NFL Week 11 Betting Recap, Looking Ahead, Bitcoin And More

 I have my missing plane/alien tech/orb post in the works, but I had to make a betting recap post today. I had my single best week of not only the year, but since early 2021. I absolutely walked on water yesterday so let's do a recap as well as a look ahead as I see a couple intriguing Week 12 spots already. A couple more random things I want to touch on as well.

Per my last post, I mentioned that this year has been a somewhat disappointing one for me betting wise. Going into last week, I was up almost exactly one unit for the NFL season. That is dreadful. Not only that, but it felt like I've been generating all kinds of really good spots all season yet running quite bad, especially live betting. I didn't really get too discouraged though and just kept hammering away, trusting the process. Well last week I finally managed to cash in on a lot of the +EV/Sklansky bucks I've been stacking. It was a nearly divine week so let us dive in!

My main Wong bets were: GB -1 and -1.5. BAL -2.5, DET +7.5, 8.5 and 9.5. A little bit of ARZ +8.5 and WASH +8.5.

I hit PHI +7.5 on the MNF game as well as the under on the PATS Thursday night game, but nothing big. The first big position of the week was the early Sunday game of WASH/MIA in Spain. (How great are these 9:30 AM Sunday games, by the way? Great to have on in the background as you make a big Sunday breakfast. I imagine someday in the future there being an NFL game on every single time slot, every single day). The line was hovering between WASH +2.5 and +3, so I don't usually Wong these teams. However, earlier in the week, I got a nice +25% Draft Kings promo with a $200 max bet for a 4 team NFL parlay. The way I try to exploit promo's like this is to make 4 bets on teams all playing at different times. That way I can arb/middle each one and make money no matter what happens. I line shop and find 4 decent bets on their own, de-vig each line (using Pinnacle as the true line) and put the parlay into a parlay calculator. With the 25% odds boost, I was making a +EV parlay on its own. My first leg was the under in the PATS game which won. My second leg was MIA -2.5. Now I start hunting for +EV spots on WASH. I was able to get +130 on the money line which was off market at the time (and through the close) as well as +3 -120. Both were good bets. On the morning of, lots of money came in on WASH so the line drifted to +2.5, +2. Now it was an official Wong. With my big parlay now as the 'hedge', I fired WASH +8.5 in a bunch of teasers and whatya know, it landed perfectly with MIA winning by 3. My parlay was still alive, my WASH teasers were still alive and I pushed on WASH +3. A very good start.

For the 1:00 slate, my parlay had LAC ML as the next leg. Now with 2 of the 4 legs won already, I could hedge/middle even more. I found a breakeven +3 on JAX and unloaded on it pretty heavy. JAX blew them out so the parlay died but I was able to extract a good amount of value from it. Playing/hedging parlays like this really isn't the by-the-book way to do it, but if you can find at least break even hedges, it's completely fine. Super long term, it's probably better to just ride naked on the parlay. But if you can find at least breakeven hedges and over-bet the original parlay to maximize the odds boost, planning on hedging, it's a good move. Always good to remember: you can run worse for longer than you think.

My biggest play of the one o clockers though was on the GB/NYG game. DK put up a juicy +320 for a while yesterday on the NYG money line, so I did a classic little GB teaser hedged with NYG ML. I got GB at -1.5 and then -.5, so the only nightmare scenario was a tie. GB winning by exactly 1 would have stung pretty bad too, but I was fine with the risk. With both plays being +EV, I basically fired as much as I possibly could. I sniped a nice little NYG +7.5 -105 at one point too, only for two units though. I basically made it so I was 'big free-rolling' on GB money line with a small little NYG +7.5 hedge. As you know, GB won by 7 so it landed perfectly.

I got in bad early last week on a couple HOU -1.5 Wongs that I hedged with TEN +7.5. HOU won by 3 so again, perfect.

On to the 4:00 slate. I had ARZ +8.5 which was literally over after the first 4 possessions of the game. Luckily it was small exposure, but unluckily, it was the only 4:00 game I didn't hedge. I simply ran out of time after the GB game took so long and looked like it could go either way all the way to the end. I planned on hedging on SF betting live, but the line literally went from -3 to -7.5 after the very first possession. So I had to bet SF -7.5 -110 and just lock in a small loss. The only real blunder of the day.

I had LAR +3.5 in a couple of my screwball-through-the-zero Wongs that I didn't love but needed the 6.5 point leg. I hedged that with SEA ML and -2.5 plus odds which was a little bit of a bummer. If I hadn't got so cute and played SEA +3 or even +2.5, I would have binked both sides. Certainly not complaining though. 

I had DEN +10.5 (same logic as the LAR +3.5 bet. I was piling in on GB -.5 as a 6.5 point teaser for which I needed 4:00 or later legs to pair with. Teasing a team from +4 to +10.5 is generally pretty bad, but not as bad as I thought when I compared it to Pinnacles alt-line of DEN +10.5. And does anyone remember the infamous 'Bill The Cop' road dogs teaser strategy? Only true OG's will. Real quick, Bill The Cop was a big poster on the SBR forums back in the day, and he apparently found that teasing road dogs from exactly +4.5 to +10.5 was profitable for a good 5 years or so. For whatever reason, that caused a SHIT SHOW on the forums. (It really is hard to explain early 2000s forum culture these days). The whole thing even made it into Justin7's 'Conquering Risk' book. Long story short, it was more of a function of road dogs over performing for a few years until the market caught up, and less of a function of the teasers themselves being any good. But if you ever need a 6 or 6.5 point 'filler' leg for a teaser, you can do a lot worse than going from 4.5 to 10.5. I wouldn't consider it a +EV leg on its own though). Anyway, DEN won straight up so it was a good result. If KC had won by between 7-10, it would have been perfect though.

Then we come to the BAL/CLE game. BAL -1.5 and -2.5 was my second biggest Wong exposure of the day. I hedged with mostly CLE +3.5, but also some ML and +7.5. BAL won by 7 so it was nearly perfect. I attacked this game pretty heavily in live betting which I'll get to soon.

Finally, we get to the Sunday Night game. DET was a light +2.5 all week, so while it wasn't a great leg on its own, I used it as the last leg in most of my teasers. And as my teasers were all winning, it meant I had a really big position of DET +7.5, 8.5 and even 9.5 going into the game. I was getting ready to hedge out of it at mostly PHI -7.5 for +230 when I stopped and thought about it some more. Why add in this last leg at all if I'm just going to completely hedge out of it? And getting only +230 on PHI -7.5 meant I would be essentially paying money to do so (as stated here before, you need about +260 or better to hedge out of a 3 teamer profitably). So I fired only a couple units on PHI -7.5 and then hedged with PHI -3.5, a little bit of money line and -2.5, and then the bulk of it at -5 at Pinnacles price. And BINK! PHI wins by 7, nearly perfect. Only thing that would have been slightly better was a PHI win by 8 but I'm not THAT greedy.

So the Wongs were good to me last week. Very good. But as good as they were, live betting was even better. I CRUSHED live betting last week. I got myself almost into the green for the entire year in basically one day. As I said last week, I couldn't believe how all over the place the live lines were between my PPH and DK. Well this week was no different. The only difference was that I didn't treat DK as an efficient market and just did nearly 100% middles/scalps. And boy did it work. I was getting fat 2 and 3 point middles on totals. On more than one occasion, I got a scalp and a middle on the same bet! (Over 40.5 +130, under 41.5 -115 for example). I managed to middle the 7 on the BAL/CLE game like 4 times, all mostly at the same time. And this was with just two books and a toddler hanging on me for some of it. Like I said last post, live betting still seems very ripe. I have half a mind to open up 2 or 3 more legal accounts and just go bonkers betting live the rest of the season. I find it surprising and actually somewhat encouraging that books even offer live betting the way they do. DK essentially puts up a line and leaves it there for the entire game. When there's a full slate of games, there is no way to stay on top of everything the way they really need to. I know it's obviously a model/algorithm and there isn't some guy frantically changing the lines. But you gotta know about when guys get injured and move in and out of the game, the changing motivations, the coaches tendencies, the game state, etc. The book has to be on top of every single line for every single game, all day and for the whole day. You just sit back and pick em off, one by one. It almost doesn't seem fair!

All in all, a tremendous week. However, I don't want to get too ahead of myself here. I'm still slightly down for the year live betting and I'm down a good chunk lifetime (a lot of live bets I made in the past were hedges). But I'm not really reacting to the result, more-so how wide the discrepancies were between my PPH and DK. And I lost live betting on my PPH. That's how much I crushed DK in it. For the first time since getting this account, I'm actually starting to get nervous about getting the boot. I usually get some kind of useable promo or odds boost every day, but nothing today. If/when I do get kicked out, I'll just start using FanDuel or something else similar. I really should have a Fanduel account already, but I just don't have the time on Sundays anymore to really lock in all day like I used to. 

Anyway, like I said, I definitely don't want to get too over my ski's here after just one good week. Not too high, not too low. Even though it put me back on track to have a good/average year, this result would have been a blip when I was full-time. I haven't had a week like this in years though and it felt great today doing my weekly numbers. I knew I was due! Hopefully we can keep this going and ride some momentum into the second half of the year.

Speaking of looking ahead, I see a good 'near free money' opportunity already next week. The Patriots are heavy -7 favorites at CIN and you can get CIN money line at +280 pretty easily right now. So I like teasing PATS down to -1 and maybe even -.5 if your teaser odds are good for a big chunk and hedging it with CIN ML at +280 or better. Right now I have a 3 teamer with PATS -1.5 hedged with CIN money line. The other two legs are JAX +3.5 (through the zero, not great but not terrible) and SF -.5. (As I'm typing this, the PATS are getting bet up to -7 -120 and -7.5 -110 in some places). I like the idea of getting in early on the Patriots at -1/-.5 and hedging out a little bit on CIN money line. Then keep an eye on the line all week and take more nibbles of CIN money line as the line gets better. I'm already seeing some +290 in just the time it took me to write this post. 

ATL/NO looks like a possible 'get both sides of a +7.5 teaser' spot. The line has already bounced around through the zero a little bit, so I'll look for a +1.5 on either side and hit it. 

We have some correlated parlay potential with the JETS and SEA games. I'll probably have a small full game or first half parlay on both games in some fashion. If you can tie in an odds boost that would be great.

And finally, GB, PATS and SF look like possible teaser/ML hedge plays. We'll have to see how the lines move.

Changing gears here, crypto is taking a shit as we speak. Looks like BTC is about to go sub $90k and alts are getting hit even harder. With a weekly close below the 50 day moving average ($100kish), it's looking more and more like $125k was the top and this cycle is over. If true, this has a LOT of interesting implications. The biggest one being the complete lack of an alt-coin season. I made the point a while back that it really doesn't make much sense at all to accumulate a stack of any kind of alt-coin, certainly not one without a capped supply (looking at you ETH). If you do need an alt coin to do things on the blockchain, it seems to me that it would make much more sense to hold BTC as your wealth preservation stack and then use it to buy alts when/if the need arises. Are we seeing the market digest this notion in real time? It's much too early to say for sure either way, but it is looking more and more likely. If I was sitting on a big bag of ETH or Matic or Solana or whatever else right now, I'd be pretty nervous. I'm about 60% BTC, 40% alts currently and I want to get that closer to 80/20 eventually. It looks like I might have to wait a whole cycle for that though. Even if this cycle top is in, and even if alts are dying, I still think we'll get at least one more alt season eventually. They're just too sexy-seeming for n00bs to have the potential drained out of them completely in 2025. Maybe alts will get on some sort of 8 year cycle? Like they miss every other cycle? Who knows. All I know is I'm still stacking BTC and probably will forever. One positive aspect of no alt-season/blow off top is that we probably won't get such a brutal low. I have $50-$70K in mind as the bear market low, or about a 50% drawdown. Bear cycles usually get to about 80% down from the high, which would put the low at about $25k. But I think as the asset matures and the market cap grows, the swings are going to get less and less volatile both ways. It just makes logical sense that a $2 trillion asset would be less swingy than one with an $800 million marketcap, like last cycle.

One good lesson to take away from the last month or so has been that patience almost always gets rewarded. Every BTC buy I've made since April of this year is now underwater. My overall BTC price is $37kish so I'm still sitting very pretty. But nearly every single 'chasing it' / FOMO buy I've ever made has been regrettable, only because I could have gotten a much better price later on. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is nothing. I will for sure be looking to increase my stack with this upcoming bear market, whether it's now or later down the line. That's the time to buy, not when it's above its all time high. And if you're out there and feel like you missed the boat on Bitcoin, get yourself ready. Start buying soon, go slow, never panic sell, and if you're going to dabble in alts keep it to 50% of your total MAX. NoT FiNaCiAl AdViCe though!

Another very important lesson that I learned from last bear cycle was that no one called the bottom. I want to repeat that because I think it's so important. NO ONE, at least no one that I'm aware of anyway, called $15k as last cycles bottom. Everyone thought it was going lower, and I do mean everyone. Really good thing to keep in mind in the coming months/years.

This is getting long so I'm going to wrap it up soon. I have a lot more to say about crypto and the possible end of the four year cycle though. The next couple weeks/months into the new year are going to be huge, especially for the future implications. I want to do another Stonks update as well. My ROI in Stocks is actually higher than it is for crypto for the first time ever, which is interesting.

Lastly, I want to share a cool link/video I saw recently. Here you go. It's a poker hand from a massive $500k/$1k no-limit game (plus a $2k big blind ante because why not? Talk about nose bleed stakes). The hand itself is incredible to watch if you like poker like me. It's a heads up pot between Nik Airball and Alan Keating. Keating has quietly become one of, if not THE best all around live poker players in the world right now. He so looks and acts the part, too. Has that big 'I'm good with math' forehead. Dresses really nice, carries himself well, plays like a super controlled lunatic, always gives good interviews. If it weren't for the fact that he's such a winner, he seems like he would be a joy to play with. Just seems like a really solid dude all around. Then you have Nik Airball, who is almost like the bizarro Keating. Loud, obnoxious, spewy, looks and acts like a slob. I'd bet money that he often smells bad. He loves to slow roll too which is a new thing in the games that I can't stand.

Anyway, Airball opens pre with 65 of diamonds and only Alan calls in the big blind with 84 off suit. Alan making this call (with the straddler behind him because of course there's a straddle. $3500 in dead money in the pot before anyone gets dealt a card just isn't enough) out of position with 84 off is one of those things where only when you really know the rules, can you break them. And this is just straight up disrespect for Airball but it'll make more sense in a minute.

So the flop comes 843, two diamonds. Alan flops top two pair, Airball flops an open ended straight flush draw. Very important context here: they are both SUPER deep. Effective stack is $1.1 million (of real money), or over 1,000 big blinds. Alan check raises pretty big, Airball calls, and the turn is one of the worst cards in the deck for Alan: an off suit 3. It pairs the board so now Alan loses to any pocket pair of 99 or above in Airballs hand. Alan bets near pot and now Airball raises 3x. Most everyone would fold here but Alan calls with the smoothness of Philly cream cheese. Pot is now $550k and the river is an Ace of Spades. So Alan has a super weak two pair and Airball misses entirely. Alan checks and Airball bets near full pot of $525k. The pot is $1.07 M now. Alan thinks and thinks and eventually finds the call! $1.6 million dollar pot, the biggest pot in the history of televised poker. 

It's an awesome hand to watch on its own, but the reason I wanted to post it was because of the interview he gave after. Besides the interviewer being terrible (can ANY interviewer just ask one question and then shut the fuck up?!) I thought it was very revealing. He makes the somewhat obvious point about how Airballs line made no sense unless he had exactly A3 of clubs. But then he says that Airball never bluffs with big amounts, and recalls how he (Alan) said that at the table earlier multiple times. "I said that a couple times in an hour, so I think I planted the seed in his head where it became somewhat of a challenge." Alan essentially challenged Airball to run a huge bluff against him, but did it in such a subtle manner that Airball didn't think Alan was aware of it. He basically stayed exactly one level above Airball, which is exactly where you want to be all the time. (If you're two levels above, you're a level under. This is the game of 'he knows that I know that he knows that I know, etc.) It's a super interesting look into the leveling wars that take place at games like this and I just found the whole thing to be really cool. Maybe you will too!

That's that for today. Thanks for reading, leave a comment why don't ya, and check back soon! We're talking crypto, aliens, anti-gravity and teleportation! 

BTC price: $92k

BTC marketcap: $1.83T

Overall crypto marketcap: $3.11T

BTC dominance (including stables): 58.8%

ETH dominance: 11.6%

Total cryptos on coin marketcap: 27.2 M

Coin marketcap fear/greed: 17/100

NFL Week 10 Betting Recap, NFL Look Ahead, Crypto/Stocks, Flight MH370 And More

 Lot to get to today. I have a good chunk of time to myself here and I have about 3 different posts swirling in my brain. I had a fairly interesting week betting mostly NFL so I thought we would do a quick little recap as well as a look ahead at week 11. Bitcoin dumping, looking like it's losing the fight for $100k, alt-season nowhere to be found, and the real reason I wanted to make this post. I saw recently a super interesting video that was somehow like a year old and only had a couple hundred views. It was dealing with flight MH370, that plane that vanished into thin air years ago. Bear with me if you think the whole thing was nonsense. I did too at first.

So first off, week 10 was a good week. Up about 8 units altogether. Crushed wongs, lost on NFL straights/hedging the wongs, lost a little live betting and won a little on random things, mostly DK promos. (I know I say this constantly but I really like Draft Kings and I'm always surprised at how much they give away. They must be making it back and then some though, obviously). My favorite play of the day was on the CLE/NYJ game. I had CLE +7.5 as the last leg of a 3 team teaser from the week before. It was a beefy one too, something like 5 units to win 8.5. It was one I hedged/middled the whole way through. Well in between me making that bet and the game starting, the Jets made some trades and the line went from Jets -2 to Jets +2. If you're a regular reader here, you know what that means. One of my all time favorite spots in betting: getting both teams in a Wong teaser. I needed to bet on the Jets anyway to hedge my Cle +7.5 position, but now I could really unload. Take the belt off, as they say. I managed the get the zenith of the Jets number too, getting them at +8.5 AND +125 on the money line where they closed at +110ish. The line closed at +1ish. (By the way, little digression coming here, but I have recently learned something about closing lines that I found interesting. I was watching a recent Circles Off video, one where it was just Rob talking. [If you don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, just bear with me here for a minute.] That channel is goofy sometimes but Rob is legit. Anyway, he mentioned sort of quickly that sometimes sharp groups will try to move a line right before game-time so that the sports books/markets live betting models will be anchored to an incorrect closing line. I made a comment asking about it and he said he's heard of it but can't discuss it. You could find the video and comment on youtube if you wanted. If that's true, that's pretty interesting. And I have to say, being someone who watches and has watched these lines every single Sunday for decades, almost always right up until close, I have seen quite a few big, odd looking moves right at the last minute, pretty often. Enough that I for sure noticed it before I heard Rob say that. I never made the connection to live betting, but it does make sense. That would throw off the 'closing line' for historical purposes too. That's a really big deal if true. You would need a lot of money to move the whole NFL market right before kickoff, but you can get quite a lot down live betting these days, and for hours. And the line moves during the game are kind of insane. You can tell it's a fairly new market/concept still. Live betting is for sure being eaten up by some groups out there right now. So, to bring this home, when I say a line closed at something, I might not be talking about what it actually literally went off the board at. More so what it was for the hour before game time. And if you're into betting like I am, this is all something to consider when thinking about 'the closing line' in general.)

What a digression, huh. Anyway, Jets vs Cle. So I have Cle +7.5 for a bunch, now I get to bomb away on NYJ +8.5 and +7.5 for a bunch, as well as a little money line. With a total in the 30's and two bad offenses, I absolutely loved this position. And whatya know, they both hit. Jets win by 7, absolutely perfect. 

Anyway, pretty much all of the Wongs won for the day. I even had a little IND -.5/ATL ML teaser/ML hedge that went my way, although not before the slight heart attack with it going OT. I had IND teased down to -.5 and hedged it out with ATL +270 money line (you can do that if you can get the opponent money line at +260 or better, assuming you're betting a 3 team teasers at +170 odds. A 3 teamer at +170 is like having 3 separate bets at -255. 3 teamers at +170 is generally the best teaser you can realistically find these days). The only way you can possibly lose money on a play like this is if the game ends in a tie. Since 2017, 8 games have ended in a tie in something like 4,900 games, or about 0.15% chance. Even less with a spread over 6, I'm sure. I'm not going to keep going with the math, but I know a +270/-255 scalp is still good with a .15% chance of losing both. And it's actually more like .09% since if the team with the money line bet wins, you'll typically get that bet refunded at least. So, bottom line, these plays are +EV, but tiny. You might lose one of them in your life (and having one go to OT like I did last week, especially in a stand alone game, is quite the experience). Really kind of up to you if you think they're worth it. I always look for any kind of teaser I can do that isn't strictly a Wong.

 The only minor downer was losing PIT +8.5 in the Sunday night game, but that wasn't a great leg so I didn't have much exposure at all, and actually had LAC +3.5 in a couple of my small screwball/cross the zero Wongs that hit.

One very satisfying thing happened while live betting, too. During the afternoon slate, I had my PPH account and DK up at the same time, looking for middles/scalps live betting. Really just looking at the market and getting a feel. I don't usually have the time to really dig into live betting on Sundays, but I did last week. First thing I see is lots of discrepancies. A surprising amount. I start pulling off a couple small arbs/middles, and I see a really juicy number on the NYG money line. They were up late in the game and for some reason, the money line on them on my PPH account got stuck at -270. I think it was when they went up by 10. I don't even know, all I know is that the line on DK was like -400 and climbing. So I hit -270 for 2 units. Then it was -500/ +390 on DK. My PPH still at -270! I hit it again for 2 units and buy some back on CHI on DK at +390. I'm about to max out -270 and then I stop. I realize this is drifting into 'bad line' territory. The line on DK keeps climbing and the -270 is still up, now for way too long. This is bad. They're going to delete the fucking bet and then I'm going to lose my hedges on DK. And sure enough, the whole line comes down, and then I see them deleted in my history. I'm apoplectic. This is not the first time something like that has happened at this book, either. (If you're a true regular reader, this is the book that deleted my stock bets AND my Kamala Vice President bets). I'm pissed at myself for even doing this, middling live bets with a PPH that can and will 'delete' bets at will. I really was fuming. And then, well, you know the rest. CHI came back and wins outright! So I binked a nice 2 units at risk at CHI +390 ML that I would have otherwise never bet. THAT is running good. (Though I will say that I still, somehow, lost a tiny bit overall live betting, which is embarrassing. I couldn't believe how many scalps and middles I was seeing though. I was mostly treating DK as the 'true line' which was dumb though in hindsight. If I do that again it will all just be middles/scalps and for small amounts spread out. Really no reason to ride naked at all in a market like that.)

Looking forward, unfortunately, I don't see much at all in Week 11. Everything I jumped on small early has moved against me. I have GB -1.5, ARZ +8.5, DET +7.5 and BAL -2.5, all of which you can do better on right now. DK is fairly off market with NYG ML so I'll probably do a little GB -1.5, NYG ML play and just hope GB doesn't win by exactly 1. Not for big amounts though. A team winning by 1 is a lot different than the game ending in a tie. 

Here at the rough mid point of the NFL season (when you include playoffs), I have to say it has been a somewhat disappointing year betting. I'm up an ok amount overall, but nothing great and pretty well off my yearly average, even for the past few years of lower volumes. I'm way up in teasers but down everywhere else except for props. But I'm up tiny on props, only really playing them with an odds boost or something. I made a good 5 units on NHL blocks but gave more than half of that away on NHL Shots, somehow. I'm up more than 4x on teasers than what I'm down on NFL straights, so I really don't think I'm over hedging. I'm down a good amount on 'non NFL straight bets' though, and down a little bit live betting. Something to think about going forward. I bet you I end up in the green live betting at the end of the year though. Little bet with myself. Down about 11 units so far.

On the bitcoin front, it looks like we might be losing the battle for $100k. Not for sure yet, but it's looking more and more like $125k was this cycles top. To be honest, I still don't think so. I still think there's another leg up this cycle and I do have a bunch of underwater futures backing that opinion up, but I haven't been adding on or anything. It wouldn't shock me if we go sideways/slightly down for the next year or so. If we don't get the blow off top, we probably won't get the in-the-coffin low though, either. I still think it's hilarious that under $100k is bear market territory. I remember hearing about when bitcoin crossed $10k. Really wasn't that long ago. Just going to keep accumulating mostly Bitcoin and look to trade in a good chunk of my ETH when given the chance. Not much change in strategy.

You know something, I'm going to make the next part a new post. I'll have more on crypto but really it's going to be about this plane and the video I saw. If you like this blog, you'll like this post. If you're reading this today, Nov 14th, be on the lookout for a new post soon. I'm going to leave this post like this, too. I like keeping a sort of stream of conscious feel to this blog. I don't even know why. Everything is so fake and AI generated and soft and perfectly curated these days, maybe I like having this weird little blog where I can puke up my thoughts on anything. And people read it! Even people from like, Vietnam and Brazil and Norway. Maybe they're just VPN's but hello out there if not and thank you for reading! Check back soon!

NFL Week 6 AND 7 Betting Recap, A Look Ahead, And An Honest To God Real Life FLASHCRASH

I wrote a Week 6 recap last week but never published it. I planned on adding more to it but just never did. And I'm sitting here trying to write my Week 7 recap but my heart just isn't in it. I think I'm only going to do these recaps if it was a particularly interesting betting week. I'll do a quick Week 7 recap here but I think this will be my last one unless, like I said, it's an interesting week.

I'll include the Week 6 recap at the bottom as well since I wrote it anyway.

So. Week 7. Finally a good week. I actually lost on Wongs again but more than made up for it elsewhere.

My biggest Wong/play of the day was with the Jets vs CAR game. As I said in the my Week 6 recap below, this felt like an absolutely perfect Wong-middle play. Two shitty teams, low total, a spread of PK through +2 Jets depending on where/when you bet. I got in early on the Jets at +7.5 and hedged big on CAR ML -113 and -2.5 +125ish. The game went just as expected, super low scoring, super low variance and it ended up perfectly with CAR winning by 7. I even managed to middle the 7 during live betting. It feels great to have a game go exactly the way you predict and bet it that it would. It's rare but when it happens it's great.

I teased MIN up to 7.5 and hit the PHI ML hedge/middle.

IND won outright.

DEN won by exactly 1 which could have been a disaster if I went with the DEN -1.5, NYG hedge that I sometimes do.

GB won but didn't cover which was perfect.

The only real bummer was the SNF game. I had the stand alone ATL +8.5 leg in almost every teaser I made. I hedged out of most of it but if that game had stayed under 8, we'd be eating good this week.

Anyway, it was a good week. Up about 9 units to bring me to basically exactly break even for the NFL season so far. It feels like I'm on the upswing though.

Looking ahead, there are quite a few juicy looking possible Wongs coming up. ATL looks good, CAR maybe, PHI looks decent. Perhaps a PATS/CLE Wong/ML hedge. But the best one on the board right now is SF +2 against HOU. Super low total, neither offense is explosive at all. I put SF +7.5 as the 3rd leg of a couple teasers from last week that are still pending and I will be slowly adding more and more all week. My 3 best looking Wongs as of today, in order are: SF, ATL, and PHI. None of them really need to be pounced on quite yet though. If I start seeing some +1.5s on SF I will and if the other two drift into -8 I will too. But I'll be mostly waiting and watching these over the next few days.

Switching topics to crypto, we had ourselves a good ol' fashioned FLASH CRASH last week where everything except The King dumped like 50% or more. It was really bizarre. I managed to scoop up like 5 LINKS for $10 per LINK. I also managed to sell exactly one LTC for $125 and bought it back for $83 in the same day which is always nice. I had 8 orders rejected during the crash. I'm a bit light on dry powder for the moment which sucked. I was trying to scoop up as much cheap LINK (LINK crashed the hardest that I saw) and LTC as possible but between getting all my orders rejected and not having a ton of cash on hand, it was a bit of a missed opportunity. Good lesson though. These markets are still fairly new and weird shit happens from time to time. Got to be able to capitalize.

I'm steadfast in my BTC prediction that I've had for the past 6 months or so now. I still think we have one more big run up to go. I think $150k is going to be the top and I think we see it before the end of the year. I think ETH is going above $5k, too. My futures positions are mostly all underwater now which sucks. I was definitely too cocky with these too early. This is the only way I really learn stuff though. I think with futures, it's good to have small positions and to be ready to pounce when there's a big change. I still think they're going to make money when all is said and done, but I for sure could have gotten better prices on most of them. Futures trading feels like the next big thing though and something I will be keeping an eye on at the very least.

I'll post my Week 6 recap below for anyone interested but that's about it for me today. I have a couple ideas for a new post up soon, something longer form. There's a company that has been quietly releasing something like 'earnings reports' for BTC every quarter that I think is interesting. I've been reading some new books I'd like to discuss, lots of alien news and some political topics I've been following. So be on the lookout, don't forget to follow me on X @poogsBLOG for updates and check back soon. Bye for now!

*WEEK 6 BETTING RECAP*

Week 6 is in the books and we are officially a third of the way through the season. Feels like preseason was just last week but here we are. It was another lackluster week for me and Wong teasers. Let us take a quick look back and then a look ahead.

The first game of the week was the Thursday night game with PHI at NYG. PHI was mostly -7, steaming to -7.5 closer to game time so it wasn't a slam dunk leg. I did go kind of big on it tough looking back, but that was because I was able to get a good price on NYG ML. So I went for the free money/heart attack arb (if PHI won by exactly 1 I'd have been shut out completely). I left some risk on PHI so it was a small loser. Never a good sign when the first stand alone Wong game of the week loses. It's a bad omen.

I got a great number on the Jets (+7.5 -120 which was a two cent-arb with Pinny at the time) which won, however I gave back a chunk of profits live betting DEN for some reason.

For the 1:00 o'clock slate, I got in early on IND at -5.5 which closed at -8.5 yet lost. I had JAX +7.5 in a bunch of teasers and they got within 8 and went for two for some reason. Stuff like this always terrifies me with regards to Wongs. Something to keep in mind going forward with JAX and other teams that do shit like that.

I did a 'through the zero' teaser with PATS and TB, making them both go from -3 to +3.5 which won. I got great numbers on CAR and CIN which won. The Sunday Night game was a good leg for DET up to +8.5 which did not cover. All in all, I was up slightly minus live betting. Ended the week down about 1.5 units. Pretty mediocre week, all around. I got crushed on Wongs but mostly evened things out with straights. I don't have any official stats but it feels like Wongs have been getting mostly crushed so far this year. I know I'm down on teasers. I still very much think they're profitable (and maybe even due?) but there have been quite a few changes in the league over the past couple years, rule-wise and just the way teams play. Going for two more often is a Wong killer so definitely something to at least keep an eye on. 

Looking ahead, there are a couple Wongs I'm jumping on early. The biggest one is the Jets *low, daunting horror movie music start playing in the background* which is +1 -105 at Pinnacle but +1.5/+2 at most books. Fairly low total too of 41.5. They're at home against CAR, so that's two teams that will be thrilled to just get a win. Being able to get CAR at -113 on the ML or plus odds of -2.5 for the hedge/middle is great. I think I'll go for a really big middle on this one. So the Jets are a great leg to start building off of, slow at first and see how the week develops. 

The only other possibilities in the 1:00 slate are the PATS at a heavy -7 and MIN at a light +1. I think the PATS are generally undervalued in the market overall. They were a DISASTER last year but have gone through a complete culture turn around with Vrabel and McDaniels and Maye taking a huge step forward. I think the market is slightly undervaluing how much of a disaster last year was with Jerod Mayo (the stories that have trickled out since he got fired have been humiliating for him. Notice you haven't heard a single WORD about Mayo since he got fired? Ain't no one looking to hire him. He was so unbelievably out of his depth as a head coach) and also how much of a boost Vrabel and McDaniels are. Anyway, that's a long way of saying that I think PATS at -7 -115 is a decent teaser leg, even though it isn't an official Wong yet.

And MIN +1 is a standard 'look for a +1.5 and tease it up to +7.5.' My book is a flat +1 so I'll be looking at that all week. Catching a foundering PHI team on the road, too. 

The remaining possibilities are IND +1.5, DAL +1.5 and the big 'Sunday Night last leg of every single teaser of ATL +2.5.' The other possibility is maybe GB -6.5 teased down to -.5 if you can get a good number on ARZ ML (+280ish or better depending on your teaser odds) or maybe find a rouge +7 if you're lucky. 

NFL Week 5 Betting Recap, Crypto, Plus More

 I skipped the Week 4 recap because it was rather uneventful and I'm not sure how captivating these posts are exactly. I had one of those strange weeks where it felt like I did good but when all the dust settled, I was down about a unit. That's a unique thing about being a semi-pro bettor; I usually have no idea how I'm doing until I do my figures for the week. Especially when I was full time, I would have something like a dozen accounts, each one with a different percentage and most of them being shared. You add in props and the phone only guys, and I typically would have no idea if I was up or down for the week or what I needed to happen in any given game. It would be a running joke between me and a couple of my degen friends who were always sweating some awful parlay. 

'How are you doing today/this week? What do you need?' 

'I don't know.'

Anyway, Week 5 was a damn near catastrophe. Except for one, every single Wongable game lost. Just a bloodbath for teasers. 

Before I dive in though I want to make one thing clear. I know I've made a few 'culture war/politics' posts on here lately. And while I absolutely stand by every thing I've said and make no apologies, I don't want any regular readers here to feel ostracized or feel like this blog isn't for them anymore. The political stuff is few and far between. So even if you're a true shit-lib marxist, you are more than welcome to be here and enjoy my inane ramblings. Not that anyone needed my permission or anything obviously, but I just wanted to put that out there.

On to the Week 5 massacre.

First Wongable game was the Thursday night game with the LAR closing at -8 against SF. I had LAR teased down to -2 with a SF +3.5 and +8 hedge/middle. LAR ended up losing in OT which was a heart breaker but luckily I didn't have much on this game at all. This game bothered me for a different reason though: Mac Jones. I have been quietly waiting for this spot for years, only to pass on it when given the chance. See, I have always felt like Mac Jones was a decent QB. He had an incredible rookie year (something everyone forgets) under Bill Belichick and it looked like the Patriots weren't going to miss a beat after Brady. Then Belichick went literally insane and started banging girls FIFTY years younger than him and coaching like he was actually trying to lose. He fucked Mac Jones up about as badly as possible. He made a defensive line coach and a special teams assistant Jones' offensive coordinators and tanked The Patriots, Mac Jones, and even himself. Jones had a terrible last couple years here in New England, then played one game as Trevor Lawrences back up and threw one of the ugliest pick sixes I can ever imagine. It was all over the highlights that week and ever since that throw, people have written Jones off. But I always felt like he got a raw deal, especially here in New England. How many second and third year guys would excel in a system where the head coach is arguably trying to lose, and also not talking to you because you dared to ask your college QB coach for help dealing with Matt fucking Patricia calling your games? So I always sort of kept it in the back of my head that if Mac got another crack at starting a game, the market would probably under value him. Well, he played his ass off against the Rams but I just couldn't pull the trigger on him. Sad! It'll be interesting to see what happens with him this year and next year though. I think he's clearly better than at least a handful of starting QB's in the league today.

Anyway, the possible Wong's for the 1:00 slate were: NYJ, BAL, NYG, and CAR. The Jets were playing DAL and a ton of late money came in on the Jets to move them from +1.5 to -2.5. My book was slow to move so I hammered the Jets +7.5 pretty hard. I was able to get Dal +7.5 in a couple teasers and hedged a bunch with Dal -2.5 but I was heavy on the Jets +7.5 and it was over before half-time. By the way, how many times in my life have I had this situation play out? I get in 'great' on the Jets only for them to get completely blown out. I think the NYJ might have cost me more money than any other professional sports team on the planet.

Similar thing with BAL. Most books had them +1 where mine was at +1.5. Super late money came in on HOU to make the closing line mostly HOU -2.5, but it was HOU -1 for most of the week. Another one that was over before the half. (WTF is up with Baltimore? It looks like their window is closed before it even opened. It'll be interesting to see what happens there in the next few months).

NYG/NO was a little interesting. When the line opened at about NO -1, I actually jumped on NO -2.5 +116 pretty hard, which is the opposite of what I normally do. I just knew that the Giants won last week but it was all smoke and mirrors as they got insanely lucky. I figured the line would move in favor of NO and then I could pounce on the Giants with a teaser. That did happen pretty much exactly as I thought so I had a really juicy middle of NO -2.5 at plus odds with a NYG +8.5 Wong. It was looking good for a while and then somehow NO ended up winning by 12. This wasn't so bad as I had more on NO than I normally would have, but still stung.

CAR was the only team that prevented the clean sweep. I got in early on CAR +7.5 pretty big and also had it as the last leg in a few 3 teamers left over from Week 4. With game day money coming in on CAR, I mostly let this one ride and it was my biggest position of the day. Even though they quickly went down 17-0 (there was a 15 minute period yesterday where every single Wong I had was losing by like 4 scores), then managed to come back and win and save me an 0-4 start to the day.

The 4:00 slate was more of the same. I had a middle with ARZ -1.5 and TEN +7.5 that didn't hit thanks to another player celebrating a would-be touchdown by dropping the ball before he crossed the endzone. Is that not the most braindead fucking thing you have ever seen in your life? And it's already happened a couple times this year! (By the way, I have to mention this little fun piece of trivia: in the history of the NFL and players dropping the ball on purpose before scoring, it has never happened to a White player, as far as I've seen and I've looked into it. Funny!)

I got SEA -3 -118 (which lost) on Draft Kings early in the week which was a good bet considering it closed at a heavy -4. I also did a small -2.5 -120, +3 -110 middle on the LAC game which obviously didn't hit. Draft Kings put up a CIN +10.5 -112 line for most of the day where Pinnacle was at DET -10.5 +120ish. I unloaded my entire balance on CIN +10.5 at -112 and -115 and set up a nice scalp with Pinnacle. It made my effective bet something like 3 units of CIN +10.5 +150 where the market was at -125ish, no vig. So obviously an incredible bet that just didn't go my way.

Lastly, we had the SNF game. I put BUF -1.5 as the last leg of every single teaser I made. Even though most of them were toast by then, I did have a few sneak through. So I had a pretty big position of BUF -1.5. I hedged it out evenly though and got a decent number on the Pats ML so I made it so I made money no matter what happened. BUF winning would have been way better but I lost a lot of my risk appetite after the 4:00 slate and mostly evened the bet out. (For any n00bs reading this, that is generally what you should do during a downswing or even a really bad day/session. Lotta people do the opposite. They start pushing it if they lose big, especially at the starts or ends of sessions. I've seen it first hand countless times in many different forms/games. When things aren't going your way for the month, week, or even day, you slow down. Maybe take a little money off the table. The time to push is when you're already winning or up, which is usually when most people start to get a little risk averse, wanting to 'book a win.' This isn't just me saying that either, that's the correct thing to do in theory, too. You want to push edges when you're winning and protect yourself when you're not.) The only nightmare scenario was BUF winning by exactly 1 but I was ok with the risk. 

As bad as this week was, the final count could have been a lot worse. I lost 7ish units for the week which puts me down roughly 5 units for the NFL season. I'm up about 20 units total for the year, largely due to crushing Wongs at the very end of the last NFL season. Despite a rocky start to this year, I feel as confident as ever. I know I'm getting in good and it's only a matter of time before I have a week where I hit a few of these Wong middles clean. I'm fine with busting my DK balance too. I should have a decently long leash there and I should also be seeing a reload bonus in my promo's soon. Weeks like these make me appreciate my hedging/middling strategy when it comes to Wongs. If I had been riding naked on these, it would really have been a bloodbath. 

Shifting gears a bit, I have been getting more and more into futures trading on Robin Hood. Their sports markets are mostly un-usable with the high juice, but the other future options are very interesting. I bought a bunch of bullish options on the price of BTC a couple months ago, and then did something I rarely do: I doubled down a couple weeks ago when BTC corrected down to $110k. I had a bunch of bets that BTC would hit $125k this year and before Nov 2025 which obviously cashed this weekend.

Looking at these futures everyday has made me get in tune with the flow of them a little bit. One thing that stood out to me right away was how panicky they feel. Wild swings every time BTC drops or gains a couple percent. It made me think, is it possible that the market for crypto futures is largely old school Wall St, finance guys? And could it be that they aren't exactly familiar with the volatility in crypto markets? A 10% drop in a day with Bitcoin is really nothing. But to a grizzled 55 year old Wall St. guy, a trillion dollar asset dropping 10% in a couple hours is probably panic-inducing. It was weird seeing my entire slate of futures go from green to red and then back to green with a super typical BTC day/week. Perhaps it's a good strategy to scoop up bullish futures on red BTC days? I mean, that's fairly obvious I suppose, but I do think there's a good chance that the futures market hasn't fully absorbed the volatility inherent in crypto markets. 

My crypto outlook has really solidified for the next few months. Pretty much the same thing I've been saying: we haven't really even started the bull run yet. We've been hugging the 'fair value' trendline since June 2022, more than 3 years now, by far the longest we've gone without a blow-off top. For the past 4 cycles, BTC has been fairly predictable in post halving years. Up in the summer, down in Aug/Sept, touch the 50 week MA, and then up in Oct into our alt season/blow off top. The big question now is will there even be an alt-season this year? Alt-coins have really kind of shown their ass this cycle as BTC dominance continues its steady climb. As long as we stay above $100k, I think the bull cycle is still firmly in play. This cycle will be a really big one for the future of alt-coins. If retail doesn't come back and we get no alt-season at all, I would be really nervous holding a big bag of any of them, ETH included. The King stays The King.

Anywho, that's it for me for today. Talk soon, bye for now!

BTC price: $126k

BTC marketcap: $2.496T

Total marketcap: $4.29T

BTC dominance (including stables): 58.1%

Total cryptos on coinmarketcap: 22.26 M

NFL Week 3 Betting Recap Plus More

I had a decent Week 3 betting the NFL. Volume was down slightly but ROI was good and it put me officially and solidly into the black for the NFL this year so far, so let's take a quick look back at my action.

I only had one teaser left over from Week 2 which was the Patriots +7.5 paired with TB +8.5 for the MNF game. TB won outright and it wasn't a big bet so I just let it ride. Small but good start to the week.

The Thursday night game was MIA at BUF which closed at BUF -11. It opened at -13.5ish and I needed a leg to make some of my 2 teamers into 3 teamers, so I teased BUF from -13.5 to -6.5 (getting a 6.5 point teaser at -120). One the very few 'non Wong teasers' that I throw in here and there to throw the bookmaker off a little bit (he's already reacting to my Wongs which I'll get into later here). To be clear, teasing any NFL team from -13.5 to -6.5 is really bad. You're paying to cross a ton of useless numbers. Think about it, how many games are won by exactly 12 or 11 points? Or 9 and 8? I get the 10 and 7 which are good but this wasn't a good leg, even before the market moved against me. I did have good reasons for it though which I think in totality make it a +EV (or +EG) bet. Number one, the most flimsy reason being the one I just said. It throws the bookmaker off a little bit. By and large, this is usually not worth it. But this is a special PPH account that I've had forever and I know the agent and bookmaker do talk a lot about me (or the person they think is betting on this account, which would be a more accurate way to phrase that). I also killed him on Wong's last year so I'm sure he is looking at me. Number two, I had two more legs that I wanted to fire on for 6.5 point teasers and the odds for 3 teamers is better than 2 teamers. And lastly, because it was a stand alone game, I was able to fully hedge/middle it.

That is what I ended up doing, taking MIA +12.5 -110 on Draft Kings which was slightly off market. BUF won by 10 so I middled this one nicely. I also hit MIA +7.5 first half which was nearly arbable with Pinnacle when I made it. So a good start to the week though these bets weren't spectacular.

The 1:00 slate was busy for me. The other two legs of my BUF 6.5 point teaser bet were IND at a heavy -3 which I turned into +3.5 and PATS at +1 which I turned into +7.5. IND got bet all the way up to -6 somehow and covered easily. The Patriots game was like a fever dream. I was listening to it on the radio and it was almost comical how cursed they were. They turned the ball over FIVE times, twice in the Steelers red zone. I had their RB, Stevenson, to score a TD with some DK bonuses, and his second fumble of the game came from trying to score. That was a big swing as I thought for sure the Pats were going to blow +7.5. I bet PIT live a little bit at -3.5 for a small amount. PIT ended up winning by 7 exactly so this one worked out well but it was a rocky ride.

I had GB -2.5 in quite a few of my teasers. I got arbable numbers on CLE +8.5 and CLE ML so I ended up kind of turning those into my bets and using the teasers as my hedge. My only nightmare scenario was GB winning by 1 or 2. GB winning by less than a TD would have been absolutely ideal and it was bizarre following that game through the play by play. I'm sure you know what happened so no need to go over it. CLE won outright which was better than GB blowing them out, I think, but worse than GB winning by 8 or less.

I had HOU +7.5 small which I let ride. My book put up PHI -3 -130 instead of -3.5 so I did a 6.5 point teaser, turning that into a +3.5. I did that mostly because I wanted to pair it up with CHI +1, turning it into +7.5. I wanted THAT because I was heavy on DAL +7.5 already, so getting CHI +7.5 as my hedge was perfect. I ended up getting PHI +3.5 in quite a few teasers so I wanted to hedge it a little bit. I got LAR ML +172 which was a decent number. I came oh so close to binking this one, as the Rams had their game winning FG (to win by a perfect 2 points) blocked. This and the GB game both featured blocked, game winning field goals at the very end of the game which is quite rare. This is about as much whining about a bad beat as you're going to get out of me though. They work both ways and you only notice the bad ones.

Probably the most interesting thing I did on the 1:00 slate though was with the TB/NYJ game. Market was TB -6, 6.5, drifting towards TB. Draft Kings put up a juicy number on the Jets ML (+270) as well as NYJ +7, so it gave me an idea. I could bomb away on the Jets ML and a little at +7 and scalp out as much as I wanted to on a TB -.5 teaser. I ended up doing that for a big amount and the game ended perfectly with TB winning but NYJ +7 also covering.

The 4:00 slate was busy as well, as I had Wongs on every single afternoon game. DEN I teased up to +8.5 and bought back LAC -2.5 for a nice middle which hit. I got SEA -1.5 early in the week which was never in doubt. I did hedge a little bit with NO +7.5 and some more live which all lost. I had ARZ teased up to +7.5 and hedged with SF -2.5 at plus odds. Little too cute, SF won but only by 1. I almost bet SF ML instead of the -2.5 too, but the -2.5 was a slightly better bet.

DAL/CHI I already touched on briefly. I jumped on DAL +1.5 when it opened, teasing it to +7.5. (I love teasing a +1.5 opener for the reason I'm about to show). I put it as the last leg in quite a few 3 teamers so I had a lot of DAL exposure. As the game drew nearer and they were still live, I saw that DAL had taken a lot of money and moved from +1.5 to -1.5. You know what that means. The Holy Grail of Wong teasers and their hedges. This meant now I could bomb away on CHI +7.5 which is exactly what I did. If that game had been won by 7 or less by either team, it would have been an unreal week. CHI won in a blowout which wasn't ideal but I did end up having more on CHI.

The SNF game was quiet for me. I got a good number on the NYG ML, so I set up a small little KC +6, NYG ML middle which obviously didn't hit.

All in all, a good week. Put me up something like 5 units for the year. Nothing to write home about but this is the grind. Without doing any props or team totals this year, I'm able to really focus in on these Wongs and their hedges and so far with about 1.2 years worth of sample, the results have been encouraging. 

Looking ahead, tonight is SEA at ARZ and the market is at Sea -1, -1.5, -125 ML. Roughly. Bovada has SEA -2. My PPH book, however, has put up the bizarre looking SEA -.5, -111 line. It's not quite a money line because it would lose if they tie, but for all intents and purposes, it's a money line. However, he also has a money line of SEA -130, ARZ +108. (I swear this guy is retarded sometimes). So the SEA-.5 -111 and ARZ ML +108 is actually 3 cents away from being arbable at the same book. Even for this guy, this is a weird move, and I'm about 75% sure he only did it because of me. I think he's trying to protect against me teasing ARZ +1.5 or even ARZ +1. This is the little cat and mouse game that goes on between books and sharps. It also tells me I need to maybe go easy on or disguise some of my Wongs, especially the 6.5 point ones for -120.

I fired on SEA-.5 -111 for a normal amount. I'll see what he does closer to game time. Like I've said before, this guy loves moving lines around and he is certainly no 'NFL push rate master' so I might get a nice juicy arbable number later on. But we'll see.

BTC is going through a healthy, minor little correction as we speak, down to $109k. Isn't that hilarious to say, by the way. It's down to under $110k. It feels like only yesterday that $100k was the big, mythical number to claim. Now it would nearly be bear market territory. I think these pullbacks are actually good. I have learned that with crypto or stocks, you need these pullbacks to clear out messy leverage and get the paper hands to fold to longer term holders. It makes the next run up much more solid. When something just shoots straight up, it usually means it's going to come down just as hard eventually. But a nice steady climb with a few corrections on the way is probably the best way to go. My short term plan is I think we go down for another couple weeks, maybe into mid October, maybe go sub $100K, and then we blast off into the final leg of the bull market. I've been slowly scooping up some bullish options on crypto with Robinhood futures with this latest down turn. I'll have more on these RH futures soon as I've been slowly learning more and more about them.

That's it for today I suppose. Check back early next week for my Week 4 round up and possibly another post in the meantime. Thanks for reading!

We're Sick Because Our Money Is Sick

I've been quietly sitting with my thoughts since the horrific murder of Iryna Zarutska, the assassination of Charlie Kirk and especially the aftermath of it. I have been really trying to parse out exactly how I feel as logically as possible, really for my own sanity more than anything else. I have really been trying to organize my thoughts and feelings because these two murders and their aftermath felt new. They felt new and different for some reason. Like a line had officially been crossed and instead of grumbling and conceding more ground and making a new line, people have finally said 'enough'. I mean, maybe. It's hard to know this stuff in real time. It's always clear in hindsight and whatever happens 5 and 10 years from now, people will say 'I knew it was coming! It was so obvious!' But really being in it like this, you have to admit you really have no fucking idea what's coming.

I'm going to do this post a little bit different than usual. I'm going to short-rapid fire some opinions because it feels like I need to get this stuff out. I know most people don't come here to read this stuff but I just can't not write anything about it. We'll get back to our regular programming shortly, but if you're interested, here is what I have to say:

-I am officially OUT on 'unity' or 'lowering the temperature.' I don't know how many times we need to get hit with a stick before we realize that someone is trying to hit us with a stick. 

-The celebration after the assassination was something I really had never seen before, and I'm a true millennial. I have seen and been on the internet since its inception, really. Like others my age, I had completely unrestricted access to the internet at 15/16 years old, before anyone even knew what the internet was. I have seen just about everything. Two girls one cup? Childs play. I saw the famous cartel-chainsaw-group-decapitation video (if you have no idea what I'm talking about, congratulations. But it was a video of 5 or 6 guys handcuffed to a long table and one guy with a chainsaw just agonizingly slowly, cutting off their heads. One by one, through shoulders and arms and all. The chainsaw sputters and shuts off a few times. It takes FOREVER. And you're watching the guy who's up next just sitting there with pure resignation on his face, along with gore and viscera being flung at him. It is a truly horrific video is my point here). War videos, murder, beatings, deaths, bombs, stuff you can't even imagine. I have proverbially seen it all. And even I was absolutely shocked at the utter glee with which a lot of these people celebrated with. October 7th was a peak into these people's minds but this was like looking through one of those old school, put a quarter into this funny looking telescope thing. These people are deranged and evil is a real thing.

-Charlie Kirk was a 31 year old, married man with two children under the age of 5. Everyone keeps saying he was 'far-right' but he really wasn't. Like, at all. He is to the left of me on just about every major issue. And even if he was 'far-right', does that excuse his murder?? Does half this country really want me to die? Not only that, but would they celebrate if I was a known person and got killed? It sure seems that way. Maybe I'm naive but I really did not know that. I despise shit libs, I hate the modern left and its ideology with a burning passion but I don't wish death on these people. Not even close. I saw a great meme describing this feeling which I will paraphrase: "When I say I hate liberals, I mean that I think they're dumb and wrong and goofy but I would save them from a house fire. When liberals say 'Just Be Kind!' they mean that they want me and my entire family to be murdered."

-The people that celebrated almost all did it openly and proudly with their full first and last names. They were shocked that anyone even disagreed with them, never mind that they would suffer consequences. That was one of the most unnerving parts of this whole thing. These people, largely teachers and nurses by the way, were SHOCKED that anyone else would be shocked at them for gleefully celebrating a 31 year old young father getting assassinated in front of his family, all for nothing but speech. Take a minute and think of the implications of that...

-One thing that was impossible not to notice about the ghastly celebration of Kirks murder all over social media was the stark and obvious difference between the people celebrating his death and the people who were defending him. The people celebrating were almost universally revolting. Not just physically ugly, though that was largely the case, but ugly in their souls. Dead eyes. Very few spouses or kids. Very few business owners or people who build or run anything. Lots of students, jobless adults, teachers (which is horrific, by the way. WTF is going on with academia?), nurses and 'government job' types of people. Every video I saw was a person alone and in a lot of their bios was a list of their mental problems. Like they're bragging. They pretend to hate this country or society or whatever else but they pretty clearly hate themselves. I'd say roughly 75% of the ones I saw were from a person that a toddler would be terrified at the sight of. I don't care what your politics are, gleefully celebrating the murder of a young man and father of two whose biggest crime was effectively sharing his opinions is irreversibly damaging to your soul. And we can all see it on your faces.

-Charlie Kirk was not a politician. He wasn't even a CEO. He was a guy who debated with people who disagreed with him. That's it! And the left celebrated like it was their 21st birthday party when a confused, gay, loner shot him in the neck with a fucking sniper rifle. 

-Am I the only person who remembers that up until like 10 minutes ago, the whole world knew that male cross dressing is like top of the list for signs of a severely disturbed, dangerous and violent person? Are we all just pretending not to know that?

-Iryna Zarutska was the Ukrainian smoke-show who had her throat slit on a train by a black man with FOURTEEN prior arrests. Fourteen! What kind of a sick, depraved society lets loose a man like that onto its own population? And why?

-I watched the actual, raw video of her murder and the aftermath. And I have to admit, for the first time in my entire life after watching a video online, I actually cried. If you haven't seen the full video, do your soul a favor and don't watch it. It is beyond brutal. And the way the people around her act like she isn't even there. Utterly confused, she cries into her bloody hands and then falls over and dies from blood loss. No one even looked at her in the video, never mind touched her. I honestly can't even really think about it without getting emotional and angry. 

-After her murder, the official Black Lives Matter X account posted a video saying 'oppressed people have the right to violence.' I looked myself, it wasn't a mistake or fake news. It's real. They really posted that and got tens of thousands of likes. Maybe even over 100k now.

-Do you understand that? Are you seeing this same shit as me? THEY WANT YOU DEAD AND THEY AREN'T EVEN HIDING IT ANYMORE.

-Unity? UNITY?! Jimmy fucking Kimmel?! I mean are you kidding?

-My view on the detestable, cringey, hacky, puppet that is Jimmy Kimmel is very similar to what Gavin Mccinnes said. Something like 'Jimmy Kimmel getting fired is bad, government pressure like that is bad and it's hypocritical of us to celebrate it. But I am a hypocrite on this. I'm glad he was fired and I want bad things to happen to him.' 

-I am DONE upholding rules for people who mock the idea of rules in the first place. I refuse to be the most principled man in the mass grave. People say 'we shouldn't do this because then they'll do it back to us!' They already did! And they're going to anyway, whether we stay 'principled' or not. I mean, did the whole world forget covid? How many times did we hear 'you have freedom of speech, just not freedom of consequences'? They LAUGH at our principles! 'Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.'

-At a time when people are the most fed up with the two party system, libertarians have not won one single thing in my entire lifetime. If anything, they've gone backwards. What good is the 'best theory on paper' if it only ever remains on paper?

So that is sort of my thoughts on this, puked up on page in bullet form. Whether you're right or left, white or black, American or not, there is one thing I think we can all agree on. We are sick. Whatever the reason, whatever the symptoms, I don't think anyone can argue that there isn't a sickness deep in the hearts or souls or minds of the modern Western human being today. Why is that?

I think that upstream of all of this, the entire culture war, the identity politics, the race acrimony, the corruption, the perverse incentives, all of the rot is from one thing; money printing. Money is the blood that runs through the veins of our country. And since our country is so much bigger and more powerful than any other country, our blood spills over into theirs. The whole world does business with USD. And just like how getting bad blood corrupts an entire body, bad money corrupts anyone who has it.

Think about 100 years ago when we were still on the gold standard.  Every single dollar in existence was backed by an equal amount of gold. It was real, hard, honest money. The only way to earn any of it was to actually earn it. You had to provide value for someone. Ever since we went off the gold standard in the 70's, that dynamic has changed. Now money can be created out of thin air. Need a loan from the bank? They just create the money right then and there with a few keystrokes. (Did you know that, by the way? When you get a loan from the bank, it isn't like they take cash from their vault and loan it to you. They just create the new loan money right there on the spot. Does that seem right to you?) A few gigantic businesses in 'key industries' got insanely greedy and stupid and are about to go bankrupt? We can't have that so let's print trillions of dollars and bail these companies out, effectively rewarding them for reckless and stupid behavior. Not only that, but also signaling to everyone else that whatever happens, the American Taxpayer won't let you go bankrupt. So leverage yourself as much as possible, take enormous unjustifiable risks and worst case, the federal government will simply steal money from the public and give it to you (that is essentially what happens when they print money out of thin air). A 'pandemic' has broken out? Quick, let's print even more trillions of dollars and this time, we'll give out 'forgivable loans' (much like the term 'quantitative easing', or 'Q.E' there's always a cheese-dick term/acronym for what it really is: creating money out of thin air. Why do you think they always have to call it something else?)

What kind of a system does that loose, 0% interest rate, money-printing dynamic produce? What kind of a person do you think that environment attracts? What sort of business people get interested and active when they hear that you no longer need to build or create or innovate to get rich, but simply need to know the right people? Or beg loudly enough? Or put yourself in the middle of deals, or create an obstacle and then sell the way around the obstacle?

'Money is the barometer of a society's virtue' - Ayn Rand.

Once these people are here, what sorts of things do they do? What do they 'build'? Who do they support in positions of power? What are their goals? Justice? Prosperity? National strength and unity? A high trust society? Please. How do you think a guy (who belongs on the other side of the planet) with fourteen arrests, a knife, no job and no train ticket gets on a train and slits the throat of the innocent White girl sitting in front if him? It's akin to the growth of the 'management class.' When you grow a company and hire more people, you have to hire people to manage those people. You then have to hire people to manage THOSE people, and on it goes. Corruption leads to more corruption like sickness leads to more sickness. A bloated bubble. We've had over 50 years of fiat bullshit. 50 years of subversion, of lies, of crooks. 50 years of money grubbing, hand rubbing men getting rich from taking, not giving. Extracting, not producing. Destroying, not creating. Not providing value but by sucking off of people who do.

What kinds of children and families do you think these men produce? What sorts of institutions arise around them? What kind of art do they like? Have you noticed how modern and 'post-modern' art is almost always bad on purpose? It's like a literal zombie bite or a vampire movie. Once you invite the Fiat Monster in, you can never get him out. 

Unless, of course, you find a way to introduce new, real, hard money built for the future that has nothing to do with the federal government or the Federal Reserve. Imagine that. Built from the ground up, no CEO, no company, no nothing. Just pure, real, money, built by creators, FOR creators.

Imagine that.

BTC price: $112k

BTC marketcap: $2.23T

Total crypto marketcap: $3.86T

BTC dominance (with stables): 57.7%

Total cryptos on coinmarketcap: 24.31M

(NFL Week 3 betting recap coming tomorrow or the next day. Thanks for reading, bye for now!)

NFL Week 2 Betting Recap

 I will have a post up soon about Charlie Kirk and Iryna Zarutska, the Ukrainian (actual) refugee who was murdered by a black man on a public train and left to bleed out in front of a dozen or so other blacks who barely even looked her way. Between her murder, Charlie Kirks murder and the reaction to both of them, I am so beyond full of rage. Like, white hot, blinding, trembling rage. I can barely muster a comprehensible sentence about all of it right now so I'm going to fester for a couple more days before I write about it. But a post is coming soon.

Today I am going to continue this new thing I'm doing this year which is a recap of my bets for the NFL for the prior week. So let's dig in.

First off, as is typical with NFL teasers, I had a few bets from week 1 that were still pending into week 2, all of them being Chicago +7.5 teasers. I hedged with various Vikings bets and again got a little too cute. I got decent numbers on a couple Vikings -1 and -2.5 which won, but I mostly hedged with Vikings -3.5 +150ish. The Vikings ended up winning by 3 so my teasers all won and a couple of the hedges won too, so a good result that should have been way better. A recurrent theme this week that we'll see...

I did a few 'non-standard' teasers this week which is usually when I get a team at -3 -130-ish and tease them to +3 and the buy half a point. I can actually get these 6.5 point teasers at -120 which is really good. Besides these teasers being +EV on their own, I like the idea of doing any teasers that aren't exactly Wong teasers. It throws the agent/bookmakers off the scent a little bit and they look square. I teased GB, SF and PIT from heavy -3's into +3.5s. The Steelers were the only team to not cover +3.5.

I also had many different small teasers with IND +8.5 and +7.5 as well as KC +7.5. I was able to get KC +7.5 by jumping on KC +1.5 early in the week. I had KC +7.5 in almost all of my teasers so I hedged with some PHI -1 and -2.5, but mostly -3.5 and a little -9.5. Again, getting too cute. PHI won by 3 so it was the same thing as the CHI/MIN game. A good result but a half point away from being amazing.

I had a fairly big position on the NYJ at +6.5 -105, -102 and +6 -108 I got throughout the week, all of which were arbable with Pinnacle. I did my half-scalp thing and got myself plus odds of NYJ +6 and +6.5 where Pinnacle was at like -115ish, no vig. They got blown out of course but they were fantastic bets. 

I had the Patriots teased to +7.5 in a few teasers and was able to hedge with MIA ML at -125 on Draft Kings which was a couple cents away from being arbable at Pinnacle. If MIA won by 7 or less points it would have been a huge winner. I still made money as I had way more on the Pats. It didn't work out perfectly but again, I was finding a ton of really good spots like this all week. I actually cashed out of most of my MIA bets near the end of the game for small amounts which is something I almost never do but worth thinking about. I did the same thing with a small DAL -4.5 bet I had. They were down by 4 with the ball for the last possession of the game. There was, I believe, zero chance they would score a TD to go up by 3 and then NOT kick the extra point. I couldn't see a single possibility where they could cover 4.5. The cash out was small, something like 15% of the bet, but I did it and it got me thinking about the cash outs a little bit. Usually you can find a better option then cash outs through live betting, but not always. I think if you are able to scoop up these little 10-20% cash out rebates it may be worth it. I think they might be leaving them up a little too long, especially when the cash out option is tiny. (However, in general, cashing out is almost always bad).

My PPH account put up DEN -107 moneyline which was off market and on the verge of being arbable with Pinnacle. However, close to kick off, Draft Kings put up IND +110. So I had a nice clean little arb there which I basically maxed out. (Terrific way to clear a bonus I had too). I had IND teased to +7.5 and +8.5 from early in the week as well, so hedging that with a -107 DEN ML and then arbing THAT with IND +110 ML is a traders wet dream. IND won with a walkoff field goal, but if DEN had won by less than a TD it would have been perfect. Again, a decent result that was inches away from being amazing.

The Sunday Night game was interesting. The market was bouncing between Min -3 and -3.5 all day. I wanted some more KC +7.5 right before it started and my PPH had KC +1 which was slightly better than market. So I paired it with MIN -3 -115 and bought half a point, which gave me KC +7.5 and MIN +3.5 for one big bet of a 6.5 point teaser at -120. Once KC covered, I knew I had to hedge some of the MIN bet. The best number I could find was Draft Kings who had ATL at +3.5 -115 (Pinnacle was at +3.5 -123ish). However, my PPH dealt MIN -3 -110, where Pinny was at -3 -114. This was one of those rare scalp opportunities where you have two slightly off market numbers instead of one off market number. So I fired hard on MIN -3 -110 and even harder on ATL +3.5 -115. I had $500 worth of bonus bets from DK too so I used them all on ATL +3.5, plus a lot more. If it was a 3 point game either way, I would have done quite well and if MIN won by exactly 3 I would have absolutely cleaned up. ATL won outright which wasn't ideal but I had more on ATL. I also had a nice little Draft Kings same game parlay with a 50% boost of ATL +3.5, under 44.5 and under JJ Mccarthy passing yards. The boost made it go from 4 to 1 to 6 to 1. That was a nice little addition but for a really small amount with the $30 max bet for the promo.

Other than all that, I had a few small live bets with bonuses and a couple small MLB props, again with bonuses. Nothing worth writing about though. All in all I'm basically break even after two weeks with some teaser equity going into week 3. Speaking of week 3, so far I have TB +8.5 tonight as the last leg of a couple teasers. I jumped in small on DEN +8.5, GB -2.5, ARZ +7.5 and DAL +7.5 for Wongs. For my non-standard 6.5 point teasers, I have one with BUF -6.5, IND +3.5 and Patriots +7.5 (they opened at +1.5/2 but are now PK/+1. Another example of jumping on those +1.5's early in the week).

Anyway, that's about it for today. Be on the lookout for my next post, should be up soon.

Thanks for reading, bye for now!