Gambling Thread

We'll see what happens. I'm not playing any of it, lol.

 

To my point earlier in the thread ... Action Network goes 0-for-5 in its Bills-Rams "best bets" last night. Oof.

Our Staff's 5 Best Bets for Bills vs Rams

 

Bundesliga and Italia Serie A better not cancel this weekend because of the Queen’s death. Or was covered at Potsdam?

 

I like UTSA today. They've been a covering machine when healthy. I don't think 19 year old kids give a rip about last week's loss (they had the game firmly in control and stopped Houston on 4th down in Houston minus territory..only to have 12 men on field because a special teamer didn't get off field in time)

 

Well, Boise-UNM was a push so my list is off to a meh start.

 

This was last weekend's best bets on Daily Wager.

 

I don't give the Daily Wager people too much crap. They are in general (except for Anita Marks) pleasant to watch. I use it as a defacto Sportscenter, no annoyances like Neil Everett giving shout outs to some bar in Hawaii.
They had a rough summer on Best Bets, and Kezarian made a semi legit excuse this summer saying that the betting menu is thin, and they have to come up with a daily Best Bet.

But to go 0-5 on the first football weekend? That is rough.

 

There was some serious line movement this week.
The Southern Miss-Miami under because it dropped all the way to 51 by the time I got to it on Friday. The Colorado State-Middle Tennessee game also jumped from 7.5 to 11. Both became stay-aways for me. I loved that Southern Miss game at 57, but at 51 it's a D/ST or garbage time bad beat waiting to happen. Middle Tennessee is worth monitoring as a potentially awful team, but laying two scores instead of one with Colorado State made me uneasy.
Georgia Southern also got a couple of extra points. Started +21 against Nebraska and I got them at +23.5.
The Mississippi State-Arizona O/U also dropped down from 59 to 57.

Wound up going with:
• Alabama -20 at Texas
• Georgia Southern +23.5 at Nebraska
• Mississippi State-Arizona over 57
• Panthers pick'em vs. Browns
• And a cheap, three-team ML parlay with underdogs Army, Houston and Baylor (vs. UTSA, Texas Tech and BYU, respectively). Two top 25 teams getting points against lesser opponents seemed worth a $5 flyer.

 

Let's see how this worked out:
Boise-UNM -- PUSH
Wake-Vandy -- WIN
Army-UTSA -- LOSS
Maryland-Charlotte -- WIN
El Assico -- EASY WIN
UAB-Liberty -- LOSS
USC-Stanford -- WIN
Baylor-BYU -- LOSS

4-3-1 ... which is about par for the course, I s'pose.

 

My list for today ...

Falcons (+5.5) to cover against the Saints. Lots of hype on New Orleans but the Saints seem to struggle against the Falcons. I think they win, but it's going to be close.

49ers (-6.5) at Chicago. Bears are dreadful, probably the worst team in the NFL. San Fran can at least win by a TD here.

Dolphins/Pats U46 ... New England's offense could be pretty bad. Not sure Miami's is much better. This feels like a 23-20 or 20-17 type game.

Vikings -1.5 (EDIT: I had ML before because I misread and thought the Pack was favored)

Chiefs (-6.5) in Arizona. KC is going to be very good and very angry about the way last season ended. They take it out on the Hopkins-less Cards today and win by two scores, at least.

 

Had my first bad beat Saturday of the year. Those are always fun.

• Alabama-Texas — Disaster. Sometimes it's just a bad beating, and not a bad beat
• Georgia Southern-Nebraska - WIN! A small WIN! But a WIN! nonetheless.

And now the bad beats ...
• Army, Houston, Baylor (3-team ML parlay) — All three games went to overtime. I was on the wrong side of all three. It was a small throwaway bet and a pure odds play, so I'm hesitant to even put it on my season record, but it would have gotten me to the break-even point for the week.

• Mississippi State-Arizona (O57.5) — This one hurt. They started off fast, with three touchdowns in the first quarter, and it looked like it'd be the high-scoring shootout I thought it would be. But Mississippi State missed two extra points. And then Arizona started falling apart and doing stuff like this:



Arizona also failed to punch in a garbage-time touchdown with its backup QB from the 10-yard line with less than two minutes left. As if I needed another reason to hate the fade pass in that situation. Wound up as Mississippi State 39, Arizona 17.
Arizona's failure at the end and those two missed PATs in the first quarter kept it under the total.
Arizona, you are who we thought you were.

Still got the Panthers over Browns today, in what I'm counting on to be Baker Mayfield having the reddest of asses and napalming his former team. It won't get me to even, but it'll cushion the blow a bit.

EDIT TO ADD: The Panthers did not cushion the blow. They took another swing. Browns bomb a 59-yard field goal at the gun to win 26-24.
Fuck Baker Mayfield. Can't even do a damn revenge game right.

 

4 for 5 here. I had some pretty good success on the NFL last year so maybe I should stick to it.