💰 My Embarrassing Sports Betting Secret

In this week's P.O. Box:

This feels somewhat embarrassing to admit, but I have yet to make a legal sports bet in Massachusetts despite it going live in the state over two months ago.

Granted, I've been preoccupied with best ball and mulching and building out a home gym, it still feels like something I should have done by now.

For whatever reason, sports betting just doesn't capture my attention in the way fantasy sports do. I respect the grind of bettors hunting for arbitrage opportunities. I enjoy poking around on odd shopper tools to see what bells and whistles are available. I even like the idea of going bonus hunting for all of the available offers.

But it's all theoretical. In practice, it just doesn't get the juices flowing for me. It feels tedious; a Sisyphean task for a marginal ROI.

At my core I'm a peer-to-peer GPP/tournament bro. I like the idea of putting in a little for a chance to win a lot. I love the exercise of trying to piece together a DFS slate or the shape-shifting dynamics of a live draft vs. eleven other opponents.

There is one big exception to this general sports betting malaise, though, and it's betting with my college buddies.

Over the years I've discovered that there's nothing better than a communal sweat with friends.

It's the same appeal of co-managing a fantasy team. It's the one instance where someone else cares about your fantasy team...because it's theirs too.

For the past ten or so years, my college buddies and I have done an annual trip during the Divisional Round weekend of the NFL playoffs to essentially just play poker and bet on sports (often in an incredibly silly manner, like 10-leg college basketball parlays or betting no score in the first 6 minutes of an NFL game).

We've done Vegas a handful of times (it was one of these trips that spawned the infamous Manz poker vlog). One year I convinced everyone to randomly go to Biloxi, Mississippi because I desperately needed a change of scenery. During the COVID year, we did a sad one over Zoom. And last year, we mixed it up and went to Lake Tahoe, where we somehow thought it was a good idea to do an alcohol-assisted polar plunge:

And this year we really flipped the trip on its head and I'm hosting them all at my house this weekend. It was too tricky to do multiple trips in the winter with a two-month old, so we decided to flex the trip to the spring and save me the hassle of traveling.

We've collectively been on a bit of a betting heater in the lead up to the trip, too:

• We placed one single futures bet for the World Cup...on Argentina

• We placed three futures bets for the NCAA tournament...on UCLA, Arizona, and...UCONN

• And we placed three bets at the start of the NHL playoffs...on the Devils, the Kraken, and the Knights.

We've also had fun tailing D.J. Mitchell's hockey pick 'em slips on Underdog. My buddies could care less about best ball drafts, but they will snap tail any pick 'em I post, sometimes even fiending for them if I forget to share:

I'm not sure what all we will get up to this weekend, but I do know that we are going to venture to the Encore Casino to play some poker and yes, place my first legal sports bet in the state.

That means no Best Ball After Dark this weekend, but I'll see you Monday morning for Best Ball Breakfast, where I'm sure I will be in tip top shape.

Oh, and I also got updates on my home gym/sauna set up, so I'll share those soon as well.

📺 BBM4 Drafts: #16 & #17 Best Ball Breakfast, #18 & #19 Splash Play, #20 Swolecast, #21 Fantasy Life, #22 Ship Chasing.

💡 Best Ball Tips. Overweight vs. balanced exposures.

🎯 My 3 favorite pockets of the draft board. Will be interesting to see how long these last.

🎽 Underdog Cardio Club is back. Let's go Deposit Kingdom.

📅 3 teams with easy playoff schedules. Falling in love with Jordan Love.

🍽️ I feasted on an 18-course meal at the Best Ball Mania restaurant and also took a vow to never draft this Cowboys WR ever again.

🛒 Why I'm buying Javonte Williams. I don't think the discount is going to last.

I've mentioned the Best Ball Data Bowl a few times on my streams and in this newsletter, but the other day I hosted a best ball data roundtable with Ben Dominguez and Sam Hoppen about the rise of best ball data analysis, the benefits of learning programs like Python and R., why best ball is the perfect puzzle, the trickiness of small sample sizes and descriptive analysis, and the first ever Best Ball Data Bowl:

The reviews have been very positive:

Later in the ep, Lou Sherman and Josh Lee swung by to share their experiences with the Fantasy Data Pros coding course and their ideas for submissions to the Best Ball Data Bowl.

I recommend watching the whole thing if you are interested, but I also want to highlight that Underdog is kicking in a free shirt for anyone who submits to the contest:

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