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Some prisons might use cans of tuna or mackerel for money, but you're just as often to find stamps being exchanged. In this prison, the powers that decide such things determined that each 49-cent stamp used on the black market is worth 40 cents in the prison; a $1 stamp is worth 80 cents. To keep the underground economy afloat, inmates purchase stamps at full price from the commissary, so a "book" of ten stamps is worth about $4. During Super Bowl weekend, a bookie could easily make several grand. The Panthers are considered such a sure thing that Eddie decided to require gamblers to bet on three other games this weekend, mostly basketball, in order to play his ticket.
One of his runners is called Man-Man, a convicted drug dealer serving 16 years and a diehard Panthers fan. He said that he's yet to bring in a single ticket that has someone betting on Denver.
"I've had about 30 dudes in last five days bet the Panthers on their tickets," Man-Man said. "I told Eddie not to mix the Super Bowl games with basketball, but he didn't listen. Now he's got at least eight dudes who laid a book [of stamps] on four bets, and they all hit three games. They're just waiting on the Panthers to hit, too, and Eddie's out 80 books"—or $320.
In the days leading up to the Super Bowl, there was plenty of talk about the game and who was betting what on it. An inmate named Little C was seriously thinking about dropping 25 books, or $100, on the Broncos. The guys who run Pay-to-Play, a competing ticket, were talking about giving the Broncos four points instead of three, and paying the winners 3-to-1 meaning you bet $100 to win $300, an enticement to get people to bet on the underdog.
"Yo, my gut be tellin' me to do it, you know?" said Little C. "But if Peyton shows up and the Broncos do what they do, man, it might be all bad for the black man... And how I'm gonna look goin' for a white man [Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning] in this Super Bowl?"
Old Man Denis is a lifer in his late 70s who's been running a betting pool called Win Big in every penitentiary he's been held in since 1995. He's got fond memories of the last time the Panthers were in the Super Bowl, in 2004.
"Best Super Bowl game is the history of the NFL," he said. "They went a quarter and a half without scoring a single point, then in the last five or six minutes of the game they put up nearly 30 points between them. I thought I was in big trouble."
"The Panthers saved my ass," the inmate remembered. "The game went way over [i.e., everyone who bet the over instead of the under won] and if New England would have [covered the spread], I would have lost nearly $10,000. As it turned out, I pulled in a little over $1,000 that night."
This year, Eddie has his own plan for how to recoup his losses if the Panthers cover the spread and he ends up having to pay. "If the line doesn't change, or everyone sticks with the Panthers, I'll just lay some of my bets off on the other tickets," Eddie said. "I refuse to get massacred... I'll leave that up to Peyton."
*Note: The author of the piece asked that his name and location not be revealed because he's writing about activities banned by prison authorities and is worried about the repercussions he could face as a result. The last names of the inmates quoted in this article have also been redacted.
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