Celebrity branding is a type of branding, or advertising, in which a celebrity uses his or her status in society to promote a product, service or charity. Celebrity branding can take several different forms, from a celebrity simply appearing in advertisements for a product, service or charity, to a celebrity attending PR events, creating his or her own line of products or services, and/or using his or her name as a brand. The most popular forms of celebrity brand lines are for clothing and perfume. Most singers, models and film stars now have at least one licensed product or service which bears their name. Lately there has been a trend towards celebrity voice-overs in advertising. Some celebrities have distinct voices which are recognizable even when they not present on-screen. This is a more subtle way to add celebrity branding to a product or service. And example of such an advertising campaign is Sean Connery voice-over for Level 3 Communications. More recently, advertisers have begun attempting to quantify and qualify the use of celebrities in their marketing campaigns by evaluating their awareness, appeal, and relevance to a brand's image and the celebrity's influence on consumer buying behavior

In organized sports, point shaving is a type of match fixing where the perpetrators try to prevent a team from covering a published point spread. Unlike other forms of match fixing, sports betting invariably motivates point shaving. A point shaving scheme generally involves a sports gambler and one or more players of the sports team favored to win the game. In exchange for a bribe, the player or players agree to ensure that their team will not cover the point spread. The gambler then wagers against that team.

Basketball

Basketball is a particularly easy medium for shaving points because of the scoring tempo of the game and the ease by which one player can influence key events. By deliberately missing shots or committing well-timed turnovers or fouls, a corrupt player can covertly ensure that his team fails to cover the point spread, without causing them to lose the game or to lose so badly that suspicions are aroused. Although the NCAA has adopted a zero tolerance policy with respect to gambling activity by its players, some critics believe it unwittingly encourages point shaving due to its strict rules regarding amateurism, combined with the large amount of money wagered on its games. The NCAA has produced posters warning of this, the most notable being an athlete sitting alone on a bench with his face buried in his hands although this may also look like the athlete suffered a tremendous defeat with the caption DO NOT BET ON IT with warnings as to what could happen if they are involved in such a plan as well as an athlete being caught gambling himself .

Famous examples of this are the CCNY Point Shaving Scandal of the 1950-51 and the Boston College basketball point shaving scandal of 1978-79, which was perpetrated by gangsters Henry Hill and Jimmy Burke.

Sports Point Shaving

The technique has been used by both amateur and professional athletes in many other sports. The intention is to manipulate scoring so that the final score results in a predetermined outcome. A typical sports game should always tend to behave in a nondeterministic manner. In other words, the exact final score of a game exists in a set, which can contain more than a thousand possible combinations. Furthermore, nondeterminism suggests that the final score of a sports game is practically unpredictable.

Many variables can influence the outcome. Such variables include weather, fatigue, and human error. However, amateur and professional athletes who are very skilled in the technique of point shaving can consistently create unlikely outcomes in bad weather and other challenging conditions. These unlikely outcomes tend to create huge financial gains/losses in prediction markets.

The deviation from the mean, otherwise known as the expected value, is what makes these outcomes so unlikely. In most sports, the expected value is a mathematical prediction that can be expressed as a scoring differential. This scoring differential is also calculated by casinos; and, gamblers generally refer to it as a point spread. In many cases of point shaving, the final outcome deviates substantially from the expected value, or the point spread. Additionally, the deviation from the expected value can be quite large. Many times, the deviation is so large that athletes on opposing teams must cooperate in order to achieve the desired result. In this particular case, the final outcome is commonly referred to as a thrown game.

Paradise is an unincorporated town in the Las Vegas metropolitan area in Clark County, Nevada, United States. The population was 223,167 at the 2010 census. As an unincorporated town, it is governed by the Clark County Commission with input from the Paradise Town Advisory Board. Paradise contains McCarran International Airport, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and most of the Las Vegas Strip, including well-known hotels such as Caesars Palace, the Palms, and the MGM Grand. Therefore, many tourists visiting the Las Vegas area actually spend most of their time in Paradise, rather than in the City of Las Vegas. Despite this, Paradise remains relatively unknown, since “Paradise, NV” does not appear in postal addresses. The United States Postal Service has assigned “Las Vegas, NV” as the place name for the ZIP codes containing Paradise. Nonetheless, if Paradise were to be incorporated, it would be one of the largest cities in Nevada.

Poker Royal

Poker Games

Poker is a card game in which players bet into a poker pot during the course of a hand. The poker player holding the best hand at the end of the betting wins the pot. During a given betting round, each remaining player in turn may take one of four actions: check, bet or raise, call, fold. Poker betting usually proceeds in a circle until each player has either called all bets or folded. Different poker games have various numbers of betting rounds interspersed with the receipt or replacement of cards. Poker is usually played with a standard 4-suit 52-card deck. In some poker games a joker or other wild cards may be added. The ace normally plays high, but can sometimes play low.