Gambling Thread

I got Broncos +5 -105 early Monday morning on Bovada

Right now it's Browns-2 -105

Not sure I will ever have a better chance to middle, and it's only costing a nickel instead of ten cents.

 

I don't know why this happened to be on my mind yesterday, but I wondered what the odds were of shuffling a standard 52-card deck and matching any previous deal.

Matching the first card would be 1 in 52, obviously. Getting two cards in order then is 52x51, or 1 in 2,652. But three in a row is 132,600. And as you can imagine, the odds of continuing the string go crazy very quickly. To match any random deal is 52! (52 factorial).

According to my calculator, that's approximately 8,065,817,520,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 deals. It's quite possible, given completely random distribution, there's never been a duplication of any shuffled deck to this point in history.

 

One of the dangers of having a big pot in front of you is that you sometimes bet a little more than you should.
I wound up betting on a dozen games this weekend (11 college and one NFL) because I had a little extra in the kitty from last week. I normally like to keep it to about a half-dozen. Didn't break the bank and still pocketed a bit of profit, but I worry that I overextended myself by breaking "the more games you bet on, the more you have to win" rule.

This week's card:
• Washington -17.5 at Arizona - What the hell, Washington?

• Illinois +23 at Penn State - Looking good at halftime. Illinois seems like this year's Rutgers, the team that's going to finish 3-9 but will be a pain in the ass for a lot of teams and easily cover a few double-digit spreads against the supposedly great teams in the league.

• A money line three-teamer with Purdue (actually getting a half-point vs. Wisconsin for that one because odds), Army (vs. Wake Forest) and Clemson (at Pitt) - All short-line underdogs that appear to have a chance to win. This might be my knew thing, is finding three of these each week and throwing $5 at it for the hell of it. Kind of wish I'd added Oklahoma State (a 7-point underdog at Iowa State) to it, but was scrolling through those games on the fly and forgot about them.

• Another three-teamer with LSU (+9.5 at Ole Miss), Purdue (+3 vs. Wisconsin on that one) and Minnesota (-5.5 vs. Maryland) - Ole Miss isn't blowing people out, Purdue should be favored, and Maryland sucks.

• Mississippi State -20.5 at Vanderbilt - Vanderbilt was bad, and then their starting QB got hurt. Bulldogs aren't great, but they should roll

• Yet another three-teamer with Ohio State (-22 at Indiana), UTSA (-7 at Louisiana Tech) and Texas A&M (-20.5 vs. South Carolina) - The Ohio State line makes me nervous, even though they seem to have turned a corner. I liked it better when it was 19.5 earlier in the week. UTSA is pretty good and Louisiana Tech isn't as good as I thought. And the Texas A&M-South Carolina game is a lot like the MSU-Vandy game. South Carolina is bad, A&M is decent, and it ought to be a blowout.

• And the Lions +15.5 at the Rams on Sunday - The Lions are not good, but they're not abysmal either. They've been competitive in a lot of their losses. And 15.5 is a HUGE number for an NFL game. Anytime you get more than two touchdowns on an NFL spread you almost have to take it on general principle. Love the Lions with that line.

 

I lost a 7 teamer, but i micro-bet the same parlay in 35-way 3 team round robin. Total cost was $80, and won $139.20. So a good day in the end.

 

I'm not counting the money line three-teamer from my earlier post against my record since that was more of a shits and giggles, let's see what happens $5 throwaway bet. Taking that away, I went 6-3 on Saturday and came away with at least a $53 profit for the week depending on what happens with Lions-Rams on Sunday.
Brings me up to 17-8 for the last three college football weekends. Not sure what it was the first five weeks, but it sure wasn't that good.
I was way off base with my three losers (Washington, LSU and Purdue), but I'm happy that my logic on all six winners was dead-bang on. Even with some of the losers, it was more underestimating their opponents than anything else. I'm starting to see patterns and trends pop out. It feels good to be back riding a good wave.

Next week might be a good time to pocket some of the gains. I look at games first and then lines, and I'm not seeing a ton of games that just blow my skirt up.

 

My little three-leg parlay was looking great for awhile yesterday ... KU-OU under 66.5 (hit), but I had Texas Tech ML and Northwestern covering 23.5. Red Raiders shit the bed in the second half and lost by a point. Northwestern gives up a late field goal, allowing the Michigan cover. Ugh.

 

Today's play: KC -4, NYJ-NE under 42.5, CAR -3.

 

Got OU -7.5 and over 44 live for $50 each at halftime yesterday. Putting those profits into $30 bets on each of the big underdogs to cover - Lions +16.5, Texans +19 and Bears +12.