By BOBBY BISCUIT

The Rangers host the Senators tonight coming off a late resurgent come back versus the Boston Bruins in the closing moments of the 3rd period. They will do so without the services of Scott Gomez for a third straight game. This meeting will be the first of newly signed Rangers defenseman Wade Redden against his former team. Since Redden’s departure the Senators have been reeling and currently possess one of the worst records in the league. They are however not to be taken lightly as there first line and power play remains one of the most talented in the league featuring Jason Spezza, Dany Heatley and Daniel Alfreddsson. The total for tonight is an even 5 and I will take the over. The reason for this is I believe the Rangers can build on their exciting victory from Saturday and that as bad as the Sens are thus far, they should still be enough of threat to push a puck or two past the great Henrik Lundqvist.

 
FEATURED YOUNGSTERS: The Senators do not have anyone I personally would highlight as a dazzling young budding star, however Jesse Winchester is a formidable young winger to look out for. Let’s however take this time to highlight the Rangers 3rd line which I am going to refer to as the kid line. They had a goal and 5 assists between them against the Devils and notched the first goal of the comeback on Saturday against the Bruins.

 
This line feature Dan Fristche, Lauri Korpikosi and Nigel Dawes. Fristche and Korpikoski are former first round picks and Dawes was drafted in the second round. These 3 have begun developing some chemistry and it would be great for the Rangers if they could keep that going as the 3rd line has been subject to nightly scratches and swaps all season.

GO RANGERS

BB

This weekend saw two games that have gamblers everywhere yelling ‘fix’ and cursing Vegas for having a say in the outcome of games.

The two games in question were Saturday’s Pac-10 game between USC and Stanford. I am writing from a southbound train and I don’t have the score specifics, but suffice it to say that USC had a big enough lead that they were going to cover the sizable spread. Stanford however was deep in USC territory with a few seconds to go and decided to bring out their FG team. I don’t know what compelled Stanford head coach Jim Harbaugh to do this, but it pissed off USC head coach Pete Carrol and he called a timeout. This prompted Harbaugh to put the offense back out, and they scored a TD and thus Stanford covered the line.

The ‘fix’ doesnt fit the USC game. That was just posturing by coaches. What is Harbaugh doing kicking a FG with 6 secs to go and down by so many points? That pissed off Carrol, as it would most coaches. The TO by USC was to say FU to Stanford. Harbaugh then said, no FU, and went for it. It just so happened that the game was around the spread.

Now, the Chargers / Steelers game yesterday is a different story. It reeks the more they, the refs, try to explain themselves. If you are unaware of what happened, in short, the Steelers were up by 1 with seconds to go and SD had the ball deep in their own side of the field. The Chargers try the customary multiple lateral play and in the process the ball is fumbled and scooped up by Steeler Troy Palamalu who scores with no time left. Final score 17-10 steelers and a back door cover of the 5 point spread. Then all hell broke loose. The refs ultimatley excuse the teams from the field declaring the game over. This was after a review and multiple conferences by the refs. The score was even posted on NFL.com as 17-10. Then, inexplicably, the refs take the TD away saying it was advanced on an illegal forward pass. The head ref, Scott Green, said after the game that they erred and the Steeler TD should have counted. Additionally, the Steelers were called for 13 penalties and the Chargers were called for 2. One of those Steeler penalties negated a TD that would have put the Steelers up by 4, 5, or 6 points depending on what they did with the PAT. Since the TD was called back they kicked a FG and took an 11-10 lead. That score is the official final score.

All I can say is, its called gambling for a reason. The NFL’s response to this should be interesting especially in light of the recent NBA referee scandal. Personally I do not believe this was a fix, rather it was just horrendous officiating. I am well aware of all the clues that point to a fix, but to me they are too obvious. Though perhaps being obvious is the best cover for the fix.

And this was on the tail of my article about how gambling can sure seem unfair at times.

15 team parlay .5% to win 117%
Atlanta Falcons -275, Miami Dolphins -500, New York Giants -300, Indianapolis Colts -350, Jacksonville Jaguars +120, Green Bay Packers -190, Philadelphia Eagles -425, New Orleans Saints -250, Carolina Panthers -900, Tampa Bay Buccaneers -230, San Francisco 49ers -290, Arizona Cardinals -155, Pittsburgh Steelers -235, Washington Redskins Ev, Buffalo Bills -230

8-Team 6 point tease .5% to win 4%
New York Giants -1, Jacksonville Jaguars +9, Green Bay Packers +2½, Tampa Bay Buccaneers +1, Arizona Cardinals +3, Washington Redskins +7½, Buffalo Bills +1

6 team parlay .5% to win 19.2%
Jacksonville Jaguars +3, Green Bay Packers -3½, Philadelphia Eagles -9, Tampa Bay Buccaneers -5, San Francisco 49ers -7, Arizona Cardinals -3 -105

6-Team 7.5 point tease .5% to win 2%
Oakland Raiders +17½, Houston Texans +15½, Cincinnati Bengals +16½, Kansas City Chiefs +13½, St Louis Rams +14½, San Diego Chargers +12½

That’s Why They Call it Gambling A must read for all of you.

There is no audio portion to today’s Rangers pregame, but I do have a report to file from Bobby Biscuit who is at Madison Square Garden for tonight’s game. Bobby likes the Under 5.5 in tonight’s game. Bobby’s featured youngster is Phil Kessel of the Boston Bruins. Kessel is a 6′ 0″ center who hails from Madison, Wisconsin. Kessel is in his third year and has 7 goals on the year. His career high was last year, with 19 goals.

With the Rangers win over the Devils on Wednesday night, they brought the return on investment to +9% on the year.

In order to be right one must utter the prediction. Well, here it is. The New York Jets will win tonight and take over sole possession of the AFC East. This serves me very well as I need one more Patriot loss on the year in order to have a winning ticket for my next trip to Vegas.

Tonight the Rangers visit the rival New Jersey Devils at PRUDENTIAL SQUARE GARDEN The Rock. The Rangers had a great October but have only notched 3 points in 5 games thus far in November. Lately they have been getting off to very slow starts, something that should not be a problem tonight as this is a rivalry game. They dug out of their 2 zip hole against the Oilers on Monday but were not able to win in the shootout.

Former Rangers goalie Kevin Weekes will be starting for a depleted Devils squad tonight.

The Rangers have literally owned the Devils since the start of last year losing only once in a shootout during the regular season and once in the playoffs last year. Tonight’s total is 5 and I will go against the Rangers formula and particularly the Rangers Devils games which always seem to be 2-1 and go with the over. Reason being the scoring troubled Rangers should be able to muster at least 3 goals against a wounded Devils team while Zach Parise will find a way to pot one against the Rangers. Parise is the featured opposing youngster for tonight. Even though he is a hated Devil, he is a young American hockey player who is doing his best to carry the Devils this season and has notched 16 points already.

Last week I attempted to apply a recognition heuristic to my decision making of which NFL teams would win. Overall the results were positive as I went 10-4 with Point Spreads and 8-6 with Money Line. From a betting perspective there was no money won as I played two 14-team parlays and a 7-team parlay. The risk was small so the damage done was inconsequential. Had I wagered each game individually and of equal amounts there would have been a profit realized at the end of the weekend.

As I did last week, I went through the entire NFL slate (save for Thursday night’s Denver-Cleveland game, and today’s Pittsburgh-Indianapolis game as there was no line on the game at the time of preparation) and I choose a winner of each game. I did this without performing any research. I simply relied on what I recognized when I viewed the two teams that would be competing against each other. I took the teams I decided would win and entered them into one parlay.

I then went back to each game to view them with the point spreads intact. There is an exercise I perform when viewing lines, which consists of me setting a line for each game, then comparing it to the Crowd’s Line and also the Vegas Line. I set my own line prior to looking at what the actual lines are. The Crowd’s Line is the line displayed on ESPN.com next to each game. Without going into too much detail, a visitor to ESPN.com can set the line for each game and then ESPN averages each selection to arrive at the Crowd’s Line. There are some inherent flaws in this, but for our purposes the flaws are not so overwhelming as to make the numbers obsolete.

This work is all done in order to have cues from which to operate the next type of heuristic. Understand that in the first parlay I was only deciding winners, and not trying to account for how many points a team may win by. Dealing with point spreads adds a level of complexity, and the recognition heuristic in my opinion is not powerful enough. So we will give ourselves some cues from which to infer an outcome.

One inference that can be made initially is any difference from my line, to the Crowd’s line, to the Vegas line. There are various ways that people will view a line that is different from what they believe it should be. I am not going to get into these right now as it unnecessarily complicates the process. Personally, I view a line that varies from my own line in different ways depending on other factors.

The point spread difference is not the only cue used, and in some instances it isn’t used at all. The process that followed was one of looking at each game with the point spread and identifying all the underdogs that I initially believed, via the recognition heuristic, would win the game. In these instances the point spreads are irrelevant. The next step is to attempt to use the point spread differences as a cue to a game. For example, I set the Seahawks-Dolphins line at Dolphins -4. The Crowd had the Dolphins at -7 and Vegas had them at -8. Being that I believed the Dolphins would win, the question in this regard is, “will the Dolphins win by more than 8 points?”. By my setting the line at Dolphins -4 my initial reaction is, ‘No, the Dolphins won’t win by more than 8.’ Since the Crowd also believed that the Dolphins would not win by more than 8, that gives me a bit more confidence in taking the Seahawks. To this point I have used two cues, but I needed a third cue for this game to make a decision. The cue that pushed me to choose the Seahawks is that 8 points signifies 2 scores, and I believe the Seahawks can keep this game within 2 scores.

Now, that may seem like a lot of work, but that whole process (except for the data entry of the lines) took less than 15 seconds. I could have gone and factored in a lot of additional statistics and trends, but they do not add any benefit in my deciding this particular game. That does not hold true in all instances, and in those games where the point-spread cue was not enough to satisfy me, I would then go to an additional cue. The additional cue is that of adding stats.

I will save the statistics cue for another time as all of us can argue over which statistics are the most relevant.

Today I am playing a 12 Team Parlay (Money Line), a 12 Team Parlay (Point Spreads), and a 4-Team 6 Point Teaser. The teams that comprise these wagers can be viewed HERE at The Fourth Down presented by Gear Live.

The Dean’s Week 10 NFL Picks can be viewed be viewed HERE

Listen to Bobby and Dean talk about tonight’s game between the New York Rangers and the Washington Capitals.

Bobby likes the Under 5.5 in tonight’s game, and of course he likes the Rangers to win. Bobby is 2-1 with his Total Goal predictions! Today we begin to Progressively Wager the Rangers. We have set our Per Game Return set at 3%.

Listen to Bobby and Dean talk about tonight’s game between the New York Rangers and the New York Islanders

Bobby likes the Under 5 in tonight’s game, and of course he likes the Rangers to win. Bobby is 2-0 with his Total Goal predictions!

Listen to Bobby and Dean talk about tonight’s game between the New York Rangers and the New York Islanders

Bobby likes the Under 5.5 in tonight’s game, and of course he likes the Rangers to win.