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NFL YTD: 6-10, -34.63 units

It was my pick. I liked the Colts, I liked them a couple weeks ago - and then as the week went by.. I was like “they were in London last week” … “Pit had a long weekend.” But honestly, it wasn’t any of that. I was just wrong. Dad gave good advice.. Houston rolled (-7ish ATS) and Cincinnati won by double digits ish (-6.5 ATS).. but Indy - who I liked AND didn’t believe in Pittsburgh/Aaron Rodgers.. lost 34-22 by 12 as a +2.5 spread. It was my pick, I sucked this year. No dice. Teases sucked, straight up plays sucked, three teamers sucked. Good luck all, hope your years are/were better than mine and wish you all well!

Hey buddy, future Jeff, if you want to do this and actually want to do it with any sort of sustained success… Make sure to reduce vig as much as possible - In fact, take the advice from the NBA, the maximum bet should be -130 weight. Just… period. And, obviously, this doesn’t seem to be the answer for sustained success.. so if you’d like to do this, you have to earn your way back and figure out the answer. There is no shortcut, there is no all in, and every large wager – it almost seems weaker than the small ones. Until you handicap full-time, stop trying to beat the people that do. Take your time, choose your spots, and make sure to have some fun while you’re doing this thing. So I guess now… The only rule I have is keep bets to a maximum of -130 weight and never do future bets.

Last note - make all bets - the day of. If you absolutely must do a two or three teamer (in NFL only) and one is that Thursday… ok. But make all bets the day of - in that scenario, it would have to be that Thursday. Although honestly.. take that break brother. When you return, if so.. make those bets the day of.

I don’t think I’m playing them myself, but starting yesterday if I switched to aiming for a maximum of -130 vig per play (that stems back to when I had the Knicks on the ML and they were -2 ish and won by 1 in the most epic comeback in NBA history on 6/10). Although I’d wonder if perhaps that’s an exception I should just ignore and once again try to reduce vig everywhere humanly possible…

Last night and the Monday night game, I would’ve had Bills +3.5 against the Rams, I even considered the Moneyline, didn’t really consider teasing it – but I certainly would’ve had not been already semi tapped out. A normal week, not playing from way behind, I think I would’ve made that good play. Also, I can’t believe I missed the Bills bandwagon this year, I watch every game – at least sort of link your success to the home teams, success, right?

Then, I would bet Seattle -2.5 against the Broncos on Thursday night. I would do so straight up and I think it’s -125. Next, I would tease the Bills to ML vs Raiders and Patriots down to -1.5, they’re -7 vs the Jets. That parlay would be -122. I would also look long and hard at Baltimore -4.5 at Cleveland, but I’m not even sure how I’d bet it if I played them.

10/18/26 NFL

Bills, Patriots -1.5, & Rams (+107) for 4 units

I would’ve gone 1-1 ATS with Buffalo on MNF and Seattle on Thursday, didn’t see Bo winning that one - although he did everything he could to not win. Pops called that one and said Seattle was a red flag.

I like the Bills/Pats tease here and threw pops’ last remaining survivor team on there the Rams to juice it up. Pats -1.5 instead of ML would’ve been -103. I just don’t think the Jets are actually that good and Pats are alright - 10-7 ish in that range I expected. Raiders are also not that good and Bills are solid. Raiders beat the Dolphins, Chargers, and Saints before coming back down to Earth.

Can’t try to win em all back in on swing.. gotta chip away. Good luck all

And fwiw, I wouldn’t consider Balt with a backup QB here. Earlier in the week, I liked them if Lamar was playing.

10/18 & 10/19

One more play for this week:

Dallas +6.5 & 49ers -2.5 (-115) for 4 units

Dallas in a must be competitive situation and 49ers against a bad Commanders team.. this game may get Washington’s coach fired after last week’s tie vs the Giants.

NFL YTD: 6-12, -43.23 units

Terrible season. Bad picks coupled with *terrible* execution clobbered me this year.

My top two tease selections for the week were Bills (-5ish) who won by 3 and Patriots (-7 ish) who won by double digits. Would’ve won the tease but gone 1-1 ATS. I also would’ve gone 1-1 ATS on my MNF and TNF spread picks but won the tease. Instead, I didn’t play during the week and on Sunday I added the Rams ML (-13, -800 ish ML) and they lost outright killing the whole parlay. Pops also got eliminated in survival.. never ever add an extra parlay leg just to try to “add a little juice” as I mentioned on the play. That’s crazy. Never ever ever forget how hard it is to win a single ATS spread, a single ML bet, let alone a parlay.

And the second play, I was killed by teasing up a small spread to a TD plus for the second week in a row. Last week I teased up Colts from +2 to +9 ish and they lost by 12. Last night I had Cowboys -1 ish and teased them up to +6.5, they lost by 10. So even if I had the +7.5, through all single digit key numbers, it still wouldn’t have been enough.

For the record, ATS.. the sides I was on would’ve.. also gotten clobbered. 10-18 ATS with individual parlay sides at 18-10. (Not including SF on MNF, doesn’t matter at this point). But 18-10 when you’re moving the line 6+ points is absolutely not good enough. Each leg was like a -300 to -400 that got rolled into a parlay.

So I wonder partially.. did I limit myself to looking at those -6ish to -9’s too closely? And then with them doing terribly this year (until this week), I was destined to get crushed? This week that just passed had options in the 6-9 ish range. Bills -5.5 won by 3, Colts -6.5 lost outright by 6 to the division rival winless Titans .. at home … Chiefs we’re -7 at home vs divisional rival Chargers and rolled by 16 (I wasn’t touching those two divisional matchups Colts & Chiefs’s sides, but both Colts and Chiefs were considered strongly). Then also Patriots -7.5, won by double digits. So.. that means - and in some past weeks too there was this idea - there is value in the tease. I would’ve lost out even quicker without the lines manipulating.

I guess the long and short of it all was once I lost that first play.. the gambler came out too quickly and the handicapper (who understands how hard it is to win even a single leg of a single wager) was stifled and stifled hard. Had I limit my exposure during the downturns and not added a little extra here or there; for example I could’ve teased last week Hou & Con and bet Indy separately and gone 1-1. I could’ve bet Bills/Pats this week and not added the Rams -800 .. just for a lil extra juice.. that killed me. Cowboys losing to the Bucs was always gonna hurt, but I could’ve limited exposure. Overall, I feel like Jeff - instincts were aight at times, execution was pretty terrible. So, I need more variance - I need more plays - and less “all in” to one play. Instead I need to make like 3-5 plays without 1 bad game torpedoing more than 1 of those plays. 1 bad game happened a lot this week (and survivor pools are left bloodied; I think the one locally is down to like idk.. 7% or so of initial entries).

That said, this was not my year regardless. Best of luck to everyone moving forward and whenever the UA returns, we’ll have to revisit the plan. Now we have NBA ATS only plan.. maybe a -130 max weight and don’t fall in love w any single bet is the NFL strategy. Although it’s obvious my -100 to -150 two team parlays had a shot (even this year) but I pushed too much exposure sometimes and didn’t give them enough runway to take a punch to the chin and get back up. Never go all in. Always take your time and be humble. Do more bets for less amounts each.. and maybe one tease per week but gotta get over it other than that and find some ATS plays. Don’t pay 3:1 for em either, -130 should be the max vig on a single play. And never ever should do three teamers.

Also, whenever I return - time for a fresh thread. I’ve had this one since August 2023. That said, this one had way too much of me thinking out loud and rambling and then degen gambling. Not only terrible sports bets, but probably not entertaining either.

I’m not running from any record I have ever posted on here though. I’ve been on Freak’s Forum for .. wow.. 18 years. When I was trying to sneak my Unfair Advantage picks into the paid professionals section and Freak had to be like bro.. maybe once you have a website and/or actually charge for picks lmao. During those 18 years, I have had multiple threads and bet many NFL & NBA seasons. Right now after getting clobbered it feels like I’ve never won - but I have. On this forum, I have 26 seasons or stints, etc. I have a W/L record (for seasons) of 14-10-2, but as you guys know I lay vig, so looking at units - I’m 11-15 with 4 more losing sessions than winning. Some of those past years were like 150-150 ish minus a couple units etc, but the long and short is all that matters is the units. And even in my last couple NBA seasons (last year was a winner but could’ve ended even better if I didn’t chase futures and series bets). This year NFL was awful, but last year ended 11-11 plus units and would’ve been plus so many more if Bills made the Super Bowl. The year before that, 24-25, I won in NFL. Truth is I probably have some legs here, but the second more important truth is I have almost twenty years of data to prove that it’s about unit execution before anything else. This last NFL season was a perfect example. Laying heavy vig and some upsets absolutely crushed me.. gotta be able to lost a single game and it not feel like you have to chase it/are down too much already. NBA is pure ATS for me (ML’s ok at -130 or less) and NFL, I guess .. here’s what we gotta do: one or two teases per week, ok I guess - prefer max one - and they should be in the -100 to -150 range. Generally speaking, shouldn’t be laying more than -130 on any single play either bc truth is.. it was the vigs that killed me. Plus overexposure early in the year. Ease into it brother. Good luck all, look forward to returning when the time is right - with a new thread where hopefully I learned from the past… and while I still absolutely own everything I posted on this forum and am accountable. Go Bills

If anyone was curious, I was, I’ve posted 1,799 plays on this forum (I’m sure my numbers are off somewhere but I keep pretty strict numbers as you know)… I have a record of 917-862-20. While a winning record, it’s losing in terms of units. You need to always add 10% for vig. That said, this record includes futures with plus money payouts and bets laying lots of lumber (this year I laid so much weight and paid the price, for example). Any way you cut it, it’s all about the +/- in units, not the W/L. It is interesting to note that my next wager I post on here will be my 1800th play posted.

Last point .. regarding futures.. they’re also not for you brotha. Pre season, you liked the Bills (not bad), the Rams (huge faves and they’re now 2-4) and the Chargers (who are an embarrassing 0-6). Idk how I would’ve bet them, win/loss total, div winner or SB winner - but any way you look at it, they would’ve been bad. I can bet the Bills to win the SB right now for only slightly worse odds, Chargers are all but eliminated already, and Rams are obvs not as good odds as they were and are already practically eliminated from winning the division (Chargers may be close statistically 6 games in lol). No futures bets ever.