The Smart Money: At Vegas parlor, an NFL Sunday with amenities

If you like your football the way some folks like their cheesesteaks - with a little something extra to spice it up - then there's no better place on an NFL Sunday than Las Vegas.

Wagering on a game or two, or putting together a four-team parlay, or getting in some halftime bets to make up for that pregame brain cramp is how football fans in Vegas roll.

And if that's your idea of an ideal NFL Sunday, you might consider the weekly extravaganza at the Las Vegas Hilton called Football Central.

Every football Sunday, the casino turns the 1,500-seat Hilton Theater into "every sports fan's dream," according to Jay Kornegay, vice president for the Hilton's race and sports operations.

For many tourists visiting Las Vegas on an NFL Sunday who figure they'll stop in at a sports book, plop down and watch the home team, there's this unpleasant surprise - every seat probably has been taken beginning at about 7 a.m. by savvier sports book veterans (remember a 1 p.m. kickoff on the East Coast is a 10 a.m. start in Vegas).

But at the Hilton's Football Central, Kornegay says, "You can get there at kickoff with three or four friends, walk into a smoke-free environment, and watch football all day."

The theater has 11 screens, including one that's 15-by-20 feet while the rest are 7-by-9 feet.

"No one is just betting on one game, so you can watch every game you're interested in without having your head on a swivel," Kornegay said.

Admission to the theater is free, and food and beverages are sold, including breakfast sandwiches, $1 hot dogs and $2 beers, even hoagies and cheesesteaks. The Hilton tries to promote a festive atmosphere with free raffles for sports memorabilia and other prizes.

Just outside the theater, there are wagering windows so customers don't have to wander too far from all those high-def big screens.

A short stroll from the theater is the Hilton's roomy sports book, with another couple of hundred seats and dozens of screens. But the Football Central experience is singular in a city filled with terrific places to watch sports, such as the sports books at Caesars Palace, the Mirage, and the MGM Grand, and Lagasse's Stadium at the Palazzo.

Linked bad beat in A.C. The hottest trend in casino poker rooms is the bad-beat jackpot because it injects into poker a sweepstakes element more commonly associated with slot machines and lotteries.

Put simply, bad-beat jackpots turn what is normally a miserable thing - getting beaten in a showdown while holding a good hand by an even better hand - into a spectacularly good thing.

The Harrah's group of casinos in Atlantic City has introduced New Jersey's first multi-casino jackpot that will be shared among all players participating in eligible games in all four casinos when the jackpot is hit. The approach is likely to routinely produce huge payouts.

Participating casinos are Caesars, Bally's, Harrah's, and Showboat.

The jackpot will be divided, with the holder of the losing bad-beat hand getting 30 percent of the pot, the winner in the bad-beat hand collecting 20 percent, and the rest of the jackpot being distributed among all players in the four poker rooms, with each player getting a minimum of $100.

To be eligible, players must be participating in a Texas Hold 'em cash game. Players in stud cash games or in tournaments do not qualify for the jackpot.

When the linked bad-beat jackpot began on Monday, it sat at a little more than $524,000. Like a taxi meter, it keeps going up. One dollar is taken out of every pot (aside from the normal house rake) and feeds the jackpot. Half is directed to the current prize and half toward seeding the next jackpot.

The minimum for a losing bad-beat hand starts at four queens and goes down one rank every Wednesday until it reaches a low of four deuces. It sits there until someone hits.

The Atlantic City record for a bad-beat jackpot was hit at the Trump Taj Mahal in June for $672,115, with the losing hand (four sevens were beaten by four aces) collecting $336,000.