Went 2-2, +1.29 the last few days.  Only up in that span because I put more stock in the Tigers in game one on their trip to Minnesota than the other three games.  Today I looked at a few, but not too in depth.  Might be over analyzing the games lately, so I'm going to let feel dictate the games below tonight.

LAD -127 @ 1.27 units (Win, +1)
CWS +100 @ 1.5 units (Loss, -1.5)
CIN +1.5 -200 @ .4 units (Loss, -.4)

Backing down a little on my units per game now that my virtual bankroll is a little bit smaller.  Had I kept the units small to begin with, I wouldn't have dropped into the lower bracket so quickly, but I've got to press when I think I have the advantage....at least I believe I do.  We'll see.  Hopefully I can start another great run today and not worry about it at all.

Totals to date:
35-29, +6.02 units

Update 4/27/14:

Game results and totals above have been updated.  Looks like my big "feel" game yesterday was my downfall....but that doesn't stop me from trying again today.  I got a feeling on this one.

PHI +115 @ 2 units

Phillies can show they are the better team today by taking 2/3 from Arizona while on the road.  Tough to get a series win on the road, but I think they do it....and I was ready to lay for this game, so the fact that I am taking makes it that much better, and worth an extra unit.

Time to Upgrade

Long gone are the days where I used to know every matchup in the NHL and NBA playoffs when they start.  About halfway through round one of both, I can probably get 75% of the matchups and maybe who is in the lead....but that's really asking too much.  I only bring this up because I find it interesting that I am looking more into how well I can predict outcomes versus the spread in more and more sports, when I am paying less and less attention to them.  Then again, my life has never been without contradictions.

Even with the NFL, which I absolutely love, I am paying less and less attention.  The 2014 schedule was announced today, and I am yet to take a serious look at it.  I took a cursory glance at the schedule for the Lions, but nothing else.  I didn't even pay attention to who they play on Thanksgiving this year.  I know the options were very limited though....when the list of 2014 opponents came out, I noticed we had very few home games versus AFC teams this year (I want to say 2) and they have to play an AFC opponent this year because we played GB last year.  I dunno.  I'm sure I'll check right after I post this, just to quell my curiosity.

Speaking of predicting sports outcomes, the last 7 have been very unkind to me.  The Tigers have lost to the White Sox 2 out of the last three days, and I was on the Tigers (laying a pretty steep price) for both losses, but NOT on them for the win.  This is the art of picking MLB games I need to pick up.  I can get a decent feel for who will win how many out of each series, but if you guess wrong on two of the three days, that's not going to do you any good.

My last 7 picks went 2-5 for a total loss of 7.31 units, cutting my season total by more than half.  Time to reassess my unit amounts for each game, as that seems to be doing me more harm than the actual losses.  Totals are below.

Totals to date:
32-25, +5.63 units

On the non-sports front, a few things of note this week.  Purchased new phones for Little Miss and I today.  We are now the proud owners of Samsung Galaxy S5s....kind of.  The store had no phones in stock, so they are being shipped to us and should be at the house by Friday, but we had to go into the store to get the buy one, get one promotion on the phone....kind of.  Unbeknownst to us, the promotion had ended on Sunday.  That also was unbeknownst to our salesman, Sean, until he tried to put the order in for us.  You see, today was the third time we were in that store since Friday, when we took my parents in to upgrade their phones (which is a story in and of itself) and had seen the ad for the promotion each time, which is why we went to the store to buy them instead of just upgrading online like normal.

Anyway, after Sean walked away to place our order, he ended up talking to someone else in the store with a Verizon Edge t-shirt on, I'm assuming it was a manager, even though the t-shirt would have made me think otherwise.  When he returns to talk to us, he informs us that the promotion had ended on Sunday, and that we'd have to pay the upgrade price of $200 for each phone instead of $200 for both.  At first I was kinda bummed and all like "okay....I guess we'll do it because we want that particular phone", but when Little Miss pressed more about it and I found out the manager had come and actually pulled the posted BOGO price cards out from under the phones right behind me while Sean was breaking the news to us, I was resolute about getting that promotion.

At first I asked to see the cards, which were taken away less than 5 minutes before I asked, so I could take a picture of it and the fine print to make sure it didn't have an expiration date on it like some of the other cards there did.  The manager had Sean tell us he had already placed them in the "burn box" and we were out of luck with that.  That was #2 and #3 (with sneaking in behind me to get the cards #1) in terms of problems I was holding against the manager.  First, I believed it to be BS that the cards were irretrievable and he just did that to stonewall us.  Honestly, I might have done the very same thing....but I would have addressed it personally, and not made the salesman explain it.

Of course, that wasn't good enough for me.  I asked Sean to have the manager to give us a signed statement that those promotion cards were out when we placed our order, because state law says that it would have to be honored, and I would contact the corporate office to try and get the difference back on our order.  After a few minutes, Sean returned and let us know the manager would honor the BOGO offer for us, and showed it to me on the order screen.  He also covered for the manager by saying he was on the phone with his supervisor working all this out.  At that point it didn't really matter, I had already discounted the manager's effectiveness at that time and was completely unsurprised at that point that he wouldn't make contact with us at all.  In my experience, it's always best to address things like this in person, no matter what the answer is going to be.  But, again, it didn't matter at that point, and Sean was much better at handling the situation than we had any right to expect.  Definitely an excellent salesman.

The other non-sports front I was referring to above is the fact that I am applying for a new job, not with my current company....and not in my current state of residence either.  I won't go into detail about it, but I haven't been this excited for a job prospect in a long time.  Whether I get the job or not, I know it is something I would excel at and a job I would like going to every day, and it's nice to know that opportunities like that still exist for me.

I think I've rambled on enough for one day, so it's off to check out a few things about the phone I forgot to look into before signing the dotted line today, no deal-breakers obviously, but a couple things I want to know about before I get the phone in my hand in a few days.

Bigger Units

Only 5 picks over the last two days, but two of those involved pretty large units on the line.  Yesterday I got down on Pit -118 @ 1.4 units and DET -115 @ 4.6 units.  I was sure the Tigers would get their bats going this weekend, which they did by scoring 6 on Friday, but I had no idea the Angels would hang 11 runs on us.  Boston came through with my first big pick of the season last week, and my faith in the Tigers erased that effort.  Hey, I thought I had a significant edge at the price I saw, and went for it.  Kinda like Blackjack, you need to bet big when your advantage is the biggest to make money, and that's the thought behind that pick.  Either way, I lost both for a total of -6 units.  Below is my updated record so far this season, with today's picks below that.

Totals to date:
30-20, +12.94 units

Cle -118 @ 1.18 units (Loss, -1.18)
Atl -128 @ 1.28 units (Win, +1)
Tex -117 @ 5.8 units (Win +4.96)

I've already talked about how I like to go against teams who scored in double digits on the previous day, like Texas did last night against Chicago, but I still think this matchup today is heavily in Texas' favor and have no qualms with a high unit pick. 

Update:
Results for today's games have been added, totals updated.

VAST Is.....

I hadn't heard or even thought about this song in years.  Heard it on iTunes Radio tonight and had to listen to it a couple more times, as well as check out the video of course.  I liked this song SO much when it came out.  I don't think I ever bought the CD, but thanks to Napster (which came out not too long after this song became popular) I had digital copy of it to listen to, well before I had my first iPod.

I, I looked into your eyes and saw
a world that does not exist
I looked into your eyes and saw
a world I wish I was in

Funk Breaking, Postponed

Looking over the schedule for today, I saw plenty of games I thought would be fun to watch....but that doesn't translate to games I want to pick all that often.  Generally speaking, any game I think will be fun to watch is a game I think will be close, and can go either way.  When you're picking winners and losers and have something riding on it, those are exactly the type of games you want to avoid.  That being said, I found 3 games I liked and 1 game that I loved today.

KC -117 @ 1.4 units (W, +1.2)
SD - 141 @ 1.41 units (W, +1)
Det -143 @ 2 units (L, -2)
Bos - 124 @ 5.2 units (W, 4.19)

Totals to date:
28-17, +14.16 units

2 of my three winners, including my big Boston pick, needed extra innings to come through.  My luck this past week in games like this will certainly temper my frustration when the market adjusts itself down the line and I start losing games like this.  Well, it'll temper it as long as I can remember this.  For now I just feel fortunate to have things bouncing my way, and hope it continues for a while.

A few days ago I proclaimed to a friend, and fellow Tiger fan, that I thought the team, especially Miggy, were set to break out the wood against Cleveland this week.  We've only got one game of this series under our belt so far, with only one left considering we got a snow day on Tuesday, but it looks like I was a little off on that one.  Hopefully they break out of this funk soon.

Less Than Expected

Had planned to do a decent bit of research into tonight's games during this afternoon.  Got way too busy to even think about that, but did have a few games I could research when things settled down.  As such, I only took two games tonight.  Both the Padres and A's are -117 against the Rockies and Angels, respectively, and I got .7 units on each of the games.  I think the Padres are the better pick here, and I'm not sure why I got down the same amount now for both in hindsight. 

I really like the A's chances, considering how hot their pitchers are right now, and the crazy output the Angels got from their offense last night, beating the Mets 14-2.  I like to bet against a team who scored more than 10 runs the night before.  Especially when that 10+ run game was against a team markedly worse than the next team they'll be playing, and the more runs above that 10 run line the night before, the more I'll like the other team.  The only thing that could have made this look better to me, is if it was in Oakland.  Oakland plays well on the road so far this year at 5-1 (5-0 as the favorite) and the Angels just won their 2nd home game of the season last night....but it's still a home game for them.

The Padres showed me that they can play with the best of them when they took two of three from the Tigers this weekend, and I don't think you can call the Rockies the best of anything right now.  I could see a little bit of a letdown here, but after rocking the last series at home, I have to believe they take three of the four games they'll be playing against Colorado the next four nights.  Only time will tell.

Totals to date:
25-17, +9.77 units

Update (4/15):
Looks like both teams bailed me out late in the games last night.  I'll try and remember that later on down the road when another one of my picks gets blown late in the game.  Record above updated to reflect the two wins for +1.2 units last night.  Nothing going tonight.

You Gotta Know When to Hold 'Em

Had a pretty slow week for my picks.  I only picked 10 games going into last night.  I was up 1.77 units on a 6-4 record, which I was pretty well satisfied with.  Yesterday, I had some time to really dig into each of the games on the board, and found 5 that I liked.  I was stoked to see that all five picks were right, but it's not a huge surprise because all the games I picked were slight favorites.  Regardless, those five boosted my record on the week to 11-4, up 7.76 units for the week.  In one good day, I more than made up for my bad streak to end last week.  I had hoped to keep things rolling again today, but when I was able to do any research on the games it was 3:45, I only had a handful of games to choose from, and not much time at all to look into them.  So, I took Sunday off.  Hopefully I am saving it all up for a good Monday, but we'll see.  There's only 9 games tomorrow, and I don't see anything that jumps off the page at me just yet.

Totals to date:
23-17, +8.57 units

Easing Off

It's a lot harder to look into MLB matchups on my days off, so Thursday and Friday might be light on picks all season long.  This week I only made 1 pick on Thursday and 3 on Friday.  Thankfully I took it easy, since my record with those picks was only 1-3.  Below are those four picks, as well as my three for today.

(4/3)
Seattle/Oakland OVER 7.5 -125 @ 1.5 units (Loss, -1.5)

(4/4)
Pittsburgh -118 @ .75 units (Win, +.64)
SD -112 @ 1 unit (Loss, -1)
SD -1.5 runs +150 @ .8 units (Loss, -.8)

(4/5)
Seattle -125 @ 1.25 units (Win, +1)
Washington -1.5 runs +147 @ 1 unit (Loss, -1)
Boston -1.5 runs +108 @ 1 unit (Loss, -1)

Run line picks have always been tough for me to hit consistently, and I usually tend to avoid them because of that....but you can't get better at something without actually doing it, so I am going to sprinkle some in here and there.  I'll update my record and +/- for the season when today's games are final.

Update (4/6):
Today's picks are below.

Blue Jays -118 @ 1.18 (Loss, -1.18)
Reds -104 @ 1.56 (Win, +1.5)
Nats -104 @ 1.56 (Win, +1.5)
Rays -104 @ 1.56 (Loss, -1.56)
Royals -122 @ 1.22 (Loss, -1.22)

Totals to date:
12-13, +.81 units

Wednesday Night 6 Pack

Woke up a little too late, and a little too uninterested, to check out the line on the Tigers today.  I doubt it would have had any impact on my picks for today, considering I was confident they would win today and Scherzer on the mound would jack up the line too high for me to lay.  Aside from that, I was surprised to find a lot of games that I did like today.  I was a little concerned that I liked mostly away teams, only one of the 5 sides I played was a home team, but considering I am doing this to see how good my handicapping is, and I'm not actually betting, I went with everything I liked.

Red Sox/Orioles Under 8.5 +100 @ 1 unit (Win, +1)
Red Sox -114 @ 2.5 (Win, +2.19)
Nats -128 @ 1.28  (Win, +1)
Pirates -150 @ 1.5 (Win, +1)
Dodgers -107 @ 1.7 (Win, +1.59)
Cards -117 @ 1.17 (Loss, -1.17)

The first three picks have won, the Pirates are in a game that won't end right now.  The Cubs went up 3-2 on them in the top of the 12th, then Pittsburgh tied it up and got the bases loaded with McCutchen up to bat.  He got the count full and promptly struck out.  Oh well, at least the pick is still live.  I'll update all the results later, when all the games are complete.

Update:
All the games are final, and all but one fell my way.  These are the days I wish these were bets instead of picks.  As long as I don't take a huge dump the next couple days, I should have a pretty good starting week.

Totals to date:
8-5, +5.43 units