Chatting off the record, one Las Vegas bookmaker recently remarked that the NCAA Tournament was his favorite time of year.

"It's better than the Super Bowl because it's about more than the money," he declared.

"People who come to town for it are true fans and many have been coming for years. They get together and it's like a family reunion.

"It's the only time all year you see more squares than wise guys."

Bet shops throughout Clark County are bracing for a crush March 16-19 and tip off of the Big Dance.

Several hundred thousand hoops junkies are expected to join the Sin City Mayhem crowd for those first four days of action as the field is slashed to 32 the first two days and 16 the next two.

Wednesday night marked the start of some conference tournaments while others get underway Thursday.

The Hilton book was full for the small stuff Wednesday night and, like other valley stores, is expected to be rocking from the rafters at this time next week when TV viewers get a steady diet of basketball for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

"Oh yeah, we'll be busy," oddsmaker/supervisor Jeff Sherman said.

"College basketball has been brisk and we've been doing first and second half total for a while now.

"The players love them."

The SuperBook will offer betttors a parlay card for Round 1 games, covering the first two days.

"We can get them out in advance, but there's not enough turnaround time to do it for the weekend," Sherman said.

Arizona Charlie's East and West, which are under the Stratosphere Tower's wing, each are sponsoring free $10,000 NCAA parlay card-type contests, which should create even heavier traffic than usual with players consistently returning to sumbit updated entries.

The Stratosphere is sitting this one out, however.

"We've been in it the last few years, but again it's a matter of clientele," Robert Jaynes, the Stratosphere's race and sports director, said.

"Midweek's quiet around here and business explodes on weekends.

"The other two places are locals casinos that get a steady flow of people all week.

"We have different people all the time so it just doesn't fly here.

"We used to have the lowest enrty total of all three places, so we did the sensible thing."