Matt Holthe's Fleeting Thoughts

A few weeks ago, I blogged that I might lose my Hilton Diamond status. Hilton Gold status (the next step down) won't be a problem. So, I decided to look... what's the difference, anyway? I took a look through the documentation on the Hilton web site, and here's what I can see the differences are: Point Bonuses: Gold receives 25% bonus, Diamond 50% bonus When staying at Embassy Suites: Gold can receive 500 bonus points, Diamond 1000 bonus points When staying at Hilton Grand Vacations: Gold can receive 1000 bonus points, Diamond 2000 bonus points When staying at Hilton, Conrad Hotels, and Doubletrees, Gold receives access to the Executive Lounge only if they were upgraded to the Executive Floor. Diamond gets access to the Executive Lounge no matter what. Diamond members have the Guaranteed Reservations clause where rooms will be available if you call 48 hours in advance. I do make use of the extra points right now - gets me free rooms more quickly, which I use on personal va...

The college basketball season will tip off in just over a month. Monday, November 9, will see two games: Murray State at California and Florida International at North Carolina. These games are part of the Coaches vs Cancer Classic.

I just spent the last few evenings compiling a list of the college basketball in-season tournaments to get ready for the college basketball season. I mostly need these tournaments to know where neutral site games are being played so I can compute my college basketball RPI values correctly. Hopefully I found them all - I ended up with a list of 44 tournaments. Some are named very similarly, and some aren't really "tournaments" (like the Big 10-ACC Challenge). Here's the list I have: 76 Classic ACC-Big 10 Challenge Athletes In Action Basketball Hall of Fame Showcase Basketball Travelers Classic Basketball Travelers Invitational Basketball Travelers Tip-Off Tourney BB&T Classic Big 12-Pac 10 Hardwood Challenge Big East-SEC Invitational Cable Car Classic Cancun Challenge CBE Classic Charleston Classic Chicago Invitational Challenge Coaches vs. Cancer Classic Diamond Head Classic Duel in the Desert Glen Wilkes Classic Golden Bear Classic Great Alaska Shootout Hispanic ...

Yesterday I returned from my trip to Central Illinois. I was flying from Peoria to Chicago, then Chicago to Denver. For just about every trip I take, I try to upgrade to first class using my "500 mile upgrade" certificates. I almost never get it, and I have a decent amount of certificates, so I keep trying to use them. Well, for the Chicago -> Denver flight, I was upgraded to first class. Yeah! Except when my Peoria -> Chicago flight was delayed and I missed my connection. So, the one time I get to use my upgrade, it turns out that I couldn't use my upgrade. I ended up in the middle of the exit row on the next flight out of Chicago, so it wasn't all bad. But I'd really like to get an upgrade to actually come through one of these times...

I've been Hilton Diamond for a couple of years now. It's an awesome program. But I'm in danger of losing my status this year because of how little I've traveled. I have 22 hotel nights this calendar year so far. I need 60 to maintain my status. I have 4 scheduled for next week and 2 the week after that. That's 28, so I need 32 more over the last 3 months of the year. I know I have a trip to Boston that will be 4 nights in October. And I know of a trip to Los Angeles in November that is 2 nights. I have a 3 night visit and a 2 night visit that haven't been scheduled yet. But that still leaves 21 days to go. Ouch. This might be a problem. I don't want to lose my diamond status!!

Today our nanny called in sick. So I was at home with Sabrina duty. At less than 3 months, she is doing things in 4 hour blocks during the working hours - 2 hours of up time (eating, activity, play-time, diaper changing, etc) followed by 2 hours of napping. In those 2 hours, I tried to do some work. I failed pretty miserably. There were two such cycles today, so in theory I could have gotten 4 hours of work done. But I maybe, got 3 hours of work in. And with a big gap between, I really didn't accomplish much. I tried to book some travel to New York in a couple of weeks, but all the hotels were either sold out or I couldn't get a good rate, so I had to fight my way through the system (trying a different combination, etc.) and ended up having to talk to a travel agent. Then I had a meeting with a customer. Between those two things, most of my 3 hours of actual work was used up. Hopefully the nanny is back tomorrow and I can get some actual work done...

Well, Delaware tried, at least. I posted a few months ago about Delaware legalizing sports betting. It turns out that the feds had a say, and they limited what Delaware can do. According to this SI article , sports betting is going to be limited to 3+ team parlay bets, and only on NFL football. The NFL is the biggest sports betting, but I bet they were hoping for college football, if not other sports. Only allowing parlay bets will end up being better for the sports book revenues - they pay out less overall than "true odds" would pay out. There's no way to tell, but I wonder how much this affects the potential client base. Meaning, if they had only parlays but allowed college football, how much more would that increase revenue? And, if they allowed single game bets but only did NFL, how much would that increase revenue?

As most of you know, I have been a Cubs fan my whole life. So I'm used to disappointment. Anyway, I was hoping for a third straight trip to the playoffs this year. But, after losing two of three at home to the lowly Washington Nationals, I have basically given up on this season. On the plus side, I now live in Colorado, so I also root for the "local" (about an hour away) team, the Colorado Rockies. They are leading the wild card race right now, so I will be changing my cheering focus to the Rockies for the remainder of the season. The Cubs and Rockies don't play the remainder of this season, so that's good for me. Go Rocks!

Starting August 1 (a few days ago), TSA was supposed to be more restrictive about making sure your boarding pass name matches exactly to your valid ID (driver's license or passport). My driver's license/passport has "Matthew Holthe" and I always had "Matt Holthe" on my boarding passes. So, for the flight I just returned from... Frontier (the outgoing flight) was able to change my name without much of an issue - I sent them an email and it was done. United (the return flight) was a much bigger ordeal. I had sent an email to United asking to change my Mileage Plus (frequent flier) account and asking if the flight could change. They changed the account, but they told me to call in to get the name changed on the reservation. OK, no problem. I called in and they said that AmEx travel would have to make the change but they would authorize it. So I called AmEx travel and they said it would be $150 to reissue the ticket. I said, "no, United authorized the chang...

This year has certainly been a lot slower for me with the travel. On one hand, that is goodness, because I didn't want to be on the road a lot around the birth of our daughter. But even factoring that out of the equation, 2009 has been slow. From January 1, 2008, through July 31, 2008, I had flown 40,118 miles. April, May, June, and July were all over 6,000 miles each month. From January 1, 2009, through July 31, 2009, I have flown 19,859 miles. March I flew over 7,000 miles, but my second busiest month this year has been 3,826 miles. The mileage is way down this year. Last year I was able to fly enough to get the lowest level status on three different airlines (Ascent on Frontier, Premier on United, and Gold on American). This year, I'm hoping to keep my Premier on United and "let's see" about Frontier - I'm not even trying American. I do have some trips coming up - Washington, DC, next week; Los Angeles the week after that; St. Louis over Labor Day, Peoria, ...

Tiger Woods missed the cut at the Open Championship (aka the British Open). It's his second missed cut as a professional. The first was after a string of 37 straight cuts made in majors. That was short of Jack Nicklaus' record 39 straight made cuts. Now I don't know if Tiger will break that record or not. I'm not implying in the least that Tiger is past his prime. But he has to make every cut, starting with the PGA Championship, for 10 more years. Jack's string was from major #29 as a profession until major #67 - Tiger is already at major #49 in his professional career.

I am back to work more than two weeks after the birth of our first child, Sabrina. We knew it would be a life-changing event, and it certainly is. I made the analogy that being in the hospital was a bit like being in a Vegas casino - time didn't matter. If it was 3 AM and she needed feeding or changing, that's what needed to happen. And when we were in the hospital we were in the one room and there was only the one window, so there wasn't much in terms of daylight or anything. Now that we're back at home and trying to get into a routine, we have run into all kinds of challenges. The biggest is when Sabrina doesn't fall asleep. After a while, she gets over-tired and there's not much we can do to help her. That becomes frustrating. That happens about once or twice a day lately. Besides that, she does pretty well. She is eating enough and is progressing along with trying to lift her head and all that. She is great at taking baths, and is pretty easy-going when she...

I've never bet on someone to win a golf tournament, and I don't know if I ever could. There are too many variables involved to know who is going to win. But for this weekend's US Open, it looks like Tiger Woods is at +150 and Phil Mickelson has the second-best odds at +800. Using the money line formula which I blogged about , this means that if you think Tiger has better than a 40% chance of winning, betting on Tiger might be a good idea. For Phil, the break-even point is somewhere around 11% chance of winning. That's the problem I have with betting on golf champions... I have no idea what kind of percentage to associate with each player. If this exact same US Open were played 5 times, would Tiger win 2 of those? I'd say probably. But would he win 3? Not so sure about that one. If it were played 10 times, would Phil win once? Probably. Would he win twice? Maybe not with all his off-the-course issues going on with his wife fighting breast cancer. Looks like I'll ...

There's a new resort in Las Vegas (technically, I think it's in Henderson) called The M Resort . It's on the strip, but way south of Mandalay Bay. This resort supposedly has a great rewards program (sign up and get a free buffet, no matter if you play that day or not). But one interesting thing I've heard about the resort is a concept they are calling "in-running" wagering in the sports book. You can bet on games while the game is going on. If it becomes obvious that your original bet is going to lose, you can make a hedge bet on the other side and at least get some of your money back. It sounds similar to sports betting exchanges on the Internet where you buy/sell lines on games even as the game is ongoing. More information can be found on the M Resort web site .

After two different posts on money lines, we have some background on money lines and determining whether it's a good bet or not. Next, let's take a look at upsets in the NCAA basketball tournament first round. Since the tournament expanded in 1985 to 64 teams, the games have been broken up into four regions. In each region, a #1 seed plays a #16 seed, #2 plays #15, and so on. Coincidentally, there have been 25 years (1985-2009) with 4 games each year (1 per region), so we have exactly 100 games to work with - it makes it easy to figure out percentages. Note that 100 games is not a good sample size. There are too many variables (a team might have been seeded higher/lower than it should have been, only 4 games/year, and so on). But it's all we have to go on. A #16 has never beat a #1, so that isn't considered here. A #15 seed has beaten a #2 seed 4 times (4%). Based on the money line formula ( found in this post ), if the #15 seed has a money line of +2400 or higher, th...

Tuesday I posted how to find a good money line bet . Today we'll determine how to know if the bet you find is really a good bet or not. To determine if it's a good bet, you need to figure the expected value of the bet. In the Lakers example, you are betting $280 to win $100. The ticket will be worth $380 if the Lakers win. You estimated that this will happen 75% of the time. $380 x .75 = $285, which is the expected value of the ticket. $285 is $5 more than the original bet of $280, so you are expecting to win $5 on your investment of $280. You take the winnings divided by the investment to compute the return on investment. 5/280 = 0.01786, which is 1.79% A 1.79% ROI is not very good - you want at least 5%, if not higher. Therefore, if you think the Lakers have a 75% chance of winning, -280 is not a good bet.

I've been reading Sharp Sports Betting by Stanford Wong and I thought I'd blog about some of the information in the book. How do you know if a given money line is a good bet or a bad bet? Let's take the upcoming game 1 of the NBA finals as an example. The Lakers are at -280 and Orlando is at +220. If you want to bet on that game, which bet makes the most sense? You first have to come up with your own money lines. This actually isn't as difficult as it sounds. There's a formula you can apply based on your expectations. You come up with a percentage of time you think the favorite will win the game. Let's say that if the Lakers and Orlando played an infinite number of games in this same situation (game 1 of the finals, at Los Angeles, etc) that LA would win 75% of the time. To compute what the money line would be in that situation, here's the formula for the favorite (for "x", use 75, because of our 75% estimation): -100 * x / (100 - x) That's -7...

I was talking with a friend about sports betting. We were trying to figure out the break even point when betting sports (the percentage you need to get right in order to gain back the casino's vig). Here's the math: Let's say that "a" is the number of games you win and "b" is the number of games you lose. To be able to easily compute percentages, let's say that a+b=100. That's one formula. The second is the break even point. Let's say you bet $110 to win $100 all the time (you're betting lines and totals - money lines is another matter). For each game you win, you gain $100 into your bank roll (you get your bet of $110 back and win $100). For each game you lose, you lose $110 from your bank roll. The break even point is when 100a - 110b = 0. Let's do some math. 100a-110b=0 means that 100a=110b, which means that b=0.90909a But a+b=100, so b is also equal to 100-a, so 100-a=0.90909a (we're now down to one variable). Adding "a...

In the NCAA College World Series regionals, Texas beat Boston College 3-2 in 25 innings. The previously longest game in NCAA history was 23 innings. A pitcher for Texas pitched 13 innings in relief , including 12 1/3 of no-hit ball. Two players for Texas batted 12 times each, setting a record for most at-bats in a game. Texas wins longest game in history

We are getting our front yard re-done. The soil is horrible - it was never prepped correctly when it was first done. (It was done by the builder, so we didn't expect anything spectacular, but it took us several years to get sick of it). Here's the lawn after the tear-up. Some of the plants are in. Tomorrow we'll get the new sod.