This Football Stuff Is Just About Over...

Good evening everyone.  Unusual to catch me here typing on a Saturday night, but I'm just resting before what promises to be a very eventful day at work tomorrow.  There are just four teams alive in the race for the Super Bowl trophy, and that number will be cut down to two after the Saints host the Rams and the Patriots visit the Chiefs.  For those of you who haven't visited in a while, I'm taking sports bets on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and as luck would have it, the majority of people here seem to be Saints fans...  : D   Our sportsbook will open at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow, and the Saints game (the first game of the day) doesn't kick off until just after 2:00 p.m., so I'm curious as to how fast/slow the betting crowd will congregate for the games.  Two weeks from Monday I will begin my annual depression as the football season will have just ended, and I'll have to wait until almost September for the colleges to tee it up again.  *SIGH*  As a consolation prize, I will begin playing poker again once the football season has concluded, so there's that.  Today I received my fifth copy of Card Player Magazine since I began my subscription, so I've been studying up a bit, seeing what the cool kids currently think about the crazy game of Texas Hold 'Em.

At this point I'm going to transition into a paragraph where poker is the main theme, because that footbally/poker paragraph was starting to get pretty lengthy.  Great thing about writing your own blog by the way, is that you can make up words, type run-on sentences, use ellipses until the cows come home, and no one can do anything about it...  ;)  Okay, poker.  Although I'm not in Las Vegas anymore, there is some poker action to be had here.  Being the responsible person that I am  :) , I've held off on playing poker during football season.  I have to wake up at 5:30 a.m. on the weekends to get to work on time, which is not optimal for late Friday or Saturday night poker sessions (although I'm sure I could've snuck a few in, and probably will in the future).  Also, I have an alarming amount of my bankroll that goes toward football betting during this time of year (WHO KNEW?!).  :D  Honestly, I'm betting a lot less now, just because the games this weekend are so tough, there aren't as many to wager on, and I'll be plenty occupied with work.  (Lucky for me, there is a two-week break after tomorrow's games before the Super Bowl, so I'll have PLENTY of time to place a TRUCKLOAD of prop bets).  Did you notice how I stuck to poker in this paragraph, leaving football in the previous one???  Back to poker, the Imperial Palace hosted a World Series Circuit Event here in Biloxi in the past few months, and the Beau Rivage recently hosted a tournament series of their own very recently.  Long story short, I looked at my Bravo Live poker app. on a WEEKDAY during the Beau Rivage series, and they had EIGHT games running in the middle of the day, while I was eating lunch, so there is some poker to be found here.  The funny thing here is that Biloxi is relatively small compared to Las Vegas (with only three poker rooms - Imperial Palace, Beau Rivage, Golden Nugget), so I'm sure that in no time at all, I'm going to get comments like, "Oh, I know you.  You work in the sportsbook at Harrah's..."  Fun times ahead...  ;)  I plan to keep wearing my ENDLESS collection of Texas State gear to the tables also, so if I'm not already bookmarked in people's heads, it's gonna happen real fast...  (You know, something other than, "Wow, that guy is an AWFUL poker player!").

One of the reasons that I'm writing for you tonight - sheer guilt.  About three weeks back, my brother mentioned to me that he was playing daily fantasy sports on Draftkings.  (Yep, this is the same brother that turned me on to poker also, in case you were wondering...).  I quickly did some research, and realized that DFS (Daily Fantasy Sports) are legal in Mississippi.  DFS were specifically shot down in Las Vegas (the state of Nevada), so I had pretty much forgot all about them.  Well, needless to say, with my addictive personality (is that a thing?), I have been a participant in DFS contests on Draftkings practically every day since Pete mentioned it.  The entries to contests run as low at .10 cents, so don't worry too much.  I can lose much more at a poker table or on a football game, TRUST ME...  :D  So, anyway, I'll enter my group of contests for each day, and then I'll monitor my computer to see how my teams are performing (underperforming, not performing at all, getting curb stomped), but yet, I have no time to write.  LOL  Draftkings is great for me because I'm more comfortable betting chunks of money on football than on any other sport, and the majority of football games are played on the weekend.  I'm not inclined to go to a casino every day to make bets on basketball, hockey, or baseball games, so DFS is a cheap way to have some action and stay informed on the games.

And in the event that I don't want to be a total degenerate, the aforementioned baseball season is just around the corner.  Biloxi has a AA minor-league team called the Shuckers, and I live about a mile from the ballpark.  NEEDLESS to say, I will be attending several Shuckers games this season.  I don't know if you've ever seen the movie 'Bull Durham' (and if you haven't, watch it), but it resulted in me wanting to someday live near a minor league baseball park, where the price of admission is nominal, pretty much every seat is a great seat, and the atmosphere is just phenomenal.  Speaking to that festive atmosphere, the teams in the Southern League are the Shuckers, the Jumbo Shrimp, the Biscuits, the Blue Wahoos, the Smokies, the Lookouts, the Braves, the Barons, and the Generals.  You can't make this stuff up.  Well, I could, but I'm not this time...  ;)  I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned it here, but growing up, I would've picked 'Professional Baseball Player' as my preferred career choice.  Anywho, the spring and summer seem to hold some promise, despite the lack of football.

I'm going to sign off for now, but I hope that y'all enjoy your football tomorrow, and I'll be back to write some more for you real soon...

Happy New Year

Hello everyone.  I just wanted to stop in and say hi to those of you who have been checking in.  I'm still alive and well and plan on writing a full blog entry here in the next few days.  In the meantime, enjoy your football and have an outstanding 2019!