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
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