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Sports gambling is one of those things that I’ve never been good at. Sure, I know that all it takes is one time to hit it big, but, for some reason, my sports knowledge prohibits me from ever just going with my gut, which then leads to over-thinking on games to pick. It’s bad, so I just refuse to bet on games anymore.
But stories like one extremely lucky sports gambler named Kevin Maselli has me rethinking my stance on sports gambling, because the dude doesn’t just bet pennies on games, but, thanks to some things going really right for him in this year’s NCAA Tournament, he won big. When I say big, I mean he turned a profit of $1,345.78, because Masseli dropped just 14-cents on a wild parlay this March Madness and, shockingly, it hit.
In an interview with ESPN, Kevin Masseli says he regularly puts pennies down on games, scratching his sports gambling itch without dropping lots and lots of money because it’s “something I’ve always done.” It’s small potatoes and low risk, so why not do it, right? Turns out that his strategy can lead to big returns, which happened during the first weekend of this year’s NCAA Tournament.
Using Draft Kings to make his 14-cent bet, Masseli’s put money down on games with almost 10,000-to-1 odds on point spreads and over-under picks for seven of the eight games on the first Saturday of March Madness. He explained how things went from there.
Kentucky and Michigan covered the spread, with both games staying under the total. Michigan State, Florida State, Baylor and Purdue all came through for Maselli. The parlay would be decided by Auburn-Kansas, and he needed the Tigers -1.5 plus the game to go over 146.5 points.
“By the 12-minute mark, I started pacing,” Maselli recalled. “At the 4-minute mark, Auburn was in control, but I didn’t really believe it. I told my girlfriend and she didn’t believe it, either. I was in shock.”
While all those games were big for Masseli’s road to a big payday, the most crucial win was when Auburn upset Kansas, which led the guy to a pretty epic reaction.
He screamed, “Boom goes the dynamite!” after confirming he had won $1,345.78 off a 14-cent bet.
“I haven’t really dwelled on that I didn’t put more money on it, because I always put like 10 of these a day and, c’mon, what are the odds of hitting one of these?” Maselli said with a laugh. “I mean, c’mon, let’s be honest.”
We all know that sports gambling is fun, frustrating and has ever emotion in-between. Oftentimes, most of us walk away with a couple extra dollars in our pockets, but nothing too big. More frequently than not, we end up losing money. And, while most of us are dropping big bills to win even bigger, Kevin Masseli’s over here winning over $1,300 by betting pennies, so sports gambling has been pretty damn good to him.