Matt Holthe's Fleeting Thoughts

Looks like I'll be set for status for 2014 on both American and Hilton. With Hilton, I either have my status already or I'm 1 stay short (the web site says I'm 1 stay short, but I think my stay last week is still pending). Either way, I have a Hilton stay on the books for a couple weeks from now, so that will put me over the top if I need it. With American, I'm 6 segments short. And I have 6 segments scheduled for an international trip. Hopefully all those come through - since it's an international flight, at the very least it will take a while to post. But even though they are code share flights, they should correctly post to my American account and it will get me there. Even if a couple of them don't post, as long as the flights over the ocean post, I'll get there based on miles. And there should be a couple more trips before the end of the year, so I'll have some cushion. I think 2014 will see a slow down in trips, and I might not make status ...

I was recently thinking about what it would take to make sports betting your job. First off, you would have to be really good at picking games against the spread (ATS). Let's just assume for now that you can predict the winner ATS right in football and/or basketball (NCAA or Professional) correctly 65% of the time. To keep the math a bit simpler, let's say you bet the same amount (call it "x") on every game. Realistically, I think a professional sports better is going to be "more sure" about some games and bet more heavily on those games, but we would have to make more assumptions (how often that happens, how much bigger those bets are, and so on). So let's stick with the same bet on every game. When you lose the game (35% of the time), you lose "x". When you win the game (65% of the time), you win an amount that is slightly less than the original bet. For most casinos, if you make a $110 bet, you win $100, which is 90.90909% of the origina...