Taking advantage of a rare opportunity to appear on mainstream media, the representative of a leading online sportsbook will express the position that since Americans enjoy making recreational wagers, they should be given the freedom to bet.

In what promises to be a rewarding and revealing program, the October 19th edition of "Quite Frankly with Steven A. Smith," to air on ESPN 6:30-7:30 pm Eastern time, features three authorities who will examine the sports-wagering scene as it affects U.S. bettors.

Glen Walker, oddsmaker and gaming consultant to Intertops.com, Antigua, will represent the sports-betting community's point of view. Intertops, one of Europe's largest and most respected gaming companies, was founded in 1983 in Austria, and claims to have taken the first wager over the Internet in January 1996.The full service Antigua office was established in 1997 to service the North American market.

Walker's background includes serving as one of the youngest sportsbook managers in Las Vegas. But perhaps his most notable claim to fame was being an integral member of the notorious betting syndicate known as the Computer Group which beat Las Vegas books for over $20 million in the early 1980s.

Today Walker uses the knowledge gained as a highly successful professional bettor to guide Intertops.com, which books over $200 million annually in wagers on American sports.

As an advocate for legal, regulated sports wagering, Walker hopes to stand up for the millions of U.S. bettors who have opted to engage in this activity as a lifestyle choice but are thwarted by arbitrary laws and puritanical interests.

"I am delighted to have this opportunity to articulate our position vis-à-vis legal sports betting on such a popular and credible TV show. In Europe and most other parts of the world, wagering on sporting events is a routine activity. Intertops would like to see Americans afforded the same freedom to bet on sports without the legal and judgmental baggage currently in place,” Walker said.

Walker hopes the show inspires a freewheeling discussion of the pros and cons of permitting Americans to wager on sports via legal, licensed entities such as Intertops. “Preventing U.S. sports enthusiasts from doing business with licensed sportsbooks is hardly representative of the people’s wishes,” said Walker, identifying a point he expects to make on the show.

Joining Walker on the program will be Congressman Tom Osborne (R), who represents the Third District of Nebraska and was formerly head coach of the Nebraska University football team.

Also on the show will be Brandon Link, whose connection with the sports-advisory business inspired the film "Two for the Money" currently in national release throughout the U.S.

Which came first, offshore sportsbooks or reviews of the books’ performances? Just like the chicken-and-egg conundrum, the answer depends on your reference points.

The issue of providing bettors with fair and accurate summaries of how offshore books treat their customers and conduct business has been around since the first shops started taking bets. Since some of the books stiffed customers, the Internet served as an early warning system for consumers.

Back in the early- to mid-‘90s, when the offshore sports-betting industry was emerging as a viable alternative to illegal books for U.S. customers, posting forums were the vehicle that bettors used to expose the bad guys. Unfortunately, it took a while for a website to attract enough visitors to be genuinely helpful.

Among the first was Bettorsworld, which included a principal who was a staunch advocate for bettors. Known as the Oddswiz, he believed players should have a reliable source of info about fraudulent books -- from slow payers to outright scammers. It was an informal and unofficial approach, but within certain parameters it worked quite well.

Bettorsworld was popular, and soon there was a plethora of sports betting-oriented websites proclaiming themselves to be watchdogs for players. The sites quickly figured out that their main source of advertising was the books. And no one, least of all the bettors themselves, really questioned the fairly obvious conflict of interest when the sportsbooks that advertised on the site received rave reviews.

Beyond that, the books got wise and figured out how to use posting forums to their own advantage. Early on, it was quite possible for Hannibal Lechter to log on to a posting forum under the name Hot to Trot, with an invite to dinner. Soon, sportsbook posters were bashing competitors as well as posting self-serving puffery about their own shops.

But these ploys were frequently transparent, and posters quickly began outing the frauds. Additionally, the ability to trace the identity of posters reduced abuses.

And so it has gone, with the books, websites and customers trying to stay one step ahead of each other. It’s a high stakes game. A book’s reputation can be exalted or sullied if it is mentioned in enough posts. Only a few books are big enough, courageous enough or foolhardy enough to ignore their posting-forum grades.

Now, a veteran website has initiated a plan it believes removes the bias from sportsbook reviews and ratings. MajorWager.com has launched a program which it claims is the Internet’s first interactive sportsbook ratings-and-reviews system.

Under its plan, legitimate bettors get to rate the books based on personal experience, and the content is listed in a directory that is broken into two categories: books insured by MajorWager, and those not insured by the site.

How does MW guarantee the reviews are legit as opposed to paid-for commercials, or agenda-driven criticism? By permitting only reviews from posters who have made at least 20 prior posts at the site.

According to Russ Hawkins, who has run the site himself since December 2003 when he bought out his original partner, “When reading the posts, please keep in mind how long the poster has been at MajorWager and the number of posts he or she has made. While this does not always mean that the opinion of a person with longer tenure should carry more weight, more often than not, it does.”

A cursory exam of various reviews reveals no discernible bias for or against the books that are insured or not insured by the website.

Hawkins has been a controversial figure, who over the years has alienated an abundance of bettors and competing websites. He concedes that he has rubbed many people the wrong way with what can be a volatile temper and a decidedly politically incorrect way of dealing with people.

But his idiosyncrasies notwithstanding, Hawkins feels they should not invalidate this sincere attempt to give bettors timely and reliable info about the books that solicit their business. Given the overall depth of MW’s new rating system, it would be a mistake to let personal feelings about MW’s owner sway a bettor against it.

While we feel the reviews -- which display the websites’ ratings and the posters’ ratings -- are well intentioned and professionally done, we always have a modicum of skepticism regarding judgmental material appearing on sites that accept advertising from books. We’ll leave it up to bettors to determine the values of the ratings and reviews. But there is no denying that the opinions of veteran posters with established paper trails brings strong credibility to the party.

We’ll offer no equivocation regarding the cornucopia of factual information available under this service. This is probably the most complete directory of offshore sportsbooks we have seen. The aggregate listings under both categories are notable for not including objectionable books. So they pass muster just as a guide to shops worth considering and are an obvious starting point for players seeking an offshore connection.

When you click onto a book, aside from opinionated material, there is a compendium of useful operational and contact info that answers many obvious and not-so-obvious questions asked by bettors.

As a reference guide to offshore books, this is the mother lode and truly a standout. Ideally, in the future even more particulars would be added to each book’s listing to make the service a one-stop info center for offshore books/casinos.

Is MW offering the definitive service for bettors to get a handle on the offshore books clamoring for their business? Given the history of this industry, it is 3-5 that someone, somewhere, some time will try to one-up MW with a competitive system.

But for now, MW looks like it has a leg up in the offshore sportsbook ratings sweepstakes.

Please send comments, questions, etc. to buzzdaly@aol.com.