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!
