My California friends may no longer be able to drive with their hand-held cellphones, but soon Nevada sports books may finally welcome cellphones for the first time.

One of the oddities of Vegas I have never understood is the ban on cellphone use in casino sports books. This isn't because they are annoying. If you are in a casino you are not allowed to use your cellphone in the sports book by posted law. Today the Review-Journal reports that the Gaming Control Board is thinking of changing the law. But why does the law exist in the first place? According to the article: "The decades-old band was enacted to keep betting lines from being transmitted outside the state and to discourage layoff wagering by illegal bookmakers inside Nevada casinos." Sadly, that makes no sense to me as a non-gambler. Who cares what people out of state know and what is a layoff wager? So, as I do when stumped by our town's major industry, I went to the gambling consumer website LasVegasAdvisor.com's publisher Anthony Curtis with my ignorance. Curtis offers this explanation of the cellphone ban in casino sports books:

"The famous Federal Wire Wager Act (called, simply, 'the Wire Act') is a 1961 law that prohibits the transmission of betting lines from state-to-state. The sports book law was partially to comply with that. (This law has had a lot to do with all the ambiguity tied to gambling on the Net, by the way.) Layoff wagering refers to illegal bookies using agents ("runners" or "messengers") to help them balance their own books by betting off excess amounts here in town. They often like to hedge their positions when they get too much money on one side. This law has always been foolish, because it didn't deter either of these things, but it did inconvenience many a good and legal customer."

And it still does. But I feel better now as the ban never made sense even to the people who do get gambling.