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!
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