Betting news, trends, odds and predictions from various handicappers and websites for Friday 8/23/19
Friday's List of 13: Random stuff with weekend here…….
13) MGM took two huge bets on the Astros Wednesday:
$55,000 on Houston -$550 to win $10,000
$63,520 on Houston -$575 to win $11,000
Another bookmaker reported from Las Vegas on this game:
“Under our Listed Pitchers market, we have $10 on the Tigers. Literally. And $60K on the Astros.”
12) If you wagered $100 on the Astros in each of Justin Verlander’s last three starts, you’d be out a total of $1,170. Not good.
Verlander has allowed 57 runs this season; 40 of them scored on home runs.
11) I’m anxious to see what the sportsbook at Rivers Casino in Schenectady will be like when college football has its first full Saturday on August 31st. Would expect pretty big crowds, and the sportsbook is not a big area, but they do have lot of betting kiosks, so that should help.
10) SLS Las Vegas will officially become Sahara Las Vegas on August 29; the SLS used to be the Sahara- the original Sahara Hotel & Casino opened in 1952 with 240 rooms. It grew to more than 1,700 rooms after several add-ons and a final renovation in 2000.
I stayed there once, in 2015; good eating places, the tightest video poker machines ever— asked a bartender if anyone ever won there (I couldn’t win a single hand for like an hour). No sports book to speak of, just a counter to bet games. Beer garden was pretty popular.
My room was so small it made me laugh; seriously. They had mirrors all over, to make the room look bigger, even on the ceiling— the last damn thing I want to see while I’m laying in bed is me.
Pretty good place for eating/shopping, but not my kind of place.
9) Raiders 22, Packers 21— This game was played in Winnipeg; NFL fields are shorter than CFL fields, and the turf in one end zone where the goalposts usually are for Blue Bomber games was a little screwed up, so the teams played on an 80-yard field and there were no kickoffs.
Next week’s Hard Knocks should be pretty interesting.
8) Red Sox 5, Royals 4 (10)— This was the completion of a suspended game from August 7; Brock Holt got the game-winning hit.
Royals lost in Baltimore Wednesday night, then flew to Boston for this, which lasted a total of 11 pitches, and then flew to Cleveland, where they’ll likely lose more games this weekend.
7) Baseball stuff:
— Colorado put P Kyle Freeland (leg) on the IL.
— Pirates released C Francisco Cervelli
— Mets DFA’d SS Ruben Tejada.
6) As of Thursday night, 60% of money wagered on Saturday’s Miami-Florida (-7.5) game was on the Gators, while 69% of the money on the Hawai’i-Arizona (-11) game is on the Rainbows.
5) Ravens 26, Eagles 15— Baltimore has now won 16 preseason games in a row (13-2 vs spread), but 40-year old Josh McCown came off the bench and completed 17-24 passes for 192 yards and two TD’s, so Philly has their backup QB.
Game was stopped with 11:54 left (weather) and never resumed, so sides/totals wagers are refunds, which is a bitter pill for Baltimore backers.
4) Major League Baseball is prohibiting major league and minor league ballplayers from participating in the Venezuelan winter league this year, because our country recently placed an embargo on Venezuela.
Jose Altuve, Felix Hernandez, Pablo Sandoval, Ronald Acuna, Gleyber Torres, Ender Inciarte and Avisail Garcia are all from Venezuela; strong baseball country.
3) Bob Cousy received the Presidential Medal of Freedom Thursday night; Cousy, 91, won six NBA titles in his 13 years playing with the Celtics. He was MVP of the NBA in 1957, and also was a decent actor— he was Western U’s athletic director in the excellent movie Blue Chips.
Cousy was the only son of poor French immigrants living in New York City during the Depression; he spoke French only for the first five years of his life. Cousy’s father served in the German army during World War I.
2) Baltimore Orioles gave up their 259th home run this season Thursday, breaking the all-time single-season record previously held by the 2016 Reds.
1) ACC Network made its debut Thursday; it is channel 612 on DirecTV, right next to the Big 14 (610) and SEC (611) channels but nowhere near the Pac-12 Network, since DirecTV doesn’t carry that station.