Gambling Thread

FanDuel's deadline to make a F4 parlay was midnight after the second first four games. The West region wasn't on the board yet so at 11:58, so I just went with Duke-Alabama-Texas. My West pick would have been Kansas. Didn't matter!

 

Moth. Er. Fucker.
Couple of weeks ago I mentioned that my local casino sports book was offering college baseball lines. If you follow the sport at all, then you know that the midweek games between Power 5 teams and in-state jabronis are usually situations where they can't set a high enough line to scare you off the favorites. I hit a four-team run line parlay a couple of weeks ago (three of the four were run rule games, and I only had to sweat the fourth because the line was so large) and have been eager for another go. Unfortunately, they're only offering money line bets now and the odds are mostly in the "why even bother?" territory. Tennessee and LSU, for example, were both -3333 if I remember right. A lot of the others are well north of -300.

But if they wanna get nuts, let's get nuts.
I decided to say screw it, and see just how much it would take to goose the odds. I started piling on games for an experimental $10 parlay, with the thought that the parlay odds would counter the ridiculous money line odds. When I got to nine games, I decided it was enough. The odds of the games ranged from -167 to -770, and balanced out to about 10-1. If I could pull this off, the $10 bet would pay back $115 and I would feel like a gambling god for a bit. Fairly low risk, high reward.
Nine games. With two late games winding down, it looks like I'm going to get eight.
Fucking East Carolina (-315) shit the bed at home against UNC Wilmington.
So close. So damn close ...

 

Bet on a spring training game for the first time today for no other reason than a handicapper I follow who has been on an absolute tear made them his freebie of the day. No reasoning behind it. It hit. Go Diamondbacks!

 

Adding to the feel-good vibes to lift our fellow degenerate @Batman! I hit an all-time miracle anti-bad beat last night. Put a few bucks on Islanders-Devils over 5.5 and the game going to OT and legged both bets. Also did a Bo Horvat-Yegor Sharangovich parlay w/each player legged. Isles go up 3-1 on Kyle Palmieri's second goal (should have had him, easy narrative choice as an ex-Devils player) with under five left. No biggie, just a few bucks. But then Horvat score an empty-netter with 1:02 left and Zach Parise scores an empty-netter with sixth-tenths (!!!) of a second left. Ends up mostly salvaging the night. Made up for that nerd from Princeton missing the FT down 11 in the final seconds on Friday.

 

Adding to the misery of my near-miss?
Two of the eight legs that hit were walk-off wins. Miami scored three runs in the bottom of the ninth to beat Florida International, and Arizona (which would've been Game No. 9) scored in the bottom of the ninth and 10th to beat Grand Canyon.
So not only did I almost pull off a miracle, there were two mini-miracles wrapped inside of it — both of which went for naught.

 

I've never bet college baseball--I'm not a sicko like Batman!--but those midweek games in good weather states would seem to be tricky. The mids in those states are usually no slouches.

 

That's why the odds were so one-sided on those games. Although a few tonight were more competitive than I'd have liked, most of the outcomes were never in doubt before the teams take the field.
There were a few toss-ups on the board that had reasonable odds (like Southern Miss-Ole Miss, which wound up having some ... issues), but I didn't want the thing blown up that way. If it was going down, I wanted it to be by a genuine shocker. In hindsight, the game I bombed out on should have been a stay-away. UNC Wilmington has a decent record and already beat East Carolina once this season. Should have picked another game.
Even though this one didn't work out, it isn't scaring me away from trying it again, either. The money line on most of these games is as much of a gimme as you can get. It's just stringing eight or nine of them together to counter the horrible odds that's tricky.

And trying to take some more positives from this, hunting for an Arizona State-UNLV score led me to seeing this sweet-ass play by a UNLV pitcher that I probably wouldn't have seen otherwise. I posted it on the college baseball thread as well, but dammit I love this play.

 

You should know as much as anyone that midweek baseball is dangerous. The mid will often throw one of their better pitchers because they need a resume builder that they can't get by winning a weekend series against North Alabama or whoever. The P5 will go with some freshman or Johnny Wholestaff because they need to save their best for the weekend. I've seen enough weird shit that it would be a total stayaway for me.

 

That's funny. I became a fan of First to 10 a couple of years ago, mostly for the NBA. Because I am not sitting around for 2.5 hours of a regular season NBA game.

I heard on RJ Bell's podcast last week that First to ten and first to 15 have become really popular in vegas for the tournament. I was going to pull the trigger on Miami, but forgot to place it. I was laughing seeing how it played out.

 

I think earlier in the year that might be the case, but now that we're into the conference schedules the mid-majors have their rotations set as well and are taking a similar approach to the big boys. Or they're just so outclassed (like Grambling vs. LSU last night, or most any SWAC vs. SEC match-up) that it doesn't matter.
The bigger danger is with the power teams taking a mental night off and suddenly they're down 6-3 in the seventh inning and it's too late to wake up.

 

Guy complains to his bookie, "Man, I'm losing my ass on football. What should I do? "

Bookie says, "Hey, hockey's starting soon, maybe try some of that."

Couple of weeks later, guy starts complaining to his bookie, "I'm losing my ass on hockey. I don't know what to do. What do you think?"

Bookie says, "Hey, basketball season's about to start, why don't you try some hoops?

Not long til the guy is back complaining to his bookie. "I can't hit anything on basketball, college or pro. What can I do?"

Bookie says, "Lts of people getting into tennis, why don't you try some of that?"

"TENNIS?!?! I don't know anything about tennis!" exclaims the guy.

Anyway, I'm njoying some tennis betting lately. Cristea +5½ games over Aussie Open champ Sabalenka. Didn't even need the plus as Cristea sweeps en route to the Miami Open finals. Makes it two days of winners in a row after yesterday's moneyline parlay of Sinner and Fritz. Never heard of any of them before this week!

 

Tennis can be fun. Be wary of what I call "toilet tennis," which are some of the low-level ATP and WTA events and basically anything after the U.S. Open until the run-up to the Aussie starts. But this week's events are 1000 events, which are basically a step below the grand slams, so they can be profitable and worth betting.