I've pretty much lost all faith in humanity.
Well, not really. I'm sure you Canadians out there have heard of this wonderful sports betting lottery called Pro Line. You basically have to select a minimum of three games (maybe it's two now?), and choose who is going to win, or tie. The odds are put right in front of you, but in the wonderful world of sports, you sometimes need to go with your gut feeling.
Now, I used to play Pro Line a few years back with my buddies Lorne and Skylar during the 2006 World Cup in soccer. I spent roughly $30 in total and probably broke even with some rookie ass bets. Whatever. Took a nice long breather from the gambling world where I spent my money on finer things: clothes, food, skateboards, CDs, traveling and so on and so forth.
The other day my friends, who will remain nameless because I'm not sure how public or private this need be, won a nice sum of money. Nice enough to make me want to take part in this good ol' gambling process again. So myself, Skylar, and my room mate Nic set out to our local convenience store to buy a Pro Line. We are all avid Basketball fans so we figured we would place some bets. The lineup was bleak that night. No real tight games, the odds were pretty balanced for a certain team in every single game. No biggie, I just wanted to come up a few bucks since I'm a poor ass college student. We all chip in $5 each and choose our teams: Miami over Philly, Orlando over Indiana, Charlotte over New Jersey and finally Atlanta over Milwaukee. Not bad. No real surprises, maybe a close Hawks/Bucks game, but nothing to fret. We're off. Ticket paid. Our payout is roughly $300.00 if these teams win. I was confident. Why wouldn't I be, none of those games would be upsets, and there was a $300 payout! Damn, son.
Fast forward me being at the library studying, but unable to focus due to excitement of watching basketball all night and more than likely coming up victorious. I am home, games are all in progress. All are going right except the Miami/Philly game. It's a little close. In fact, tied with 24 seconds left. I am frantically refreshing the TSN.ca scores page. Finally, its done. Miami 107, Philly 105. I've officially won all my games that I bet on. How nice. Oh, wait a second. Pro Line's rules are so fucky that you need to win a basketball game by more than five points in order to for to count as a "Pro Line win." All of the other games met this five point criteria, but not Miami. Why? Why did you fail me Dwayne Wade, after all the times I said "You are the fucking man!" or "You see that? That's why he is the best in the NBA!". Wade put up 30, very nice, why couldn't you have put up 34? Why couldn't Arroyo, Beasley, Haslem or O'Neal toss up a few extra or made all their free throws. Oh the endless excuses and "Whys????"
So basically, the moral of this story is don't get your hopes up, there are countless upsets every day, and, obviously, that Pro Lines fly by night rules suck (and are virtually unknown until you're caught with your dick out at the convenience store, thinking you won but come to find out your "winning" ticket is an epic fail). I had to call my mother today to ask for some money to buy groceries because I spent my last $20 gambling in the past few days. The opposite of dignity. I didn't win once - I've come close, but close isn't worth shit.
Two of my room mates are back at it tonight. I have decided to sit this play out.
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