceivable the Angels top pitcher would ever have a bad month based on his history. Similar to Hernandez, the Halos of Anaheim and Weaver end up playing Boston and the Yankees frequently during this time period, along with division games, which has contributed to a faulty record.

Wells, Randy – 3-8
Notes – From the Ripley’s Believe It or Not, the 6’6 Cubs pitcher is actually a converted catcher. Wells depends on placement because of his well-below average fastball and will use a change-up more than once to hitters in their time at bat. When Wells cannot spot his pitches, he’s throwing room service pitches.

Mayweather Wins By Unanimous Decision

Article Courtesy of www.espn.com and Associated Press

Floyd Mayweather Jr. shined in a tough test from Miguel Cotto, winning by unanimous decision to capture a piece of the 154-pound title.Tags: Miguel Cotto, Floyd Mayweather Jr.

LAS VEGAS — Floyd Mayweather Jr. finally found himself in a real fight, complete with a bloody nose and an opponent in Miguel Cotto who never was going to quit.

As usual, he found a way to win.

Mayweather used his speed and accuracy Saturday night to take a unanimous decision over a game Cotto in a bruising bout to win a piece of the 154-pound title. But it wasn’t easy, as Cotto landed some hard punches and kept attacking all the way to the final bell.

“You’re a hell of a champion,” Mayweather told Cotto in the ring afterward. “You’re the toughest guy I ever fought.”

Mayweather dominated late, rocking Cotto in the 12th round to pull out a win and remain unbeaten in 43 fights. Unlike most of his fights, though, Mayweather got his nose bloodied and engaged in some bruising exchanges he usually likes to avoid.

Two judges scored the fight 117-111 and the third had it 118-110. ESPN.com had it 116-112 for Mayweather. The Associated Press had Mayweather winning 116-112.

Fighting just a few weeks before he enters a county jail to serve a three-month sentence for domestic abuse, Mayweather found himself in a tough fight against a game opponent who never stopped moving forward. But he was faster and more accurate than Cotto and seemed to wear him down in the final rounds.

In the last round, Mayweather landed his best punch of the night, a left uppercut that seemed to hurt Cotto. He followed that with several flurries to the head to wrap up a decision that until the later rounds had been in doubt.

The decision was roundly booed by the crowd at the MGM Grand arena, which cheered wildly every time Cotto landed a punch.

“He’s a tough competitor,” Mayweather said. “He came to fight; he didn’t just come to survive. I dug down and fought him back.”

Cotto was never down, though he seemed hurt several times during the fight, particularly in the 12th round.

“The judges said I lost the fight; I can’t do anything else,” Cotto said. “I’m happy with my fight and performance and so is my family. I can’t ask for anything else.”

Mayweather, who was guaranteed $32 million, was forced to fight every minute of all 12 rounds against the Puerto Rican champion. He did it after weighing in at 151 pounds, the heaviest he has been for a fight.

The weight didn’t seem to affect Mayweather, and neither did the heavier 10-ounce gloves at super welterweight. But he took some punishment, including a bloody nose during the middle rounds, before coming back to dish some out in the later rounds.

“When you fight on pay per view, you have to give the fans what they want, and that’s excitement,” Mayweather said.

Mayweather entered the ring unbeaten in his 16-year pro career, and a 6-1 favorite to stay that way. The fighter who has become the biggest pay-per-view attraction in the sport padded his already thick wallet with the fight, but he was forced to earn every penny of it.

The win gave Mayweather the 154-pound title held by Cotto, and assured him of still being a champion when he reports to jail June 1 for a sentence stemming from a domestic abuse case involving his former girlfriend and their children.

“In life there’s obstacles,” Mayweather said. “When it comes to June 1, I have to accept it like a man.”

Mayweather will be in jail when Manny Pacquiao fights in the same ring on June 9 at the MGM Grand against Timothy Bradley. Though boxing fans have clamored for a Mayweather-Pacquiao fight, it has yet to be made — and may never be made.

That’s partly because of Mayweather’s insistence that Pacquiao submit to Olympic-style drug testing, though Pacquiao already has said he will do that.

“I want to fight Pacquiao but he needs to take the tests before we make that fight,” Mayweather said.

Cotto came out looking slow and overmatched in the first round, but quickly settled into a routine, attacking Mayweather from behind his left jab. But Mayweather got more aggressive coming out to start the fourth round, and landed a series of rights to the head that stunned Cotto and kept him from moving forward effectively.

Mayweather fought good portions of the fight on the ropes, using them for leverage and counterpunching to Cotto’s head when he opened up. He was not only quicker than Cotto, but more accurate, often landing in between Cotto’s defenses.

“He’s ready to quit,” trainer Roger Mayweather told his nephew after the sixth round.

But Cotto was relentless, coming forward and hitting Mayweather with good shots to the head. Toward the end of the eighth round he landed several punches to the head, prompting Mayweather to shake his head as if they didn’t hurt, but by then Mayweather was bleeding from the nose and looked like he had taken some punishment.

Punch stats showed Mayweather landing 179 of 687 punches to 105 of 506 to Cotto.

Cotto, who fell to 37-3, was guaranteed his biggest purse ever, $8 million.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
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Alvarez Pounds Mosley To Retain Belt

Article courtesy of the Associated Press

Saul “Canelo” Alvarez turned in a dominant performance to beat Shane Mosley by unanimous decision and retain the junior middleweight title.

LAS VEGAS — Junior middleweight titlist Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, the 21-year-old Mexican star, was matched with old warhorse and former champ Shane Mosley for one reason: to etch the name of the likely Hall of Famer on his résumé.

And etch it he did in the co-feature, winning a unanimous decision to retain his title for the fourth time on the card headlined by Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s junior middleweight title challenge of Miguel Cotto on Saturday night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.

Alvarez, with his youth and power, muscled his way past Mosley, whose reflexes and speed are gone at age 40 after a 19-year career and hundreds of amateur fights.

But unlike his past three fights — in which Mosley did almost nothing in losses to Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao and a draw with Sergio Mora — Mosley came to fight.

His will was clearly there. But he could not make his body fire at will as he once did.

Alvarez was happy to take advantage, cleaning Mosley’s clock with numerous clean right hands and left hooks. Both fighters worked hard to the body, but Alvarez seemed to win that battle, too, on his way to winning by scores of 119-109, 119-109 and 118-110. ESPN.com had it for Alvarez, 118-110.

“This was a great experience,” Alvarez said. “I felt really good and I want to thank Shane for giving me this experience. He’s a great fighter, a true veteran. I tried to knock him out. He took a lot of punches, but it didn’t work.”

Alvarez (40-0-1, 29 KOs) repeatedly rocked Mosley (46-8-1, 39 KOs) with shots, landing 348 of 673 punches (52 percent). Mosley couldn’t get away from even looping right hands. It was the most blows landed on Mosley in the 34 of his fights that CompuBox has tracked.

“His defense was really good and he was really fast,” said Mosley, who has won five titles in three divisions. “He can go a long ways. When the kids start to beat you, you might need to start going to promoting. I didn’t expect him to be that fast or that good.

“He’s up there with the top guys [I've faced]. Mayweather is fast, Cotto, all those guys I fought. He’s up there with them.”

Alvarez, fighting on the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo and with the crowd behind him, suffered a small cut over his left eye in the third round from an accidental head-butt, but it was a dominant round for him, including rocking Mosley with a clean right hand. The cut never became a serious factor, even though there was a trickle of blood running down Alvarez’s face in the late rounds.

“The cut didn’t really bother me,” he said. “My corner knew how to handle the situation. This is a huge night for me, all of the experience, the cut, all of it was new.”

Mosley managed to land 183 of 745 punches (25 percent), according to CompuBox.
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Nate Diaz Calls on Guillotine, Submits Jim Miller in UFC on Fox 3 Main Event

By Brian Knapp
Read more from Brian at the superb mma website www.sherdog.com

Nate Diaz did what 23 previous men could not: he finished Jim Miller.

“The Ultimate Fighter” Season 5 winner submitted Miller with a second-round guillotine choke in the UFC on Fox 3 headliner on Saturday at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, N.J. Diaz (16-7, 11-5 UFC) cinched the submission and coaxed the tapout from the New Jersey native 4:09 into round two, as he won for the third time in as many outings.

“I’m happy to come out and perform for you guys,” he said. “[Miller] is a great fighter. I have nothing bad to say about the guy. I had a hard time being motivated to train for this fight, so I had to [think about fighting] behind enemy lines.”

Miller’s game plan became clear from the outset, as he initiated the clinch and tried to engage Diaz in close quarters. It was ineffective, and once the two men separated, Diaz established his superiority on the feet. The 27-year-old Cesar Gracie disciple floored Miller with a straight left hand late in round one. The AMA Fight Club ace withstood the blow, but his face was bloodied and he was struggling to keep pace.

Diaz did not let him breathe in the second. He battered him with the high-volume punching attack that has become his calling card. Miller (21-4, 10-3 UFC) staggered forward and soon found himself trapped in the choke. Diaz adjusted his grip, rolled into full mount and sealed the deal there, perhaps cementing his position as the No. 1 contender for the UFC lightweight crown.

“He had my number. Nate is a tough guy. I knew that coming in,” Miller said. “He was just landing strikes and hurting me. [The game plan was to apply] pressure and not let him use his range, but he found it and went to work. Nothing was really surprising. He deserves that [title] shot. There shouldn’t be anything in his way now.”

Surging Hendricks Outpoints Koscheck

The thudding left hand of Johny Hendricks carried him to a narrow split decision over perennial welterweight contender Josh Koscheck in the co-main event. All three judges scored it 29-28, two of them for Hendricks (13-1, 8-1 UFC), who has won his last four fights.

Hendricks brought the battle to his opponent with clean power punching and did some subtle work in the clinch, as well. However, his left hook — the same punch that wiped out Koscheck’s former American Kickboxing Academy teammate, Jon Fitch, in December — was the most effective weapon in the 15-minute encounter. Hendricks delivered it with regularity, leaving visible damage on Koscheck’s right eye, and mixed in a sneaky right uppercut and occasional knees when the opportunities presented themselves.

Koscheck (17-6, 15-6 UFC), whose 15 wins inside the Octagon rank fifth on the all-time list, made one final push late in the match. He put Hendricks, a two-time national champion wrestler at Oklahoma State University, on the ground, passed to half guard and worked from top position. However, it was not enough to swing the decision in his favor.

“I hit him with everything I had, and I did everything I could,” said Hendricks, who absorbed a number of stout right hands from Koscheck. “Hat’s off to that dude. He’s a real fighter. Nothing [surprised me]. I knew he had heavy hands and he was going to be one tough fighter. I just thank God for this.”

Belcher beat Palhares at his own game.Belcher Stymies, Stops Palhares

Roufusport representative Alan Belcher stopped Brazilian leg lock connoisseur Rousimar Palhares on first-round ground strikes in a featured middleweight bout. Belcher (18-6, 9-4 UFC) buried his foe with punches, elbows and hammerfists 4:18 into round one.

Palhares (14-4, 7-3 UFC) expectedly snatched a leg and secured a takedown from the start, fishing for kneebars and his trademark heel hook. Belcher weathered the engagement and turned the tables, threatening the Brazilian Top Team with a twister before moving into top position and settling in guard. From there, he let his hands and elbows fly. Before long, Palhares was shying away from contact, forcing referee Dan Miragliotta to intervene.

“That’s what I’m talking about. Why don’t you guys ask ‘Toquinho’ who the baddest man in MMA on the ground is. It ain’t him no more,” said Belcher, who has pieced together four consecutive wins. I’ve been doing this all the time in training camp. I was so ready. I wasn’t scared in this fight. “

Belcher then took aim at reigning UFC middleweight king Anderson Silva.

“I just wanted to prove that I could beat the best guy on the ground, and I can beat the best guy standing up,” he said. “That belt is mine. I’m coming for it, and I think you know it now.”

Johnson Stops Barry in First

Strikeforce import Lavar Johnson obliterated Pat Barry with a violent volley of punches in the first round of their heavyweight showcase. Barry (7-5, 4-5 UFC) met his end 4:38 into round one.

Johnson (16-5, 2-0 UFC) was far from flawless. The fight spilled onto the ground early, and he was exposed. Barry moved to mount and ultimately transitioned to side control, a position from which he threatened to finish it with a keylock.

Johnson freed himself, returned to his feet and let his thunderous power do the rest. He backed Barry into the cage and unleashed a savage barrage of right uppercuts and left hooks, mixing in a knee to the body and an elbow to the head for good measure. After one final hook to the head, Barry folded.

“I feel great,” Johnson said. “Pat is a very tough guy. I’m just happy to be here in the UFC.”

Movie Review – The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

By Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times Film Critic

“The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”is an affectionately told comedy about a bunch of English retirees who trade a bleak British future for an elegant retirement hotel in the middle of India, one that promises to make those final years truly golden — and for a fraction of the price at home.

Sounds like a dream, or a scheme, and in truth it’s a bit of both as neither life nor the “Marigold Hotel” turn out exactly as one might wish. But when the bags are packed with pride, prejudice, problems and prospects by some of Britain’sbest — including Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson and Maggie Smith — it makes the trip worth taking. Complementing all that aging grace is Dev Patel, the breakout star of”Slumdog Millionaire,” as the irrepressible young owner of the Marigold. Aptly named Sonny, he is trying ever so hard to gloss over any rough patches — at the hotel and in his life or his guests’. It all makes for a movie whose infectious charm outweighs some of the predictability that slips in around the edges.

While the film’s infrastructure may be creaky at times, not unlike the leaking faucets and crumbling rooms of the aging Marigold Hotel, its heart is solid gold. It starts with director John Madden, who is always adept at spinning a yarn; here, he has completely embraced the whimsy of screenwriter Ol Parker’s adaptation of Deborah Moggach’s novel “These Foolish Things,” about “outsourcing” one’s retirement to India. That country’s Rajasthan region, where the film is set, lends its exotic temples, emerging industry and teeming humanity to provide a vibrant backdrop, and it’s beautifully shot by cinematographer Ben Davis, who last worked with the director on”The Debt,” which was released in the U.S. last year.

After a rough trip — airport delays and a bus ride that would have cowed more youthful mortals — the group of seven strangers turns up on the Marigold Hotel’s steps. Most come from Britain’s not-quite-upper-crust, and there are early snapshots of the lives they are leaving to set up things.

Evelyn (Dench), who will become the central voice of the film as she launches a blog to record her India adventure, is a recent widow who finds the husband she trusted left her with debts she never imagined. Graham (Wilkinson) is the youngest, a 50ish judge who opts for early retirement to deal with unresolved issues in India, where he lived as a boy and first fell in love. Providing most of the conflict are the long-married, ill-matched Douglas (Nighy) and Jean (Penelope Wilton). Completing the set — the filmmakers want to make sure they have all the types covered — is the never-married Muriel (Smith), who managed someone else’s household affairs and is facing a hip replacement, and the saucy singles Madge (Celia Imrie) and Norman (Ronald Pickup), both still hoping to score a rich mate.

One by one, each character faces life-changing, and challenging, moments, which require that they either embrace or reject the possibility of transformation. Sonny has his own trials — how to save the hotel and win the heart of his girlfriend, and obtain his mother’s acceptance of both — though with the ebullient optimism that Patel lets vibrate through Sonny, it is hard to believe that things won’t eventually turn out fine.

This exceptional ensemble makes aging in exotic climes feel effortlessly real, never over-reaching, appropriately fraught. Dench in particular paints a moving portrait of Evelyn as she navigates the empowerment of landing her first job — helping train those ubiquitous Indian telemarketers — and her sometimes paralyzing fear that she might not be up to the task. Madden brings just the right light touch, much as he did in the royal treat of “Shakespeare in Love,” which won seven Oscars, including best picture, in 1999.

The message of “Marigold” is ultimately one of hope, that it’s never too late to find yourself, and possibly your soul mate — that there is time to rewrite the final chapters of your life. All that uplift amid the rubble could turn saccharine, but it rarely does. Instead, “Marigold” makes you believe that despite the ups and downs, the aches and pains, sometimes life can indeed get better with age.

betsy.sharkey@latimes.com
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‘The Avengers’: Pre-assembled

by Marshall Fine – Author and film critic, hollywoodandfine.com

Here’s the best thing I can say about “The Avengers” (and no, I will NOT refer to it as “Marvel’s The Avengers,” because the branding is implicit):

It offers a couple of the biggest laughs in recent memory, including a slapstick gag worthy of Chuck Jones in his “Looney Tunes” heyday.

Thankfully, there are other nice things to say about “The Avengers,” a Marvel mash-up featuring a group of super-heroes who (almost) all have had their own movies. Don’t think of this as a sequel to the others; it’s its own thing unto itself.

And, thanks to writer-director Joss Whedon, that thing is veined with wit, even as it offers exactly the kind of action that fanboys and normal movie-goers alike want out of something like this. The wisecracks and bulls-eye one-liners aside, “The Avengers” offers big mouthfuls of action, at a scale that tickles the imagination.

Yet Whedon also realizes what the real attraction is here: It’s not the moment when these various troubled super-heroes put their own issues aside and band together to fight off a horde of invading aliens (although that’s a moment that’s worth the wait). Rather, it’s about the sturm und drang – the personal demons that goad these differently abled creatures into battling each other.

Those, after all, are the comic books that were always the best – the ones that pitted super-hero against super-hero. You always know that the super-hero will defeat the villain. But when it’s hero vs. hero, well, anything goes.

Or so it seems in this movie. You’ve got Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) vs. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor vs. Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Hulk against Black Widow (Scarlett Johannssn), Black Widow taking on Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner). And that’s not to mention the trash talk, the best of which is offered by Downey as the ever-flippant Tony Stark.

The plot is as comic-booky as it comes, drawing on clues and hints that popped up at the end of “Thor,” “Captain America” and the “Iron Man” movies. It all has to do with something called the Tesseract, a glowing cube of energy that figured in at least a couple of the previous films. SHIELD, the secretive agency headed by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), has been guarding this thing inside a mountain-top fortress – but Fury and his cohort discover just how little they understand the thing when it activates itself.

It opens a portal to, well, apparently Asgard – though it could be any evil corner of the universe where Loki (Tom Hiddleston) has been cooling his heels since he had his ass kicked last year in “Thor.” Loki, now in cahoots with a race of space aliens that look like Skeletor, pops up in this cave fortress, then casually takes over the minds of both Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and Dr. Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard), though, if I recall, he brain-blipped Selvig at the end of “Thor.”

Then Loki takes off with the Tesseract. His goal is to open the portal and let all the aliens through; together, they’ll conquer Earth and install Loki as ruler. So Nick Fury calls together all the super-heroes at his command for a pow-wow on how to lock down Loki.

But, what with egos and cross-purposes, none of these heroes plays particularly well with others. So it takes them a while to stop squabbling among themselves and team up to battle the real bad guys.
The friction between them, however, creates all the sparks that ignite the moments of pleasure in this film. The slugfest between Thor and Iron Man is imaginative and full-bodied, with the two guys nearly flattening a forest as they punish each other. And the Hulk-Thor throwdown is similarly impressive, pitting two indestructible forces against each other within an enclosed space.

The final showdown with the invading aliens – set around Grand Central Terminal in midtown Manhattan – starts slowly, but quickly gets over what is apparently the irresistible urge by directors to blow up cars and buildings to focus on the heroes and their struggles. Whedon quickly finds his groove, blending close-up hand-to-hand shots with sweepingly dynamic scenes of dogfights within New York’s concrete canyons.
He also comes up with perhaps the coolest effect in recent memory: a massive alien fighter-craft that looks and moves like a giant metal snake – or perhaps a cross between a snake and a whale. It flies, it undulates, it wreaks havoc with New York buildings – and, when it crashes, well, that’s cool, too.

Ultimately that’s what “The Avengers” is all about. With the spate of Marvel movies we’ve endured in the past three or four years, the level of computer-generated and green-screened action has risen considerably. It takes more skill – more intelligence and wit, as well as visual imagination – to create a “wow” factor. “The Avengers” definitely has it.

Yes, at 145 minutes, “The Avengers” is too long. On the other hand, it has more than a half-dozen major characters, each of which is used to having a whole movie to himself. Whedon finds ways to give each of them enough screen time to satisfy fans without losing the focus on the team. Indeed, the Iron Man material is head and shoulders above the stuff that filled out the bloated, slow-moving “Iron Man 2.”
If you’re not a comic-book fan, well, this probably won’t make you one. But if you’re looking for the kind of big-screen action that summer movies invariably entail, “The Avengers” is one of the rare ones that actually delivers on that promise.

DID SEAU’S LOVE FOR THE GAME KILL HIM?

BY ALEX MARVEZ
COURTESY OF FOX SPORTS

Alex Marvez is a Senior NFL Writer for FOXSports.com. He has covered the NFL for the past 17 seasons as a beat writer and is the former president of the Pro Football Writers of America. He also is a frequent host on Sirius XM NFL Radio.

My favorite player is dead.

I’m not talking about the one I’ve most liked to write about in my NFL reporting job for the past 18 years. I didn’t like Junior Seau because he gave me special access or shared off-the-record information with me. He never did.

My affection began when I was a civilian, so to speak. I was just a kid from Miami who liked Junior Seau simply because he was Junior Seau — the NFL’s baddest linebacker playing for my beloved San Diego Chargers.

And now I’m wrestling with the fact that the game itself — the game I love and the way I make my livelihood — might have contributed to his apparent suicide.
Not that Seau would change a minute of anything he did on the field. I came to learn he didn’t just live and breathe football every waking second during his 20-year NFL career.
He smelled it.

So did his teammates with the Miami Dolphins. He was the first Dolphins player inside team headquarters almost every weekday morning when I covered the team from 2003 to 2005.
The first thing he did: Ensure the coffee was brewing so strongly you could taste it in the air.
This is where Seau set the example that every young NFL player should follow. Seau already was done with his caffeine-charged workout by the time most of his peers arrived. He didn’t do this to leave home earlier in the day after practice had ended.

Seau just couldn’t wait to get started.

Having sat in a linebackers meeting with him while I was a Dolphins beat writer, I was keenly aware Seau knew his stuff in the film room, as well. The thousands of tackles that Seau made in college and the NFL weren’t just the result of sheer athleticism or guesswork. When video showed a younger ’backer had lined up literally 1 foot off the mark in practice, Seau pointed out that the player had tipped his hand to the offense about where he was headed and ruined the entire defensive plan.

Seau could tell you everything there was about playing linebacker. Unfortunately, it appears, factors he might not have been able to control as well might have overtaken him.
Several people who knew Seau better than I did told me Wednesday they had suspicions his current life wasn’t nearly as great as when he was leading fans into a frenzy with his post-tackle fist pumps on game day.

There were warning signs.

Seau drove his car off a cliff in late 2010 after a physical confrontation with his girlfriend. Seau claimed the road mishap was an accident when he fell asleep at the wheel and not a suicide attempt. There were whispers Seau experienced financial problems and depression.

Clearly, something was troubling Seau. He never let many of those close to him see it. Seau still would flash his charming smile during public appearances and refer to virtually everyone around him as “buddy.”

“He was always the guy helping someone else,” one of Seau’s former coaches said. “He couldn’t be the guy that took help.”

However, he llikely will be the newest guy at the center of the NFL’s biggest discussion: head injuries sustained by those who have played in the league.

There is no definitive proof, yet. Seau wasn’t known for having a concussion history while he played. He apparently wasn’t part of the pending lawsuits filed by more than 1,200 former players against the NFL claiming the league didn’t properly treat or advise them on concussion-related matters.

But he also wasn’t the type of guy who would let blurred vision, headaches or any other side effects keep him out of a game. One former Dolphins teammate recalled how Seau “literally shattered his fingernail” in the cold of a December 2004 game at New England.

“His nerve was sticking out,” the player said. “I could see it and I almost threw up. He told (team trainer Kevin O’Neill) to tape it up.

“Missed like two plays. Unreal. True warrior.”

That win-at-all-costs mentality might have contributed to his demise. Think about how much contact Seau’s helmet sustained in two decades of pro football. If his brain is analyzed by medical researchers, as some former players’ brains have been, there may be a way of knowing how much of a toll the sport took on Seau’s mind.

A slew of dead NFL players have been diagnosed with the progressive degenerative disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). One of them was former Chicago Bears safety Dave Duerson.

Duerson took his life in February 2011 in the same fashion that police believe Seau may have done — by shooting himself in the chest. Duerson did so deliberately so his brain could be studied postmortem.
Whether Seau had the same intention is unknown. He didn’t leave a suicide note, according to The New York Times.

From the conversations Seau and I had in South Florida, I always worried how someone as passionate about football as Seau would handle life after football. I wondered if there was anything he could do to fill the void that most retired players face after the cheering stops and the real world begins.

When he starred a few years ago in a short-lived television series, “Sports Jobs With Junior Seau,” I half-jokingly said I hoped that one of the gigs he covered would appeal to him for a new line of work.
I was a lifelong Chargers fan until 1995, when I started writing about the NFL, and Seau became my favorite player once Dan Fouts retired. I held dining for the first time at Seau’s namesake San Diego restaurant with the same reverence as visiting the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Having the opportunity to cover Seau daily for three years with the Dolphins was surreal.

When my mom helped me out with laundry chores when I was a college-aged slacker, she washed the No. 55 Chargers jersey I would wear every time I watched San Diego play. I noticed the jersey last Sunday for the first time in a while when I walked into my closet after she had visited.

Hearing the news of Seau’s death will leave my mom as heartbroken as I am because she knows how much he meant to me and what he represented.

Neither of us, though, will experience the pain being felt by Seau’s mother. A hysterical Luisa Seau burst into tears while speaking about her son to the media that had gathered for a Wednesday afternoon police news conference announcing his death. She wasn’t ready to accept that her Junior had killed himself.

“I don’t understand who do this to my son,” Luisa wailed.

It’s probably not “who.” It’s probably “what.”

And what a shame if it was the game he loved to play

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Seau’s Death Reveals Hard Truth About Football

BY JEFF NEUMAN –
ARTICLE COURTESY OF REAL CLEAR SPORTS  WWW.REALCLEARSPORTS.COM

A suicide is a tragedy. The suicide of a young man, a father, a son, leaves devastation behind.

Those who loved him cannot help but wonder if there was something they could have done, some way they could have shown him that life is worth living.

The decision to end one’s life is the most basic and personal decision possible. Whatever our circumstances, whatever our accomplishments or disappointments, there is one thing we all share: We are alive, until we are not.

I don’t know why Junior Seau would take his own life, if indeed he did. Whatever personal judgments or failings or problems he felt were too big to face are just that – personal. I did not know him, I did not love him; his reasons are not important to me.

What is important is the ease of our assumptions.

How long did it take you, upon hearing about Seau, to think of the cumulative brain damage known as Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE)? Two seconds? One?
How long to think of Dave Duerson turning a gun on himself and shooting for the heart to preserve his brain for scientific study? Or Ray Easterling just two weeks ago, another self-inflicted bullet to the chest from a former NFL player with progressing dementia?

Junior Seau’s choice may have had nothing to do with repeated concussive impacts over the course of a long life in football. It may have come from an inability to adjust to living without the weekly rush of adrenaline the game provided. It may reflect family issues, or financial problems, or simply a sense that life offers nothing to compare to the highs he’s already known.

There have already been erratic incidents in his life that reflect potential instability. He signed a one-day contract with San Diego in 2006 so that he could retire as a Charger, then agreed to join the New England Patriots four days later, playing an additional four years. He was arrested after his live-in girlfriend alleged domestic violence in October 2010, and later that day his SUV went off a beachside cliff while he was driving.

Brain chemistry – in the form of tau proteins indicating trauma-induced injury that can cause depression, personality changes, impaired judgment and impulse control problems – may have had nothing to do with it.

But that would be a surprise.

And the fact that it would be a surprise tells us something important.

We know that football is a violent, dangerous game. It wouldn’t be so thrilling otherwise.

We’ve known for a long time the toll it takes on bones, joints, muscles, tendons, cartilage; the pain it causes long after players have left the field for good.

And the speed of our leap to a conclusion means we know, whether we want to or not, that the presence of CTE is a logical assumption in anyone who has played football for an extended time.
The league has to be worried about the consequences of this growing understanding. It’s one thing to ask players to ignore risks to the body; football players pride themselves in their ability to overcome pain.

It’s quite another to knowingly expect players to set aside reservations about damage to the brain.

Everything about football on the professional level has to change. Practice regimens, equipment, technique, training, player awareness – all must be altered to reflect our growing understanding of the neurological results of participation.

If I had a son who wanted to play football, I’d suggest he take up something less dangerous. Like drugs.

After all, there is more scientific evidence for the damage caused by football than there is for steroids or marijuana.

Jeff Neuman’s columns for RealClearSports appear on Monday and Thursday. Follow him on Twitter @NeumanJeff. His collected golf writing and blogging can be found at www.neumanprose.com.
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NFL needs to publicly release evidence of players’ bounty involvement if it exists

By Michael Silver | Yahoo! Sports 
.
Sean Pamphilon, the filmmaker who released the recording of the ex-Saints defensive coordinator’s speech the night before the team’s January playoff defeat to the San Francisco 49ers, called it a “smoking gun,” but really, it was more than that: Williams’ words took people inside a culture of amplified rhetoric and calls for violence and eliminated any doubt that a line had been crossed.

As a result, the NFL-imposed suspension of Williams – and those of Saints coach Sean Payton, assistant head coach Joe Vitt and general manager Mickey Loomis – became very difficult to dispute. Anyone in a position of authority who tolerated or perpetuated such an environment, let alone who lied to league officials and ignored their directives, was clearly culpable and, for want of a better term, cruisin’ for a bruisin’ from commissioner Roger Goodell.

Yet Wednesday’s suspensions of current New Orleans defenders Jonathan Vilma and Will Smith, and former Saints Scott Fujita (now with the Cleveland Browns) and Anthony Hargrove (now with the Green Bay Packers), don’t rise to that standard. As a result, I can understand why the punished players, many of their peers, NFL Players Association executives and Saints fans are frustrated by the severity of the penalties.

Unless and until the NFL produces unassailable evidence that these men actively participated in a pay-for-injure operation that caused tangible consequences to Saints opponents – or Pamphilon shares another tape implicating the men in question – I’ll be somewhat skeptical about the depth of their involvement.

Or, to borrow from an iconic (if fictional) Arizona Cardinals wideout, Show me the money.

“If you have actual evidence of money changing hands and guys actually getting injured – if that exists – then all the suspensions are justified,” Saints linebacker Scott Shanle told me Wednesday afternoon. “I think they have nothing to show. If you have evidence to show, at this point, wouldn’t you show it? I don’t think they have anything.”

Shanle, a ninth-year veteran not known for making controversial public statements, may sound to some like a frustrated and semi-delusional player sticking up for his friends, but I wouldn’t be so quick to marginalize him. For one thing, I’ve talked to numerous players on the Saints, and with other organizations, who basically share his sentiments.

I’ve also had conversations with several knowledgeable sources who question the way the league conducted its investigation, including one person interviewed by an NFL security official before the league released its report. I’ve heard stories of disingenuous promises and of investigators who actively sought only information that they deemed incriminating while ignoring any evidence to the contrary.

Obviously, the people with whom I’ve spoken have an interest in portraying the penalties as unjust, and I’m certainly not in position to judge the legitimacy of the NFL’s investigation. The findings could be airtight, paper-thin or somewhere in between.

The league issued a statement Wednesday which declared that “the evidence supporting today’s disciplinary decisions is based on extensive documentation and interviews with multiple sources. The information was developed by NFL Security, working with independent forensic analysts, and the disciplinary decisions are each based on evidence that has been independently corroborated by multiple sources.”
On Thursday the league trotted out Mary Jo White, a former prosecutor retained by the league to provide an “independent review” of the evidence, to speak to reporters, and she described the investigation as “thorough, fair and robust.”

Conversely, Vilma and Smith issued public statements strongly proclaiming their innocence, while sources close to Fujita have done the same to me in prior conversations. (Fujita acknowledged in March to Sports Illustrated’s Peter King that he made individual payments to teammates for performance-related bonuses such as interceptions and fumble recoveries.) “Scott Fujita never put up any money to injure anybody,” Shanle insisted on Wednesday. “It didn’t happen.”

Hargrove, according to the NFL’s statement and White’s conversation with reporters, provided a signed declaration to the league which acknowledged the existence of a bounty program and his role in it. It is believed that Hargrove’s declaration is the key to the NFL’s case – but, because the league has not released it to the suspended players or to the public, none of us can be sure what was said and how credible it is.

Given that the players are planning, with the assistance of the NFLPA, to appeal to Goodell (good luck with that) – and reportedly may initiate legal challenges in federal court – the league may eventually have to show its hand. Until then, the commissioner is essentially saying, “They’re guilty – take my word for it.”

To me, that’s not good enough, for a number of reasons:
We have yet to be presented with evidence of an obvious instance of a Saints opponent during the 2009, ’10 or ’11 seasons sustaining an injury from an unsportsmanlike or inordinately vicious hit – or of any failed attempt to inflict such an injury.

White isn’t really independent, given that she was, you know, paid by the NFL for her services. Not surprisingly, the NFLPA’s outside counsel, former prosecutor Richard Smith, had a much different assessment of the league’s evidence and essentially dismissed her expertise on the issue. I’m not saying Smith’s perspective carries any more authority than White’s; I’m simply pointing out that there is a serious disagreement between the two sides on the most important issue – whether there’s any real evidence of a pay-for-injure scheme.

Smith referenced Joe Hummel, the NFL’s director of investigations, who abruptly resigned last Friday. Hummel, who was heavily involved in the bounty probe, left for what NFL spokesman Greg Aiello told profootballtalk.com was “a big career opportunity,” but the timing of his departure certainly seemed fishy to men being investigated and those advocating for their interests.

These were not insignificant penalties. Middle linebacker Vilma, who was suspended for the entire 2012 season, is 30 years old with a history of knee problems. For him, this could amount to a career-ending punishment. Smith, who turns 31 in July, Hargrove, who’ll be 29 the same month, and Fujita, 33, could face similarly daunting consequences after they return from their respective suspensions. In theory, Smith (four games), Hargrove (eight games) and Fujita (three games) could be waived by the Saints, Packers and Browns, respectively, after serving their suspensions if their employers are satisfied that the younger, cheaper stand-ins are performing capably. Subsequently, the punished players’ affiliation with the bounty scandal could cause them to be blackballed by other teams as well.

For now, I’m trying very hard to be level-headed about all of this. While the NFL, which is facing numerous lawsuits from former players alleging that the league didn’t do enough to prevent head trauma, has a vested economic interest in making a conspicuous statement demonstrating its support for player safety, I also believe that Goodell sincerely wants to address the issue.

My suspicion is that Wednesday’s tragic death of future Hall of Fame linebacker Junior Seau, a suicide which may prove to be linked to the perilous effects of concussions, will increase the commissioner’s sense of urgency to create a safer working environment.

So no, I don’t think Goodell is a self-serving liar with a God complex. And when the league announced the suspensions of Payton, Loomis, Williams and Vitt, I laughed off the vitriolic reactions from Saints fans who screamed that the franchise was being singled out by a vindictive commissioner as being myopic and naïve.

Roger Goodell (US Presswire)Now, however, I’m having conversations with men who’ve actually played for the Saints during that span, and they’re expressing similar sentiments. The absence of conspicuous evidence in the public realm makes me hesitant to dismiss them out of hand.

Is Goodell trying to stick it to the Saints?

“It’s hard not to feel that way,” Shanle said. “When you look at the severity of the suspensions and the lack of hard evidence, it’s kind of tough to take. All there is is hearsay. And I feel badly for Jonathan Vilma and the other suspended players, because I feel like they were made an example of. And I just hate how it’s almost like everybody is guilty until proven innocent.”
And how does Shanle explain the Williams audio tape and the exhortations to injure opponents?

“Guys say crazy things all the time,” Shanle said. “Gregg is one of the greatest motivators I’ve been around, but when he says things like ‘kill the head and the body will die,’ people don’t take it literally. It was more of a device to get guys in a frame of mind to play a violent game at an insanely high level of intensity. It takes you to a place mentally that guys can’t go otherwise.

“It’s the same with Vilma. If he made statements like that, it was about trying to get guys to play harder and more together than they ever knew they could.

“Let’s think about it rationally: If there’s $500 in a kitty for taking out [an opponent], do you think I’m gonna intentionally injure someone and risk a $75,000 fine from the league for an illegal hit? It makes no sense.”

It’s a valid question, and I don’t profess to have the answer. At this point, there are a lot of unanswered questions, and they’re bringing out my inner Rod Tidwell.

If Goodell is devoted to improving and possibly saving the sport – and I believe he is – I’m ready to do my part for the cause. When it comes to cracking down on coaches whose instructions to injure opponents may or may not be taken literally, and when evidence of such is subsequently broadcast to the masses, the commissioner’s swift and severe punishment makes a lot of sense.

So far, I’m not convinced that Vilma, Hargrove, Smith and Fujita’s lengthy suspensions were similarly warranted. And before those players turn in their playbooks and fork over the cash, I’d feel a lot better if someone would show me the money.

Chuck Rounds’ Las Vegas Entertainment News

Check out more from Chuck at his website www.igoshows.com

May 2012

May…It’s another perfect month in Las Vegas. The weather is great. Entertainment is plentiful. School is almost out. The summer season is upon us, and the pool party schedule is active until September. This is a crucial time for productions to get a strong foothold into the entertainment world and establish themselves for the very busy fall season. The summer will generally determine what shows are going to be staying around for a while and which ones will be closing forever. This May is going to be an interesting month for a lot of reasons. May is always an odd transitional month…the weather is changing as frequently as the shows…the only thing that we can really count on is that we know that by the end of the month, things will start getting hot.
May brings out the best in Las Vegas entertainment.

And for those of you that have asked, my daughter is going to be a duck next year. She has decided to go to the University of Oregon…and she’s ready to graduate and leave now…even though she has another month of school—she’s done. Her mind is already in the Pacific Northwest. She is typical of most of the students right now…everyone is ready to be out of school and into the summer.

Every bar and club will have Cinco de Mayo celebrations…and the fact that this holiday lands on a Saturday this year, means that there will be that many more celebrations.

Remember that Mother’s Day is on the 13th. If you’re in town, there are several shows that will offer specials for you and your mother; every buffet and restaurant in the city is offering some sort of deal. If you’re not in town…just remember your Mom.

May 15th is the 107th Anniversary of the founding of the City of Las Vegas. No one really cares about this statistic. We had a great 100-year celebration, and we may have to wait for the 150-year mark to get the city to celebrate again.

A lot of shows are moving around right now…Blue Man Group is leaving the Venetian and going to the Monte Carlo…Jabbawockeez will begin performing its show “MÜS.I.C.” in an 800-seat tent in the parking lot of the resort beginning the first week in June through September. In spring 2013, Jabbawockeez will make a permanent move to Luxor Hotel and Casino into a brand new, state-of-the-art theater with custom-designed staging and a completely new show with a style that only Jabbawockeez can deliver.

Tommy Wind will be moving his musical magic show, “Impact,” from the Wolf theater in the Clarion into a showroom on the Strip, and a new show from China will be moving into the old Debbie Reynolds theatre at the end of the month at the Clarion.

The 2:30 p.m. afternoon show “One Voice” starring voice impressionist Bethany Owen has closed as of Tuesday, April 17th and she and her manager/husband Jim Whirlow will return to their home in Huntington Beach, California for a well-deserved rest after being on the road for about two years non-stop. She performed in the showroom since Jan. 10th and was also known as “The Woman of 1,001 Voices and Faces.”

Legendary comedian and impressionist Rich Little is returning to the Las Vegas stage with his one-man show, “Jimmy Stewart & Friends.” Featuring more than 25 celebrity icon voices, including Cary Grant, George Burns, Ronald Reagan, Catherine Hepburn and John Wayne, among others, “Jimmy Stewart & Friends” will take you on an adventure through the life of the famed Jimmy Stewart. “Jimmy Stewart & Friends” will premiere Monday, April 30 at the Shimmer Cabaret inside the LVH – Las Vegas Hotel & Casino.

Recreating the music, feel and excitement of the birth of rock ‘n’ roll, Bill Haley, Jr. & The Comets will perform at the Suncoast Showroom May 19 and 20. Reviving the look and sound made famous by his father — Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame member Bill Haley — Bill Haley, Jr. recaptures the heyday and carries on the tradition his father started in the 1950s. The original Bill Haley & The Comets scored their first hit with “Crazy Man, Crazy” in 1953 and reached stardom with their follow-up, “Rock Around The Clock.” The single sold an estimated 25 million copies and spent eight weeks atop the Billboard chart. The song was ranked No. 158 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.”   Bill Haley, Jr. & The Comets will perform favorites such as “Rock Around The Clock,” “See Ya Later Alligator,” “Shake, Rattle & Roll,” “Rock This Joint,” “Don’t Knock The Rock” and “Rockit 88.”

Comedian Tom Dreesen brings his one-man show, “An Evening of Laughter and Memories of Sinatra,” to the Suncoast Showroom May 26 and 27. Dreesen toured the United States for 13 years as the opening act for Frank Sinatra and shares his experiences from the tour in “An Evening of Laughter and Memories of Sinatra.” The show is also a retrospective of Dreesen’s life as a stand-up comedian. Sinatra once told an audience, “If I’m a saloon singer, then Tom Dreesen is a saloon comedian.” Dreesen and Sinatra remained friends beyond their tour, and on May 20, 1998, Dreesen paid tribute to Sinatra by eulogizing him and serving as a pallbearer at his funeral.

Iconic funny man Bill Cosby, who has been making audiences laugh for decades with his keen insight into everyday existence, brings his signature comedy to the Treasure Island Theatre May 25 at 8 p.m. Cosby has earned respect from critics and adoration from fans for his uncanny ability to connect with people through humor and providing insight into the role of parents, children, family members, men and women,. Without resorting to gimmickry or lowbrow humor, Cosby has been compared to such great American humorists as Charlie Chaplin, Will Rogers, W.C. Fields and Groucho Marx. A testament to his status in the world of comedy, Cosby has earned five Grammy Awards for best comedy album. Known the world over for “The Cosby Show,” which ran from 1984 to 1992 on NBC, Cosby broke racial barriers and sent a powerful message to viewers – that the family unit and raising children matters most. The No. 1 rated sitcom earned six Emmy Awards, three Golden Globes and 10 People’s Choice Awards. It helped set the stage for Cosby’s career as an author, as his book “Fatherhood” remained at No. 1 for more than half of its 54 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller List. Among Cosby’s other titles are “Time Flies,” “Love and Marriage,” “Come On People: On the Path from Victims to Victors” and “Friends of a Feather: One of Life’s Little Fables,” which was illustrated by his daughter. Few entertainers have achieved the legendary status of Cosby, who emerged from humble beginnings in a Philadelphia housing project. After returning from the Navy, Cosby went on to earn a degree at Temple University and later a master’s and doctoral degree in Education from the University of Massachusetts. As philanthropists, Cosby and wife Camille have made substantial gifts in support of education and to various social service and civil rights organizations. His lifelong contributions to American culture were recognized with a Kennedy Center Honor in 1998, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in July 2002, America’s highest civilian honor, and the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2009.

Australian soft-rock group Air Supply quickly became a staple of early ’80s radio after their first smash hit, “Lost in Love.” Performing together for more than 30 years, Air Supply returns to The Orleans Showroom for three shows Memorial Day weekend, May 25, 26 and 27. Englishman Graham Russell and Australian Russell Hitchcock met in 1975 while performing in the Australian production of “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Later that year, the duo formed Air Supply and released their first smash hit and self-titled debut album, reaching gold in Australia. After opening for Rod Stewart’s tour in the United States in the late ’70s, Air Supply had an international breakthrough and signed a distribution deal with Artista Records in 1980.

The legendary Carlos Santana will perform An Intimate Evening with Santana: Greatest Hits Live – Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow. For 40 years and as many albums later, Santana has sold more than 90 million records and reached more than 100 million fans at concerts worldwide. To date, Santana has won 10 GRAMMY® Awards, including a record-tying nine for a single project for 1999′s Supernatural (including Album of the Year and Record of the Year for “Smooth”). In 1998, the group was ushered into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Among many other honors, Carlos Santana has also been cited by Rolling Stone as No. 15 on their list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.” His last CD, Guitar Heaven … The Greatest Guitar Classics of All Time (Arista), was released in late September 2010. Celebrating that chart debut, Santana joined the ranks of the Rolling Stones as the only musical act in chart history to score at least one Top 10 album in every decade beginning with the 1960s.  Guitar Heaven … is Santana’s 29th Billboard Top 200 charting release, 12th Top 10 album debut and third Top 10 debut over the last five years.

Emmy®-nominated actor Rob Schneider, renowned for his trademark blend of character and comedic acting, will perform at The Orleans Showroom May 11 and 12. Schneider is the star of the new CBS show, “Rob,” about a lifelong bachelor who married into a tight-knit Mexican-American family. Rob is a successful architect who elopes with Maggie in Las Vegas after a whirlwind romance. After opening for comedians such as Jay Leno and Jerry Seinfeld, Schneider made his network television debut in 1987 on “The David Letterman Show.” In 1990, “Saturday Night Live” producer Lorne Michaels saw Schneider’s appearance on HBO’s “13th Annual Young Comedians Special” and hired him to be a regular on SNL. During his four seasons on SNL, Schneider was nominated for three Emmy® Awards and a Peabody Award.

Whoopi Goldberg, who has been delighting audiences since the age of eight, will return to Treasure Island, May 4 at 9 p.m. Goldberg began her career working in theatre and creating characters that became “The Spook Show” and evolved into the hit Broadway show, Grammy® Award-winning album and HBO special that helped launch her career. During her Broadway show, Goldberg grabbed the attention of Steven Spielberg who cast her in “The Color Purple,” her first big-screen role. Since then she has starred in many other films including “Ghost,” “How Stella Got Her Grove Back” and “Girl, Interrupted.” Goldberg has appeared in a variety of television programs, and hosted the Academy Awards®.  She currently serves as moderator of “The View” and is making guest appearances in the Broadway musical “Sister Act,” a show she also produces.  Goldberg will also appear in multiple upcoming episodes of the hit television show “Glee,” beginning May 1.

Multi-talented entertainer and showman Earl Turner returns to the Suncoast Showroom May 12 and 13. Turner began performing at the age of 13, and by age 19, he was traveling the country as a front man with various show bands. As a solo artist, Turner scored a Top 40 dance hit in Europe in the mid-1980s with “Love Caught You By Surprise.”  Turner is a renowned Las Vegas performer, having appeared at numerous resorts and showrooms on and off the Las Vegas Strip.  In 2004, Harrah’s New Orleans transformed the Mansion Ballroom into The Earl Turner Theatre, where he performed for two years.

Real Time” comedian and political commentator Bill Maher brings his trademark humor back to The Orleans Showroom May 5 and 6. Best known for his sharp political satire and sociopolitical commentary, HBO late-night talk-show host and comedian Maher began his stand-up career in 1979, and was host of New York City comedy club Catch a Rising Star. In 1982, Maher began appearing on the Johnny Carson and Dave Letterman shows, and made other television appearances, including a guest appearance on the popular drama “Murder She Wrote.”  After his feature film debut in 1983′s “D.C. Cab,” Maher appeared in several films, including “Rat Boy,” “Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death” and “Pizza Man.”

The 33rd Annual San Gennaro Feast will take place May 9-13, 2012, in the northeast parking lot at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino Las Vegas. The festival is the biggest Italian Feast in town is now even bigger. The Annual San Gennaro Feast is now a festival that is held twice a year and held in honor of the Saint San Gennaro. The festival features a wide variety of ethnic food vendors, live national acts hourly on the main stage, hosted by Tony Sacca, who has been part of the event for more than 25 years. And of course, there are amusement rides and games fun for the whole family. The festival is one of the most popular festivals for locals and visitors from all over the world. Each festival expects to out-do the last…and the food is wonderful.

Helldorado Days, this May 17th – 20th, is an outdoor community event celebrating Las Vegas’s tribute to the Wild West and produced by the Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks Lodge No.1468. Helldorado Days which began in 1935, is the longest running civic event in the history of Las Vegas, originally created as a means to encourage tourism to the city upon completion of the Boulder Dam. With over 40,000 people in attendance, Helldorado Days offers a 4-day pro rodeo, a parade, carnival, treasure hunt for gold, whiskerino contest, golf tournament, poker tournament, art show and auction, trail ride, exhibits and food. For 4 days Downtown Las Vegas is transformed into Helldorado Days as the event takes over several vacant downtown blocks and builds a rodeo arena and carnival from the ground up. Helldorado Days is a non-profit community event. The members of Elks Lodge No. 1468 are committed to assisting children and veterans in need and have given back over $75,000 in 2009 and over $4 million to the community since 1935.

May brings out some of the best people to kick off the summer season, and the offerings are huge…

An Intimate Evening with Santana: Greatest Hits Live – Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow
Mandalay Bay May 2 – 13
Elton John’s Million Dollar Piano
Caesars Palace May 4 – 27

The second week has…
Sweet Honey in The Rock
The Smith Center May 9
Creed Live
Palms Casino May 11
Desert Outlaws
Cannery Casino May 11
Drake
MGM May 11
Ray Price
Boulder Station May 11
Blues and Brews Festival
Henderson Pavilion May 12
Devil Dash Race
Bootleg Canyon Park May 12
Jazz in the Park – Spyro Gyra
Clark County Government Center Amphitheater May 12
Keiko Matsui
Green Valley Ranch May 12
Las Vegas Philharmonic Masterworks V
The Smith Center May 12
Liza Minnelli
LVH May 12
Muay Thai: Schilling vs. Marcus 2
Hard Rock May 12
Snoop Dogg
Hard Rock May 12
Snow Patrol w/special guest(s) – Ed Sheenan
The Cosmopolitan May 12
Wynonna & the Big Noise
Cannery Casino May 12
ABBA The Concert
Eastside Cannery May 13
El Chavo del 8 Animado
LVH May 13
Lily Tomlin
The Smith Center May 13
The Drums
Hard Rock May 13
33rd Annual San Gennaro Feast
Rio May 9 – 13
Vegas Uncork’d by Bon Appétit
Various Hotels May 10 – 13
Alan Safier as George Burns in Say Goodnight Gracie
The Smith Center May 11 – 12
Amy Schumer
Riviera May 11 – 13
James Gavin’s Stormy Weather: The Lena Horne Project
The Smith Center May 11 – 12
Ralphie May
South Point Casino May 11 – 13
Rob Schneider
Orleans Hotel May 11 – 12
Art Festival of Henderson
Henderson Events Plaza May 12 – 13
Earl Turner
Suncoast Hotel May 12 – 13
Las Vegas Gun Show
Sport Center of Las Vegas May 12 – 13

The third week includes…
Iliza Shlesinger
Sunset Station May 18
Next Movement
Cannery Casino May 18
Buddy Guy with Quinn Sullivan
The Smith Center May 19
Creedence Clearwater Revisited
Buffalo Bill’s May 19
Don Carlos & Friends
Hard Rock May 19
Golden Boy Presents Lamont Peterson vs. Amir Khan
Mandalay Bay May 19
Jazz in the Park – Trombone Shorty
Clark County Government Center Amphitheater May 19
Men of Soul Tour
Cannery Casino May 19
Stryper
Santa Fe Station May 19
The Dramatics
LVH May 19
Billboard Music Awards 2012
MGM May 20
The Diary of Anne Frank
The Smith Center May 20
PSY by Seven Fingers
The Smith Center May 15 – 16
Dita Von Teese “Burlesque: Strip Strip Hooray!” Variety Show
Mandalay Bay May 17 – 19
Helldorado Days 2012
Las Vegas Boulevard & 7th Street from Stewart Avenue to Mesquite Avenue May 17 – 20
Jeff Tracta
Palms Casino May 17 – 20
Las Vegas 51s Baseball
Cashman Center May 17 – 24
Jane Monheit
The Smith Center May 18 – 19
Las Vegas Car Stars – Knight Rider Festival
Fremont Street Experience May 18 – 19
Las Vegas Coin, Currency, Jewelry & Stamp Expo
Imperial Palace May 18 – 20
Lewis Black
Mirage May 18 – 19
Paul Williams
South Point Hotel May 18 – 19
Super Summer Theatre – A Grand Night for Singing
Spring Mountain Ranch State Park May 18 – 19
The Phantom of the Opera
Henderson Pavilion May 18 – 19
Tahiti Taurua Nui I Las Vegas
Orleans Hotel May 19 – 20

The last week of May will have…
Daughtry
Hard Rock May 24
Bill Cosby
Treasure Island May 25
Jay Leno
Mirage May 25
M83
The Cosmopolitan May 25
Merle Haggard
Texas Station May 25
¡Q’VIVA! THE CHOSEN LIVE
Mandalay Bay May 26
Arabian Nights 25
Paris May 26
E’CASANOVA “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet”: A Tribute to Michael Jackson
Texas Station May 26
Jazz in the Park – Jeff Golub
Clark County Government Center Amphitheater May 26
KOOL Summer of Fun Kick Off Festival & Car Show
Cannery Casino May 26
Reba McEntire
Buffalo Bill’s May 26
Rock of Vegas Summer Concert: Vince Neil
Fremont Street Experience May 26
Russell Peters
Caesars Palace May 26
Sin City Rollergirls
Riviera Hotel May 26
Taste of Home Cooking School
Cashman Center May 26
The Cult
M Resort May 26
UFC 146
MGM May 26
Young the Giant
The Cosmopolitan May 26
Childish Gambino
The Cosmopolitan May 27
The Beach Boys
Red Rock May 27
Van Halen
MGM May 27
Rita Rudner
Venetian Resort May 21 – 27
Mary Poppins
The Smith Center May 22 – 27
An Intimate Evening with Santana: Greatest Hits Live – Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow
Mandalay Bay May 23 – June 3
Barbara Cook
The Smith Center May 24 – 27
Drew Carey’s Improv-a-ganza
MGM May 24, 2012 – May 27
1st Annual BBQ and Music Festival
Henderson Pavilion May 25 – 26
Air Supply
Orleans Hotel and Casino May 25 – 27
David Spade
Venetian Resort May 25 – 26
Incubus
Hard Rock May 25 – 26
Pablo Francisco
South Point May 25 – 27
Laughter & Memories of Sinatra with Tom Dreesen
Suncoast Hotel May 26 – 27
Ron White
Mirage May 26 – 27

And the first week in June brings:
The Las Vegas Contemporary Dance Theater Five Year Anniversary Concert
The Smith Center May 29
Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times
Henderson Pavilion June 1
Chickenfoot
Hard Rock June 1
Stanley Clarke Band
Santa Fe Station June 1
The Fab
Cannery Casino June 1
The Ultimate Fighter Finale
Palms Casino June 1
Blood Sweat & Tears, Chuck Negron formerly of Three Dog Night
Cannery Casino June 2
Fresh Music Festival
Orleans Hotel June 2
Jazz in the Park – 480 East
Clark County Government Center Amphitheater June 2
King Of The Cage
Eastside Cannery June 2
Gilbert Gottfried
Riviera May 30 – June 3
Burlesque Hall of Fame Weekend
Orleans Hotel May 31 – June 3
David Copperfield
MGM May 31 – June 13
National Barrel Horse Association Professional’s Choice Las Vegas Super Show
South Point May 31 – June 3
Clint Holmes
The Smith Center June 1 – 2
Debbie Reynolds
South Point Casino June 1 – 3
Glen Campbell
LVH June 1 – 2
Wayne Brady
The Mirage June 1 – 2
Las Vegas 51s Baseball
Cashman Center June 2 – 5

For dates and times, be sure to log onto the Las Vegas Online Entertainment Guide: lvol.com.

Igoshows.com is, of course, the place to read the reviews of all of the shows that are in town so that you can be better informed as to what you should expect from a certain production. The reviews are updated as needed to give you the knowledge you need to spend your entertainment dollars better.

You can contact Chuck through the Feedback Form on the following page: www.igoshows.com/feedbacktochuck.php

…Serena Williams recently told Celebuzz, at her Sleep Sheets launch in NY, that she has had so much heartache that she won’t date for the next…wait for it…..DECADE!! Apparently her last relationship (not sure whether that was Drake or Common) was so heartbreaking that she refuses to go through that pain again.  She tells Celebuzz  “,I have given   up on dating, It just hasn’t worked out well for me.  I’m a really emotional person. I give my all and everything. I do make mistakes — like every human does — but the last relationship just was too much of a heartbreak for me. I just can’t go through that anymore. It was hard.  I just have to remove myself from that atmosphere for about the next decade or so.  I can’t get involved.”

…First the good news.  There will be one less Kardashian on television this upcoming season.  Now the bad news.  Lamar Odom may be joining your favorite NBA team next season.  Odom and his wife Khloe Kardashian who headline “Khloe & Lamar” are ending their E! series, according to TMZ.  The couple have been benched from their reality show and will not return for a third season so the struggling NBA player can get his game back on track, it was reported.

…According to TMZ, Jordan Hill has been charged with felony assault stemming from an altercation with a family member that took place on February 29th..  Los Angeles Lakers big man Jordan Hill has just been charged with felony assault for allegedly choking a family member during an altercation in Texas earlier this year … TMZ has learned.  The charge was filed by the Harris County District Attorney in Houston. It’s unclear whom Hill is accused of attacking.  The alleged incident took place on February 29. If convicted, Hill faces up to 10 years in prison.

…An insanely lucky Kentucky woman is now reportedly $63,000 richer after winning big on a  10-cent bet at a New Mexico horse racetrack. From WLKY.com:72-year-old Julia Kring, of Frankfort, Ky., won the bet last week when she hit the Solo Pick 6 at Sunland Park Racetrack & Casino. Kring had placed her bet through TwinSpires.com. Kring said she saw an ad for the Sunland Pick 6 and decided to take a chance on that racetrack that day. “I spent a lot of time studying, but it was all luck,” she told the El Paso Times. “I was fortunate to hit the Pick 6, but I’ll take it. It was an exciting day for me. I love trying to figure out a race. There are so many things to figure out and try to pick a winner. Racing is my passion.”

…Three former NFL players are facing identity theft and tax fraud charges in Florida, The Miami Herald reported Tuesday.  Former Giants’ and Vikings’ first-round picks William Joseph, 32, and Michael Bennett, 33, were arrested and questioned Monday by FBI agents in connection with an alleged scheme to steal people’s identities and file false tax returns.  Former Patriots draft choice Louis Gachelin, 31, was also detained by federal authorities, along with six others believed to have been involved in the alleged scheme, according to The Herald.  An FBI spokesman declined the paper’s request for comment.

…A Florida golfer got a lucky escape after he was grabbed by a 9-foot (2.7-meter) alligator as he went to recover his ball.  Albert Miller, 75, was set upon by the reptile at Lake Ashton Golf and Country Club in Lake Wales last week, The Ledger newspaper reported Monday.  Miller was playing golf with three friends when he hit a bad shot on the 15th hole and went to collect his ball from a pond.  As he turned to leave, the alligator launched itself out of the water and sank its teeth into Miller’s left knee. His friends rushed to his aid and clung on to his arms as the animal thrashed wildly and attempted to pull him into the water.  Miller said, “He let me go. I was three feet from my life. He had me submerged up to my belt buckle. That was my miracle of the month.”  The senior citizen required 40 stitches to close a 10-inch (25 centimeter) cut and two other wounds.

…Junior Seau’s tragic suicide is just the tip of the iceberg when you look back at the ill-fated 1994 San Diego Charger team that lost in the Super Bowl that year.  Accidents, illness and the bizzare have all struck the 1994 Chargers. The Chargers lost to San Francisco 49-26.  The tragic list:

• Linebacker David Griggs wrecked his car in Davie, Fla., in 1995. Tests showed he was legally drunk. He was 28.

• Running back Rodney Culver was killed in the ValuJet airplane crash in Florida in 1996. He was 26.

• Linebacker Doug Miller was struck by lightning in 1998 in Colorado. He was 28.

• Center Curtis Whitley died of a drug overdose in 2008. He was 39.

• Defensive end Chris Mims died from an enlarged heart in 2008. He was 38.

• Defensive lineman Shawn Lee suffered a heart attack in February 2011. He was 44.

• Linebacker Lew Bush also suffered a heart attack, in December 2011. He was 42.

• Seau died of a gunshot wound to the chest, which police are investigating as a suicide. He was 43.
The 1994 Chargers went 11-5 during the regular season. In the playoffs, they beat Miami at home and Pittsburgh on the road to reach the Super Bowl.

…Add Seau – Seau is the 5th known former NFL player who has committited suicide.  Dave Duerson and three other former NFL players committed suicide this year, Junior makes five. Steve Smith, Ted Johnson, Kevin Turnerwere the others and many more are suffering terribly. Concussions seem to be a common thread.

…Pitcher Andy Pettitte acknowledged under cross-examination Wednesday that he might have misunderstood Roger Clemens when Pettitte said he heard his former teammate say he used human growth hormone.  Asked by Clemens’ lawyer if it was fair to say it was ”50-50” that Pettitte misunderstood the conversation from 1999 or 2000, Pettitte responded, ”I’d say that’s fair.”  Pettitte is a key government witness as the prosecution tries to prove that Clemens lied to Congress when he denied using performance-enhancing drugs. Pettitte’s concession could weaken the government case.

…In a classy move by former Rutgers head coach Greg Schiano, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers signed defensive tackle Eric LeGrand this morning to an NFL contract. LeGrand, paralyzed in an on-field incident 18 months ago, joins the long list of Rutgers players under Schiano to be on an NFL roster.  LeGrand will be reunited with Schiano and many of his old college coaches in a symbolic role with the Buccaneers. No money was exchanged in the contract due to salary cap restrictions, but LeGrand will receive his No. 52 Buccaneers jersey shortly.

…Add LeGrand: LeGrand was injured on Oct. 16, 2010 during a game against Army, suffering a severe spinal injury after an awkward collision during a tackle attempt. He was taken to a New Jersey hospital where doctors determined he was paralyzed.  In his recovery, LeGrand is finished with his walking program after approximately 80 sessions.

… Are you kidding me?  Word leaked this weekend of a production company filming on the set of Judge Sapp, a daytime series just like Judge Joe Brown and Judge Judy. The production company, Onset Productions, posted an advertisement of the taping of the show, which paid its live audience $50.00 to sit there for 6 hours. The description of the show from Onset Productions says “As a studio audience member, you will be watching and reacting to court cases as presiding Judge Warren Sapp decides who is right and wrong. You will be ON CAMERA.”  Sapp was fired from NFL Network last month after he reported that Jeremy Shockey was the one responsible for leaking out information regarding the Saints Bounty System, and shortly after that declared bankruptcy.

…San Francisco Giants reliever Jeremy Affeldt might want to spend his time away from the ballpark in a bubble.  In September, Affeldt sliced his non-throwing hand to the bone while separating frozen hamburgers (has happened to the best of us). But now, Affeldt’s home life has injured him again. The left-hander sprained his right knee Saturday night catching his four-year old son, who was jumping off the couch. Walker, 60 lbs., was so happy to see his dad he jumped into his arms for a major league hug. Luckily for Walker, he’ll have some more time to spend with daddy while he recovers on the disabled list.

…New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton and other front-office members of the organization are already paying a heavy price for their involvement in a bounty scandal. Now, it’s the players’ turn. The NFL announced Wednesday that four current and former Saints players are being suspended for portions of the 2012 season. The harshest penalty was levied to Saints middle linebacker Jon Vilma. He was banned for the entire 2012 campaign. Saints defensive end Will Smith received a four-game suspension. Two ex-Saints — Green Bay defensive end Anthony Hargrove (eight games) and linebacker Scott Fujita (three) — also were sanctioned.

…The Washington Post is reporting that Notre Dame quarterback Tommy Rees has been arrested and jailed on felony charges following a confrontation with officers that took place early on Thursday. Because some of the charges are felonies, Rees hasn’t been released yet.  Rees, 19, was arrested on charges of resisting law enforcement, battery to law enforcement, minor consumption and public intoxication, St. Joseph County police Sgt. Bill Redman said.  According to Sgt. William Redman, Rees was pepper sprayed before arriving at the jail. At this time, he isn’t sure when it exactly happened. [FOX28]  Rees isn’t the only Irish player to be arrested as linebacker Carlo Calabrese was also arrested on misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct and released after he posted $150 bond.  “The university is aware of this incident and is confident that it will be handled in a prompt and professional manner through the criminal justice system,” Notre Dame spokesman Dennis Brown said in a statement. “Internal discipline is handled privately, in accord with our own policies and federal law.”  Rees started 12 of the Irish’s 13 games last season. Rees was among four other quarterbacks fighting for the starting position this season.

…Add ND QB – South Bend police had received a call about a loud party at about 12:30 a.m. on Notre Dame Avenue, an off-campus area that is home to many Notre Dame students, South Bend police Capt. Phil Trent said.  Officers found a “madhouse of people” drinking and congregating outside a home, enjoying the warm night, he said.  “It was a nice night, they were drinking, they’re having a loud time, which is the reason we’re there.”  As officers approached, five or six people hopped a fence and led police on a chase, Trent said. The officers caught up with the group and used their hands to corral them, but Rees “actively resisted,” Trent said.  “It wasn’t terribly violent, but it was enough to be considered resisting,” he said.  One officer suffered a minor scrap and “had the wind knocked out of him” while trying to stop the group, Trent said.

…Former Miami Hurricanes head coach and alum, Randy Shannon, is suing his alma mater for failure to pay him all his guaranteed money. Shannon was the Hurricanes head coach from December of 2006 until December of 2010. While in Coral Gables, he compiled a record of 28-22, which is well below expectations at the U. While he was initially credited with helping to clean up a renegade program left by Larry Coker, he never reached the level of success of his predecessors or from his playing days in the 80s.  His lawsuit contends that the university made the decision to prorate his guaranteed money, that had kicked in the previous February. The lawsuit does state that he is receiving monthly payments from Miami, but at a lower rate than the deal would stipulate. Exact figures are not available, and are kept confidential due to terms of employment. According to his details of his contract, he was guaranteed a specified amount if he was fired prior to 2014.

…Mariano Rivera’s career may have ended Thursday night, not while basking in the glow of adoring fans at Yankee Stadium, but in agonizing pain on the outfield grass before a few thousand fans in Kansas City. Baseball’s greatest closer tore a ligament in his right knee while shagging balls during batting practice before a 4-3 loss to the Royals, a devastating injury that likely will sideline the Yankees’ 12-time All-Star for the remainder of the season.  The Yankees, already playing subpar ball with a subpar pitching staff, will no doubt be forced to make a big move to replace Mo.

…The mother of a University of Virginia student killed by a member of the men’s lacrosse team has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the team’s coaches, the university’s athletics director and the state, claiming they ignored the student’s erratic behavior.  Sharon Love filed the lawsuit in Louisa County Circuit Court on Tuesday ahead of the second anniversary of the death of her 22-year-old daughter Yeardley Love, a women’s lacrosse player.  George W. Huguely V, 24, of Chevy Chase, Md., was convicted in February of second-degree murder in Love’s May 3, 2010, death.  The complaint alleges that the coaches ignored Huguely’s erratic behavior, including two alcohol-related arrests, frequent intoxication and attacks on another female student, a teammate and a Virginia tennis player. The lawsuit cites another incident in which Huguely allegedly choked Love until others stopped him.  Despite these incidents, the lawsuit says, nobody at the university disciplined Huguely or tried to get him into treatment for alcohol abuse or anger management.

…How the Mighty Have Fallen – Tiger Woods misses the cut again and it barely registers as newsworthy.

Federal Bill Seeks to Overturn Ban on Sports Betting

By Staff Writer – igamingbusiness.com
Congressmen from New Jersey have penned a letter asking for the support of their fellow representatives on measures that could see sports betting expand across the nation.

Democrat Frank Pallone and Republican Frank LoBiondo are both long-serving members of the United States House of Representatives and declared that they are working together in a bipartisan effort designed to gather support for separately proposed legislation for the expansion of sports betting.

LoBiondo represents New Jersey’s Second Congressional District, which includes the resort of Atlantic City, and his House Resolution 3797 would allow states to decide on an individual basis whether to legalize sports betting. Pallone is the representative for New Jersey’s Sixth Congressional District and his House Resolution 3081 would exempt New Jersey from the current Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) prohibition of 1992 and permit it to offer online sports betting within its borders.

“New Jersey has been clear about its intent to host sports betting,” said LoBiondo.

“Legalizing sports betting would strengthen Atlantic City in the face of stiff competition, giving it an additional edge to attract visitors and critical tourism dollars. I appreciate Congressman Pallone’s partnership in gathering support for our effort to bring sports betting to our state.”

The pair pointed to November’s state-wide ballot referendum on allowing sports betting at casinos and racetracks, which was supported by a margin of two-to-one, and stated that both bills could see New Jersey benefit to the tune of “billions” of dollars. “Sportsb etting is widely supported in the state of New Jersey but federal law stands in the way of considerable revenues that will undoubtedly benefit the state,” said Pallone.

“Both of these bills will enable us to bring sports betting to the state and I look forward to working with my New Jersey colleagues to achieve this goal.”

This is a reprint from igamingbusiness.com

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Amarillo Slim dies at 83; poker’s first celebrity

Born Thomas Austin Preston Jr., the colorful and quotable Amarillo Slim won the World Series of Poker in 1972 and began promoting the game on TV and in books. He brought the game ‘out of the back alleys,’ one expert said.

By Dennis McLellan, Los Angeles Times
Get pictures and more updates at www.latimes.com

It was 3 a.m. in Las Vegas in May 1972.

Thomas Austin Preston Jr., better known as Amarillo Slim, had won the main event at the World Series of Poker less than two hours earlier, and there he was looking for a game — any game.

“As long as it’s for real money,” the tall and lanky professional gambler in the anteater-hide cowboy boots told a Times reporter, pushing his pearl-gray Stetson toward the back of his head.

“Seems like a feller ought to be able to get a game like that — something interesting, you know — in a town like this here,” he said. “But I swear to goodness I just can’t hardly find a thing to occupy my time!”

Amarillo Slim, who was long known as a living legend on the worldwide poker circuit, died of colon cancer Sunday in hospice care in Amarillo, Texas, said his son, Bunky Preston. He was 83.

A 1992 inductee into the Poker Hall of Fame, Slim was a colorful character who became known as poker’s first celebrity. In the wake of his 1972 World Series of Poker win, he began promoting poker — and himself — on”The Tonight Show”and other TV shows.

He also wrote a number of books, including “Amarillo Slim’s Play Poker to Win” and “Amarillo Slim in a World Full of Fat People: The Memoirs of the Greatest Gambler Who Ever Lived.”

“He brought poker out of the back alleys,” said Larry Grossman, a longtime gaming analyst and poker historian who knew Slim. “He was just a guy with an outsized personality, and he was the perfect person for the time to represent poker. It was really Slim that became the face of poker for middle America.”

He also was known for his claims of making eccentric bets.

Tales abound, including beating Minnesota Fats in a game of pocket billiards using a broom stick. Or beating tennis hustler Bobby Riggs in a game of pingpong using an iron skillet. Or betting he could hit a golf ball more than a mile.

“I found this frozen lake,” he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 1992, “and the ball hits the ice and starts slidin’ … and one and a half, two miles away it was still goin’.”

Losing was always a possibility in gambling, Slim acknowledged, but he didn’t consider losing a bad thing in itself.

“Anyone that never loses doesn’t do much playing,” he told the New Orleans Times-Picayune in 1994. “If there wasn’t any losing, it wouldn’t be any fun. You’d be bored to death.”

Bunky Preston said his father “always kept the media on their toes. He’d say or do anything. That guy was unbelievably outrageous.”

He was also highly quotable: “Look around the table. If you don’t see a sucker, get up, because you’re the sucker.”

Amarillo Slim found his reputation tarnished in 2003 when a grand jury indicted him on three felony counts of indecency with a child by contact, accusing him of touching a 12-year-old girl on three occasions earlier that year.

In 2004, he pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor assault charges in the case. He was sentenced to two years deferred adjudication and fined $4,000 by an Amarillo judge. His attorney, Robert Templeton, said at the time that the felony charges were dropped because prosecutors could not prove their case.

“He was crushed by the allegations,” said Grossman, “and a lot of people in the poker world shunned him.”

He was born Dec. 31, 1928, in Johnson, Ark., and his family later moved to Amarillo, which remained his hometown.
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Why betting on horses is legal, when gambling elsewhere is not

By Ryan Delaney – wrvo.fm
The rules on legal gambling in New York State can be a little murky.

Casinos on Indian Territory are allowed, but not elsewhere – for now. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been calling for the legalization of casinos in the rest of the state.

New York also already has what are known as “racinos”: horse racing tracks where there are also video slot machines, along with plenty of betting on the actual horses.

Betting on those same horses online is also allowed. But betting on poker and other card games on the internet is not.

Why?

The exception for horse racing has to do with the fact that it’s a sport, and thus different, according to state Assemblyman Gary Pretlow (D-Mount Vernon).

“Horse racing is actually a publicly attended event that no one is really controlling,” says Pretlow, who chairs the Assembly’s racing and wagering committee. “Whereas [in] online gaming, there are too many opportunities for people to cheat.”

But if it’s a sport, then why doesn’t New York allow for betting on all sports, like baseball or football?

It has to do partially with just who – or what – is competing in the sport, according to attorney Todd Engel, who specializes in horse racing.

“Wagering on athletes has never been part of the framework in New York State,” Engel says.

Horse racing wedges itself between betting on human athletes and the controlled environment of table games, says Engel.

Big business

But perhaps the biggest factor is money. Horse racing is a nearly $2 billion industry for the state, according to the New York Racing Association.

And since attendance at race tracks is declining, off-track betting (OTB), video slot machines, dial-a-bet and now online betting are making up a bigger chunk of that.

The problem, says Pretlow, is that while interest in playing the ponies may still be there, fewer people want to make the trip out to the track anymore.

“Horse racing is a spectator sport and people no longer have the desire to go to the race track to bet,” he says. “But we have many different venues for them to view racing and to bet.”

The more ways the state allows betting on horses, the more places there are for it to collect revenue.

That’s not possible with sports or card wagering on the internet. Those are controlled by the federal government so New York wouldn’t be able to take a cut, according to Engel.

Going online

But further parsing of the world of horse wagering poses challenges for the older forms of betting.

“No doubt there is an opportunity that [online betting] could slightly hurt the branches themselves, but we do realize it’s the way of the future,” says E.J. Merriman, branch manager for Western OTB, which owns a track and several parlors in western and central New York.

Western OTB will be launching its own online gambling service soon, according to Merriman.

“It’s a slightly struggling industry,” explains Merriman. “It’s something that has to compete with the flash of other sports and other gambling entities that have the noise, the bling, bling, bling and the lights.”

Most of the customers in his parlor are older. Along with declining attendance at the track, customers at OTBs have declined too, says Merriman.

He hopes getting younger fans into the sport through the internet will entice them to come out – be it to one of his OTB parlors or to the track itself.

This is a reprint from wrvo.fm