Preseason Week Two Picks
Bing bing! Bing bing! Oh wait, I had wandered into the slot machine section of the casino for a moment there (who am I kidding, casinos these days are one big slot machine section and a tiny, out of the way sports and race book in some corner).
Speaking of slots, there are some machines that you can beat legally for some small change from time to time. It involves finding machines with "carryover" features where someone has walked away before the carryover was hit. Not enough to make it interesting, but enough to earn a buffet now and then. Send me an email and I'll tell you some more on that.
Anyway, back to football and the big, hearty BRAVO! goes to the TwoMinuteWarning.com research moles for last week's results, as their multi-part series on how to bet the preseason games came through with a bang. Adding up all the spots plays they listed it was a 17-9 week (yes, I know that's more than the number of games played because some games had more than one spot play in effect).
Old Timmy did y'all a favor by listing plays for some of these angles in my early preseason betting columns -- Early Reads Part I and Early Reads Part II -- and those two columns had 4-1 and 2-1 records.
If you missed this "illuminating" series then here's what you need:
- Part I: "GAP" comparisons
- Part II: WIN comparisons
- Part III: Offensive/Defensive Ranks
- Part IV: Teaser Percentages
- Part V: Coaches Preseason Records
Onwards and upwards. I'm under a mandate to make a call on every game which could be seen as a disadvantage to being able to pick and choose, but heck with preseason it's all a chipshot into the sand bunker of life...
Da Picks: (Edited 8/15 to correct line errors)
Oakland +3.5
New Orleans +2.5
Baltimore +1.5
Chicago +4
Minnesota +3
Seattle +4
Jacksonville -1
New England -3.5
Cincinnati +3
Carolina +3
Detroit +3.5
Arizona -3
Houston +5 (Go Texans! Yay! First win already on the books)
Atlanta -3
Washington -3 [first home game for mister Spurrier]
Denver -4
Last week: 8-6
Preseason record: 8-8
A lot of hubbub goes on in preseason about which quarterbacks are playing for how long, blah blah blah. Tim's presonal theory is that running backs are more important and that perhaps finding teams where the starting RB spot is to some extent up for grabs could be profitable. I'll see if I can get the moles onto this one, but meanwhile the above picks have a few teams with this going for them: Carolina, Houston, Atlanta, Denver.
Let's check in with the contest between the four "bankroll managers" running around in my head. To refresh your memory they are stodgy, happy, due boy and manic. They have their own way of playing, so let's see who wins! We gave 'em each $1000 to start and after the first week here are the standings:
Manic: $1,177
Due Boy: $1,120
Happy: $1,084
Stodgy: $1,042
Now Manic and Due Boy were both helped by the fact they won the "big bet" games and it was after all a winning week. However, credit where credit is due and we'll see who is on top at the end of the snicker games.
Here's how it looks for week 2:
Stodgy: mister conservative when it comes to playing, divvies up only half the roll and bets evenly across all games. So, $33 on each of the sixteen.
Happy: assumes the best, bets everything every week, evenly across games. So, $66 on each of the above picks.
Due Boy: believes in the law of averages. Base bet per game per day is $33, but after a losing day doubles the bets the next day, and so on until a winning day. So he goes $33 on the Thursday games, will stay at $33 if he wins for Friday's games, go to $66 if he loses and so on.
Manic: bets 10% of his roll per game, divided by the square root of the games in action at once. So he goes 5.7% on Thursday, 5% per game on Friday, 3.7% per game on Saturday, and rolls 10% each on the Sunday and Monday games.
