Lazy Sunday

If you held a gun to my head and forced me to come up with something I liked about Canada, I could actually come up with two. And oddly enough, they both involve Sundays.

The first is Alan Cross, whose Ongoing History of New Music is one of the best music documentary programs ever produced. I like to set my alarm for Sunday @ 9am, and then just lie in bed listening to his show, which my local Corus station, FM96, plays for two hours on Sunday mornings. Alan Cross is a national treasure, and should be listened to by anybody with eardrums.

The second thing I like about Canada is our legalized sports gambling, Pro-Line. I can go down to my local Mac's and buy a ticket making my picks for the weekend's football games. I can actually bet on a whole host of sports, but I only bet on football. From what I can tell, the only major sporting event missing from Proline is NBA, which they used to offer, but the NBA forced them to drop it when Toronto was trying to get the Raptors. Seems certain NBA stars at the time had a small problem with gambling. *cough*MJ*cough*

Of course, the only drawback to having sports gambling overseen by the Ontario Lottery & Gaming Commission is that its not as simple as picking one team to win, or cover the spread. Instead, I have to pick a minimum of three games, and up to a maximum of six. I usually play the straight Pro-Line, wherein you choose a game, and then select one of five outcomes: Visitor by 8, Visitor by 4, Tie (either team wins by three points or less), Home by 4, and Home by 8. These outcomes are all given a value of at least 1.1, and once you have selected your three to six games, those values are multiplied together to determine your odds, and then multiplied by the value of your bet to determine your potential winnings. Riskier picks means better money, but is harder to win. Playing six games also increases your potential winnings, but means you have to get that many more picks correct. So its obviously in the house's, or government's favour. But its still fun.

What I tend to do is to play one ticket with the 1:00 games, one ticket with the 4:00 games, and another ticket that I call the Kwik-Pik, where I find the range for the day's football games, then make six random selections.

Here are my picks for this week:

1:00 Games

NYJ @ TEN, TEN by 04 pts. Odds: 1.90
BUF @ NE, NE by 08 pts. Odds: 1.50
SEA @ DET, SEA by 04 pts. Odds: 1.30
PHI @ HOU, PHI by 04 pts. Odds: 1.50

Total Odds: 5.56
$2 bet = $11.10

4:00 Games
DAL @ JAX, TIE Game Odds: 2.80
CHI @ GB, CHI by 04 pts. Odds: 1.80
SF @ ARZ, ARZ by 04 pts. Odds: 1.30

Total Odds: 6.55
$2 bet = $13.10

Kwik-Pik
NYJ @ TEN, TEN by 04 pts. Odds: 1.90
SEA @ DET, DET by 08 pts. Odds: 6.20
IND @ NYG, TIE Game Odds: 3.10
CHI @ GB, CHI by 08 pts. Odds: 2.40
NWO @ CLE, NWO by 04 pts. Odds: 2.50
ATL @ CAR, TIE Game Odds: 3.50

Total Odds: 766.88
$2 bet = $1533.80

Right now, things aren't looking so good for my 1 o'clock or my Kwik-Pik. But I've still got my $13.10 4:00 ticket.