By Chewy
Hello sports fans! My buddy (Lewy) and I have decided to share our thoughts on betting, sports and sometimes life in this column. Why you ask? Well mainly because we love sports, we love betting and sometimes, when we win, we really love life. Also, since there seems to be no shortage of other people out there sharing their own ridiculous opinions and despite the sage advice my mother used to tell me (“if you don’t have anything nice or smart to say keep your f**king mouth shut”), I have decided along with my longtime buddy, to engage in creating a weekly article for your reading (dis)pleasure. There may be some hyperbole in that quote of my mom’s but you get the point.
A little bit about me, I am a consummate gambler, I gamble daily and I am pretty certain (100%) I am not up against my bookies. I gamble on too many games, I gamble on parlays (like a d*ck) and I do not follow my own rules when it comes to gambling (don’t chase!). In short, I am just like you, the difference being you (most likely) have the self-control not to gamble every day. All this being said, I once did hit an 8-team parlay for multiple six figs (more about that in a sec) and I am 8 for 8 in the last 8 Super Bowls. No one knows the expression “hope springs eternal” more than a gambler, and it’s the hope for that W that seduces me back everyday.
My buddy Lewy is helping me and will be leading this column from time to time. He’s a math teacher, loves sports and analytics, used to play intramural hockey and true story (??) he once got tuned up on the ice by Frankie Muniz of Agent Cody Banks and Malcolm in the Middle fame. To put this in perspective Lewy stands in at 6’1”, approximately 220lbs (I’ll take the over). According to IMDB, Frankie is a lofty 5’5”. Ehh, no further questions your honor.
Moving along, we are going to talk hockey here for the next couple weeks/months. Why only hockey you ask, why not also the NBA? Well, for me, as a sports fan and then a gambler, I cannot watch the NBA and certainly cannot gamble on it. There is no defense being played, the players complain about every single foul, and I don’t think the players are trying that hard every night. I get it, there are a lot of games, but honestly, I don’t care: the average NBA salary is $8 MILLION dollars. Suck it up, stop complaining and play ball. This isn’t Jordan’s 1995 NBA where the Bulls went out to crush every night and it certainly isn’t the 1980s Celtics/Lakers/Pistons NBA where you had some truly angry men out there balling. What about the playoffs you ask? Aren’t they all playing hard then, isn’t it worth gambling and watching then? The answer is no. Let me explain with one recent example. Last year in Game 1 of the NBA playoffs, Portland beat the Nuggets in Denver 123-109. Two days later, Portland LOST 109-128, again in Denver. So in two days, Portand got 33 points worse or Denver got 33 points better, depending on which point of view you would like to take. More likely, one team decided not to show up, as extending a series is literally in every players’, coaches’, owners’, TV stations’ (ad infinitum, you get the picture) interests. The bottom line is this is an unwatchable, unbettable product IMO. Oh and for the final nut kicker, it’s the only major league sport where a ref went to prison for fixing games.
Hockey, on the other hand, is a rough and tumble sport played at nonstop speed. It’s incredibly physical, with crunching hits doled out along non forgiving boards made stiffer by low temperatures. The players are in a dead sprint 45 seconds at a time over the course of a 20-minute period, 60 minutes per match. Not only are the player-on-player hits oftentimes brutal, but each player is also asked to give up his body to block shots travelling at an average of 100 mph, made up of a frozen 6 ounce, 3 inch by 1 inch vulcanized rubber projectile. Often these shots end up on the wrists, ankles, knees and helmets (!!) of the defending players. Uhm no thank you. Do these players bitch and moan about hits? Do they complain about every referee call? No, they do what all major league athletes USED to do. They let their play do the talking for them. They leave it all on the ice and they do it every game for 82 games. Oh and the average NHL Salary in 2021? 2.5 million. And while the rest of sports aren’t exactly setting the bar very high, it’s refreshing to not hear about an NHL hockey player getting into trouble for beating up his wife or girlfriend or shooting himself while in a night club or some other idiotic felonious behavior. For these reasons, because the league and the players display honor, strength, courage, and heart on and off the ice, Lewy and I love hockey.
We (actually Lewy) entered every piece of win, loss, ML, PL, favorite, dog, home, away data into a program where we analyzed simple trends. Now, I (and my betting balance) can attest that the trends do not always hold up, and of course intuitively they cannot otherwise winning teams would always win and losers would always lose. That being said, there are instances where we believe we have found some true leans (60% win or better). Mainly, right now, we are concentrating our efforts on instances where a team is involved in a back-to-back situation.
We will be tracking our results weekly and will display how we did every week and provide a running record of our wins and losses here. I suggest you play all three of the money line plays individually and also in a three way parlay to juice your winnings if we get super lucky. And ALWAYS protect yourself with the George Costanza parlay hedge of betting the exact opposite of our three picks with a small amount in case we are super unlucky. And now you all know how I was able to win an 8 team parlay……
Good luck and lets all get some W’s!
Picture Credit: Wikimedia
