How To Bet On The NFL, Specifically With Teasers

I want to do a fairly basic primer for NFL betting and take a dive into teasers, specifically NFL 6 point teasers, AKA Wong Teasers.  I meant to post this when the playoffs started but unfortunately didn't get around to it. This will be helpful to anyone who bets for fun to hopefully make you at least lose less if not actually turn a profit.

First off, it is amazing how bad the average bettor is. I was a bookie for a while in a past life, and you really can't believe how bad the vast majority of bettors are. Getting the worst possible number, buying points for no reason, teasing NBA totals, action reverses, parlays, teasers at -120 (or worse) odds...the list goes on. It's the equivalent of someone playing blackjack who has a loose understanding of the rules. Even if you play perfect blackjack, you're expected to lose something like 2% of every dollar you risk. But if you're hitting 18s and staying put on 9's because 9 is your favorite number or something, you're obviously going to lose a lot quicker. That's what most people are doing when they bet. If the market says a team is +3 +103, and you bet it at +3 -110, you're already behind. Now let's say you buy 2 points because buying points is fun. Those points should cost something like 35 cents, but you pay 50 cents! Now you're REALLY behind. So hopefully this post can help you or someone avoid things like that.

If you're going to bet on anything, you must first learn the importance of line shopping. Getting the best possible number/odds is the most important aspect of betting straight bets (unless you're at the very top of the pyramid, in which case you generally want to get the most amount down on everything. For this discussion we're leaving the syndicate guys out). If you're betting at -110 lines (which you shouldn't be but most everyone is), you need to win 52.4% of the time to break even. If you can hit 55% you can make retirement money. Think about what that means, winning 52.5 out of 100 games versus winning 55 out of 100. You have to turn 1.5 games out of 100 from losses into winners. Or a couple pushes into winners. And think about all the 1 or two point or half point losses you'll have out of 100 games. Getting that extra half point or paying -105 instead of -110 is really the name of the game. 

So that brings us to a natural question; how do I know the "true line"? Where is this market? There really is no set answer to this, but the best answer is simple; check pinnacle. Ive talked about it before, but Pinnacle Sports if an offshore book that is basically considered the best. They're the market maker. They take the highest bets, have the lowest juice, and generally don't kick people out. Some people may quibble over this, some books are right up there and it does depend on the market, but for anything with high liquidity, such as any NFL game, you should consider the Pinnacle line the line to beat. Oh and you have to beat the juice too. So what you do is take the vig out of Pinnacles line, and that is basically considered the true line. You beat this line, in the long run you will make money. If you don't, you will lose. (Again, we're talking about high liquidity, aka big games. This doesn't apply to small stuff like props). 

You really should be betting with this as the goal. However, I realize this isn't feasible for most people, so you should try to get as close to this line as possible. Always check pinnacle before making a bet and have at least two different sports books. I like to have at least 10 accounts going at once but you have to have at least two if you're going to betting any kind of money at all. 

One good little nugget if you're just betting for fun; look for what I like to call the 'pinny stopper'. Sometimes pinnacle will make a game -111 when the rest of the market is at -110. This is them basically saying we don't want anymore action on this. That can be a good bet if you have to make a bet.

Remember, you're betting numbers, not teams.

OK so let's look at teasers. There is actually a very specific teaser you can make that has historically been +EV. If I were forced to bet on the NFL with one account and couldn't find off market bets, the only bets I would make would be this teaser. And I don't mind talking about it and 'giving away the secret' because the secret has been out for a long time.

A while back, this math professor named Stanford Wong wrote a book and he talked about an exploit he found betting on the NFL. Specifically, 6 point teasers where you 'capture' both the 3 and the 7. They're called Wong Teasers and you can read all about them for the math of it, but the simple explanation is this. Football is unique in that points are not scored 1 or 2 at a time, but generally 3 or 7 points at a time. A teaser is a bet where you're essentially doing a parlay and buying points. But since not all points are created equal in football, you can actually tilt the odds in your favor if you tease the right games.

So what games are we looking for. You want underdogs at +1.5 to +2.5, and favorites at -7.5 to -8.5. If a team is an -8.5 favorite, you tease them 6 points down to -2.5. You go through, or 'capture' both the 3 and the 7. Since so many games land on exactly 3 and 7, you capture enough win probability to win long term AT -110 OR BETTER ODDS. This is hugely important and cannot be overstated. When Wongs book came out and before these were well known, you could find 6 point teasers for as good as +110! I remember hammering a book around 2012 that had them at +105. Books did adjust and nowadays you really have to look to find anything better than -110. If you find a place that does -105 or even odds, you're in great shape. I actually had a book this year that had them at even odds for a while but changed to -110 mid season. (However, one lesser known thing; 3 teamers at +180 is really good too and you can still find these some places. Most have gone to +160 which isn't great, but any time you get a new sports book, always check out their odds for 2 and 3 team 6 point teasers.)

Now here's the catch, apparently. People always get greedy and include teams that are close to, but are not true Wongs. You have to capture the ENTIRE 7 or 3. You can't tease a team from +3 to +9, or -9 to -3. You must get the entire point. 

Personally, and especially since the XP point moved back, I like to play these only if they're perfect. For example, if the whole market has a team at +1, I'll hunt for a +1.5 to tease it to +7.5. Or same thing, if the market is -9, -9.5, I'll hunt for a -8.5 to tease to -2.5. Also, check your books rules for pushes. Some count them as losses, some count as pushes.

If you play these perfectly, you'll almost certainly make money. It's as close to a robotic, plug and play sports betting system that actually works. Yet people consistently cannot stay disciplined with these. They include totals (which is HORRIFIC by the way), they tease NBA games, they tease only TO the 3 or 7 and not through it. If you can stay the course, you can have fun betting and make money!

So that's about it for today. I'll be posting more often again so be on the lookout.

Ether: Not Just For Huffing Anymore

Bitcoin, huh? It has been a nice little 6 weeks or so in the crypto market. Bitcoin has continued its steady but bouncy ride upwards, going from a local low of 48k on Feb 28th to its current price of just under 60k. It's up 15% the past month and 82% the past 3 months. It broke through 60k and hit an all time high of 61.2kish on March 13th before bottoming back out at 51k on March 23, and then groggily making its way from there to 58.3k at the time of this post. 

The total crypto market capitalization right now is $1.94 trillion, and the BTC market cap alone is sitting at a nice and comfy $1.11 trillion. The BTC market cap settling in over 1 trillion is a real good sign. Ethereum's market cap is $237 billion. After that is Binance Coin at $51.6 billion, Tether (which is a stablecoin always pegged at 1 USD) at $42 billion, then Polkadot at $40.5 billion to round out the top 5 coins right now. Just under that is Cardano, and Chainlink is 10th with a $12.8 billion market cap. (A point I'd like to make here, by the way, is that too much emphasis is put on a coins' price. The real metric you want to measure is market cap. What a coins current price is is irrelevant when comparing to other coins or the market as a whole.)

The 'BTC market cap dominance' is something I like to keep an eye on. It's currently just under 60% and has been slowly trending down since mid 2019 when it 69%. ETH market dominance is at 12.4% which is about average, albeit slowly climbing since end of 2018. I think market cap dominance is obviously a good metric to look at to see how BTC and any other coin is doing compared to the whole of the crypto market. Last post I was worried about an alt-coin surpassing BTC and becoming the go-to crypto currency. I'm a little less worried about that now since BTC has such a huge lead over anything else. The closest competitor in market cap is ETH but ETH and BTC can co-exist. I have been and will be buying ETH anyway so that doesn't really scare me. And the BTC dominance falling doesn't necessarily scare me either. There are currently 9108 crypto currencies listed on coinmarketcap.com and that number is constantly growing. So BTC can slowly lose its market cap dominance yet still be in first place by a mile. I suppose that is the real question though, isn't it? Where will the BTC market cap dominance sort of 'settle in'? 50-40% feels about right. If it fell through 40% I might start to get worried. 

With the markets being open 24/7 and the crazy volatility and maybe even the futuristic feel of it all, it seems like time speeds up in the crypto markets. A week feels like a month and a month feels like 6 months. And for a while it seemed every night at around 2-4 AM the price would fall off a cliff before slowly rebounding during the day. Everyday waking up and checking the price can be a wild ride. When you look back at charts it all seems so obvious and easy but being in it every day is a different story. I learned my lesson pretty early on trying to 'time' the market and sell tops and buy dips. I actually made a really nice little excel sheet that tracks everything I do with crypto. I'm up about 10% on my total investment on BTC and 15% on ETH (ethereum) but I own about 10x more BTC than ETH. My average entry on BTC is 51.6k and for ETH it's 1750. I've 'lost' money by selling BTC but have done better with ETH trading-wise and am up just on trading. I also have tiny bits of Chainlink and Cardano.

I think I got all of the n00b mistakes out of my system early on and feel great about how things are going. I got a little crazy when BTC and ETH were really pumping in the beginning and made every mistake possible. I made a couple BTC and ETH buys at literal tippy tops and made some BTC sells that look absolutely horrible in hindsight. I also FOMO'd my way into Cardano at its all time high and managed to pay a bunch of fees for the privilege. It was for a tiny amount though and I just look at it as the price of an education. The alt-coin market is crazy and honestly probably best to just avoid. I waited on a nice little dip on Chainlink and got in at 25.23 but I don't think I'll do much more alt-coin dabbling in the future. A little piece of advice I heard was that you should own at least one full bitcoin before you get into alt-coins and I think that'll largely be my strategy from here on out, except for adding in around 20-30% ETH. 

Speaking of Ethereum, what in gods name is Ethereum? Well if you thought Bitcoin was hard to understand, take a dive into ethereum. I'm not going to go deep into ETH and what it is and what it does. I'm far from an expert and you can learn plenty for free online. But the broad strokes are that ETH is a smart contract platform and its network is 'proof of stake' instead of the btc-used 'proof of work' (or at least ETH is turning into a proof of stake network.) Proof of stake uses up less energy than proof of work, and the energy consumption problem is becoming one of bitcoin's biggest issues. There is no real 'coin' though with ethereum and what you own when you buy ethereum is honestly a little murky. You're basically buying a piece of the ETH network. There are 115 million "eth's" in circulation right now, but there isn't a max supply. That was one of my biggest pluses with bitcoin and that worries me about ETH. Another cool thing about ethereum is that it is actually able to host other crypto currencies. This has been the most common use of its platform so far (Link is on the ETH network).

However, the big thing right now with ETH is the fact that all the NFT (non-fungible tokens (fungible means tradable)) stuff is going on the ETH network. You can't talk about ethereum without talking about NFT's. NFT's are a huge thing going right now. If you don't know, it's basically like baseball cards but online. And instead of just baseball cards it's all kinds of stuff. Meme's, tweets, art, music...they all can be NFT's. Some of the stuff going on right now in the NFT market though is absolutely insane and honestly makes me a little nervous that we're at a top. A meme of a defeated Donald Trump sold for almost $70 million!A meme you can just, like, have for yourself, online... for free. I also saw Kings Of Leon released their whole new album as an NFT with NFT artwork. I went into the auction to check it out and everything was going for insane prices. People are even paying the huge fees that ETH is charging right now too to make these transactions. The NFT thing feels preposterous to me to be totally honest, but you really can't argue with the numbers. The amount of money going into NFT's is mind boggling. People love owning little things and anyone around my age can remember the hype of baseball cards when we were young. The biggest problem with memorabilia has always been the same; fakes. Some estimates say that 80% of all memorabilia is fake. NFT's solve this problem. Maybe even with 3D printers, people can make physical copies of their stuff, too. I'm just trying to keep an eye on everything, really, and am staying away from any hard and fast rules. You gotta keep your head on a swivel around here. This space is fast, it's bizarre, it's constantly changing and evolving and it sure is fun being a small little part of it. It really is an interesting time to be alive.

But anyway, back to ethereum. Its' price action has been frustrating since everyone seems to think ETH is way over due for a major breakthrough. And I have to agree somewhat. The BTC/ETH valuation seems out of whack to me. I don't see how BTC can be almost 5 times worth more than ethereum (in market cap). It leads me to think that either BTC is overvalued or ETH is undervalued (or both).

The negatives with ETH right now seem to be A) its network is clogged, slow and costly B) it's had some technical issues C) the miners 'show of force' threat D) it has a lot of competitors. 

The first point doesn't bother me at all really. It's like saying a bar is going to go out of business because it's too busy. The reason the network is slow and expensive is because everyone is using it. Now, the networks ability to deal with the increased traffic may be a problem in the future, but right now this isn't something I worry about too much. 

The technical issues centered around the fact that the ETH network was released probably too early and it came with glitches. The basic idea was we'll release it and fix as we go. This got them first mover advantage but it does have its drawbacks obviously. There is supposed to be some new fork or a 2.0 platform coming out, so we'll see about that. 

The miners show of force threat was basically ETH miners trying to band together and get control of 51% of the ETH network just to show that they could. This was in response to ETH miner rewards being decreased (to deal with the high fees). This was big news when it came out a few weeks ago but it seems to be a non issue now. I haven't heard or read anything about it in weeks and it was always dubious as to whether that was even possible.

Cardano is currently ETH biggest competitor. Actually, the guy who started Cardano initially was a co-founder of ETH and split off to make Cardano. I think if you're going to buy a large position of ETH, it wouldn't be crazy to buy some Cardano as a hedge (which was my thinking). I don't know enough about it to write anything, but I'll be watching Cardano closely. 

(Small disclaimer about everything I just wrote: I do not understand ethereum nearly as much as I do bitcoin and some of this stuff may not be 100% correct. If you have any corrections, feel free to comment).

It feels like ETH has been moving sideways forever but it's actually up 26% the past month, which is largely fueled by its 21.8% growth this past week. It finally broke though 2k, topped out at 2139 and has been falling a little bit since, currently at 2050. If its falls through 2k and back to 1850ish I'm going to be really confused, but I'll probably be buying.

Also in my last post I mentioned how youtube has been a great source for learning about crypto and I mentioned 'BitBoy' as my favorite guy to watch. He still is the best to watch for a general overview of the crypto world, but his trading advice and tutorials can be ignored. He's a little bit salesman-y so you really just gotta use him for news. Don't follow his (or anyones, really) trading advice. People complain that he and others are a little click baity with the 'O face thumbnails' and ridiculous price predictions. But he and others have addressed this and I can't say I disagree. They don't want look absurd in their thumbnails and call for a million dollar bitcoin, but it's the only thing that works! People don't click on boring thumbnails. So don't judge a youtuber by his thumbnails.

The best guy on crypto-youtube though is "ben crowen". Just search him and you'll see what I mean. I like bitboy for all around market news and ben crowen for market analysis. I also watch 'crypto zombie' who is almost like bitboy and ben combined. One of my biggest strengths in sports betting was always knowing who was smart about what and learning as much as possible from them, and right now all that stuff is mostly going on at youtube. 

That's about it for now. Haven't been doing much betting but I plan on getting back into hockey props soon. My model is great but as always I don't have many places to play, and the model takes forever to use. NBA was going ok until I had one horrible week and just sort of lost interest. You really need to be following the leagues if you want to bet props night in and out and popping in a couple days a week isn't cutting it. With players being out of the lineup all the time with covid it's especially tough, and I haven't found a good way to incorporate the fact that NHL teams are virtually playing the same opponent every night. At the very least, I'll be betting hockey props in the playoffs (and may even give out some picks!), which are always super high ROI. As far as the lack of posting, if you are a reader of this blog I  really do appreciate it. I always plan on writing more but one or two a month seems to be the norm. I'll never just abandon it though, and if I ever do decide to stop I'll make a post. So bookmark me and check back at least once a month and you should see something new. Until next time!

Political Wrap-Up, Year In Review And CRYPTO CURRENCY DEEP DIVE

Long-time no see, huh. I didn't mean to take such a long break, there just wasn't a whole lot to talk about really. Politics was bananas obviously but by the time I wrote my last post I was well passed tapped out credit-wise and was just waiting for all my bets to settle. The last political bet FINALLY settled a few weeks ago so I can say that the 2020 political betting season is officially in the rear-view.

So what can we take away from it? I've been thinking about this for a little while and to be totally honest...I don't think we can take away all that much. It was as simple as using PredictIt as the 'true line' and betting things that were far enough off to be +EV. The only real skill in this, I suppose, is having access to these accounts that have these ridiculous price discrepancies. As well as actually getting paid and staying at them/finding more. I could write forever about trying to time the market and mining comment sections and analyzing (the right) polls (the second they come out), and there are absolutely guys out there doing that and making a living, but honestly for the most part, I just looked for price differences and clicked the buttons (except for the VP race. I feel like I was pretty spot on there and made plenty of market price bets that were +EV imo).

Nuts and bolts wise, I made just under 26 units in about 10 months of political betting. I made most of my profits early by betting on states and nominations. From February to March I had only one losing week. Some of the early numbers I was getting were eye-popping, some of the biggest discrepancies I've seen in my entire life, and Ive been bashing PPH's for almost 15 years now. The wins weren't huge with the small limits and small amount of places to play, but they were consistent, easy and added up. I had another nice 10 unit jolt in August around the time of the VP announcement, and pretty much broke even after that in the overall presidential race. Even with having some bets deleted and losing a couple accounts, it was definitely worth it. My only regrets are being a little gun shy at the start (I literally couldn't believe what I was seeing at certain points) and probably over-hedging/spraying. Especially in the VP race. I would have liked to get way more volume down, too. My ROI was absurd but the unit count should be higher. Next time I'll be better prepared before it all starts.

Overall 2020 was a strange year betting-wise. I had the highest ROI year of my life but the volume was way down. Other than NHL shots on goal and the 2020 super bowl, I didn't do much in the way of props this year. Politics and stock market bets covered some of the missed volume, but not all of it. I ended up down money on straight bets which is extremely confusing since all I do is bet off market stuff (and hedge teasers which I made money on so that kind of evens out). Every week during the NFL it seemed I was finding unreal numbers and setting up huge middles which just basically never hit (I remember hitting exactly one clean). I had an UNREAL position on the Superbowl. One of my books put up KC -1.5 even and ML -145 when the market was all 3 and 3.5. So I maxed out KC (for almost 5 figures - it wasn't a rinky dink little book) and bought most of it back on TB +3 and some 3.5 (and even a little bit of +4). So if KC won by exactly 2 or 3, which should happen between 10 and 15 percent of the time, I'd win both. Obviously that didn't happen but those are the exact kind of spots I was generating all year. I ended up having a great 2021 super bowl by absolutely crushing props, especially my all time favorite props to bet; cross sport props. Actually, making the cross sport bets got me to dust off my NBA player prop model which I re-discovered was actually quite good. I kinda forgot how good that model is. I've since updated it a little bit and have been using it with great success the past couple weeks on NBA. I'll probably have a post later on going into more detail about that specifically, but I really want to talk about something else.... Crypto currency.

'Yea yea' you might be saying...'bitcoin...we get it. You're about 6 years too late.' Yes, obviously it would have been better to get in when it was under 10k, but I think it still has a looooong way to go.

 I'm going to explain what I know about crypto, ask some questions that maybe people in the comments can answer, and lay out my theory on what it is and where it's going.

So first off let me just say that obviously I am no computer/crytpo expert. Far from it. But I have researched it quite extensively and can safely say now that I officially 'get it'. I get the problem that bitcoin/the blockchain solved and why it's such a big deal. The 'hows' are still a little murky to me but I think A) I will understand it all eventually and B) you don't really need to know all the tiny technicals to know why bitcoin is so special.

Bitcoin (aka BTC) was 'invented' by a person or more likely a group called Satoshi Nakamoto. He (I'm just gonna call them 'he' from now on) simply uploaded a 9 page pdf to a hacking forum and then disappeared forever. You can read the 'white paper' pdf here.

In short, 'a bitcoin' is really just a long string of unique characters on a public ledger, aka the blockchain. "Miners" (regular people with fancy computers) compete and are incentivized to verify transactions and add to the blockchain. They get paid in tiny amounts of BTC for this service and the amount they get per block is halved every 4 years (I think it's 4 years) so the supply trickles out (you may have heard of 'the halving' before - thats what that means.) As the blockchain grows and grows, it gets stronger and harder to hack. HOW the miners compete exactly and HOW the chain is impossible to hack is a little above my pay-grade. All I know is that really smart people/coders all agree that the code behind blockchain is basically perfect and it is essentially un-hackable. (Fun little bit of info I got from the white-paper, and this is up against the limits of my understanding and may not be completely accurate; but the blockchain is created in a way that it doesn't make sense to hack. If a bad actor tried to reverse engineer the chain and "catch up to it", he could in theory 'take back' any bitcoin he previously spent. However, he would actually make more money just keeping the legit chain going. Why/how, exactly, I don't really know. But I do know that hacking the blockchain is basically impossible/wouldn't make sense to do, which is really all you need to know about it. ...I'm pretty sure.)

That's some of the technical stuff. The economics behind it though are what really gets my attention and none of this stuff is over my head. If you accept that the technology behind BTC/blockchain is sound, as I do, then the rest is eye-popping stuff, honestly. Besides the code, the best and most interesting thing about bitcoin is that the supply is fixed. Permanently and forever. Let me repeat that. The supply is forever fixed. There will only ever be 21 million bitcoin in circulation (right now there's about 18 million and we'll get to 21 million in the year 2140ish). The importance of that simply cannot be overstated. Imagine how much one dollar would be worth today if the Fed stopped printing more money once there was 21 million in circulation. So bitcoin isn't only a hedge against inflation, it is literally inflation proof. (Oh and let's not forget about how many bitcoin are simply lost. So there will actually be less than 21 million in total supply.)

Bitcoin was initially invented as a currency to replace cash. And while I think that will eventually happen, it doesn't have to to have enormous upside. Have you ever seen a gold bar? I haven't. Have you ever paid for anything in gold? Besides buying it to store, have you ever even heard of a single transaction taking place that involved gold? I haven't. Gold isn't used as medium of exchange, it's used as a store of value. And yet we all agree that gold is worth a certain amount of money. So an asset can be valuable without becoming an actual, everyday tradable currency. If ALL bitcoin does is replace gold as a store of value, which I think it will, then the price per coin will be roughly 500k. (You can read a really in-depth piece by Tyler Winkelvoss here.) But the money shot is this: gold has a market cap right now of about 9 trillion. That means the total known supply of gold in the world right now is valued at 9 trillion USD. If you assume BTC is at least as good as gold, then the market will value BTC at 9 trillion. Right now the market cap of BTC is roughly 1 trillion with a 55k price per coin. If you assume the market cap gets to 9 trillion, then that means you 9x the current price per coin. That would put a roughly 500k price tag on one bitcoin. And again, I think that is the absolute floor.

'But poogs' you might be saying, 'how are strings of numbers on something called a blockchain possibly worth more than gold? Shiny gold, with its forever-track-record and that people use in electronics and that I can hold?' Well good question. First off, the supply of gold is unknown. People are always finding more gold, there's a ton of gold in the ocean and on the ocean floor, and oh by the way, theres a TON of gold in space. It isn't out of the realm of possibility that Elon Musk or someone else will be mining asteroids for gold in our lifetime. Possibly huge amounts of it, too. That would cause a huge upward shock to the supply of gold which would plummet its value (instantly). Secondly, gold costs money to store and moving it is extremely costly, AND depends on several rent-seeking middlemen. Conversely, bitcoin isn't physical so it only costs server space to hold on to. It's extremely easy to move around and is peer to peer. If I want to send you btc, I click a button and it goes directly from me to you. Not from my bank (who we just have to trust), to a 3rd party (who we just have to trust), to your bank (you get it now). It isn't tied to a country or an economy, it can't be stopped and can't be hacked. 

Completely on its own, I think BTC is an absolute game changer and most likely the currency of the future. But when you add on the other stuff going on right now, it makes it even better. Do you know how much dollar printing the United States is doing right now? It's absurd. Because of the pandemic, TRILLIONS of dollars are being printed out of thin air and pumped into the economy. This might help in the short run, but it's a very dangerous game. Every time a new dollar gets introduced to the system, the value of every dollar goes down (you have less a percent of the total amount in circulation). It's why a million dollars was a lot more money 10 years ago than it is now (and a million today will be worth less than that in 10 years). So normally this would be a good time to buy gold, but it just happens that the New Gold is out there now, only it's selling at about a 90% discount.

Also, there's a nice little generational gap right now that I think affords even more value. For the most part, older people just simply do not get this. Like, at all. The range of attitudes seems to be on one end you have Olds who are threatened by it, call it a scam or a bubble, say it won't work, etc. Basically what Bill Gates and Warren Buffet were all saying up to about a month ago. Then on the other end of the range you have Olds who know that they don't get it but see how other people talk about it and say 'well I don't get it but the smart people that do seem to love it so I'm not against it.' You don't really see any huge acceptance of BTC by the big, old school institutions and fund managers just yet, and I think that as time goes on and some Olds in power die off and get replaced by younger guys who grew up online, you'll see institutions start to come on slowly at first, then super fast because no one wants to be left behind. (I think that's actually a little bit of what's going on right now with these huge spikes in price. I think lots of firms are finally realizing that this is a race and they can't get left behind, so they're buying up in bulk before announcing anything. Once they all start to announce the price could go up even faster).

You can learn all you need to know about BTC and crypto online for free. This has been far from everything I understand about it, and everything I understand about it is far from everything there is to understand. I learn more about it every day and I find youtube to be a great source. There are a bunch of academic papers on it too, which are fun to read. The econ and computer guys absolutely love it and you can learn a lot from their papers. I've read one or two academic papers by people who just clearly don't get it though, and you can still learn from them. It's useful to know HOW people are misunderstanding something. My favorite guy right now for this stuff is "bitboy crytpo" who you can find on youtube. Don't worry if you think you don't quite understand it yet...I've found that most people don't and they're still making plenty of money. Even (especially) the stock people who fell into crypto. I'm only really scratching the surface of the whole thing so far but I at least know what I don't know which is important.

The downside: Now one of my all time favorite truisms has always been that you don't fully understand something until you can intelligently argue against it. So let's play devils advocate and look at potential risks of BTC and investing in it:

1) The government eventually won't like competition against its currency and will 'ban' it. I am not worried about this whatsoever anymore. Just this week, Nigeria 'banned' bitcoin and guess which country leads the way in BTC use percentage wise right now? Nigeria. BTC is basically immune to restrictions. Short of turning off the internet, you can't turn off crypto currency. Which brings me to my next point...

2) You're reliant on the internet. This is (I think) actually a legit risk and something I haven't seen mentioned a lot. The internet is reliant on satellites, which rely on governments and companies. (I know there are actual hard wires backing a lot of stuff up, but if all satellites went down we would be in deep trouble). I am far from an expert in this field so maybe I'm wrong, but it does seem like a dangerous problem that you could knock the whole thing down by disabling satellites, or our ability to communicate with them. I'll look into this more for next time.

3) Crypto currency takes off but bitcoin gets left behind. This is probably my biggest concern and the thing I've been trying to learn most about recently. The only technical problem that people seem to agree that bitcoin has is that it's actually a little bit dated. The computations per second aren't as impressive anymore as they were in 2009. My fear is that crypto currency takes off, bitcoin does all the leg work of introducing itself to the public, and then some other random, newer coin takes off and becomes the new accepted currency. Honestly, I'm not even sure if this is possible? Bitcoin refers to actual bitcoin currency, but it also refers to the blockchain behind it. So is even possible for BTC to get left in the dust? Could crypto take off and bitcoin be worth nothing? I don't know for sure but I promise I will have that answer next post.

4) Its a bubble/ponzi scheme. If you hear anyone call bitcoin a 'ponzi scheme', just know that you're talking to someone who not only doesn't understand bitcoin (or ponzi schemes) at all, but doesn't understand that they don't understand, which is doubly worse. A ponzi scheme has levels of sellers all kicking the empty can down the road. Bitcoin is basically technology that allows users to create trustworthy 'smart contracts', as well as trade actual currency. They're not even close to the same thing, and anyone saying that is just repeating cool, smart sounding words to try to poo poo something they don't understand. Now, is it a 'bubble'? Is the housing market a bubble? Is the US dollar a bubble? There are bull and bear phases in any market and wild swings in price are not unusual for an emerging asset during price discovery. Is the whole thing a bubble that will pop and see the price go to zero? Sure, it's possible. But I don't think it'll happen. Elon Musk is betting 1.5 billion dollars against that, as is Blackrock (the biggest asset holding firm in the world who, by the way, just released that they're 'dabbling' in it. And you can see the interview with their boss who does this weird little coy smile twice when he says 'dabbling' which I took to mean they're doing a lot more than dabbling).

5) It isn't an income producing asset/you can't hold it in your hand. This was Warren Buffet's line, and again, just shows how early we still are. Is an internet domain name worth anything? Can you do anything with a dollar bill besides spend it? (spending it on an investment is still spending). Things are worth what we all decide they're worth. This is probably the flimsiest argument against btc that Ive seen and I've seen it a lot which, like I said, is a good thing.

6) You're too late. This is the big one. People see its price skyrocketing price and think 'damn I missed it, if I got in at 20k it would be great but the price is too high now.' Well, I (read: Tyler Winklevoss) laid out the clear path to 500k per coin, and that's if bitcoin ONLY becomes a store of value. If BTC becomes the currency of the internet or the world, you're looking at each coin being worth well over 10 million each.

For me personally, I got in at 39k a couple weeks ago for a small amount and have been adding on pretty much as much as possible every week. I was selling some at the 'tops' but I don't think I'll ever sell it again, honestly. Not for a long time at least.  I was a little gun shy to jump in as the trader in me absolutely hates buying into anything at the literal highest its been ever. But it was at an all-time high at 20k, then 30k, then 40k, etc. All I really do now is look for dips and buy as much as I can afford. I'm breaking my own rules by not being SUPER price sensitive because I just keep thinking, if this thing does reach 500k or more, is it really going to matter if I got in at 54k or 55k? Not really. And I'm not fomo-ing in at the top because everyone is and it's fun, I legitimately think BTC is going to 500k eventually at the very VERY least and probably a lot higher. I also think BTC will prove to be the most valuable asset in the history of mankind. Yea I know that's hyperbolic but that's truly how I feel about it. The future is de-centralization, and what better asset to de-centralize than money?

I'm also buying some Ethereum (ETH) which is a whole other thing. I'll probably get into ETH next post. 

Till next time!

State of the Union

Well it sure has been a long time, hasn't it? After the hot dog eating contest there was a good month or so of basically no action for me, almost at all. It was probably the smallest volume month I've had in like a decade. All the free money Covid stuff, the stock market bets and the horse matchups and video games and the hot dog eating contest and the NFL Draft even, all that stuff either came and went or I lost access to betting on them. Things have picked up ever since the NHL playoffs started, and now especially with football in full swing. But before we get into what I'm up to now, let's do a little house keeping on the hot dogs and a little politics.

Joey Chestnut won the contest, of course. It wasn't even remotely close. I got that at -850 which was somehow still a steal. That won me .75 units. Miki Sudo DID win the womens group, however, and that cost me .5u. Both of them went over their totals (but not in my middle range) which netted me 1.93. So a final win of 2.18 units. Really not bad considering the amount of time and "research" this took. I wish I kept better records early on, I would love to know how much I'm up lifetime in the July 4th hot dog eating contest. Every year I just bet on Chestnut and usually the over, and usually have arbs too. One-off events that draw a ton of attention like that and the Draft and the Super Bowl always offer all kinds of opportunities.

The other development is the VP was picked! Kamala Harris! If you've been reading along, you know I've been following this market especially close. And even though my initial prediction was wrong, I feel like I was pretty on top of what happened. The Dems threw out a lot of names and nothing really stuck, so they kind of backed up into Kamala. No one can argue that Kamala was the clear choice all along, it was obvious they were looking at and floating the names of a lot of women. After Klobuchar became radioactive, it felt like a long, meandering walk to begrudgingly pick Kamala. 

So how did we do? Well, pretty good it turns out. On paper at least. My final position on Kamala was 12u to win 20, which won. I had 12.8 units on everyone else, so I ended up plus 7.2 units in the VP market. I say 'on paper' because I didn't end up collecting all of that. A couple of my later Kamala bets got "deleted" before they settled, which is just awesome. It's the cost of business though I suppose. When you're a AAA ball player hitting off a tee, you can't cry when the other team goes home. Or something.

They also finally officially nominated Biden for the Democratic nominee, so those bets all settled. That was a win of 12.5 units. So I've scooped up a nice 19.7 (paper) units on politics and 2.18 on hot dogs since we last spoke. Since I decided to include stiffs and "deletions" in the official record (my reasoning being that the risk of not getting paid on winnings must be factored into any official record I have due to the nature of the markets I bet on), the official politics win was only 13 units. 15.18 additional units total since the last count.

So what now? I've added some political bets in the past couple months. A few states and I've added to the House and Senate positions as well as some more on Trump vs Biden. I need to update my own records though, once I do that I'll make a post with everything I have pending. 

What I've really been focusing on though is NHL player shots on goal bets. I have been on fire with them this post-season, too. It sucks I can barely get anything down on them, and they take FOREVER to do, but it's been worth it. Up almost 40 units since early August. It's due to a combination of A) these props always being generally very soft B) one of my books that takes them has no idea what theyre doing C) my model is legit and D) maybe running a little good? Although to be honest I don't think that's true. I can't even get down a full unit on these plays most of the time. It's grinding out pieces of units every bet...that's an honest 40 units if you ask me. 

This model started as an off-shoot to one of my very first models. It was for NHL player vs player total points. Compared to what I have now, it was very simple but it had a certain clever elegance to it. To this day, NHL player vs player props is one of my very best prop sub sets and it was profitable right out of the gate.

The basic logic behind it was to use a players Corsi per game for the current season as a starting point. I'd take this number as his 'true talent' level and assume any change in this number was due to an increase in actual skill, not random variance. Then I'd use some some combination of his career numbers and his last 3 years of "corsi into goals". There was never really an official name for this stat, but basically a players shooting percentage but using shots AT the net instead of shots ON the net (corsi instead of shots). Like shooting percentage, but even more so, that number fluctuates wildly and has a big impact on a players performance. It can be very fluky, even for an entire season. A player's 'corsi per game', or his shot attempts per game, however, is not so fluky. A sudden increase in a players corsi per game is much, much more likely to be the result of an increase of actual skill rather than a fluke, as opposed to how often his converts those chances into goals. (Or he's playing with better line mates which is fine too.) So I'd use current season numbers for Corsi per game, career/L3 years numbers for 'corsi into goals', adjust for the opponent, factor scoring effects in a little bit, and I'd get a pretty good number for the players expected goals. 

Then for assists, I would assume each team would get the average number assists that their expected goal total would suggest, give a bump to primary assists and a ding for secondary assists, and bang. Add em up and you get expected points. Then use poisson to convert them into percentages against each other, which you then convert back into betting odds and you got yourself a model.

That was the original one that got this new one started. I eventually got kicked off of every account that offered head to head matchups, so I had to adjust. First thing I tried was just using the model to bet at a new account that offered over-unders on players goals and assists. This did not work for assists, and in the old format, didn't work for goals either. I figured out that the model was really only good at matching up players and finding ones who were running good or bad. The actual numbers they were spitting out weren't all that accurate (this new book is very sharp, too. Its a real-deal one, not a PPH mickey mouse club member.) 

I then started looking at shots on goal. This new account offered them and I thought if I took the same logic as before but improved on it and applied it to shots instead of goals, I might have something. I scrapped the old model completely and started from scratch. I made so many improvements: I started using 'per minute' instead of per game and came up with a really good way to predict power play time for each team and player. I think that was probably the biggest improvement, as well as more accurately adjusting for the opponent. Lots of other things too that all add up and have come together to make a model I am most proud of. Of course it's in a market that almost no one offers and when they do it's for a couple months a year and you can only bet like 1 or 200 hundred on, and if you have a good week or two you'll get noticed like a sore thumb but hey, a profitable model is a profitable model, damnit!

I would love to post my plays on here for a few games but it probably won't happen. They take forever to do and I'm always firing right up until the game starts. I will try though. If I do you best get down on em. It's not even so much that the edges are huge, it's just deadly accurate. I'm fine with betting stuff only 5 cents off of my expected number which is a pretty low margin of error. I feel like I need to push every edge I have in this market though since it'll be gone soon.

That's it for now, expect another update relatively soon with some football stuff.

New Post Coming Soon

 Hello everyone! Ill have a new post up soon, within a couple days at least. Just wanted to let everyone know this blog aint dead! Lots to discuss so check back soon!

Hot Dog Eating Contest!

Quick little update today - want to post my final bets for tomorrows hot dog eating contest. The odds for total hot dogs eaten are all over the place so you may be able to find these prices and/or at least get some arbs in.

Here's what we have.

Joey Chestnut to win overall: risk 6.4u to win .75 (-850)

Sudo NOT to win women's group: risk .5u to win 4u (+800) {this is the ending position of a half-scalp/arb. I got Yes at -500 and No at +600}

Total dogs for women: over 37.5 risk 1u to win 1.1 (+110). Also under 40.5 risk .67u to win 1.05 (+155)

Total dogs for men: over 72.5 risk 1u to win 1.25 (+125). Also under 72.5 risk 1u to win 1.45 (+145) and over 73.5 risk 1.1u to win 1.25 (+110).

Good in really good on everything, especially the mens total. I find that with big, one off stuff with lots of public interest, the best way to play it is to look for overs and yes's as soon as the bets come out. The public almost always bets on overs and yes's so generally everything moves that way. Then the day before (or even better, the day of) you can buy back some or all of you position on unders and no's. When I bet this 3 months ago I got over 72.5 at +125 and now that price is as high as -160. And I could take free money on Jaws to win overall with No at +900.

So my final position is Chestnut to win, nibble on Sudo not to win, over 73.5 dogs for men with a nice clean arb thrown in and a sweet little 38 through 40 middle for the women but winning at least a little bit no matter what. The only big exposure here is Jaws not winning but I think that has just about zero chance of happening. I was thinking of piling even more on at -1300 but decided against it. I'll try to check tomorrow right before it starts, I bet the odds will be even higher for yes's and overs, but I do not plan on being inside too much.

Have a good 4th everyone, talk soon!

A Sunday Conversation

Been a little while since we last spoke. There just hasn't been much going on betting-wise, unfortunately. When sports finally do start back up I anticipate I'll be updating much more frequently. But until then, let's focus back on politics where there has been A LOT of changes and a lot to discuss.

But first I want to correct something I wrote about in my last post about the lottery. Turns out I did the math wrong. Ever since I made that post it's been bugging me a little bit - it seemed a little too good to be true and I really wasn't 100% on the math. I did some digging and more research and it was way more complicated than I initially thought. Luckily my overall hunch was right - I am making +EV bets on these. But the edge is small; something like 52%. So it's still worth betting at even odds but not anything worse than that. To that dude that commented that he could get them at -130, sorry but it's a bad bet. Hope I didn't cost you or anyone else any money betting on those. Although if I did, look at the bright side; your bookie probably thinks you're a fish so at the very least you should have more runway time at your account.

Which actually reminds me of a really good piece of advice that not many people know. I forget if I've mentioned this on here or not but either way it's worth repeating. This only applies to PPH users (though I suppose you could work this out at a regular book too). If you have a PPH account, a good reputation and either a really good or really bad agent, you can sometimes negotiate a percentage off of your weekly losses. It's very simple - if you get, say, 10% off of weekly losses and you lose 1k in a week, you just owe 900. But then if you win 1k the next week, you get the whole 1k. So you can see how profitable this is. Even if you're just a breakeven bettor you'll be in +EV land. The best is when you have two or more accounts that have this kind of deal. Then you can do massive 0EV arbs (aka bet Team A money line at -120 and their opponent money line at +120) and still make money. The goal is to simply "move" money from one account to the other. If you had 10% off of weekly losses, did all 0EV arbs and got one account to +5k and the other account to -5k in a week, you win 500 bucks. All without actually having to actually win any money.

The best time to ask for this is during a downswing. Say you have three bad weeks in a row. When you meet your agent the third week and pay him no problem, he's going to be close to ecstatic. Remember, these guys get stiffed all the time and that's usually how it happens. Someone losses a few weeks in a row, they pay up every week, then they just disappear without paying after the last week. The bookie rarely goes after him since he just got crushed 2 or 3 or more weeks in a row anyway. It's so common that it's almost expected with new players, especially ones my age at the time. So when you show up with a full envelope and no problems, he's going to be very happy thinking he has an actual whale on the hook. That's the time to ask.

I had a dream of an account back when I was just starting out to get really into this. The agent was a solid but clueless older guy and we never had any issues. I had a 4 or 5 week BRUTAL downswing one time and every week I went to him and paid him no problem. My other bookie friend at the time told me about how he gives a couple of his better customers a percentage off of their weekly losses. I had never heard about this before but it was like kindling in my little sports betting brain. So I came up with a plan; the next time I had a big weekly loss I went in and as I handed him the envelope I said I had another account with a different agent who offered me 10% off of weekly losses. I said I really didn't like the other guy and his site though and would much rather put my action in with him and his account if he can match the offer. (Whether you have the other account or not doesn't matter, obviously). He ended up giving me a ridiculous 20% off (he must have thought I'd be bleeding money to him for years) and for the next couple months I beat him up so bad that he got so buried in makeup that he literally quit being an agent altogether (and stiffed me the last week and disappeared from his job).

[Fun aside; I was always confused as to why they didn't cut me off sooner from this account. I'm not kidding when I say I absolutely crushed him at the end, and it lasted for months. He just kept paying me, week after week. It would have been a bloodbath even without the 20% off the losing weeks, but you can imagine. I found out later that his 'boss' was out of the country the whole time and cut me off as soon as he got home and found out. He actually called me on the phone and we had one of the most bizarre phone conversations I've ever had. Apparently he lived with and ran the book with his mother which he kept mentioning for some reason. And he was mad at me for never tipping the agent. LOL I still remember him saying 'back in the day when a guy won $xxxxx in a week he'd tip his agent a hundred bucks!' And I shot back 'I never got a tip in the 2 months before that when I was getting killed'. And he goes (I'll never forget his exact words) 'ok ok you're right. Let us forget that and NEVER SPEAK OF IT AGAIN.' And he had the most effeminate voice. He sounded exactly like Mark Harris when he used to go on Howard Stern. I know you don't know who Mark Harris is so google it, it'll be worth it. Oh and then he called me back and started talking to me ABOUT me, thinking he called the agent. One of my biggest regrets is cutting him off and not letting him go on and on. It really was fucking weird.]

Anyway, the shorter the time period of the percentage off of losses the better. Weekly is standard, which is the best way to do it. I did have one account though that gave me a piece off of monthly losses which isn't great but better than nothing. 5-10% is standard, 15% is great and anything above that is highway robbery. So if you have been betting and losing on the lottery because of me, now would be a perfect time to request it. Even at 5% a week, you'll more than make up for anything you might have lost.

Now let's switch to the only thing really going on right now. Politics. Ugh, I know. Isn't it the worst. As usual when there's a big Team One Side vs Team Other Side national debate I find myself disagreeing vehemently with both sides. 'Defunding the police' is such a comically bad idea (and terrible slogan), and the stats on police brutality just simply do not add up to what the left is saying, at all. But at the same time, policing in this country does need reform. I mean, as a libertarian and an American and just a human being, the thought of an agent of the state, with over 10 complaints of excessive force on his record, kneeling on a mans neck until he dies, in broad daylight knowing he's being filmed, is awful.

I think it comes down to two big things; police unions and the fact that we ask cops to do too much. Police unions are the reason why a cop with dozens complaints of excessive force is not only still on the street, but feels empowered to behave that way. I think that part is key. If cops didn't know that they had a union behind them that will protect them, and very effectively at that, no matter what, I think you might see overall attitudes change.

I also think that we simply ask cops to do too much. Think about the spectrum of events a police officer is expected to handle. Imagine what it takes to respond to an active shooter situation, or to stop an armed robbery, or be in a high speed chase with a guy shooting out the window at you, or handle violent, belligerent people day after day. It takes a certain kind of person for which a society absolutely does need. Now do we need this person to respond to calls on the very end of the other side of the spectrum? Minor traffic infractions, public intoxication, maybe some non-violent domestic disputes or whatever else is considered easy by police. Get their feedback. Anything where there's like less than 2% chance of having to pull a gun. We ask cops to do the work of social workers, but would never ask a social worker to do the job of a cop. Imagine a guidance counselor in a shootout. It's preposterous. Maybe we should be thinking of that the other way around too. Oh and pay them more! Then you'll get better applicants. Less armored SWAT tanks for suburban towns, and more money towards payroll. You could even use incentives; pay cops a little bonus every month they don't have a complaint or something like that.

Anyway, those are my thoughts whatever it's worth. As for the markets, there have been some big moves. In general, everything is moving in the Democrats favor. The overall presidency market, all the state markets and those for the house and senate have moved in favor of the left. I jumped on quite a few state markets early and got in at some really good prices. I'll post them here because they're part of my overall position on this election obviously, but I put them in so long ago and the prices are so far gone that it won't be much use to anyone. Right now I'm really heavy on Democrats. I have bets on them to win the House and Senate and now a bunch of states. I'd like to start buying back on Republicans because I don't think their price is going to get much worse, but as usual I'm up against limits and places to bet. I might have some new accounts on the horizon actually which would be awesome, but we'll see.

The most interesting market though, of course, is the VP market. BIG changes here. Klobuchar went from the favorite to taking herself out of the nomination process altogether after the George Floyd incident. It now seems like there is literally zero chance that the winner will be anything other than a black woman. Kamala Harris has seen her price shoot all the way up to a current high of 54% and is now very much the clear favorite. Val Demings is in second at 16% (topped out at 23% a few weeks ago) and in third is Susan Rice at 13% (topped out at 18% mid June). Liz Warren is in a distant 4th at 6% and there's a bunch at 3-5%.

I may have lost my mind quite a bit in this market and now have way more invested in it than I would have liked. Almost 25 units total. All my Klobuchar and Whittmer bets are toast, and the nibbles on Baldwin, Buttigegigig, Abrams, Grisham and Duckworth have added up. Here's what I have, in total in this market:

Harris: risk 12u to win 20u (+165)
Klobuchar: risk 3u to win 19.1u (+635)
Warren: risk 2.3u to win 30.2u (+1400)
Demings: risk 2.25u to win 20.1u (+930)
Whitmer: risk 2.8u to win 18u (+640)
Duckworth: risk .6u
Mayor Pete: risk .4u
Baldwin: risk .3u
Abrams: risk .75u
Grisham: risk .4u

I think I probably made too many bets here but other than the Mayor Pete one and maybe Grisham, none of them were really outright disasters. I got in good and early on Harris at +285 and +275 but as things changed over the past couple weeks I had to go kind of heavy on +175, and then +125, and even a little at even odds, which brought my overall position down quite a bit. So as you can see, if it's Harris or Warren I show a good profit. If it's Klobuchar, Demings, Whitmer or Duckworth I about break even. If it's Abrams or Grisham or Baldwin it's not too bad, and anyone else and it's a bloodbath.

The obvious exposure here is Susan Rice. Right now she's at 13%, so I have a 13% chance of getting scooped totally. That is not ideal. I can't find anything resembling a good price for her, and even if I could, I can't keep chasing every woman who shows up in this market. I mean, did Gretchen Whitmer ever really have a chance? Or Stacey Abrams? To be Vice President Of The United States? I don't know. If I had kept it to Klobuchar, Warren and Harris the whole way I'd be really looking pretty. Then I could buy some Rice insurance.

Certainly learned some good lessons for these longer term, dynamic markets. The world changes fast and they're volatile as hell. How to capitalize on that is another story, but for now it's good to just start with the foundation that I should expect the VP market in March to almost certainly look different than it will in July.

I personally think that it will be Harris and that she'll hurt Biden's chances of winning. But man, Pence vs Harris in the VP debates will be fucking feisty and fun as hell to watch.

I still have Biden To Win The Nomination pending. I got in for an average price of -135 to win 12.5 units. That'll be nice when it settles. I also have an awful position for which side will win the popular vote. I basically locked in a small loss since I got in early on Republicans and their price has cratered. If they happen to pull it off I win about 5 units, but if/when the Dems win I'll lose about 1.5u.


Here's everything I have for state bets. Again, these were pretty juicy when I made them weeks ago and they've only gotten better so I don't think anyone will be able to get these prices or anything close to it. I will try to post a lot closer to when I make the bets from now on.

These are all for Democrats to win:

Florida: +130 risk 1.5u
Georgia: +200 risk 1.1u
Iowa: +210 risk 1.1u
Michigan: -175 to win .75u
N. Carolina: +140 risk 1u
Arizona: -105 to win 1.25u
Nevada: -330 to win .85u
Ohio: +160 risk 1u
Texas: +240 risk .75u

Every single one is better than the current PredictIt price which is great. One of my books has Trump to win at +120 which I would love to hit for about 10 units right now and really just round my position out and take the big arb, risk-free money on election night. I really should just make a PI account and bet on Trump to win at 43%, actually. Because as it stands now, if it's a Trump win and he wins a lot of these states, I would take a pretty big hit. Especially if Dems lose the House and the Senate.

Which, for completeness sake, my position is...

Dem to win the house: -300 to win 1u
Dem to win the Senate: +135 risk 1u
Dem to win House and Repub to win Senate: +120 risk .5u
Dem to win House and Senate: +140 risk 1u

And my current total position on to win the overall presidency:

Trump: risk 16.3u to win 12.7u (-130)
Biden: risk 7.7u to win 22u (+285)
Others: loss of 3u


So that is EVERYTHING politics wise. Whew! Plus the 20 something units already in the bank from the primaries. I think I will be looking to get down on some Trump to win in the next couple days or weeks. Feels like the perfect time.

That is it for me. This was a long one, thanks for reading. Oh and I'll have that thing to sign up for email alerts when I have a new post soon, I promise.