Coming to America

Bill Simmons hasn't done a mailbag on Page2 of ESPN.com lately, but I have sent in another letter. This time I forgot to cut and paste, so I'm rewriting this from memory. Hopefully I get close.

What events need to transpire before we can congratulate David Beckham on becoming the Kris Benson of MLS?

Think of the following as the beginning of a top ten list.

Posh informs press that if Becks ever cheats on her she will sleep with the entire Galaxy (LA Galaxy--not the Milky Way Galaxy).

MLS concocts new stats in order to create fantasy soccer, in hopes that America's love of fantasy leagues will help to popularize MLS; would-be fans discover that Beckham has soccer equivalent of a 4.82 ERA.

Beckham develops the soccer equivalent of shoulder injury on pitching arm--misses entire season. What? You're not laughing? Me neither.

Angry Posh exclaims to press: "I can't believe they traded us to Real Salt Lake!!!"

Posh endorses obscure online casino, somehow doubling online gambling's sleaze quotient.

Posh gets her own reality TV show. What? She already has one? Maybe Anna Benson needs to move to England and get a reality show about that. This would confirm all their predjudices and bad opinions about us.

Now that I have exchanged a couple of Emails with one of the Manchester Uninted's (ick!)correspondants, there is an outside chance I will be deluged with letters from people who have no idea who Kris or Anna Benson are. While I am willing to answer your questions about who these people are, along with the various ways they have graced our tabloids, I encourage you to do a couple of searches on them and see what you can find. Trust me, if you don't laugh your ass off you will at least find some semi-attractive pix of Anna. (Opinion regarding her hotness seems to vary wildly--if you like what you see, keep looking and you will probably find nudes. I didn't, but I was just looking for material for my letter to the Sports Guy.

Beckham has been getting alot of ink comparing him to Wayne Gretsky, who moved to the LA Kings because of his actress wife, Janet Jones. I think I speak for many Americans when I say that while I can't remember a single movie she's been in, I do recall her being in the news last year or so for her alleged involvement in some sort of gambling ring while also being involved with the Phoenix Coyotes, who her husband has an ownership stake in.

At least she didn't promise to sleep with the entire team if she lost a bet, as far as we know that is.

Anyway, while Becks is somewhere in between Kris Benson and Wayne Gretsky as far as his talent and significance goes, this is irrelevant here. What matters is that Anna Benson has historically been far more tabloid worthy than Janet Jones, and hence is more worthy of being compared to Posh, though Posh will almost certainly eclipse Anna in the tabloids unless Anna completely goes off the deep end, +/or finds another famous husband. I could go on, but this sort of explanation sort of kills the humor, doesn't it?

Meanwhile, I have discovered that a percentage of Mansion.com proceeds goes to support Tottenham Hotspur. I think I found this on a Mansion site, which is bad, because it could scare away Arsenal supporters, to say the least. For that matter, Liverpool and Man U might want to avoid doing anything that makes it possible for Spurs to afford Berbatov, since we know they will make repeated attempts to snatch him in the next 2 or 3 years. Liverpool probably already knows they can't afford to outspend United, just as Chelsea knows Spurs will never let Berbatov go to them or Arsenal. If they do they'll get some kind of Ruthian curse, and they'll deserve it too.

My own Mansion poker account balooned up to somewhere between $2200 and $2400, plummetted to a little over $400, and now is hovering around $1500. So I guess I'm supporting Spurs, at least until I return to the US. Mansion doesn't service American customers unless they are overseas. Meanwhile, I've cranked my FullTilt account up to $5677, which is the most I've had on any site since the year before I started this blog, when I had a little over $10,000 on PartyPoker.

(The following has been sent to Bill Simmons. Hopefully it will appear in a Sports Guy mailbag in the near future.)

Now that we may be entering the asterick era of MLB records, I figured I'd celebrate by setting a record for astericks in a mailbag question:

Hank Aaron is to Meat Loaf as Barry Bonds* is to ___________*?

a.) Motley Crue*
b.) W.A.S.P.**
c.) Snoop Dogg***
d.) Uncle Kracker****
e.) none of the above due to weak analogy--Meat Loaf more like Wade Boggs than Aaron (contact hitter, willing to go to the opposite field*****)
f.) none of the above--Meat Loaf more like Bobby Bonds (set record for strikeouts in 1969--broke it a year later)

*stats enhanced by frequenting of strip clubs
**purists oppose including unnatural +/or non-consensual acts
***pimpin' ain't easy--or legal
****"swim through your veins like a fish in the sea" lyric may actually personify illegal performance enhancing substances
*****Of course, Aaron hit to the opposite field all the time--but for home runs. I suppose this sort of prowess would be analogous to David Lee Roth. Or KISS.

Mansion in da House

Well, the WSOP main event is starting in about 3 days, and I'm on leave, but I won't be spending it in Vegas. i was 1/2 considering showing up to play in side games, since the place is supposed to be pretty target rich, but I was running pretty bad last weekend, so flying 14 hours or so to isolate myself in the desert with nothing to do but gamble seemed like it could be a mistake.

Meanwhile, my Mansion account finally has a cool G in it, with another G bonus pending me playing a few thousand hands or so. No sweat. The bank transfer took about a week to clear, and before I go back to the US I will have to take my $$ back out, but the action on the site seems to good to pass up. The average pot size routinely balloons out to double (and sometimes triple) what I am used to on other sites. At this point I suspect that the average pot size is calculated from the last 5 or so hands, instead of ten. That would explain the juicy stats. I was at some juicy tables though--I'm just not sure if the $300+ average pots (at $2-4 NL) were really legit.

I was checking my email and found something from bodog, which included a guide to Scotch. The guy writing it managed to divide Scotches up into 2 main types--single and blended. He managed to explain all this without using the word malt, at least not until about 3 paragraphs later. I was starting to wonder if he'd managed to "educate" himself without learning the word.

Bodog has a bunch of articles you can read to help educate you on everything from Scotch, to Vegas hotspots, to sports betting, to pulling off an Ocean's 13 style Casino heist (seriously). Some are more helpful than others. One particularly interesting mixed bag I discovered was a short treatise on contrarian betting. The advice was good, in theory at least. It explained how handicappers make the line with the public in mind, so it is therefore usually sensible to go the opposed way. Good solid advice. Great.

The problem was that the premise for this advice was as something to consider before betting on the 2007 NBA Finals, which makes it look like bodog is trying to drum up support for the Cavs. The advice was great, but if applied here it would probably be disasterous. I don't know how the Cavs did against the spread, but we all know how the series went.

Meanwhile, the fact that Mansion, like bet365 and bodog is an online sportsbook & casino means I now have over $1000 that I can bet on sports, so maybe I'll start writing more about sports again. After the Tigers' World Series collapse, and my own handicapping collapse in the NFL playoffs, I didn't much feel like writing. (And my bodog bankroll was devastated, as it still is.)

On that note, lets check the standings:

AL......................W......L.... RS......RA..........RD....bodog....Mansion
Boston..............51.....29...404.....319......+85.......8-5................3-1
Anaheim*........51.....32....419.....356......+63.......3-1.............19-4
Cleveland.........51....32....449.....383......+66.......3-1............... 6-1
Detroit.............47.....34.....476.....391......+85......3-1..............25-4
Seattle.............45.....35....400....400......even...20-1..............21-1
Oakland...........43.....40....370.....327.......+43....18-1.............27-2
Minnesota.......42......40...388.....367.......+21.....10-1.............27-2
NYYankees.....39......41....420....363.......+57.......7-1...............5-1

The odds under bodog and Mansion are all AL pennant odds. I believe you can bet against the teams on Mansion, which may explain the somewhat fairer odds. I'm thinking I need to take some Yankee bets. I'm not saying you should count these guys out, but 5-1? That puts them a tick below Anaheim* and above Cleveland and Detroit. Ridiculous. By the way, A-Rod just got injured. Strained hamstring. He played the next day. Hopefully he keeps playing, his hitting cools off, and he reinjures the hammy.

Looking at the runs scored/allowed, the Yankees should be doing much better than they are. Their numbers are a mirror image of Anaheim, just as Cleveland and Detroit match one another. based on run differential, they are the only team that belongs with the first four. As strange as the Yankees' poor record relative to their RD (and far more disturbing, at least for me) is the fact that Seattle is only 1 1/2 games behind the Tigers, despite having failed to outscore their opposition at all. Ick.

Minnesota really looks like a suckers bet at 10-1, since they are a 1/2 game behind Oakland, who are 18-1. Given that Oakland's RD is double that of the Twins, the fact that they only have one team to catch in their divison, rather than two, and Oakland's tendancy to surge after the all-star break (granted, the Twins had a big surge last year; Oakland seems to have one every year. Unfortunately, on Mansion, where you can take action on these things (I think) both these teams get the same odds. I need to find out how this works.

Soon I'll check the NL standings. Or go on a bender. Whatever.