When in Rome, do what the Romans do, so yes, I succumbed to gambling while I was there, and mostly it was the sportsbook. It helps that arguably the best sportsbook in Las Vegas is a very short drive from where my parents live. I could walk there and get a good workout there and back, but my folks insisted I take their car. That's where I spent most of the time I did not spend with my parents. The place has eight huge video screens and the guys that took my wagers were giving out free drink tickets like candy. I could see myself being a loser later in life, shuffling down there and back in my waking hours every day, and then just ... dying there. I would be happy, because it would be like I was home.
Oh yeah, the bets. Yeah, that dream I had in the above paragraph probably isn't doable if I keep making losing bets. And that seems to be the theme. I took a crash course in finding free "best bets" online and making them, especially ones from the NFL. However, I, needing to justify my intellect, used my own judgement and made picks on my own. So I laid out a lot of money, straddling between wagers I found and wagers I came up with.
And guess which ones were better? Knowing my damned prognostications, I made one rule for myself in order to mitigate blowing a huge hole in my wallet: I would bet $100 on every wager I found some consensus on on the Internet separately, and I would make a $50 parlay on all the bets I decided upon on my own. That way, if I somehow stumbled across several picks that came through, I would win big, and if all of them went to shit, well, who cares, I only bet $50.
In particular, the three "best bets" were Green Bay, San Francisco, and Carolina. I soured on my entire trip because the Panthers laid an egg against Atlanta; I thought, "Well, here I go again," and I swore at the moment never to come to Vegas ever again. That feeling deepened when the 49ers Kicker's Field Goal attempt to beat Cincinnati at the end of regulation started off straight, then made an immediate right turn onto I Hate Unforgivable Wetness And I Want To Fuck With Him, Love, God Street. Fortunately, San Fran answered the Bengals' FG in Overtime with a Touchdown, thereby covering their -2. And while I was hanging out with my folks in downtown and Fremont St., the Packers finally pulled away from Chicago.
As for the wagers I created on my own ... well, I had four of them I wrapped up into a single parlay: Las Vegas, the Jets, Houston and Denver. Only the Broncos covered, and I thought they beat Detroit because they were inspired by the untimely and unfair death of former Broncos Wide Receiver Demariyus Thomas. The other three? Woof. And so I thank Buddha that I did not make separate bets on them, otherwise I would be in the shit in a bad, bad way.
Nevertheless I was under for my sportsbooking, and so I did the responsible thing and bet more money in order to get back the money I lost. I bet on the Liga MX grand finale Sunday evening and lost $100. I know scant better about Serie A and La Liga than I do Mexican soccer, but that didn't stop me from putting down a two-legged parlay: AS Roma and a Draw between Cadiz and Granada. Well ... I'm ashamed to admit how almost brought to tears I was, but I hit both bets. This was my first real parlay winner in my lifetime, and I swear to God I feel that's a bigger accomplishment than graduating from college. I took one big breath in the big leather seat at the sportsbook before I looked at the result of the Cadiz-Granada Match on Google, and when I saw that it ended 1-1 (knowing Roma beat Spezia 2-0 already), I felt good that I could make a successful wager in at least one Match (the one between Cadiz and Granada, although Roma was a huge favorite over Spezia) and that I'm not a total fuck-up.
Spurred on by that Win, I put into action my plan on making bets on Games and other things happening in the future. For example, I think that at the very least, Cincinnati and Michigan are good enough to keep their College Football Playoff Semifinals (being played New Year's Eve) close, so I parlayed them covering their respecting spreads together. I bet $5 that the Seattle Kraken would follow the (Las) Vegas Golden Knights into representing the Western Conference in this Year's Stanley Cup Finals. I won't know if they will until late June (unless they get eliminated earlier than that), but if they do, I (more likely Father, to whom I gave all these bets because he lives there and can just go up to the sportsbook window) will win $750.
I also made bets for Games that would be played the next few Days after I would be gone. I made a three-legged parlay that Manchester City (of the English Premier League), Bayern Munich (Bundesliga) and Hibernian (Scottish Premiership) would all win their Matches Tuesday; they did, but since all three were heavy favorites, my payout wasn't that much. (The World Wide Web also thought Aston Villa would win; either I had a bad feeling about them or I flat-out forget to make that bet, but I left them out, and too bad, because AV won.) I also made a two-legger for men's college basketball -- that Alabama would go on the road and beat reeling Memphis and that Oregon St. would beat Cal-Davis, a school that recently got blown out by a lower-division art school that some people believe is a diploma mill. Both the Crimson Tide and Beavers lost. Maybe that ain't my sport.
You know what? I'm tired, and I think I should leave the rest of my story to another blog post.
No comments:
Post a Comment