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.

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Friday, September 7, 2018 10:05 AM

I don't like Thursday Night Football

in Sports by MegaBearsFan
Thursday Night Football

So, this might be a blasphemous statement from any self-described "football fan", but I really don't like Thursday Night Football, and I really wish that the NFL would stop having Thursday night games. Keep the Thanksgiving Day game(s), as many of us need the distraction of football to prevent us from murdering our certain relatives (especially given the current political climate), but for the love of gods, just stop with all the other Thursday night games.

Last night, the 2018 NFL season kicked off with a Thursday night rematch of last year's divisional round playoff game between the Atlanta Falcons and the (eventual Super Bowl champion) Philadelphia Eagles. It was a fine enough game -- actually played out almost identically to last year's playoff game. The Eagles won that playoff game 15 to 10, and they won last night's week 1 rematch 18 to 12. It was kind of a messy game, with lots of penalties, but it was close and tense, and that's what we all want in football right?

Not all Thursday Night Football games are as close or competitive as the 2018 season-opener.

But not all Thursday night games are nail-biters between potential Super Bowl contenders. The NFL, in its infinite wisdom, sometimes decides to grace us with the privilege of watching a toilet bowl match. For instance, this year's week 3 matchup between the Jets and the Browns looks to be a battle between two league bottom-feeders. Who knows? Maybe the Browns and/or the Jets will have good seasons this year due to their new quarterbacks, and maybe they'll even compete for the division? Probably not.

Even games that look like they should be hard-fought games can turn into one-sided bores. Take, for instance, last year's opening week Thursday night game between the Chiefs and the Patriots. Looks good on paper, as both teams were potential Super Bowl candidates, and both teams made the playoffs. The result, however, was a lopsided 42-27 ass-stomping. Now, I like watching the Patriots be humbled as much as the next guy, and I had Alex Smith on my fantasy football team, but I still got bored with this game.

No, I'm not ready for some football!

Lopsided games and toilet bowl matches are going to happen regardless of what day the game is scheduled. That's not my real reason for disliking Thursday Night Football. Put simply, it's just too soon to start a new week of football. The final game of the previous week was just three days ago! The Monday night games (whether they're good games or not) are a perfectly satisfactory cap on a weekend of football. It's an encore, and it's something to look forward to after getting up on a Monday morning and dredging myself back to work. Thursday night games just don't have that same appeal to me.

Thursday night games don't have the same appeal as coming home on a Monday to watch football.

In addition to not being something that I particularly look forward to, having this one football game game in the middle of the week feels more like a disruption. It gets in the way of other things that I want to do. It also puts undue pressure on me to get my fantasy football lineup squared away, and to get my football bets in at the sportsbook (I live in Nevada, it's legal). The sportsbook doesn't even put the parlay cards out until about 9:30 am on Thursday morning. It's not early enough for me to pick them up on the way to work, and the game starting at 5:20 pm (Pacific time) doesn't give me enough time to make the bets on the way home from work. So I have to either show up to the office late (after picking up my parlay cards) and then fill them out and drop them off during my lunch break, then stay at the office late (or take work home with me) and miss the beginning of the game anyway; or I have to go to the office early, pick up the cards during lunch, fill them out at the office, and leave the office early to drop them off.

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Welcome to Mega Bears Fan's blog, and thanks for visiting! This blog is mostly dedicated to game reviews, strategies, and analysis of my favorite games. I also talk about my other interests, like football, science and technology, movies, and so on. Feel free to read more about the blog.

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