Shots, Bucks and Graeme

In their first game back after the All-Star game, my wife's hometown San Diego Padres scored a club record 24 runs beating the Washington Nationals by an American Football score of 24 to 8 on Friday night. This is also the most runs by any team this season. 

On track to win the second game of the series last night, the game was suspended for the most American of reasons - a shooting outside the stadium in Washington with reports saying that four people were injured. Not my joke, or a joking matter, but some have said that one American pastime was interrupted by another American pastime.  

Backing the favourite in the first game after the break added another 1.11 units to our total, and since 2004 this simple system is up 49.22 units on the Money Line and 26.54 units on the Run Line, ROIs of 14% and 13.1% respectively. This was mentioned in 2019 so hopefully some of you took note:

Sports Insights has found that blanket-backing favourites had been profitable before and after the break in recent years, although those studies only look at the one game either side.

In the NBA, the first four games of the Finals went to the home team, but Game Five last night was won by the visiting Milwaukee Bucks . After winning the first two games, the Phoenix Suns traded as low as 1.23 to win the championship, but they are now outsiders at 3.94. Game Six is on Tuesday in Milwaukee where their record since mid-April, including the play-offs, is an impressive 17-1 straight up, and 12-6 ATS. 

I layed the Suns at 1.59 before the Finals started, and I'm happy to let this investment run. 

Finally some sad news that I stumbled across earlier today. In the early days of this blog I exchanged thoughts and ideas with Graeme Dand, who I described in this 2009 post as "very personable".

Graeme was also an entrant in the Friendly Tipster League and was famous for his (often extremely) lengthy blog posts often accompanied by screenshots of carefully compiled spreadsheets complete with pivot tables.

Check out some of his posts here. 

Even when communications with someone are all electronic, you get an idea of who the good guys and decent people are, and Graeme was definitely in that category. 

Our paths haven't crossed for several years, but it came as a shock to find out this morning that Graeme is dealing with a serious illness with a bleak prognosis.

Graeme was also an entrant in the Friendly Tipster League and actually one of the "Bounty Boys" as I called them, donating additional money to the prize fund.

Graeme was one of the winners with his TFA Draws finishing in eighth place but I can't recall if he came out ahead in the end.

Graeme also appears to have collected a small sum with his TFA_Raz entry, but after six years I have no recollection of what that was about.

All of this of course pales into insignificance when compared with the only really important thing in life, which is health. Making money is great, but without good health it is meaningless. I wish Graeme the very best and will be following him on Twitter with positive thoughts. You should do the same.