Vegas pre-Christmas

Alisa Boguslavskaya, Crisson Jno-Charles, Maria, and I took a pre-Christmas holiday in Las Vegas last week. We stayed at Bally’s, mostly for its location in the middle of the strip (a fact which made life slightly difficult when this happened). We wandered both The Strip and Old town Vegas, went to three shows (Cirque de Soleil Ka, Vegas! The Show, and Nathan Burton’s Comedy Magic), ate a lot of food, saw the new Star Wars, and didn’t get arrested for card counting.

I was able to put some of my NFL betting model into practice. I familiarized myself with both Bally’s and Bellagio’s sports books, betting at the casino with the more favorable line for each game. Using these predictions, I bet on the 15 non-Monday night games of week 15. Unfortunately, with the lines offered at the times of betting, I ended up with 7 wins, 7 losses, and 1 push. With the casino’s built in edge (usually bet $110 to win $100), I ended up losing a little money. Could have easily ended up way up if the Sunday afternoon games hadn’t gone to hell in the second halves. Had I bet on the Monday night game, I would have won. I didn’t want to have to mail in a winning ticket (our flight out was during the game), however, so I didn’t bet. I also wanted to bet on the 5 or 6 college bowl games that were happening while we were there, but I didn’t get the data for the model together in time.

After the trip, Maria and I spent a few days with family for Christmas. We’re finally back in Bloomington today, after 12 days away. We will be having a New Year’s Eve party on Thursday at 8pm, so stop by!

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