Day Off

Good evening everyone.  I'm back at the Mirage Sportsbook after a more involved day off than I had anticipated.  With the eradication of the Flamingo's Monday Freeroll (which I might have started qualifying for again, assuming that I had put my recent bad karma at the Pink Chicken in the rearview mirror), I will probably use Mondays to get my chores done.  Monday figures to be the slowest day at poker rooms around the valley, and it is the day immediately following the busy weekend.  For me obviously, you throw Saturday and Sunday football into the mix, and it makes the most sense to use Mondays to stay close to home.  With any luck, I will have to hedge the Monday night football game for the occasional winning parlay ticket, but those games don't kick off until very late in the afternoon here.

Anyway, back to today (and yesterday), I woke up at about 5:30 this morning after getting almost 8 hours of sleep.  Even though Sundays are the time to catch AMC's 'Breaking Bad' marathons (like 5:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. here), I was wiped out by 10:00 p.m. after a day full of football viewing yesterday.  My friend and fellow blogger Grrouchie picked me up at about 9:00 a.m. and we cruised on down to the Westgate (formerly Hilton, formerly LVH) Theater to watch the opening Sunday of NFL football.  The theater has 1,100 seats, and even on opening day the venue was not filled to capacity.  Their 300-seat sportsbook must have been packed, because we heard several announcments encouragong fans to make their way to the theater.  The theater shows every game that's being played, and pretty reasonably priced food is available nearby ($3.00 drafts, $2.00 hot dogs, $6.00 wings and sandwiches, etc...).  It was nice having a friend who's a Steelers fan to watch the game with.  It was a lucky thing for the guy sitting next to me (Jets fan - go figure Pete Peters) that I didn't punch him as he rooted for the Browns during their second-half comeback against Pittsburgh.  Grrouchie was wearing a Steelers jersey, and I clapped during the bigger moments of our positive first half.  This genius (who of course has the right to cheer for whoever he wants, and he seemed to be rooting for someone vocally in EVERY GAME) would yell for Cleveland, and then out of the corner of my eye I could see him turning to look at me every so often afterward, like to see if he could get a reaction from me...  :)  Well, the Steelers pulled the game out, and despite trying their best to conspire against me, the NCAA and NFL teams in
our great nation were unable to wreck all of my parlay tickets this weekend.

I endured several disappoinments yesterday (and Grrouchie got his first taste of sports betting), but I did have a game to hedge.  It turns out that I should have bet my first instincts heavier last week as I was able to bring a $20.00 3-teamer to the point of hedging.  I had Eagles (-10), 49ers (-6), and Broncos (-7).  A winning ticket would return $140.00 to me.  I got value on my hedge because the Colts had been bet to (+8).  Anyway, I bet $10.00 on the Colts moneyline (+310), $25.00 on the Colts (+8), and another $20.00 on the Colts (+14.5).  I almost got a totally bad break in wasting all of my hedging money as the Broncos were PUMMELING the Colts early in the game.  Then things swung the other way, and if the Broncos would have won by between 1-6 points, that would have been the worst scenario for me.  As things turned out, Denver won by exactly 7, which reduced my 3-teamer to a winning 2-team parlay, returning $72.00 instead of $140.00.  However, I did win on 2 of those hedge tickets, and with the other small winning tickets that I had, I got back almost $200.00 today (a negligible loss for the week's football wagering).

Yeah, so back to today.  I had to wait until 8:00 a.m. to do my laundry, and that was done at about 10:00 a.m.  And we all know how exhausting clothes are, so naturally I took a nap (hey, I woke up at 5:30, so shut up)...  ;)  Then I made a bank deposit (remember that freeroll cash from Saturday?).  Hopefully I'll be making more bank deposits in the future...  :D  Then I paid another week's rent (always good).  It's a little cheaper to pay by the month, but once I took the time to look at the paperwork, I discovered that it said NO REFUNDS all over the place, so why give them a bunch of extra money up front???  ANYWAY, then I went back to the Westgate today to cash my hedge tickets (with only that intention).  But alas, they already have the NCAA and NFL lines up for next week's games...  Well, blame the "Superbook," but somebody spent the rest of the Giants/Lions matchup there studying the NFL lines and putting in a few early wagers for next week's games...  Then I ventured over to the Riviera (my old stomping grounds - I dealt poker there once upon a time) to see if my friend Maly was working, and evidently she's back on the graveyard shift, and will allegedly be there tonight.  So I MAY be hiking back down there later tonight, we'll see...

Chris Berman just made me realize that it's already past 1:00 a.m. on the east coast, so it's WAY TOO LATE for me to be typing for y'all...  ;)  Have a good one and I'll see you soon!