Matt Holthe's Fleeting Thoughts

Courtesy of Casino Player magazine, some special deals on food in Las Vegas: South Point Hotel specials from midnight to 6 AM (like biscuits & gravy for $1.95) Similar specials midnight to 6 AM at the Orleans American Burger Works at Excalibur - serves french fries with option of 15 dipping sauces Anthony's Gourmet Burgers and Brew at M Resort - pairs burgers with special craft beers Mr Lucky's at Hard Rock Hotel - $7.77 (unpublished - you have to ask for it) meal with steak, three huge grilled shrimp, potato, and salad Station Casinos are the best buffet deals in town (have to be a players card member) - $4.99 for breakfast, $6.99 for lunch, and $9.99 for dinner.

Some excerpts from an article about the NCAA Tournament handle in Las Vegas this year... ( original article ) “This year the opening weekend of the NCAA tournament for us dwarfed the Super Bowl in terms of our network handle,” said Todd Fuhrman, senior sportsbook analyst for Caesars. The sportsbook at the MGM Mirage reported a 40 percent increase in bets on the opening Thursday of the tournament compared to last season. The Nevada Gaming Control doesn’t track betting numbers on the NCAA tournament alone. It lumps the NBA in with college basketball on its monthly revenue reports. But industry officials estimate the NCAA tournament accounts for 70 percent of all basketball wagers in March. Last March, Nevada sportsbooks took $137.5 million in basketball wagers. Nevada sportsbooks took $93.8 million in Super Bowl bets this year. Fuhrman said there’s a good chance his book will have taken more bets on Colorado State-Murray State—the first game to tip on the opening Thursday—than...

This year my friend Tim and I are picking the lines, totals, and money lines for every NCAA tournament game. Picking the money line is basically picking the winner of every game. But it's not quite that simple. You are involving money with the pick. For example, in the Cincinnati/Ohio St game in the sweet 16, if you picked Ohio St to win, that was -375. Cincinnati to win was +310. For a $30 bet on Ohio St, if Ohio St wins, you win $8. For a $30 bet on Cincinnati, if they win, you win $93. That's a big difference. If you think that Cincinnati has more than a 25% chance of winning, then the bet on Cincinnati is the better choice, even if you think Ohio St has a 70% chance of winning. On my Money Line picks, when I pick the favorite, I'm 31-14 (69%). When I pick the underdog, I'm 7-12 (37%). Line bet and total (over/under) bets are more traditional. In line bets, I'm 34-28-2 (55%) - enough to make money in the long run. For totals, I'm 33-31 (52%) - losing mo...

As a follow-up to this post , I have finished picking 1 game every day during the regular season and conference tournaments. That was a total of 122 games in 122 days. I really stumbled to the finish. I went 2-1 in my last 3, but right before that I was on an 12 game losing streak. So I was 62-43-2 at one point (58.9%) but ended up 64-56-2 (53.3%) - barely enough to make money for the season. Of course, if I was doing this for a living, I wouldn't bet exactly one game per day. Some days would be more, some days none at all. When picking the favorites, I was 24-24-2. When picking the underdogs, I was 40-32. Over those last 15 days, I picked 8 favorites (1-7) and 7 underdogs (1-6). So, before my collapse, I was 23-17-2 (57.1%) picking the favorites and 39-26 (60%) when picking the underdogs.

As a followup to yesterday's post about picking all the games, I basically had a "meh" day. I went 42-46 overall. There were 48 total games - 2 of them didn't have any odds posted, 6 of them had totals (over/under) only, and 41 had both lines and totals. Of the 41 games where there was both a line and a total, 7 times I won both, 9 times I lost both, and an astonishing 25 times I won one and lost the other.

Today is the first day of the Big Ten, SEC, ACC, Mountain West, and some other "big conference" tournaments. Conferences like the Big 12, Big East, and Pac-12 have already started. But that means there are a lot of games to pick. For grins, I picked every game that had a line and/or a total today. That's 88 bets spread out over 47 games. Since a lot of these picks are wild guesses, it will be interesting to see how I do overall.

For the 15th time in the last 16 years, the Vegas sports books posted a profit on the Super Bowl. Compared to last year's modest $724,000 profit, this year's profit was $5,064,470 - very nice. Here is an article from the The Vancouver Sun, via Reuters : The value of bets placed in Nevada’s 184 sports books was $93.9 million US, up 7.3 per cent from the $87.5 million wagered on last year’s Super Bowl between Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers, according to the Nevada Gaming Control Board. Sports books in Nevada kept a combined $5 million from Super Bowl bets, or 5.4 per cent of the total wagers placed, unaudited figures showed. That was up significantly from the $724,176 they pocketed last year when the Packers beat the Steelers. Casinos in Las Vegas were initially hoping for a Patriots win in Sunday’s championship game but a slew of late bets for New England over the weekend altered their allegiances. I got the actual number from this web site which lists the actu...

My wife, daughter, and I were all in Houston, TX, for the last few days. We went to the Children's museum twice, the zoo, a bouncy-house place called Pump It Up, and did lots of other fun stuff. After we returned home, we built our daughter's new bed and headboard. After doing all that, I can honestly say that I don't remember when I was this sore last. All this playing and running around and crawling and everything was rough on my body. But my daughter had a blast on vacation and absolutely loves her new bed.

This college basketball season, I have been picking 1 and only 1 game every single day. This started on November 7, 2011. There are a few days when there haven't been any games (Christmas Eve and the day after Christmas being examples). As of February 16, I was 57.7% at 56-41-1. When I pick the favorite, I am 20-17-1 (53.9%). When picking the underdog, I am 36-24 (60%). Picking 1 game a day wouldn't be enough to make a career out of handicapping, but the overall 57.7% is enough to at least think about the possibility. If I had actually been doing this in Las Vegas and betting $200 every game, I would be $1744.80 ahead. Certainly not enough to make a living, though.

As an update to this post , my automatic picking of the totals are now 24-11-1 (68%). That's pretty good. My automatic picking of the lines are 82-78-1 (51%). That's not very good. Picking the favorites are actually killing me - 31-40. Picking the underdogs is 51-38-1 (57%). That 57% isn't enough to quit my day job by any stretch, but it's way better than 43.7% for picking the favorites. It looks like I'll have to change my criteria for when I go with the favorite. In other words, I think I'll have to make more strict criteria for picking the favorite and keep the existing criteria for picking the underdog.

For a few years now I've been playing around with my own college basketball RPI and a way to predict the outcome of games. I always wait until the calendar changes before doing any of the predicting, which gives me three full months of picks every year. This year is only a few days old so far. My system has made 27 line bets and 9 total (over/under bets) with limited success. It's only 5-4 on the totals and 14-13 on the lines. But the interesting thing is the difference when it picks the favorite and when it picks the underdog. When picking the favorite, it's 4-10, which is terrible. But picking the underdog it is 10-3. I'm going to see if this trend keeps going, since it is such a small sample size so far this year.

I just read about a new, up and coming, casino game called 7-14-21. More information can be found on the Wizard Of Odds web site. There is also a online game if you have Adobe Shockwave Flash installed. The idea of the game is you get 6 cards and you have to build 3 hands of 2 cards each. There are no rules in how you build your hand. What you ideally end up with is a hand that totals 21, a hand that totals 14, and a hand that totals 7. Aces count 1 or 11 in any hand. If your hands don't bust (each one individually) they play against the dealer's hands - your 7 hand against the dealer's 7 hand, your 14 against their 14, and your 21 against their 21. It looks like there is no way to write down a strategy. But here's what I figured out: If you can make all three hands total 7, 14, and 21, then obviously do that. If you can make two of the three hands match the values (a 7 and a 21, for example), then do that, no matter what the third hand ends up with. If you ...

One of the things I enjoy doing at the end of every year is to look back at some stats. Today I decided to count up how many different airports I've been to since starting my current job in early 2007. That covers nearly 5 years worth of travel. It turns out that I've been to 56 different airports: ABE (Allentown, PA); ABQ (Albuquerque, NM); ATL (Atlanta, GA); BMI (Bloomington, IL); BNA (Nashville, TN); BOS (Boston, MA); BUF (Buffalo, NY); BWI (Baltimore, MD); CID (Cedar Rapids, IA); CLE (Cleveland, OH); CLT (Charlotte, NC); CMH (Columbus, OH); CSG (Columbus, GA); CUN (Cancun, Mexico); DCA (Washington, DC - Reagan); DEN (Denver, CO); DFW (Dallas, TX); DTW (Detroit, MI); EVV (Evansville, IN); EWR (Newark, NJ); GRR (Grand Rapids, MI); HPN (White Plains, NY); IAD (Washington, DC - Dulles); IND (Indianapolis, IN); LAS (Las Vegas, NV); LAX (Los Angeles, CA); LGA (New York, NY - LaGuardia); MCI (Kansas City, MO); MDW (Chicago, IL - Midway); MEX (Mexico City, Mexico); MGM (Montgomery...

I normally don't stock-pile miles -- I use them for free flights for vacation and stuff. For example, I used 50,000 miles to send my wife and her friend Jenny out to Washington, DC, earlier this year. Since I tend to use miles, I don't think I've ever reached the 100K mile level in my account until today: I could be wrong - I might have gotten there on other airlines in previous years, but I don't think so. I looked back at my records going back to 2008 and I don't see a time when I had 100,000 miles in the bank on any airline. The most I saw was nearly 70,000 miles on United before we moved to Bloomington (and I stopped flying United because they don't fly into BMI).

Following up on my previous travel updates , I officially got both my AA Platinum status and Hilton Diamond status for 2012. I'm in the middle of my last trip of the year right now. This is my 29th Hilton stay for the year (I needed 28), and after my trip out here I now have 60 American segments (I needed 60) and will end up with 62 segments after the return trip. That was cutting it WAY too close for the year - hopefully next year I can do it with a little more room to spare.

My wife bought me a Kindle Fire for my birthday. I have been busy loading it up with books, magazine subscriptions, and apps. I haven't bought any movies yet or put any songs on it yet. But I thought I'd write down what app my apps were, just in case I need this list sometime in the future. Here are the apps I've installed so far: All Recipes Dinner Spinner American Airlines Andoku Sudoku 2 Free Angry Birds Free Audible Calculator Ultimate Lite CalenGoo Craps ESPN ScoreCenter Fandango Movies Golf Digest Magazine Jewels MapQuest Notepad Read It Later Pro Real Blackjack SI Magazine Solitaire The Weather Channel TIME Magazine TripIt Urbanspoon

The 2011 ACC/Big Ten Challenge is now over. The Big Ten won for the 3rd year in a row (after losing the first 10 years straight). The thing that was amazing (to me at least) was how well Vegas did at predicting the winners. On the first day, you could have bet all the favorites and won 5 out of 6. Even the one that you would have lost (Georgia Tech -3 vs Northwestern) would have been a winner with the opening line (Northwestern -1 initially). Here are all the results: Virginia (-3) vs Michigan - Virginia 70, Michigan 58 Georgia Tech (-3) vs Northwestern - Northwestern 76, Georgia Tech 60 Illinois (-4) at Maryland - Illinois 71, Maryland 62 Purdue (-9.5) vs Miami (Florida) - Purdue 76, Miami (Florida) 65 Clemson (-1) at Iowa - Clemson 71, Iowa 55 Ohio State (-7.5) vs Duke - Ohio State 85, Duke 63 Penn State (-5) at Boston College - Penn State 62, Boston College 54 Indiana (-1.5) at North Carolina State - Indiana 86, North Carolina State 75 Michigan State (-7.5) vs Florida Sta...

After a 2-8 horrible week picking college football games, I now stand in 151st place. Ouch. There's only 2 more weeks left in the season, so not much time to make up the ground from such a bad week. I guess the dream is dead...

Ugh. Travel has been pretty heavy the last several weeks. I just finished my 6th week in a row of going somewhere. (One of those was vacation, which helped). Now I'm at home for Thanksgiving week next week, and then back out on the road for three straight weeks (almost full weeks, too) before shutting it down the last couple weeks of the year. I'll make my AA Platinum status easily (I need 60 segments and will end up with anywhere from 62 to 66, depending on what I decide for a couple trips). And I'll easily make my Hilton Diamond status (I need 28 stays and will end up with 30). I just wish that the travel was a bit more spread out. Next year I have to remember to not be so agreeable when someone asks for my availability the last 3 months of the year.

Last week I dropped a bit from 21st place to 28th place. I was only 6-4 that week, and lost by 5, 6, and 7 (out of 10) confidence point games. So that wasn't a very good week. The following week I had a decent week, but dropped to 55th place. I went 7-3, but lost my 9 point game, which really hurt. I'm 10 points out of 2nd place. The person leading has 517 points, with second place at 508 points. I need to pick up my game the final three weeks of the season.