Some of you may find this hard to believe, but I\’ve never placed a sports bet in a casino. Horse racing, yes … but football, baseball, basketball, soccer … nope. Have come close a few times to betting on Wigan, but in the end decided to just \”pretend bet\” … and I went on to lose a pretend few hundred dollars. I guess it\’s for the same reason I\’ve never tried heroin. From what I understand, heroin feels great, but I suppose I fear I\’d like it too much and/or would find my new junkie friends far more appealing than anyone I know from poker. But now I am starting to reconsider …
I play in a little free NFL pick\’em league with my family each year — hosted online by the Las Vegas Review Journal with 7-Eleven gift certificates and Fatheads for prizes — and this year, seven weeks into the season, I\’m kinda kicking butt.
Having correctly picked 71 of 102 winners, I\’m in the top 1 percent: 21st out of 9,379 in Las Vegas, and 155th out of 131,525 nationwide.
Among the 13 people in the Michalski group, I am in first place. While I\’m proud of that, you should realize that competition includes my 1-year-old nephew who always picks teams named after animals, Uncle Ray who writes in \”Ditka\” for every pick, and my cousin-in-law Phil the Filmmaker:
There\’s also a cool little \”Survivor\” sidegame, where you have to pick one team that will be a certain winner each week — you get to use each team once. I\’m still alive in that, too … 400 of us are in LV, and about 3,400 nationwide. I think winning that comes with some real prizes actually … man, if/when I go out in that, I know I\’ll be feeling some serious withdrawal.
OK, sorry, back to poker …
