I have been bangin away at this +EV betting thing for about 15 years now. Nearly 2 full decades. And I shit you not, I had one of the most perplexing, bizarre, swingy, heart attack inducing days of my betting life this past Sunday. Still, two full days later, I'm not entirely sure what even happened, exactly. Let me try to explain.
If you're a long time regular reader here you might know this, but my main NFL betting strategy for the past 3 or so years has been mainly centered around teasers (of the Wong variety, mostly). I'm able to get 2 teamers at -110 and 3 teamers at +170, both of which are profitable and nearly impossible to find these days. (Draft Kings charges -135 for 2 teamers. -135! Way back in the day I got these at +105!) In order to wring out as much value as possible from these teasers, I way over-bet them and hedge/middle each leg. An important wrinkle here is that each leg in each teaser has to be playing at a different time slot (something that took me way too long to figure out). I need each leg to be decided before the next one starts (if you're a smarty pants you might be a step ahead of me here).
My big teaser teams in the 1:00 slate Sunday were (in order of exposure) TB -2.5, BAL -2.5, PHI -1.5, and ATL +7.5. Now, right off the bat you can see...not great. Only one of those bets (PHI) won. However, it wasn't as bad as it looks because PHI won but didn't cover which means a lot of my TEN hedges won.
I went pretty bonkers on TB -2.5 and to a slightly lesser extent BAL -2.5. They were both perfect teaser candidates. -8.5 with Pinnacle dealing heavy -9s on both, essentially saying 'we do not want to take teasers on either of these games'. A big -8.5 to -2.5 teaser is typically one of my favorite legs. You can get the opponent money line at something like +380 if you try really hard, so that's a -255/+380 scalp basically. You can also middle with opponent +3.5 for big odds, on top of +7.5 usually for plus odds too. The only real risk is the teaser leg winning by 1 or 2, but you can cover that with getting +2.5 as a pure scalp, or +3.5 or better as a middle.
Anyway, I did all of the above for my CLE hedges/middles. My PPH has a massive max bet and credit limit, and I've really been trying to up my volume lately in everything. The more volume the better. So I bet pretty much as much as I could on TB -2.5 and hedged/middled out of most of it. I got everything from CLE ML at +380ish, +2.5, +3.5, +6.5, +7.5, +8.5. If this game ended with TB winning by 8 or less, it would have been outstanding for me. TB winning by exactly 3? Massive.
So imagine how it felt to be following along with this game with 2 minutes left. TB is down by 4 but driving with the ball on the CLE 30-something. They have to score a TD and it would put them up by exactly 3. And the game gets delayed for lightning! For over a fucking hour!! More importantly, not only is it quite the sweat, but I don't know if the next legs in my teasers are live or not!! And the next games are starting!! Remember, I way over-bet these teasers. I need to hedge/middle out of each leg, which means I need to know if each teaser is live or not before the next leg starts!
So I'm frantically refreshing X trying to get an update, meanwhile I have no idea if I have action on my JAX +8.5 and LAC -1.5 teaser legs, which, again, I over-bet. So I'm watching along in my battle station, sort of half hedging on LV and DEN. Luckily for me, both games were close into halftime.
And then around the 3rd Quarter of the 4:00 games, (I think? it was all a blur) TB/CLE starts up again out of nowhere. And of course TB just cannot get in the endzone. I did have the wherewithal to fire on CLE ML +112 during the delay as a sort of insurance but in hindsight, I should have bet quite a lot more.
Now that TB lost, I realize my teasers are mostly all dead and now I'm exposed on LV and DEN. I bet a little bit on the other side and luckily both games ended up going in my (now) favor, so that worked out I suppose. But holy shit! What a sweat! I'm still not sure if I got lucky or unlucky, to be perfectly honest. A bit of both I suppose.
To add to the nuttiness of it all, the BAL/NO game almost gave me a heart attack, too. Like I mentioned earlier, I teased BAL down to -2.5 and hedged with a good amount of NO moneyline. So the only thing that could not happen in this game is BAL winning by 1 or 2. In the middle of all of this other stuff, NO scores a TD to go down by exactly 2 to BAL late in the game. They go for 2 and fucking MISS IT (or so it showed on the play by play). Now I'm really sweating. I fire a small NO +2.5/BAL ML parlay as an 'in case of emergency insurance play', and sure enough, there was a flag on the play and NO goes for again and this time gets in, tying the game up. Just insanity all around. This is why I used to not even watch the games at all. (Now that I have access to NoVig, I am able to hedge with opponent +2.5 profitably instead of just betting them on the moneyline. I still do bet the ML but not as much for this exact reason).
I had a nice little NYJ +3.5, GB ML middle which binked. Draft Kings put up an arb to the market all week on the Jets +3.5 and I did a cute little scalp and ML middle.
The SNF game landed perfect with KC winning by 3. Normally that would have been a windfall for me, but I was so shell shocked from earlier in the day that I didn't get much down on it at all.
Honestly, going to bed Sunday night I had no idea how the day went. I had no idea if I got crushed or not, and if so, how bad it was. Plus I had no one I could remotely tell all this to, and I had to kind of pretend none of it was happening at all. My wife is supportive of this and does her best to give me a lot of 'alone computer time' on Sundays, but she still (somehow) doesn't even know what a parlay is, never mind a teaser. The specifics of betting are not something we talk about and any time I find myself trying to explain something to her, I end up feeling like that Charlie from Always Sunny in Philadelphia meme.
'OK so a teaser is a parlay where you get to move the spread 6 points in your favor. But all the legs have to win. I over-bet the teasers and then hedge/middle out of each leg. I need each leg to be over before the next one starts and guess WHAT?! The TB game is in lightning delay! Yes, lightning. No, it almost never happens. Now I don't know if the teasers are live or not and the afternoon games are STARTING!'
*the blankest stare you have ever seen in your life* 'I wish I understood this stuff better. Dinner is almost ready, are you going to be done soon?'
The whole day felt surreal, honestly. A little bit like watching that god awful movie 'Uncut Gems' but like it was only happening in my head.
Doing my numbers this morning felt like my heart was in my chest. And guess what? I made about 6 units for the week. So not bad at all, I guess, but it probably took like 3 days off of my life.
Really weird start to the NFL season. My volume is way up and using an exchange is quite different, plus I do have a good amount of accounts now. I am ramping things back up, sort of without me realizing almost? So far, teasers have gotten demolished yet I'm still up for the season which is a really good sign. Getting my hedges/middles in at NoVig has been a massively good change. That means I've gotten crushed on my PPH too, which is kind of a good thing to happen this early. Now I know I'll almost certainly have this account all year, at least.
Looking ahead, I did have a couple teasers sneak through with LAR -1.5 as the last leg which won last night. I added some more, coupled with GB -1.5 and my favorite look ahead teaser leg of the upcoming week: SF -2.5. TB and DEN look good too but we'll see how things develop.
That's it for today, check back soon as I am big time in sports betting mode right now.
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