How Green Was My Valley?

This story goes back to my late November/early December trip, the same one that featured the WPBT tournament and the AVP Meet & Greet.  Because I returned to Vegas so soon after that trip, I’ve never had time to write up all the chronicles from that trip.  So hopefully I can get to them now, in addition to those from the more recent trip.

The day after the WPBT, the powers that be in Vegas decided to close the Strip for the Vegas Marathon.  Seeing as how I wasn’t staying on the Strip, this made it difficult to get to the strip to play poker in the evening.  There were back routes to get there, but I figured the traffic would be a mess so I opted to play off the Strip that night.  I tweeted out for suggestions and Stump suggested that I join him at Green Valley Ranch, so I did.

Since making the switch from limit poker to NL, I’ve been reluctant to play in locals casinos, prefer to stick to the tourists on the Strip.  Having played limit at those local places, I assumed that NL at a locals place would be tougher to crack.  Too many tight players….too many nits….plus they’d all know each other and each other’s games.  I thought I might be at a disadvantage.  Being a fairly tight player myself, I figured I’d never get paid off for my good hands.  Aside from a few forays at Red Rock (see here, for example), I’d stuck to the strip for NL.

By the time I got to GVR, Stump was mostly finished with his session.  I helped open a new table and we never got to play together.  The game started out extremely dull.  I got the sense that most of the players knew each other—as I suspected—but they weren’t much for talk.  I was card dead and after awhile, managed to steal a few chips with position raises.  But whenever I had a hand to play, it didn’t pan out.

After a couple of hours of spinning my wheels, finally things got interesting.  A table had broken and a couple of guys with big stacks joined us.  There were already a couple of guys with big stacks at the table, so it looked like things could get interesting.  The big stacked guys definitely knew each other and even started joking about eventually all butting heads.

One of the big stacks who had just joined the table was the most aggressive of any of the players I played with this session.  He was raising a lot.  I wasn’t sure if that was his natural style, or he was just taking advantage of his big stack to bully everyone.  So, I had J/10 of hearts and he raised, as he usuallyl did. He made it $10 or $12 and I called, so did one other player.  The other player and I had around $170 and Mr. Big Stack had over $400.  The flop was Qh-8d-2c.  So I flopped a gut shot and a back door flush draw.

The shorter stack bet out $40 and the aggro guy called.  I started to fold, but thought it over.  I don’t usually put much on the line with gut-shots, but the fact that there were two of them already putting in $40 gave me pause.  If it’s just one it’s pretty bad odds, but with the two of them already in there, it got a little better.  Plus both of these guys had given indications that they might possibly pay me off if I hit my straight—especially the aggro guy.  So there were decent implied odds.  And I had the back door flush possibility, making it a little more appealing.

It was such a slow night for me, I figured, what the hell, let’s roll the dice a little.  As I counted out my forty bucks, I started thinking about the one card I really, really wanted to see on the turn.  The 9 of hearts.  That was the card I was wishing for.  It would give me the nut straight, and also the flush draw.  And it would give me an open ended straight flush draw.

So as the dealer was about to put the turn card down, over and over and over in my mind, all I was thinking was, “9 of hearts, 9 of hearts, 9 of hearts.”

Have you ever gotten the exact card you wished for?  I don’t mean like you’ve got a pocket pair and you’re hoping for one of the other two cards that would give you a set.  I don’t mean where you’ve got a flush draw and you’re hoping for any heart, or any spade.  I don’t mean you’ve got a straight draw and you’re hoping for one of eight cards that complete it, or if it’s a gut shot, one of four.

No, I mean you want an exact card, both the rank and the suit.  I’m sure I’ve prayed for such a card before, but I’d never gotten the exact card I wanted.

Until right then.  Yes, the 9 of hearts was the turn card.  Straight made, flush draw, straight-flush draw now on the board.

Unfortunately, both the shorter stack and the aggro guy checked.  How much should I bet there?  I wasn’t sure.  Having been on the wrong end of some nasty suck-outs recently, I had some flashbacks to them.  A straight is good, but vulnerable.  If I made any other flush but the straight flush, I’d have at least some possibility of losing to a bigger flush.  I decided not to mess around.  Actually, I probably didn’t have much of a choice.  I wasn’t about to check, and my shove was less than the size of the pot.  So I announced “all in” for about $120 more.

The first guy folded instantly, but the aggro guy thought about for awhile, then reluctantly folded.  It was a nice pot, not as good as it could have been, perhaps, but I was happy.  As I was stacking my chips, I suddenly remembered that GVR has high hand bonuses, and if I held out and tried for the straight flush, I would have gotten a bonus.  Oh well, it probably wouldn’t have been worth the risk right?  I refused to check on how much the bonus was so as to not torture myself.

The only other “big” pot I won was a little later; I had Aces in early position, raised to $12, and had four callers.  The flop was Jack high and I bet out $40.  Everyone but the aggro guy folded quickly.  He took some time, looked me up and down…..and then folded.  I was ahead for the night and stayed that way, not getting any cards to invest a lot of money in.

There two other hands of note, neither involved me.  There was a kid to my right who had one hell of a night.  He didn’t talk at all but all the dealers knew him.  Early in the session, he stacked some guy and won a $400--$500 pot when he rivered quad 7’s.  The other guy didn’t show his hand, but based on the way the hand and the betting played out, I assume he had a straight and got unlucky.   The kid got a $20 bonus for the high hand and gave the entire amount to the dealer.

Much, much later, when those big stacks joined the table, the kid got into one hell of a hand with the both of them.  He still had all the money he had won earlier, and then some—at least $600.  The aggro guy about $500, and the other big stack had about $350. The shortest of the three stacks had raised preflop, the other two called.  The flop was K-8-4, rainbow.  There was a lot of betting on the flop.  The turn card is unimportant.  Aggro guy bet, the kid raised, and the short stack looked at the bet, looked at the kid’s remaining stack, and called.  Aggro guy re-raised all in.

The kid didn’t hesitate, but I swear, his voice cracked when he said, “Call.”  He was risking all but around $100 of his stack, and suddenly a really profitable session was in jeopardy.

I don’t remember the bets, but the other guy could have gotten out there, he still would have a decent stack, though his night’s profits would be gone.  But he snap-shoved.

River doesn’t matter either. I was thinking there were probably three sets out there.  Not quite.  Aggro guy flipped over pocket 4’s for bottom set.  The kid flipped over pocket 8’s for middle set. The short stack flipped over….Ace-King.

Yeah, Ace King.  He put over $350 at risk against two guys shoving and all he had is top pair, top kicker.  Can’t blame the aggro guy; set over set, that’s poker.  You’re probably gonna lose your stack when that happens.  But the other guy?  He didn’t realize that at least one of the other two guys could beat his TPTK???  He didn’t even have two pair.  Wow.

The pot was like $1350, one of the biggest, if not the biggest, pots I’d ever seen in a 1/2 NL game.  The kid methodically stacked his chips (the other two guys took off) which took some time.  Interestingly, the guy didn’t tip the dealer, at least immediately.  He kept stacking his chips, and at one point, the dealer said something about the player not liking him.  He used the player’s name.  It was obvious reference to the guy not having tipped him for the huge pot.  First time I can recall a dealer actually “complaining” about not getting tipped.

The kid say he liked him fine, to be patient, I’ll get you.  When he finished stacking, he said, “See, I like you,” and slid a single one dollar chip to the dealer.  But just a few seconds later, as the dealer was “thanking” him, he threw him a couple of $5 chips.

The kid got up a bit later with over $1500 for his $200 buy-in a 1/2 game.  Not a bad several hours.

I left a bit later, happy with my much more meager profits.  On that one hand, I got the exact card I wanted, but I didn’t catch cards like the kid next to me had.

I Think I Got Into His Head

This past Saturday I drove down to The Bike in Bell Gardens, America (oops, that’s Coach’s bit—It’s actually Bell Gardens, CA) to play my first poker session of the new year.  Once again, I bought in for $300 (the max) at their $2/$3 game.

Early in the session, while I was enjoying my free lunch, I looked around and was rather surprised to see my ol’ pal Poker Genius walking around another section of the poker room.  This is the first time I’d ever seen him in L.A., but I do recall reading that he has been spotted at the L.A. poker rooms before.  I figured out quickly that he was likely there because the WSOP is having their circuit events there presently.  There was a $1675 ring event starting that day, plus satellites into the main event.  My guess is that PG was looking for someone to stake him into a satellite, or the bigger event.

He was quite a distance from me and looking in the other direction.  My actual thought was that, if he saw me, he’d probably ask me to stake him!  He soon disappeared from where I saw him and I never noticed him again.  I suppose it was likely that he found a sucker benefactor and was playing in the tournament area, which is in a separate area form the cash game area I was playing in.

Things started slow for me and I wasn’t getting any cards.  However, I do want to point out, for the benefit of Grange95  that I did indeed win a hand with pocket Kings very early in the session (see his comment here for the explanation of why I bring this up).  I had them in middle position.  Two people limped first, I bet $20, and no one called.  So see, Mr. Grange, I can win a pot with pocket Kings!

I was losing close to $!00 after a couple of hours.  I just couldn’t find a place to do anything, and when I got promising cards, the promise seemed to always be broken.  Then a guy who looked familiar sat down next to me, and after a few hands got a seat change to the seat 1 directly next to the dealer.  I was in seat 5.  And I was racking my brains trying to remember this guy.

I was sure I’d played with him at the Bike.  Then it started coming back to me.  He was a very aggressive, very loose player.  Raised a lot preflop.  Made a good deal of bluffs that I knew about, and probably a lot more I didn’t see.  Showed his cards when he bluffed and he didn’t have to sometimes, but would also show a good hand when he didn’t have to as well.  A tricky player to deal with.  He was probably in the same general age range as me, and somewhat distinguished looking. 

Now, my memory isn’t what it used to be. I wasn’t sure if I had mentioned him on the blog or not.  But in getting ready to write this post, I found I had indeed mentioned him, in this post here.  If you read that post, he’s the guy who I called “bluffing guy” there (which, sorry to confuse you, has nothing to do with the bluff of the title).  Since that was a couple of months back, and a lot has happened since then, and I only played with him that one afternoon, and since he wasn’t some hot chick with large breasts, I could have easily not remembered anything about him.

But I remembered this guy, and I knew he was going to be raising light and that he was going to try to bluff.  I was determined to use this knowledge of him to my advantage if I possibly could. Now, of course, I would have figured that out again after playing with him a bit.  But the hand I’m about to describe happened before he had really had a chance to exhibit any of the tendencies I remembered.  He hadn’t been at the table very long, and I had just finished going over my mental file on him.

In middle position, I had Ace-Queen off.  There had been one limper so I made it $15.  Two callers, including this guy, who, I’m calling to call “BG” for bluffing guy, as I named in the previous post.  He was either the small or big blind, which is why he didn’t raise first.  OK, maybe not the reason, as he did limp into pots occasionally.  In fact, a few hands before, he had limped in with 2-3 off and flopped a wheel, and taken a nice pot from a guy with two pair who couldn’t believe he played 2-3 in early position.

The flop was Queen 9 - 7, two diamonds, one heart.  It was checked to me and I bet $50.  The other guy folded but BG called, fairly quickly.

The turn was the 4 of hearts.  He checked again, and as I was considering my action, I suddenly flashed back to the now famous hand I got into with Grump.  What if he checked raised me there?  And did I really want the pot to get too big with only top pair?  So I decided to risk giving him a free card and I checked behind him.

Now I knew for sure that he would bet the river, whether it was a bluff or if he had the goods.  I had shown weakness on the turn and he would want to take advantage.

The river was the 3 of hearts.  True, there were now three hearts on the board, but I felt if he had a flush draw, diamonds was a lot more likely, since it had been runner-runner hearts.  Of course, he could have had 5-6 for the straight, I couldn’t rule that out.  Hell, I couldn’t rule out that he had 3-4 and had gone runner runner two pair.

But if my memory was correct, I knew there was an excellent chance that any bet there was going to be a bluff.

So indeed, he bet out, putting a nice neat stack of $100 in front of him.  I really didn’t take too long.  As soon as I realized he was going to bet, I knew I was going to call.  I just thought it was well over 50/50 that he was bluffing.

I put out my stack of $100, which would have left me with less than $100 left if lost, and he said, “good call.”  But he didn’t muck so I had to show my hand.*** (see addendum below)  When he saw what I had, he said “good hand” and mucked, so I don’t know what he had. 

I could tell by his body language though, he didn’t think it was a good call.  I swear, I was sure he was thinking how could I call there with only top pair, top kicker?.   He hadn’t shown a bluff yet on that day, how did I know?  Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I swear that’s what I was sensing.  And part of me wanted to “brag” to him that I knew he was bluffing because of the previous time we’d played together, which I remembered and he had not, though of course, I never would do that.

He clearly didn’t remember me.  As the day wore on, and he saw how tight I was playing, I think he became even more surprised at my call there.  Meanwhile, he started demonstrating the exact game that I remembered, lots of preflop raises (usually $15, though sometimes $20) and lots of showing his bluffs as well as his strong hands.   And after some early losses, he re-bought and started building up his stack again. 

And then I noticed one hand he played against another player.  The other player had made a good size preflop raise, and BG three bet, 3x the guy’s bet.  The other didn’t have much more than the amount of the raise, so he shoved and BG called.  The other guy had a pocket pair, 10’s I think, and BG had AK off and hit his Ace to take the pot.

I guess I wasn’t surprised that he three-bet with AK, but it caught my attention.  To me, in a cash game, that’s not really a good play.  But it depends on your opponent, doesn’t it?  I guess it was ok there because the guy didn’t have a huge stack, but I saw him do it again against someone with a stack almost as big as his—who was a much tighter player than he was.

So I recalled that hand when I was dealt AK offsuit in middle position.  Under the gun, BG raised to $20.  It folded to me.  As you can infer from the previous paragraph, re-raising there isn’t something I’d normally do.  In fact, I doubt I’d ever three-bet AK in a cash game before.  But again, I knew my opponent.  I knew his raising range there was pretty close to any two cards. There was a guy two seats away from me that was playing a lot tighter than I was, if you can believe it.  I wouldn’t have 3- bet him with anything less than KK.  In fact, a little earlier, when that guy had raised preflop, and it folded around to BG, as he went to look at his hand, he said, “I’m not calling with anything but Aces or Kings.”

Anyway, I figured I’d raise it so everyone else would get out, and if he did call, it would just be heads up.  So I made it $60.  If folded to him and he thought for quite a while, and then folded….face up.  He had pocket 6’s.  I didn’t show, and he gave me a very inquisitive look, sort of expecting me to reveal my cards.  Truth be told, he had shown a lot of his hands that he didn’t have to, including that one.  I kind of liked the idea of keeping the information flowing, and also, I kind of liked the guy.  I did admire his game.  So, I mouthed to him “Ace King.”

I know I had surprised him again.  By this point, having played with me for several hours, I think he would have been his house that I’d only 3-bet with Aces, Kings, and maybe, maybe, on my loosest day, Queens.  Heh heh.  He was again rather disturbed.  He said something like, “I guess 55-45 isn’t good enough against you.”  He was upset that he put me on a better hand, and upset that he hadn’t called when he was ahead.  He only folded because he thought he had a two-outer. 

I started to think I had gotten into his head.  On a hand he was in with another player, that I had absolutely nothing to do with, he made a laydown against a big raise, and said something to the effect that “he would have called.”  The “he” he was referring to was yours truly, he was looking right at me when he said it.

I wasn’t sure how to use this information—that I was in his head—but I knew I had to tread carefully.  No sense getting too cocky and giving him back his money.

I came real close to make a move against him one other time.  He made a small raise in a hand I’d already limped into with pocket 5’s.  There were some other callers between us.  The flop was Queen high and missed me completely.  I checked and he made a bet of about half the pot.

I thought it over.  I knew there was an excellent chance the flopped had missed him.  There was a decent chance my fives were good.  There was also a chance a check-raise there would cause him to fold.  OTOH, since I told him I only had AK on that other hand, he might now be more inclined to give me credit for making a move, and be willing to call me on it.

I decided to play it safe and fold.  And I was somewhat surprised when he said to me, “I would have folded to a big bet.”  I instantly responded with the truth, “I was thinking about it.”

But I wondered why he said that.  Surely, he was trying to set me up.  I think he was trying to get me to make that move against him the next time with a weak hand and he’d re-pop it, whether he had a hand or not.  Or maybe I’m thinking a little too much?

Anyway, the opportunity never present itself.  After five hours, I’d had enough and took off.  Most of the money I made from BG I had distributed in small pieces to other players, so it wasn’t a particularly profitable session.  But I took solace from having won some money with some good reads on a certain player, knowing that doing this more often and more reliably will be a key to improving my game.

***-Addendum (1/16/13):

As Neo & Mojo commented below, I misspoke, or misstyped.  I did not have to show my hand.  I could have--and should have--insisted he show his hand first, since I had called.  I think I was basically just so delighted that my read was right--and also that I had won the hand--that I didn't bother to stick up for my right to demand he show first.  Really, I was too busy doing my little happy dance in my head to do it.

While that was a bad play, I have to say, I think it worked to my advantage to show that hand (I might have had to anyway, if I had forced him to show, he probably would have), as I described in this post, I think that seeing I had called with such a (relatively) weak hand really distracted him, or as I titled the post, got into his head.  You could say I gave away free information to the other players I suppose, but I think it was minimal damage.  But yes, that was a bad play on my part.

And thanks to my readers for pointing this out!

Lying, Sleazy Sports Handicappers

This is a bit off topic for my blog, but not that much.  I would say if I hadn’t spent so much time involved in poker the past year or two, I probably wouldn’t have done what I did in this story, I probably wouldn’t have made the phone call I did.  But hanging around poker rooms, I am constantly hearing players talking about their sports bets, their parlays, their teasers, their round-robins, etc.  Also, a lot of the fine bloggers you see on my blog roll cover sports betting as much—or even more—than they do poker (examples:  LuckiDuck & Coach).  There seems to be a connection.  And I’ve actually discussed sports betting a little bit before, in this post.

Actually, this is more a post about some blatantly false advertising I heard on the radio, which had to do with the NFL playoffs the weekend of January 12-13.  And even if you don’t follow football, or give a damn about sports betting, I think there’s a good chance you’ll find this story interesting.

On Saturday morning, before any of the NFL playoff games had started, I was driving in L.A. on my way to an appointment, and flipping through the dials on my radio.  I found a station where some guys were talking about the playoffs, so I started listening.  It soon became apparent this was not a regular sports talk show or a normal preview of the weekend’s games.  The guys on the show were all talking from the perspective of how to bet the games, not to what to look for as a football fan.

I soon realized this was a sports handicapping show, and what I was actually listening to was basically an hour long infomercial.  The “hosts” were telling the listeners that certain handicappers had absolute locks for the games this weekend, and if you followed their advice, you would be a big winner with your NFL playoff bets.

I was amused.  I’ve actually heard these types of shows before and for reasons I cannot explain, find them oddly entertaining.  I knew I could switch over to a “real” sports show where some expert would tell me why Aaron Rodgers was going to carve up the 49’er defense (ahem), but I found this strangely more interesting.  Especially when some guy said he had a 92% win rate for the current NFL season and he had “an absolute lock” for the late game that day, Green Bay at San Francisco.  He insisted the Vegas line of 3 points was way, way off.  He said the team that was going to win was going to win by at least three touchdowns.  Yeah, that’s what he said.

Now I must admit I don’t follow the NFL nearly as much as I used to.  It used to be my favorite sport, and there was a time where I could honestly say I never missed a Monday Night Football game, and when I almost never missed the Sunday double-header.  But that was a long time ago.  For reasons I won’t go into, I’ve paid less and less attention to the game as the years have gone by, and these days, the NBA is by far and away my favorite sport.  Now, I really only start watching the sport when the playoffs start (I can still say I’ve seen every single Super Bowl except the first one—and only because that one was actually blacked out in L.A.).  But this brings us back to poker.  Because of all the NFL talk at poker tables, I’m able to absorb a fair amount about the current season and the teams without really trying.

So I was intrigued when this so call expert handicapper said the 49’ers-Packers game, which I was looking forward to watching, was going to be rout.  Like the Vegas oddsmakers, I expected a tight game.  And here was this guy insisting the winning team was going to win easily. 

Of course, he wouldn’t say on the radio who the winning team was going to be.  For that you had to call a 800 number, presumably his office phone number.  Now, I understand the way this guy makes money is by selling his sports picks to sports bettors.  In that sense, he’s like a financial advisor selling his advice on which stocks to buy.  But as I’ve heard other times I’ve heard shows like this, he was offering to tell you the winner of the 49’er’s-Packers game for free.

Yes, free.  You see, all you had to do was call his toll-free number, and you would hear a pre-recorded message that would tell you which team, the 49’ers or the Packers, would win the game by at least 3 touchdowns.  The caller would then be able to place a bet on that team and win as much as they felt comfortable betting.  And he made it clear that this pick was absolute slam-dunk sure-thing winner.  There was like no chance the other team could win.  It was essentially money-in-the-bank.  The guy had different levels of picks, some marginal, some sure things, and this was a definite sure thing.

If the guy makes a living selling this information, why would he give you this pick free?  Well, he explained, if you get this pick, bet on it, and win a bundle with it, you will be so happy, and will so clearly see the benefit of using this guy’s service in the future, you will be only too happy to subscribe to the service.  In other words, this is a loss leader.  He gives you the first one for free, you will like the results, see how much money you can make from paying this guy for future sports picks, and be more than willing to pay his fee.

It made sense.  They also had another handicapper on, who had a similar “lock” for one of the Sunday games (I don’t recall which one).  But it was the 49’er game that kept intriguing me, because what this guy was saying seemed so out of line with what I was expecting from this game.

So, it was a long drive and I started toying with the idea of actually calling his 800 #.  After all, he said it was a pre-recorded message.  And it would be totally free.  Now, I had absolutely no intention of making a bet on the game, that’s just not my thing.  But I was actually really curious as to which team was going to win by such a big score, or at least, which team this so called expert thought would.

Yes, I knew that it was very possibly a scam.  That it wouldn’t be exactly what it said it was.  But I thought that would be interesting to find out.  I also thought, well, they’ve only repeated like 87 times that that if you called the number, you would get the team to bet absolutely free and that you would get a pre-recorded message.  They said that over and over and over again.  It couldn’t be clearer.  And this was an over the air radio station.  Certainly truth-in-advertising laws apply. 

So, what the hell, I had some time before I got to my destination.  I had time to dial an 800 number and hear a pre-recorded message that would tell me whether it was the 49’ers or the Packers who win the game by at least 3 touchdowns.  And then, when I watched the game, everything that happened would be filtered through that perspective….did that interception, did that touchdown, did that fumble, help or hurt the guy’s pick?  It might add a whole new layer to the game, without my actually having to risk any money of my own on it. 

So I called the number.  After a few rings, a guy came on the line.  Not a pre-recorded message, but a real, live, person. Who sounded like he belonged on The Sopranos.  I suppose I should have hung up immediately, but I figured at this point it would be fun to see what was going to happen.

The guy said he worked for the handicapper I was hearing on the radio and said something like, “We know on the radio it said you’d get a pre-recorded message, but it’s actually a little different than that.”  No shit.  It’s not a little different.  What they said on the radio was an outright lie. 

The guy asked me my first name.  I gave him a phony one.  The guy asked me my phone number.  I gave him a phony one (though, with caller ID, he has, in theory, one of my numbers).

Then he asked if I was calling out of curiosity or because I am a sports bettor wanting to use the information to place a bet.

I said that I was mostly curious, but that I do sometimes make sports bets.  So, I told a fib, but you know, once I realized that they were blatantly lying on the radio, I felt no compunction to be honest.

He asked, if he gave me the name of the team to bet, did I have a way of placing the bet?  I suppose I could have said that I was in Vegas (as I frequently am) and that I could place it at  a sports book.  But instead I said yes, I have an online account (not true).

He asked how much I usually bet on individual games.

I had to play this out a little longer.  “Oh not much, usually about $10-$100.”

I was wondering if that was too little to be of interest to him, but he pressed on.  “If I gave you this pick, which is an absolute lock, an absolute guaranteed winner, and you were sure you would win with it, what’s the most you would put down on the game?”’

Sigh, Ok, I’ll play a little longer.  “Oh, maybe $250, tops.”

“OK, so if you bet the $250 and won, and you will win, then you’d have $500 in your offshore account.  Then I’d give you the pick for tomorrow, which is also an absolute lock.  And you’d bet that game, and at the end of the weekend you’d have $1,000 in your offshore account.  That’s pretty good, right?”

I said yes, waiting for the shoe to drop.  “So, well, I know this isn’t exactly as we say on the radio, but for that $1000 you’re gonna make, that’s worth….that’s gotta be worth the $100 membership fee for to you sign up for our service, so you can get all our picks, including absolute locks like these two…..right?”

I didn’t say anything for a few seconds.

“So what do you say, will you sign up for membership for $100 to get these two picks?”

I’d had enough.  I said, “No. This isn’t anything like what you advertise on the radio, so goodbye."  And I clicked off.

I found the whole thing amusing, but disturbing.  Are all sports handicappers this scummy?  I mean, he could say on the show that it’ll cost you to get the information.  Instead, he lies that it’s free, and lies that you get a pre-recorded message.  I imagine most callers don’t stay on the line as long as I did, seeing as how dishonest the thing was.

Then I turned the radio back on.  They were finishing up, and the guy was giving his one free bet on the radio..  Yes, he was giving you a bet to make without having to call his 800 # and get the “pre-recorded message.”  He said bet the over in 49’er game.  He said that the team that’s gonna win will cover the over all by themselves. 

I started replaying the whole conversation in my mind, and realized that I had maybe a good story.  And then I started wondering a few things.  For one thing, since everything else the guy said was a lie, I wondered if the whole three-touchdown thing was a lie too.  I could imagine that if I’d given the guy my $100, he’d then say, “Oh that was another thing that we said on the radio that wasn’t quite true.  It’s really is going to be a close game.  So, the Niners will win, but they won’t cover.  Bet the Packers.”  That would be funny.  I also wondered—if I had said I could bet $10k on the game, would that membership fee would be substantially more than $!00?

Originally, I was planning to give the name of the sleazy handicapper, as he is a lying scumbag who deserves no protection.  But for reasons I won’t go into here, I’ve decided not to out him here on the blog.  I have a hunch that maybe they’re all like this, but I can’t say that for sure.

Anyway, later that night, watching the game, I of course couldn’t stop thinking of the handicapper.  First of all, my working assumption, rightly or wrongly, was that if any team was going to win by 3 TD’s, it would be the Packers.  Ooops.  But during the first half, it sure looked like that "win by 3 touchdowns" thing was way off, as it was a close game, with the teams exchanging scores all half.  I was hoping for a very close game, regardless of who won, just so the guy would be proven totally wrong.

But the second half was quite different, as you know.  The Niner's were indeed up by 3 TD's at the very end, but missed the "3 TD" prediction only because the Pack scored a meaningless touchdown in the game’s final minutes.  But that doesn’t matter if the guy was picking the Niner’s, because they more than covered the 3 points they had to and I’m sure that the guy wasn’t going to suggest you find a bookie who would give you a money line on the Niner’s winning by 21.  I really would be curious if they guy had it right, it was such a lock.  Did he really pick SF by 3 TD’s?  Or did he pick Green Bay and is there a huge amount of egg on his face…and big red deficits in his subscriber’s accounts? I’ll never know.

But I have to give him credit for one thing.  He was right about the over/under.  I tweeted to find out the line there and it was 45.  So over was definitely the way to bet, as he said.  In fact, The 49’ers hit the over all by themselves, as he had predicted.

But he’s still a lying sleazeball.