THE BETTING FOOL
By a Man Who Should Know Better
One and two. Eighty-seven dollars and change out the door, $25.87 of it never came back, and $1,123.17 shrinks to $1,097.30.
The winner was the only bet with weather attached. Fifteen miles an hour in Green Bay on Thursday night, 29 points on a total of 43.5, thank you and good evening. The other two were played in fine conditions, which in hindsight was the tell — Los Angeles won by seven while I was laying ten, and Denver and Houston stopped at 33 on a 40.5 I had bet over.
Four weekends since the calendar flipped to October have carried this thing from $1,062.38 to $1,097.30. Thirty-five dollars for a month of Thursdays. Nobody is naming a wing of the hospital after me, but the light is still on.
Five on the wind gauge in Nashville is a nice day for a walk and no use to me whatsoever. So here is Tennessee for the third straight week on my card, still without Calvin Ridley and Jeffery Simmons and now missing Xavier Woods on the back end, against a Chargers team traveling without Tarheeb Still and Tony Jefferson in its own secondary. It shakes out to 10.3 against a market ten. Three-tenths, 50.5 percent — every side I print is this same bet in a different hat.
Fifteen miles an hour in Green Bay on the last Thursday of October is about the most trustworthy sentence available to a man in my line of work. The book priced the weather as far as it cared to and quit at 43.5; I have it at 42. Green Bay is missing Dontayvion Wicks and Lukas Van Ness, Carolina is short its center in Cade Mays, and none of that carries the weight of the flags over the north end zone. Biggest ticket of the week at 52.6 percent.
Denver travels to Houston without Pat Surtain II, which is the rarest line on any injury report in the league, and without P.J. Locke next to him and Marvin Mims Jr. on the other side of the ball. Lid on the building, still air, nothing for the weather rule to do, so it comes down to the bare number: 41.6 against a 40.5 at 52.2 percent. A total that low says these two clubs cannot reach the end zone three times between them, and with that secondary shorthanded I will take the other end of that.
“Bet less than you brag, learn more than you lose, and never trust a tout who smiles too much.”
— The Betting Fool
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