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Tuley Best Bets column
Welcome to our “Tuley’s Takes” Best Bets column for Thursday.
In case you missed it last week, we’ve started splitting our daily column into two separate pieces: there’s a FREE ATS Report where I recap the betting action from the night before and update league-wide betting stats in the various team sports, and then this one where I look for the best betting opportunities on today’s wagering menu.
Links to both articles can be found each morning on the VSiN.com home page, though I advise my regular readers to also bookmark my dedicated page at https://vsin.com/news/dave-tuley-columns/.
FYI: we’re not getting involved with the NFL draft props this year. I know a lot of people make money on this, but anyone interested can find plenty of coverage on VSiN’s daily programs to try to react to the ever-changing news cycle that’s needed to get the best prices (and those shows are better equipped than our morning columns).
Wednesday Best Bet Results
We ended up having a losing day on Wednesday. We won our top play of the day on Astros First 5 Innings +115 at the Rays as the Astros led 1-0 after 5 innings on the way to pulling off the 1-0 outright upset for the game.
Unfortunately, we lost our secondary MLB play earlier in the day on the Red Sox First 5 -105 at the Orioles as they trailed 4-1 on the way to a 6-2 loss and then also lost our NBA play on the Kings +1.5 at the Warriors.
We didn’t have an official play on an NHL First-Period Over 1.5 parlay as it wasn’t available on our apps here in Las Vegas with Kraken-Avalanche on Wednesday and Lightning-Maple Leafs on Thursday. Note: I Tweeted out on my @ViewFromVegas account on Wednesday that I was able to bet the parlay when the Thursday lines became available (and parlayable). We lost the wager at +199 when the Kraken and Avalanche played to a scoreless tie on Wednesday night. For those who don’t know (and we certainly hope that most loyal readers have been following along!), that still only dropped us to 4-1 with those parlays this postseason for a net profit of 7.24 units. We have the same situation now with Maple Leafs-Lightning tonight to Avalanche-Kraken on Friday night. I’ll probably still play this despite it not being an “official” play here or on the VSiN PRO picks page, but we’ll be watching closely and might back off on these plays if teams get more defensive as we get deeper in these series.
Another note: the past couple of weeks, we’ve usually been able find a play each night in NBA, NHL and MLB, but the way the schedule and the matchups fall tonight, in addition to the NHL situation mentioned above, I just have one MLB bet I like on the 11-game card and nothing in the NBA in the lone game as the Celtics are 6.5-point road favorites in the zig-zag role after losing Game 5 on Tuesday. Maybe it’s a good thing as we’ll be mostly watching the NFL Draft even though we don’t have any wagers at this time.
MLB Thursday Best Bet
Royals First 5 Innings +0.5 +100 at Twins: To be totally honest here, I’ve been going over Thursday’s MLB card all night (which is why it’s coming up on 8:30 a.m. ET/5:30 a.m. PT for me even posting this column) and have often thought of begging off a play of the day for the first time since this daily column has been running every day for the last 9 months (around 270 straight days), but finally decided to make this First 5 bets with the +0.5 runs at even money at BetMGM (shop around as more books post their First 5 lines on Thursday). I’ll probably also take the straight First 5 money line on the Royals +155, but I like the option of winning with the tie as I still trust KC’s Zack Greinke (0-3, 4.61 ERA) to match Minnesota’s Tyler Mahle. The only other F5 dogs I considered were the White Sox (Dylan Cease) and the Rangers (Andrew Heaney), but didn’t like those enough to fade the Rays/Shane McClanahan or Yankees/Gerrit Cole. Overall, it looks like a chalky card and hopefully I found the rare live dog (at least for the First 5).
XFL playoffs Best Bet
Seattle Sea Dragons +5 at DC Defenders: We gave this out Sunday night on “The Greg Peterson Experience” when Circa Sports was one of the rare books with early lines on the XFL playoff games this upcoming weekend. We don’t like the Arlington Renegades vs. the Houston Roughnecks in Saturday’s XFL semifinal game, but took Seattle in this matchup on Sunday. DC (9-1 SU, 7-3 ATS) was the top team during the regular season, but Seattle lost its first 2 games of the season, including 22-18 at DC, and then went 6-1 the rest of the way with the only other loss to DC, though that was another close game at 34-33. I have this at pick’em, even with DC at home as XFL hosts are just 19-19-2 ATS overall, so home-field advantage is negligible (even though DC was 4-1 ATS at home, though failed in most recent home game as 10-point chalk in 28-26 win vs. Arlington in Week 9). I believed this line opened too high and wrote in Monday’s version of this column, “we have to take the Sea Dragons at anything more than a field goal.” It was still mostly +3.5 on Tuesday but has since dropped to 3, so keep shopping around if you’re with us.
