The lesson this week, I’ve decided, is to try and maintain some perspective. Sure, I lost all of my bets for the second week this season – making my total-loss rate a solid 50% so far – and as a result my confidence in this department has never been lower.
But then I remember the first time I went to Las Vegas in 2014 for my honeymoon. In the weeks before the trip, I decided to do a little reading about Blackjack. I more or less memorized the “basic strategy” and understood the bare minimum about how the practice of card-counting works. My wife and I arrived to the Palazzo and I was ready to hit it big.
Long-story short, I dropped a crisp hundo on a $10-minimum table and proceeded to lose all of it in about 15 minutes. I was gut-punched, and didn’t gamble another dollar for several years. It wasn’t the money – I know why the Palazzo looks as nice as it does – I just hate losing. Before I could actually enjoy the gaming aspect of gambling (or at least tell myself that I enjoy it), I had to square the fact that a lot of the money I put out there just isn’t going to come back.
It’s for that very reason that I’ve specifically capped my weekly Packer bets at $20, so I don’t go chasing my losses and make this project even more financially idiotic. I might make some foolish choices here, but they won’t cost me more than a night at the bar (which happen much, much less frequently than they used to, because I’m actually quite boring), and they certainly won’t ever feel worse than that first Blackjack experience.
Face the pain/No escape/Can you step to this?
BET #1 – Packers -9 (-110) – $10 bet pays out $19.09 – LOSS
Why did I make this bet?
I mean, the damn Patriots were starting Brian By-God Hoyer (whose given first name, and I swear this is true, is AXEL) and their only win in three weeks had come over the Pittsburgh Steelers, who might be the NFL’s worst team. Meanwhile the Packers were coming off a low-storing but still-encouraging victory at Tampa Bay, and looked like they still belonged among the league’s elite. Aaron Rodgers continues to improve his relationships with his new teammates, and Allen Lazard was once again going to be on the field. Seemed like an easy call.
This line even started with the Packers laying ten points, and ended up at -9.5, so I felt lucky to get in during the brief time when things were a touch “closer.” This seemed like a lock.
What did I learn here?
So my dog has started to do this thing in the last year where he’ll acknowledge treats or bones or whatever that we give him, but he won’t eat them right away. Instead, he stands nearby and makes a series of play-noises at increasing volume until my wife or I pretend to try to take whatever it is from him. Only then does he snatch it up off the floor and start chewing, as if to say “HAHA – gotcha sucker!!”
I’ve come to the conclusion that my dog realizes that he doesn’t have any competition for his food, so he’s decided to artificially create it with his two human companions. It’s the only way that treats can remain interesting to him, I guess.
I’m having the same feeling about the Packers. This season they’ve either started out hot, established a decent lead, then basically tried to run out the clock, or (as was the case on Sunday) they have to wait until their opponent actually threatens to defeat them to kick things into gear. I certainly understand what it’s like to be bored at work, but it sure would be nice to see a good-old-fashioned 45-pointer one of these weeks.
For now, I’m telling myself that I’m swearing off any Packer line that goes beyond about -5, to avoid what I’m going to refer to as the Professional Athlete Boredom Variant.
BET #2 – Aaron Rodgers UNDER 227.5 Passing Yards (-115) – $5 bet pays $9.35 – LOSS
Why did I make this bet?
If you enjoy gambling content (and, if you don’t, thank you so much for reading this), you’d probably really dig the Gamblers podcast on The Ringer. David Hill is an infinitely better writer than I am, and his ability to gain access to and share stories from some of the world’s most interesting high-rollers is second to few. Check it out if you’re a podcast person.
Anyway, on one recent episode about a group of guys who bet a ton of money on Super Bowl props, professional gambler Rufus Peabody emphasized the importance of betting Unders, and furthermore emphasized the importance of doing so fairly close to when the event was taking place. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this piece of advice (which is rooted in the notion that most bettors will go for Overs because they’re more fun, therefore late prop-line movement tends to trend upward), so I thought I’d follow it for this game.
What did I learn here?
These millionaires who made their money betting on sports sure do know what they’re talking about.*
*Unless the game in question goes into overtime because the Packers couldn’t manage to out-score a team being led at quarterback by guy I’d literally never heard of until the announcers said his name because Axel Hoyer left the game in the first quarter with a head injury.
Before the extra period, Aaron Rodgers had just over 200 passing yards, but because the Packers needed 15 plays over two possessions to clinch the W, the team took to the air to get kicker Mason Crosby into field-goal range. Rodgers ended the game with 251 yards, leading the Packers to a win but handing me a loss in the process.
BET #3 – AJ Dillon Scores a Touchdown (+135) – $5 bet pays out $11.75 – LOSS
Why did I make this bet?
Man, I don’t know. It worked in Week 1 against the Vikings, and I thought that the Packers would again find themselves in a short-yardage, goal-to-go situation that’s perfect for Quadzilla. I think this was another one of those bets where I had an extra $5 and I wasn’t quite sure what to do, so I tried to repeat that previous success.
What did I learn here?
Past performance does not indicate future results, or however that saying goes.
I’ve really gravitated toward these scoring props this season, whether it was a certain player getting in the end zone or teams scoring a certain number of times within a specific time-period. In retrospect, I suppose I’ve hit about half of them, but my instinct is telling me to start exploring elsewhere, especially with the player props. The odds are often tempting, but there are so many possibilities for how a scoring play will occur that it really doesn’t seem worth it.
SUMMARY
WEEK 4
$20 bet
$0 paid out
$20 loss
2022 SEASON
$80 bet
$54.96 paid out
$25.04 loss
Other Bets from the Weekend
Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix – Max Verstappen to Win (+170) – $5 pays $13.50 – LOSS
I got into Formula 1 in earnest before the 2021 season. I’d seen every season of Netflix’s Drive to Survive, which certainly piqued my interest in the world’s richest motorsport, but because I didn’t know anyone else who even casually followed it, I never consistently paid attention to the race results in real-time.
All of that changed when I met my co-worker who lives in the UK. Seeking to find common ground with my new teammate, I quickly discovered that he was a massive F1 fan, so I decided to up my own commitment and start watching the 2021 campaign more closely. I’ve since grown to really enjoy the periodic Sunday ritual of waking up around 8:30 or 9, catching the first and last thirds of a Grand Prix on DVR and fast forwarding through the middle bit. It’s especially great when I can transition that right into several hours of NFL football.
While the last decade or so has been largely dominated by Lewis Hamilton and the Mercedes team, young superstar Max Verstappen was able to steal the drivers’ championship from Hamilton at the very end of last season. Granted, this win was due in large part to a questionable interpretation of the rules during the final laps of the year’s final race, but to be fair it was also due to Verstappen’s ability to get the absolute most out of his Red Bull race car.
This year, the F1 governing body changed up a ton of regulations, which has led to further separation between Verstappen and the rest of the field. In fact, had Verstappen won on Sunday, there was a possibility that he could have wrapped up his second consecutive title with a handful of races still left to go. So even though Verstappen’s car severely underperformed in the Singapore qualifying sessions on Saturday, and even though that underperformance resulted in Verstappen starting the race in eighth position, his incredible driving in combination with Red Bull’s engineering acumen and the possibility to win the drivers’ title still gave me plenty of confidence that Max could earn the checkered flag.
Like the Packers/Patriots overtime situation, however, I did not account for the possibility of rain, which severely impacted the Singapore Grand Prix’s results, but not in a way that benefited my wagers. Running on slower tires/tyres designed for a damp racing surface, Verstappen wasn’t ever able to maneuver his way to the front of the pack, and had to watch his teammate Sergio Perez cross the finish line in first place. Surely the Red Bull team is more than satisfied with the result, but anyone who’s paid even passing attention to F1 knows exactly how Verstappen probably feels. So do I.
BKFC 30 – Ben Rothwell to Win by KO/TKO/DQ (-205) – $5 bet pays out $7.43 – WIN
This was as close to a guaranteed win as I think I’m going to find in the foreseeable future. Hence, I suppose, the less-friendly odds. Here’s what I knew going into this fight:
- Ben Rothwell has been fighting professionally since 2001, and 28 of his 39 professional MMA wins have come by knockout or technical knockout.
- On Saturday, Rothwell was making his debut for the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship, and being punched with a bare fist by someone who has been making his living as a high-level heavyweight cage fighter for more than two decades is not going to end well for the person on the receiving end.
- Speaking of being a heavyweight, Rothwell weighed in at more than 290 lbs. before Saturday’s BKFC 30 event, but it was totally cool because there is apparently no weight limit for bare-knuckle fighting’s largest division.
- Rothwell was facing a man named Bobo “The Bible Belt Brawler” O’Bannon, who was not only giving up nearly 40 lbs. but much more importantly had only five pro fights to his credit (and, perhaps even more telling, no Wikipedia page).
I lay all of this out to suggest that this was a super easy bet and that I needed to do almost no deductive reasoning to place the wager. Rothwell ended up knocking O’Bannon clean out in less than 20 seconds, but it’s kind of hard to feel too prescient about this one.
NEXT WEEK
The Packers head ‘cross the pond, mate, to take on the Football Giants of New York in London at something called Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Giants running back Saquon Barkley has been an absolute menace in his second season after returning from a torn ACL, so I’ll be keeping a close eye on some player props for that young man. Whether I wake up in time for kickoff at 6:30 a.m. PDT is another story entirely.
Tallyho!
