The Gaming Den

For those of us who have an interest in such a thread, there you go.

Right now, the Rams have drawn first blood with a touchdown to get to a 7-0 lead.

EDIT 1: Bengals get a field goal to get the score to 7-3.

EDIT 2: Another touchdown by the rams to get the score to 13-3!

EDIT 3: Bengals get a touchdown to reduce the Rams' lead to 13-10!

EDIT 4: Bengals takes the lead with a touchdown to establish a new lead of 17-13!

EDIT 5: And the Bengals dominate with a field goal. New score is 20-13!

EDIT 6: Rams get a field goal, and take the score to 20-16.

I feel like I'm living in an alternate dimension watching this game.

Everything about the phrase Super Bowl Quarterback Matthew Stafford of the Los Angeles Rams is designed to break my brain as someone who used to watch a lot of football 10 years ago and mostly stopped keeping up.

Aaaand the Rams reacapture the lead with a touchdown with a new score of 23-20!

EDIT: Aand the game is over with the Rams as the victors! Hell yeah!

So sports betting is now a big thing. If you were to bet on a football game you can bet on someone to win. Since one team is supposed to be better than another, you might see Rams -180. This was a 'money line bet I saw. This means you had to bet $180 to win $100 (you also get your bet back if you win). So if you has bet $180 on the Rams, you'd get $100.

In football people often bet 'against the spread' (ATS). It's a form of handicapping. It's not enough for a team to win - the better team has to win my a certain number of points. Going into the game, the Rams had to win by 4.5 points.

They did not.

So if you bet on the Rams to win ATS, even though they won the game, they didn't overcome the handicap, so people who bet on the Bengals won.

Since the amount spent on gambling in this country dwarfs all the box office returns on all the movies every year by a factor of more than 10 I am curious to see what the general feeling is tomorrow among people who bet the game.

I've got a couple uncles that are into sports betting, and they were carrying on about hoping the Giants would "beat the spread" (lose, but not lose as hard as expected) back in the 90s. There's not going to be much of a reaction today. Some bets won, some lost, happens every day.

4.5 isn't even a big spread. It's hardly a surprise.