Scouting the Best Race Books in Las Vegas

Events / Travel
The view north on the Vegas Strip. (Wikimedia Commons)

One of my best friends is getting married in March. His bachelor party – which I was in charge of planning – is this weekend… in (surprise, surprise) Las Vegas. We’ve got a couple of activities planned already and, truthfully, we’ll probably let the weekend push and pull us wherever it may.

But since we are going to be in Vegas (the home of the NTRA/DRF National Handicapping Championship next weekend at Treasure Island), I figured it might be a good opportunity to scope out some of the best race books to have a few drinks and lay some wagers down on a couple of races. Not knowing fully what to expect, I tweeted out that I was looking for opinions on the best race books.

The responses? Well, there were lots of them! Here were my takeaways:

Everyone Values Something Different

Each sports book is “known for” one thing or another, and different customers choose their favorites based on different priorities. Some put a lot of stock in comfortable seats, others just wanted easy access to free drinks. Additional items to consider are ambiance, decor and the number of screens on which to watch racing and other sports.

Here are a few of the opinions shared by fellow racing tweeps:


Doing it Big

I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t really know much about the Westgate Las Vegas Resort and Casino before this week but I was sold on it based on the video above and other tweets that people shot my way. The place looks massive! I’m so impressed that I think I’m going to attempt to reserve a spot at the Westgate book this weekend… I’ll let you know if I can even get in!


Wild Cards

If I knew very little about Westgate before this week, I knew absolutely nothing about some of the other locations that other people mentioned. One of the spots I uncovered is Green Valley Ranch. Check out some of pictures from this place – pretty impressive.

Perhaps a little less of a wild card is South Point, which got rave reviews from a number of people.


And A Few Others…


The Most Votes Went to … The Wynn

While opinion was varied, the Wynn Las Vegas got a bunch of endorsements from most horseplayers. The Wynn’s book is clean, spacious, comfortable and offers great views of the races. It’s also THE spot for making future wagers on Kentucky Derby contenders – which is a huge reason why I’m insisting that our bachelor party make a stop at the Wynn. The staff and management also have a reputation for being very friendly to horse bettors.


Honorable Mention

The Mirage gets many thumbs up from horseplayers. All in all, it probably ranks right behind the Wynn as the most popular race book, based at least on our not-so-scientific Twitter survey.

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