Sports gambling thread

Wondering, first of all, if anybody else likes to lay down the occasional wagers on NFL, college football, NBA games, etc. It seems like this is a pretty taboo subject with people - people seem to recoil about it even more than drinking, drugs, etc., etc.

But I almost always lay about $40 down on various football games each weekend, and it makes things fun. I guess it's kind of a hobby.

Anyone else? Anybody found that they're actually pretty good at picking games, for example?

Anyone want to offer any tips? ;D

 

A hobby? Maybe you should try needlepoint.

May want to check out this book about guys who were able to find spreads they like and pile the money on them:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/books/review/Veale.t.html

 

Yeah, it's fun. My wife and I both throw in $20 a weekend and it makes the games fun to watch together. I know it seems weird, but when we lose, it's like, "Eh, it was fun anyway." When we win, it buys us a nice dinner out the following week.

To each his own, I guess.

 

If you're going to do it, do it, like so many other things, in moderation. It's not difficult at all to get in over your money and to squander money you can't afford to lose.

My most important rule of all: There are NO sure things. Never have been, never will be.

I remember a college basketball game several years ago when UMass and UConn were playing and I believe UConn scored nine points in the first half. You can be certain that if I'd walked into a sports book in Vegas and saw an over/under of 10 posted on UConn's first-half total, I would have run to the windows with every dime I had.

 

If you're losing some weeks, shouldn't the winnings just get you back to even instead of giving you extra cash to spend? I mean, you already had that cash in the first place.

 

I play on pickspal.com. No money, just fake sports gambling. I make all my points back in a week if I lose them earlier in the week and usually I make around 5,000 off of getting 1,000 a day.

It's about studying the stats, looking at off the wall stuff, trying to avoid the NFL point spreads(although the Dog is over .500 this year) and just being smart about it.

 

You and your logic

 

Not if he won the first week.

 

My hometown is gambling crazy. You can't get two guys together without hearing about point spreads. I would go into a local bookie joint and see 50-year-old women filling out parlay slips. Good times in moderation, but I've seen people go out of control too. (Obviously)

After I graduated college I was home during the beginning of h.s. football season and saw a place had high school games. I remembered two lines, thinking how would they make spreads before the first game, and damn if they didn't hit either right on the line or within a point.

 

You don't have to get the spreads right, you just have to get it so that it balances out. If a bookie has $50,000 on one team and $50,000 on the opponent, that is the perfect result from his point of view.

Once I played parlay cards where I worked and I picked 4 out of 4 two weeks in a row - the first week some numbers were way off and the second week I was lucky. By the third week, people were looking at me like I was Moses but I didn't win again the rest of the year.

 

I went 116-94 against the number in a weekly college football pool ($100 entry fee) this season and finished 14th out of 66 entries. But never finished in the Top 5 in any single week and only the Top 12 finishers for the season got at least their entry fee back.

Total earnings: $0.

But 116-94, I guarantee, is a hell of a lot better than some of these Vegas sleazeballs on the Saturday morning shows with Jim Feist and others who look like they've been on crack for a month.

 

Was that against a line Dick?