Bets

Stamp Out Cancer - sponsored by the B-More Stampers, held at Camp Chapel United Methodist Church, 5000 East Joppa Road, Perry Hall, a day of stamping and scrapping, Aug. 20, 9:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. $40 includes make and takes, boxed lunch and donation to The Breast Cancer Research Foundation and The American Cancer Society. bmorestampers@gmail.com for a registration form. Nancy Amato, 410-661-4465 or http://www.nancyamato.stampinup.net. Outdoor Concert - Jerusalem Mill Village, Gunpowder Falls State Park, 2813 Jerusalem Road, Kingsville, Aug. 7, 6 p.m. with classic rock music of the Great Train Robbery.

(NOTE: To download Liam's full cheat sheet for all of Saturday's races, click here . Following is his analysis on the Preakness Stakes.)   There are always lots of hard luck stories in the Kentucky Derby, and some of those hard luck horses come to the Preakness looking to set the record straight. Several of those guys are here to take on Orb. And a handful more Derby grumblers are skipping the Preakness to set their sights on the Belmont. However, recent history shows that the Derby winner tends to back up the Derby win and beat most if not all of those Derby finishers again.

Who pays for the food involved when mayors and governors make bets on football games? When it comes to Faidley's crab cakes, the centerpiece of the market package Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has wagered on Sunday's AFC championship game, Faidley's is prepared to provide the goods. Faidley's owner Bill Devine said he has promised and provided crab cakes for municipal bets before, dating back to the William Donald Schaefer era. "It's a feel-good gesture," said Devine about his make-good promise.

The course is "Introduction to Casino Gambling," but upon entering the classroom, one might be tempted to place a bet at the roulette wheel, the craps table or any of the other table game layouts. As he stared at the roulette wheel, Christopher Lamb of Elkridge, a student who has taken one week of the Anne Arundel Community College course, could scarcely contain his excitement at the thought of working in a casino. "It is an amazing game, just on gambling and chance, and who knows where the ball is going to land?

Every morning, Monday through Friday, blogger Matt Vensel will hook you up with reading material -- mostly on the Ravens but with some other Baltimore sports stuff, too -- to skim through as you slug down coffee and slack off at the start of your workday. That way he'll have an excuse to do the same to start his workday, too. On Tuesday, someone from the Bovada sportsbook sent me over some interesting Ravens prop bets. Now I'm not encouraging gambling, but it is fun to talk about over/unders.

Beginning today, Maryland's six wagering outlets will take bets on full-card simulcasts from Saratoga and Del Mar, two of the nation's great resort racetracks that open this afternoon.

Imagine you placed a $10 bet on a horse tagged with 10-to-1 odds for today's Preakness Stakes. Like a dream come true, that long shot comes through.But instead of the odds you were promised before the race, the track makes a mistake. Your payout is a meager $36 instead of the $100 you anticipated.That's just how Henry L. Straus got burned at a small Havre de Grace racetrack almost 70 years ago.Today, the stakes are much higher. Pimlico Race Course officials expect to rake in about $8 million in bets on the 116th running of the Preakness.

Bettors hoping to make a lucky dollar with a Baltimore County bookmaker instead found themselves out of luck and out of money, the U.S. attorney's office said.Christopher T. Buettner of Reisterstown pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud in U.S. District Court in Baltimore yesterday. In one case, Buettner admitted operating a "sports information service" where he and other accomplices lured customers into wiring more than $700,000 into what the customers thought was a Las Vegas account to be used to make bets on sporting events, according to the U.S. attorney's office.

An article in yesterday's editions incorrectly stated the plea made and sentence received by one of six men charged in a gambling conspiracy. Kevin Charles Keller of Baltimore did not plead guilty and was not ordered to perform community service. His case was placed on the court's stet, or inactive docket. Charges will be dropped if he has no similar charge filed against him within one year.The Sun regrets the error.Six men tied to a football betting operation in Baltimore City and Baltimore and Harford counties pleaded guilty to gambling conspiracy charges yesterday in Harford District Court.

John E. Mooney is tired of watching buses from Maryland go through Delaware on their way to the slot machines at Atlantic City, N.J., so he's doing something about it.Mooney, general manager at Delaware Park, is convinced that most of the gamblers are slot-machine types and not headed for the tables."

By now you've surely seen the video, below, of Tom Brady getting super, duper excited about Orb winning the Kentucky Derby. In it, he runs over to congratulate Ogden Phipps II, son of co-owner Ogden Mills "Dinny" Phipps. I'm not sure how they know each other. Maybe Brady just really revels in the good fortune of other fantastically rich people. Also, he apparently bet $4,700 on the colt and won $25,000 . (In some versions of the video you can see the other co-owner, Maryland resident Stuart Janney, roam through the shot in a tan rain coat and Orb hat, looking for all the world like maybe he'd mistakenly arrived in that place at that time.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake will join the mayor of San Francisco today for a day of service in Baltimore to collect on a Super Bowl wager that she won when the Ravens dominated the 49ers. The mayors will help AmeriCorps members revitalize a vacant lot in the Franklin Square neighborhood, repaint and repair a police station in Sandtown-Winchester and tutor third-graders in Cherry Hill. But first, Mayor Edwin M. Lee will join Rawlings-Blake at Faidley's Seafood in Lexington Market, where he will learn how to make a crab cake sandwich.

In a pair of working gloves with the Ravens logo emblazoned on the front, San Francisco Mayor Edwin M. Lee painted broad brush strokes at a West Baltimore police station Friday to make good on a bet. Had the Ravens lost to the 49ers in Super Bowl XLVII, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake would have traveled to the West Coast to complete a day of service, which was the wager she and Lee made on the February game. "I think San Francisco is a lovely city, but I am glad I did not have to go there in payment of a debt," said Rawlings-Blake, who traded in her signature high heels for a pair of wedge booties for the day of activities.

Ten days before the NFL draft, the amazing transformation of the Ravens continues. Rolando McClain is just the latest new piece of the puzzle. And I wouldn't bet he's the last free agent the Ravens sign, not with the team still $4.1 million under the salary cap and several gaping holes in the lineup still to be filled. But by signing the volatile linebacker after the Oakland Raiders dumped him, the Ravens reaffirmed that they're willing to take chances on players other teams wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole.

When she entered the race to replace John R. Leopold as county executive, Laura Neuman had a far higher profile in business than she did in politics. Many of the other 15 candidates were better known. But the County Council pulled a surprise, granting her the seat in a 4-3 vote. It wasn't the first time Neuman, a 48-year-old Annapolitan, came to the table with a seemingly weak hand and raked in all the chips. Born to a family of modest means in East Baltimore, she never finished high school or college, but during her 20s talked her way into the MBA program at Loyola University Maryland.

A hot topic among Ravens fans this week is this: how well will Ray Lewis do in his new role next fall as an ESPN talking head? According to reports, Lewis will appear on the network's "Monday Night Countdown," "Sunday NFL Countdown" and "SportsCenter" shows. But apparently some fans on sports talk radio and message boards are worried he'll come off either as too intense, too preachy or too rambling. Personally, I don't see that at all. Just as Lewis was the consummate pro for 17 seasons with the Ravens, preparing for every game with an astonishing attention to detail, he'll prepare the same way for life behind the microphone.

Gamblers, rejoice. If the Super Bowl weren't occasionally deadly dull, you probably wouldn't be able to bet today on which will be greater, the number of passes caught by Marvin Harrison against the Chicago Bears in Miami or the number of free throws made by LeBron James against the Detroit Pistons in Cleveland. Or whether Bears Coach Lovie Smith or the Indianapolis Colts' Tony Dungy will slam his headset, what color the players' sports drinks will be or whether Prince will split his pants open during the halftime show.

Which horse will win the race is far from the only intrigue involved in horse racing. Politics and making law may be the greatest intrigues of all. In Annapolis, during the legislative session under way until April 10, legislators ponder bills related to horse racing. Well, some legislators do. Many could care less about horse racing, if you want to know the truth. And some who care about the sport don't understand its underlying complexities. Simulcasting, sharing revenues, funding purses, financing bonds, soothing opposing factions.

When Baltimore's Gardiners furniture lost a Super Bowl bet with its customers, forced to give away $600,000 in furniture because the Ravens' Jacoby Jones returned a kick return for a touchdown, the store owners couldn't have been happier. Because they didn't have to pay up. Their insurance company did. And now Odds On Promotions president Mark Gilmartin isn't exactly doing the Ray Lewis dance. "It's always good to have winners in our industry," he told Insider Wednesday.

They came to pay off a wager, but they couldn't escape a little trash talk. California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer walked humbly to Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski's Capitol Hill hideaway on Thursday to pay off their Super Bowl bet, showering Mikulski and Sen. Ben Cardin with cheese, wine and crab -- the West Coast variety. "This is real crab," Feinstein said as she handed a Dungeness crab to the Maryland senators. "It was caught a few days ago in a trap off of the Golden Gate Bridge...It comes with our deepest congratulations.