Week one of the NFL is in the books. I got off to a good start in my Supercontest going 4-1, with the Vikings letting me down at San Francisco. Nice start, but I’m sure some nightmare weeks will come.
I sided with 5 favourites this week all between -3.5 and -2.5, it was generally a good week all round for the favourites, going 8-5 ATS on Sunday. As a result there’s been plenty of stories about how Vegas had a terrible weekend on the NFL. Favourites winning is usually bad for bookies. Their worst hits coming with Green Bay and Miami winning ATS.
A story about Vegas losing money?
Boo. Hoo.
Don’t shed too many tears, they’ll be millions in profit soon enough. These stories are great PR for bookies though. With the implication being that gambling is a get rich-quick scheme that everyone should be taking part in. Quite often you’ll read an article about some bloke who won thousands on a parlay/accumulator, which attracts more people to join the masses who fill out these out every weekend and never win anything.
Generally speaking, gambling stories are about people winning money. The bookies don’t want to promote stories about losers. In the media I think you’re far more likely to hear when bookies have a bad event than a good one. This is definitely the case in real life interactions with people. Whenever your friends/work colleagues/random guy at the bar start talking about gambling, it’s always about how much money they’ve won.
“Hey, I made $ betting on the football this weekend” (I’m a winner!)
You’ll never hear this:
“I lost $ on the football this weekend” (what a loser I am!)
It’s understandable. If you’ve lost money, you’ve not going to want to talk about it. Spend a game day on Twitter and you’d think everyone makes money!
Quick tip: I like Denver at Kansas City on Thursday night. ML around 2.45 (+145 US) or +3 on the spread. Sure Manning has had 17 neck surgeries, has no feelings in his finger tips and played poorly against Baltimore (who have a great defence)… but he’s still a good QB and there’ll be some reversion towards to mean, hopefully immediately. Kansas City beat a poor team in Houston. They got a great defence too but an average QB at best in Alex Smith. It’ll be a low scoring game but I think the value’s on the Broncos.
Update: Peyton Manning played better and Denver beat Kansas City 31-24.