Reizner, Sonny

"Born Julius Charles Reizner in Taunton, Mass., in 1921, he fell in love with sports as a child. He placed his first bet with a bookie -- on the Boston Braves -- when he was 16."

"The family moved to Las Vegas in 1970. Reizner went to work at the now-defunct Churchill Downs Race and Sports Book."

"As sports book director of Hole-in-the-Wall Sportsbook at the now-defunct Castaways Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip from 1976 to 1987, Reizner launched Nevada’s first football contest -- the “Castaways Challenge,” started in 1978, which offered large purses to handicappers with the best season’s win records."

"In addition to the usual football, baseball and basketball betting lines, Reizner established the first betting line on the Boston Marathon in 1979, and he was among the first to take wagers on other nontraditional betting sports such as NASCAR races, golf and tennis."

"Reizner was unprepared for the response he generated in 1980 when he posted the betting line asking, 'Who shot J.R.?' Thousands of fans of the TV series 'Dallas' placed wagers on who they thought was the unknown assailant who had shot the unscrupulous Texas oilman J.R. Ewing, played by Larry Hagman, in the previous season’s cliffhanger. Reizner wrote the odds for every character on the show who had a reason to kill J.R."

"He worked at the Fremont and Stardust before he was hired by the Castaways Hole-in-the-Wall Sportsbook in 1976. After the Castaways was demolished in 1987 to make way for the Mirage, Reizner became director of the Frontier hotel’s race and sports book.

Reizner, who taught a course on the history of sports betting at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas for three years, helped open the Rio’s race and sports book in 1989 and served as its director for several years before taking over the same job at the Desert Inn. He retired in 1996."

Quoted directly from: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-dec-13-me-reizner13-story.html