For years, I've been hearing people on sports talk radio say that "parlays are sucker bets". For those who don't know, a parlay is a group of multiple bets that all have to win in order for the ticket to pay out. If any pick on the ticket loses, then the whole ticket loses. The benefit is that if you do win, the odds multiply together for potentially large payouts. They are called "sucker bets" because the potential for large payouts leads casual gamblers to make more picks on one ticket hoping for larger payouts, which dramatically increases the risk of one pick losing and causing the entire ticket to lose.

Parlays are a "sucker's bet" because they lure gamblers
with promises of large payouts, but a single wrong pick
will invalidate the entire ticket.

I do parlay bets for college and NFL football every year. My local sportsbook (I live in Vegas, so there is a legal sportsbook in every suburb) has $2 parlay cards with a minimum of 3 or 4 picks per card, so I would often do between 5 and 6 of them for a total of $10 or $20 in bets per week. Not a lot of money; pretty casual gambling. I've never won any big parlays, and have been a little bit in the red every year (usually $50-$100 down by the end of the season). I do it for fun and to have some extra investment in the games that I watch. Since starting to track my winnings a few years ago, I've been hitting just above 50% on my individual picks, and winning back about 80% of my money.

Well last year, because of the disruption of COVID, my local sportsbook wasn't offering the usual $2 parlay cards. Instead, I had to start making regular bets off the board, at the counter. Unfortunately, these bets cost $5 minimum instead of $2, so my risk more than doubled. However, the minimum number of picks on a ticket decreased to 2 instead of 4. So in response to the higher cost, I started buying more tickets, but would only put 2 or 3 "safe" picks on a single ticket. Even though I ended up spending a lot more money each week ($50+), my winnings shot up from about 80% to almost 90%! Despite spending more money, I ended up losing far less overall because I would win back all my money almost every week by winning one or two of those 2 or 3-pick tickets.

So this year, after hearing sport talk radio hosts continue to refer to parlays as "sucker bets", I decided to double-down on last year's success. I started experimenting with direct money-line bets. A money-line bet is a single bet for which team wins. No point spread, no multiple picks per card. If the team I pick wins the game, I win the bet. Of course, the downside is that picking the favorite results in much lower payouts. A $10 bet might only win $5 or less if the winning team was favored by more than just a field goal.

But I've had pretty good success with this strategy this year. My winnings have once again shot up to almost 100% (meaning I've almost won back all the money I've bet), even though I've once again had to bet a lot more each week in order to pay for all these single-pick tickets.

I saw on NFL Network earlier today that there is apparently some controversy regarding the following play at the end of the New York Giants / Tampa Bay Buccaneers game on Sunday, September 16th:

After the game, during the handshake, Giants coach Tom Coughlin was apparently irate with Buccaneers coach Greg Schiano regarding this play, shouted at him the whole time, and almost walked away without shaking hands. The folks on NFL Network were even talking about the possibility of the league taking action against the Buccaneers and possibly even changing the rules somehow to prevent this sort of thing.

What a big baby!

The Buccaneers are trying to win the game! That's the whole point of playing. They are trying to force a mistake that will give them an opportunity to get the ball back and score.

I guess the Giants just didn't want another "Miracle at the Meadowlands" to spoil their game.