Thursday was another long day on the road as – after staying up late to post yesterday’s column – I left Flagstaff in the morning for the Phoenix area as I had tickets for the Def Leppard/Motley Crue/Poison concert at State Farm Stadium in suburban Glendale.
I offered to pick up my friend Darlene at her home in the far East end of the valley. I had forgotten the Phoenix metropolitan area is the most spread-out one I’ve ever seen as it took me nearly 3 hours from Flagstaff. Anyway, that gave us plenty of time to chit-chat and I also made it a point to stop at Portillo’s (No. 1 in VSiN colleague Matt Youmans’ fast-food rankings) for an Italian Beef, Hot Dog and Chocolate Cake Shake, of course. The concert was just as awesome, but the concert ended at 11 p.m. and I made the mistake of offering to drive Darlene home even though my hotel was close to the stadium. So, I had a 3-hour round trip and – after posting the horse racing articles for Xpressbets’ Jeff Siegel and VSiN’s Ed Sehon (aka Mr. Ed) before heading back – I didn’t get to my hotel until nearly 3 a.m. to post this article. My Best Bets fared even worse as I lost on the Twins 1st 5 vs. the Astros and A’s 1st 5 vs. the Yankees. At least the Twins showed some fight as they battled back from a 4-1 deficit to lose only 5-3 after 5 innings while the A’s were whitewashed by the Yankees as they trailed 10-0 after 5. Let’s recap the rest of Thursday’s (full-game) betting results and then look for more 1st 5 plays on Friday plus my football plays for the weekend in NFL Preseason Week 3 and CFB Week 0.Thursday’s recaps
NFL: Underdogs went 2-0 ATS with 2 outright upsets as the Chiefs beat the Packers 17-10 as 3-point home dogs and the Texans beat the 49ers 17-0 as 2.5-point home dogs, so home teams were also 2-0 SU and ATS. Both games stayed well Under their betting totals of 38 in the GB-KC game and 40.5 in the SF-HOU game.
More NFL: Faves still lead 18-15 SU overall in the preseason with 2 pick-’ems, but dogs improved to 17-14-2 ATS lead. Home/road teams now tied at 17-17 SU with home teams taking a 17-15-2 (note: neutral-site Hall of Fame Game not included). Overs dipped to 22-13 (62.9 percent) overall.