*** OFFICIAL *** NFL 2025-26 Thread

[Dan Druff]

If that annoying fumble didn't happen in the 3rd, I think the Eagles win this, despite all the fail.

Momentum was going their way, they had just intercepted the ball, and a TD there would have demoralized the Bears and finally excited the crowd.

Instead they blew a 1-yard 3rd down rush AND fumbled it, and it was just a collapse from there.

They were totally outplayed, though. No answer for Bears running game. 281 yards rushed, including two players with 125+. Ouch.

[Dan Druff]

It would have felt much worse had Ravens won yesterday. Then I'd be kicking myself for not going with my original plan. Here I still feel I made the better pick, but both of them had a shit result.

This year was kind of a perfect storm for this to happen. Eagles looked awful in the second half on Sunday, and have had a lot of question marks offensively this year. Ravens had all kinds of red flags, and were facing a team which was invigorated by the return of Burrow.

I said beforehand that I felt good about neither team, and indeed both lost.

This kinda feels like busting the WSOP Main because I was dealt on the wrong end of set-over-set, rather than busting it by making a terrible call where I was obviously beat.

[Daly]

Gg todd. Even if I had 8 entries left going into today i don't think Id still be alive. Nothing to hang your head over.

I think i learned a few things this year as well. The question that needs to be answered is when you want to start fancy play. Thanksgiving might be the answer for a few reasons.

Love the format. We should do something next year. If nothing else we should Do a pfa freeroll.

[Sheesfaced]

Now that it's all over (for me), here's what I've learned from my third Circa Survivor (and second on my own):

2) Avoid road favorites. This was also my mistake in week 3.
.

FWIW I forgot the exact stat I heard but it is something along the lines of for a 7+ point favorite road favorites actually have a higher outright winning percentage than home teams. Which sort of disproves the no taking road teams argument. That being said I got bounced in week 10 taking the Bills at Miami so that stat can go fuck itself lol.

[gut]

It would have felt much worse had Ravens won yesterday. Then I'd be kicking myself for not going with my original plan. Here I still feel I made the better pick, but both of them had a shit result.

This year was kind of a perfect storm for this to happen. Eagles looked awful in the second half on Sunday, and have had a lot of question marks offensively this year. Ravens had all kinds of red flags, and were facing a team which was invigorated by the return of Burrow.

I said beforehand that I felt good about neither team, and indeed both lost.

This kinda feels like busting the WSOP Main because I was dealt on the wrong end of set-over-set, rather than busting it by making a terrible call where I was obviously beat.

Or, a year where there really are no "great" teams, thus no sense planning out a yearly map. Couldn't have known that beforehand tho.

On to Cincinnati....

[Tellafriend]

please tell me what the payout odds would have been had i bet a 4 game moneyline parlay on all 3 NFL underdogs yesterday and the one game today



11/27/25 - green bay, cincinnati, dallas, 11/28/25 - chicago


ChatGPT said:
Thought for 47s


Short version: that 4-leg underdog parlay would’ve been around +8000(!) — roughly $8,000 profit on a $100 bet. You almost robbed the book with a butter knife.


The games & underdog moneylines (approx)

Using widely posted pre-game lines from major books:

11/27 – Packers @ Lions
Lions were about -150, Packers about +125.
AZCentral
+1

11/27 – Bengals @ Ravens
Bengals were roughly +285 to +290 at kickoff (FanDuel and others posted +285 to +290).
reddit.com
+1

11/27 – Chiefs @ Cowboys
Chiefs were the favorite; Cowboys were around +155 as home dogs.
reddit.com

11/28 – Bears @ Eagles
Eagles closed in the -340 to -350 range; Bears were about +270 to +280 depending on book.
Action Network
+1

To get something concrete, let’s pick one reasonable “consensus” set:

Packers +125

Bengals +285

Cowboys +155

Bears +270

How the parlay math works

Convert American odds to decimal:

Packers +125 → 2.25

Bengals +285 → 3.85

Cowboys +155 → 2.55

Bears +270 → 3.70

Multiply all the decimal prices:

2.25 × 3.85 × 2.55 × 3.70 ≈ 81.73

That means:

Decimal odds ≈ 81.73

Convert back to American:

(
81.73
−
1
)
×
100
≈
8
,
073
(81.73−1)×100≈8,073 → about +8073

So your parlay was roughly:

🔥 +8000 to +8300 territory depending on the exact lines your book had.

Example payouts

Using the ~+8073 figure:

$10 bet → returns ≈ $817 (about $807 profit)

$25 bet → returns ≈ $2,043

$50 bet → returns ≈ $4,087

$100 bet → returns ≈ $8,173 (about $8,073 profit)

So yeah: that “all the dogs on Thanksgiving + Bears on Black Friday” ticket was basically a lottery scratcher with advanced stats.

The books really did get stuffed this holiday.

[Tellafriend]

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/MeninistTweet/status/1994540946059612566

[Daly]

Some weirdo who has 4 entries fired 2 on the Bears and 1 on the Bengals. Insane.

Also, Brett Richey, who has one of the better looking tickets out there, fired on the +3 Packers for one of them, and Ravens on the other. That's ballsy.

I'm not doing any fancy plays with this ticket. I'm going to do what I can to get us to the end. If it works, great. If it fails, so be it.

Like your post above talked about - this is right about when a fancy play gamble could win you the whole
Pot. A ML parlay on cinci and bears pays 13.5-1 give or take. If that hits your equity will undoubtably be improved better than +1350

Im not saying this is a good idea but its mathematically sound.


GL

I know we all got the concept. This guy turned ~$104K of equity into $1.909M

Thats a better than +1350

Granted its a bit of a longshot but he def got "paid" properly and then some.

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/galenhall/status/1994450832343839218

[BCR]

Like your post above talked about - this is right about when a fancy play gamble could win you the whole
Pot. A ML parlay on cinci and bears pays 13.5-1 give or take. If that hits your equity will undoubtably be improved better than +1350

Im not saying this is a good idea but its mathematically sound.


GL

I know we all got the concept. This guy turned ~$104K of equity into $1.909M

Thats a better than +1350

Granted its a bit of a longshot but he def got "paid" properly and then some.

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/galenhall/status/1994450832343839218

That dude. Didn’t he used to post on 2plus2 under a name like WVUGolden Bears? Cal grad kid with some connection to West Virginia iirc

[Daly]

So now the question..... do you ever have the balls to put all 5 on one game?

Do you "have too" hedge yourself through to week 15?

What if the 44 others were ready to deal?

[Tellafriend]

So now the question..... do you ever have the balls to put all 5 on one game?

Do you "have too" hedge yourself through to week 15?

What if the 44 others were ready to deal?

i'd hedge. i wouldn't be able to help myself.

seems unlikely to get that many people agreeable at this point bc some will be far better off than the others.

[Daly]

So now the question..... do you ever have the balls to put all 5 on one game?

Do you "have too" hedge yourself through to week 15?

What if the 44 others were ready to deal?

i'd hedge. i wouldn't be able to help myself.

seems unlikely to get that many people agreeable at this point bc some will be far better off than the others.

[Dan Druff]

Regarding Galen Hall...

I'd love to know the names of his 5 tickets.

First off, no player has 5 tickets left, nor did they before Thanksgiving. So obviously he has at least one partner, and it's possible he's part of a consortium of several people buying tickets together. So when he says he has "5 tickets", it could be 5 out of 20 they had remaining, and they burned 15.

Note that it is within the rules to have such partnerships, which some people have complained makes it unfair, and skirts the rule of 10 tickets max. I just tweeted at Jeffrey Benson to either allow one person to buy more than 10 entries, or to disallow partnerships in more than 10 entries. Otherwise this destroys the spirit of the rule of keeping people to 10 or fewer tickets.

Second, I am curious how many of these 5 tickets were forced into this spot (perhaps having taken all 4 favorites, or at least both Buf and Phi, and how many were done as part of strategy.

The other good thing about making it through in this fashion is that you're mostly against ploppies with bad tickets now. So provided you can fade further upsets, you should have a big edge on the field.

What would I like to see? Players who took an underdog with only one ticket, despite having availability of either Buf or Phi.

Note that there was good reason to try a dog if you had already taken Buf and Phi, even if you had KC and/or Det left. KC was on the road, has been struggling, and Dallas has been looking increasingly better, so taking KC may not have been appealing. Detroit was only a small favorite, and again seems to be on decline. So if all you had were KC/Det as favorites, it was probably worthwhile to say fuck it and go with a dog. I believe Brett Richey had used Bal/Phi on his "Get Crunk 9" ticket, which was otherwise a really good ticket, and went with GB exactly for this reason, which was smart. Now he's sitting in great position AND has tremendous equity.

I don't know who Hall was on 2+2. I had only heard of him after he won a WSOP bracelet in the Crazy 8s in 2018, and he wore a suit to the final table. I believe he's now 40 years old, so he would have been young in the 2000s on 2+2. I think he's a hedge fund guy and has a lot of money.

[BCR]

Regarding Galen Hall...

I'd love to know the names of his 5 tickets.

First off, no player has 5 tickets left, nor did they before Thanksgiving. So obviously he has at least one partner, and it's possible he's part of a consortium of several people buying tickets together. So when he says he has "5 tickets", it could be 5 out of 20 they had remaining, and they burned 15.

Note that it is within the rules to have such partnerships, which some people have complained makes it unfair, and skirts the rule of 10 tickets max. I just tweeted at Jeffrey Benson to either allow one person to buy more than 10 entries, or to disallow partnerships in more than 10 entries. Otherwise this destroys the spirit of the rule of keeping people to 10 or fewer tickets.

Second, I am curious how many of these 5 tickets were forced into this spot (perhaps having taken all 4 favorites, or at least both Buf and Phi, and how many were done as part of strategy.

The other good thing about making it through in this fashion is that you're mostly against ploppies with bad tickets now. So provided you can fade further upsets, you should have a big edge on the field.

What would I like to see? Players who took an underdog with only one ticket, despite having availability of either Buf or Phi.

Note that there was good reason to try a dog if you had already taken Buf and Phi, even if you had KC and/or Det left. KC was on the road, has been struggling, and Dallas has been looking increasingly better, so taking KC may not have been appealing. Detroit was only a small favorite, and again seems to be on decline. So if all you had were KC/Det as favorites, it was probably worthwhile to say fuck it and go with a dog. I believe Brett Richey had used Bal/Phi on his "Get Crunk 9" ticket, which was otherwise a really good ticket, and went with GB exactly for this reason, which was smart. Now he's sitting in great position AND has tremendous equity.

I don't know who Hall was on 2+2. I had only heard of him after he won a WSOP bracelet in the Crazy 8s in 2018, and he wore a suit to the final table. I believe he's now 40 years old, so he would have been young in the 2000s on 2+2. I think he's a hedge fund guy and has a lot of money.

I looked him up after my post. He goes by just Golden Bears now, but with WVU still in his avatar pic. Pre-2007 before 2plus2 had their tech issue where everyone had to re-register, pretty sure his screen name was WVUGoldenBears.

I recall him from way back just because we interacted a lot in college football threads. He was a big CFB fan like myself. I recall him winning the PCA a long time ago and being on tv big games just because I talked to him a lot over there in CFB thread.

There was famous college coach who coached for like 30 years with same name. I think that’s what made me remember his name in relation to cfb. I’m sure I asked back then if he was related but can’t recall.

[Dan Druff]

Some guy runs a small site called "PoolCrunch" and just tweeted this to me:

https://poolcrunch.com/pools/circa/2025/standings


I'm going to look at it now, and see if I can deduce who Galen is in the contest.

[Dan Druff]

So here are the entries which picked Cincy, of which Galen claimed to have 2:

Accorsi-1
Champ-4
Heater City-8
Itstartswithabet-7
Kick your knees up - 10
LawfirmofJCM-6
LeapingLizards-6
Playerpropsking-1
Sloppy Brie-8
Thewestwingers-7


Interesting. There is not a single entry with more than 1 CIN pick, or more than 2 CHI picks.

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1994892297302151448

So there's no way to determine which ones are Galen.

Either he's lying, or he owned parts of 4 different entries. If he's telling the truth, he either bought up a ton of entries in friends' names, or he's part of a big consortium of entries, which doesn't sit well with me, even if allowed.

[gut]

So here are the entries which picked Cincy, of which Galen claimed to have 2:

Accorsi-1
Champ-4
Heater City-8
Itstartswithabet-7
Kick your knees up - 10
LawfirmofJCM-6
LeapingLizards-6
Playerpropsking-1
Sloppy Brie-8
Thewestwingers-7


Interesting. There is not a single entry with more than 1 CIN pick, or more than 2 CHI picks.

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1994892297302151448

So there's no way to determine which ones are Galen.

Either he's lying, or he owned parts of 4 different entries. If he's telling the truth, he either bought up a ton of entries in friends' names, or he's part of a big consortium of entries, which doesn't sit well with me, even if allowed.

I mean, thats the ultimate smart play eh? Have runners so you own/have equity in like 50 entries where you pick for them all?

Seems like any like random forum could pool enough for something like that....

[Dan Druff]

Chris Moneymaker said on a podcast tonight that he might get some people together to buy "at least 50 entries" next year.

I think you're gonna see a lot of pro gamblers doing this, and then designate some of them to oppose each other when it makes sense, both guaranteeing passage and possibly ending up in a small field if there are several upsets.

[Kalam]

Regarding Galen Hall...

I'd love to know the names of his 5 tickets.

First off, no player has 5 tickets left, nor did they before Thanksgiving. So obviously he has at least one partner, and it's possible he's part of a consortium of several people buying tickets together. So when he says he has "5 tickets", it could be 5 out of 20 they had remaining, and they burned 15.

Note that it is within the rules to have such partnerships, which some people have complained makes it unfair, and skirts the rule of 10 tickets max. I just tweeted at Jeffrey Benson to either allow one person to buy more than 10 entries, or to disallow partnerships in more than 10 entries. Otherwise this destroys the spirit of the rule of keeping people to 10 or fewer tickets.

Second, I am curious how many of these 5 tickets were forced into this spot (perhaps having taken all 4 favorites, or at least both Buf and Phi, and how many were done as part of strategy.

The other good thing about making it through in this fashion is that you're mostly against ploppies with bad tickets now. So provided you can fade further upsets, you should have a big edge on the field.

What would I like to see? Players who took an underdog with only one ticket, despite having availability of either Buf or Phi.

Note that there was good reason to try a dog if you had already taken Buf and Phi, even if you had KC and/or Det left. KC was on the road, has been struggling, and Dallas has been looking increasingly better, so taking KC may not have been appealing. Detroit was only a small favorite, and again seems to be on decline. So if all you had were KC/Det as favorites, it was probably worthwhile to say fuck it and go with a dog. I believe Brett Richey had used Bal/Phi on his "Get Crunk 9" ticket, which was otherwise a really good ticket, and went with GB exactly for this reason, which was smart. Now he's sitting in great position AND has tremendous equity.

I don't know who Hall was on 2+2. I had only heard of him after he won a WSOP bracelet in the Crazy 8s in 2018, and he wore a suit to the final table. I believe he's now 40 years old, so he would have been young in the 2000s on 2+2. I think he's a hedge fund guy and has a lot of money.

I looked him up after my post. He goes by just Golden Bears now, but with WVU still in his avatar pic. Pre-2007 before 2plus2 had their tech issue where everyone had to re-register, pretty sure his screen name was WVUGoldenBears.

I recall him from way back just because we interacted a lot in college football threads. He was a big CFB fan like myself. I recall him winning the PCA a long time ago and being on tv big games just because I talked to him a lot over there in CFB thread.

There was famous college coach who coached for like 30 years with same name. I think that’s what made me remember his name in relation to cfb. I’m sure I asked back then if he was related but can’t recall.

Oh shit. I used to post sportsbeting stuff on 2+2 like 15 years ago*, and I bet against that guy a few times. Didn't remember his real name, but the WVU/Cal thing I definitely remember. His avatar was a split screen of Cal and WV logos. It was a long time ago, but I remember he was super arrogant; but FWIW I ended up plus money against and he paid me, so nothing bad to say about his integrity there.

*I know this is hard to believe but I was banned on 2+2 for complaining too much about bad beats, which is probably why I ended up posting sports betting picks here and the rest is history.

[Dan Druff]

So here are the entries which picked Cincy, of which Galen claimed to have 2:

Accorsi-1
Champ-4
Heater City-8
Itstartswithabet-7
Kick your knees up - 10
LawfirmofJCM-6
LeapingLizards-6
Playerpropsking-1
Sloppy Brie-8
Thewestwingers-7


Interesting. There is not a single entry with more than 1 CIN pick, or more than 2 CHI picks.

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1994892297302151448

So there's no way to determine which ones are Galen.

Either he's lying, or he owned parts of 4 different entries. If he's telling the truth, he either bought up a ton of entries in friends' names, or he's part of a big consortium of entries, which doesn't sit well with me, even if allowed.

I mean, thats the ultimate smart play eh? Have runners so you own/have equity in like 50 entries where you pick for them all?

Seems like any like random forum could pool enough for something like that....

Yes, it is a smart play. It's just annoying to me when the spirit of the contest is to restrict people to 10 tickets each, and then they fully allow these syndicates. Like, if that's the case, why not just open it up to unlimited tickets (or something very high like 100), and then let the thing play out?

Here Average Joe Rich Ploppy gets restricted to 10 tickets, and sharp guys like Galen Hall get to be in a giant consortium of them.