SUPER NUMBER: $207,000I received a direct message on Twitter at 11:41 EST on Jan. 1. It was from @4RichardStand and read: "In Vegas to see how this all plays out."For those who haven't been following the blog, @4RichardStand is also known as Richard Stand, which is the pseudonym for the guy who entered the final weekend of the NFL season leading the Las Vegas Hilton's Supercontest, the premier handicapping contest in the country. More than 300 contestants paid $1,500 to pick five games against the spread every week. The winner earned -- and after a season of agony, there is no doubt it is earned -- $207,000.Richard went into the weekend with a one-game lead over a guy named Wisky. Rather than sit in his Boston home pacing the carpet and trying to avoid his wife and young son, Richard hopped a flight to Vegas with friends to spend the weekend watching the drama unfold live. But he didn't want to stay at any of the standard Strip hotels. He checked into the new Mandarin, the only place in Las Vegas that doesn't have a casino. "I wanted some quiet," he told me. "I wanted to think about my options."Richard wasn't just there to sit back and hope things went his way. One way or the other, he was walking away from Vegas a winner of some very large dollars. Before he hit The Strip he withdrew $75,000 in cash -- his kid's college fund -- to make some hedge bets. He's not crazy and he's not a degenerate; he knew he'd be putting that money back, either as the contest winner or as the winner of his hedges.That Saturday night, while he played craps and blackjack at the Bellagio, he began whirring through the dozens of potential scenarios for the following day. "I got back to my room around 2 a.m. and was up until 3:30 in the morning trying to figure out the hedge opportunities."[+] EnlargeLionsAP Photo/Rick OsentoskiAs part of the most important wager of his life, Richard Stand bet that the Lions could handle the Vikings.Wisky had Pittsburgh minus-6.5, Tampa Bay plus-8, St. Louis minus-3, Dallas plus-12 and Houston plus-2.5. Richard had St. Louis, Dallas and Houston also. Plus he picked Green Bay minus-6.5 and Minnesota plus-7. Whether he won or lost would come down to how the Packers and the Vikings did for him. Or how the Steelers and Bucs did for Wisky. "So that's when I figured out my hedge," Stand says.The Hilton contest lines are posted on Tuesdays, and those are the spreads all the contestants play (picks are due Saturday morning and posted on the Hilton's website Saturday afternoon). But, by Sunday, the line on the Lions-Vikings game had moved from Detroit minus-7 to Detroit minus-3. The lines on the Steelers and Bucs had stayed mostly the same. So Stand decided his best option was a three-team parlay: Steelers minus-6, Bucs plus-8 and Detroit minus-3. This was a safe bet for four reasons:1. If Pittsburgh and Tampa covered and Detroit won by more than seven he'd fall out of first place, but would still win his $50,000 parlay.2. If Pittsburgh and Tampa didn't cover, he'd lose his parlay, but Wisky would be out of the running for first, so Stand's chance to win the $207K would be greatly increased.3. If Pittsburgh and Tampa covered and Detroit won by four, five or six he'd win his parlay and still be in contention to win the whole thing.4. If Pittsburgh and Tampa covered and Detroit won by exactly seven, he'd win his parlay, tie his Detroit-Minnesota play in the contest and still have a chance to finish first.I had asked him to e-mail me throughout Sunday to keep me posted on his emotions and plans. This is what I got at 10:48 am EST. "Up all night working on hedge strategy. Felt good during a late-night craps run but now not feeling as good. Heading to M with more cash than Pablo Escobar."Vegas isn't what it used to be. Back in the day of Lefty Rosenthal you could walk into any book on The Strip and get any kind of action you wanted. But these days -- with books owned by huge corporations -- the liability of taking huge bets is too big. Richard wanted to make a $10,000 three-team parlay bet. He tried the Aria and the Bellagio, but neither would give him more than $5,000. So, having read a recent New York Times story about the M and how bookmakers there would take any bet that comes, he hightailed it there early on Sunday morning, to get down his action.At 10:51, while Stand must have been in the cab, I got this e-mail: "Am I really risking $200K on Joe Webb?"Richard Stand's Ticket ReceiptRichard StandStand's parlay.Thirty minutes after that I received this picture, highlighting his parlay: Steelers minus-6, Lions minus-3, Bucs plus-8. Take: $10,000 to win $52,914.The M is the original home to in-game wagering, meaning you can bet on the games and ever-changing odds and point spreads from play to play. There are no couches or comfy chairs to sit in, except for in the VIP section. Instead there are rows of desks set up like a Wall Street trading floor, with touch-screen computers where people can make their in-game bets and small televisions to watch the games."I asked if I could sit in the VIP section because I was putting down so much on a parlay and they just looked at me," Stand says. "They told me that wasn't enough. Instead they set me and my guys up in three or four cubbyholes with desks and put a small piece of paper on each one that read, Reserved: Stand."Almost immediately, it was clear that the Steelers were going to easily beat the Browns. And the Bucs were giving the Saints all they could handle, too. So the Vikings' performance was crucial to Stand's chances. As the game progressed slowly, with neither team taking control, my e-mail went eerily silent. I worried that he was hyperventilating. Finally at 1:52 EST, shortly after Joe Webb ended a Vikings potential scoring drive with an across-the-body pick, I got this: "WTF was Joe Webb thinking throwing that pass ... Favre Jr."As the Lions went into halftime ahead 10-0, I received this e-mail, which was practically dripping in tears: "I feel everything slipping away."But it wasn't over. Even though Detroit went up 13-0 early in the third, the Vikings plus-seven was still in reach. With 6:12 left in the third, Detroit had just begun a drive on its own 35. Still despondent and afraid to watch his dreams slip away, Stand went to the bathroom. "Went to take a leak and begin crying," he wrote me. "Came back to a Minnesota touchdown."Jared Allen had picked off Shaun Hill and returned it 36 yards for a touchdown. The score was now 13-7. Two minutes later, the Vikings began a long drive that extended into the fourth quarter and ended with a field goal. What had been a 13-0 lead for Detroit was now just 13-10, with 12 minutes left to play.That lasted for three minutes, right up until Lions running back Maurice Morris went 5 yards off tackle for a Detroit score. With a little more than nine minutes left the Lions were up 20-10.By now, the Steelers were leading the Browns by infinity, as my 4-year-old likes to say. And the Bucs-Saints was going back and forth. Covering the 8-point spread wasn't going to be a problem for Tampa. Wisky was going to start the day 2-0. Stand needed the Vikings to push or cover.With 5:36 seconds left in the game, the Vikings got the ball back on their own 12, down by 10. This is what Stand sent me: "It all comes down to Joe Webb."And the rook did not disappoint. He completed 7 of 10 passes and scrambled once for 9 yards, moving the ball down to Detroit's 30 before the Vikes were stopped. Needing 10 points, Minnesota coach Leslie Frazier elected to go for the field goal. "Oh god..." came the word from Stand. And then, after Ryan Longwell connected from 46 yards, leaving the door open for a push, Stand wrote, "I can live with a tie. A push allows me to still win it."Five minutes later, with the game over and feeling lucky he escaped with a tie, Stand sent me this: "Still alive and just won 52K."Now there was the matter of the Bears. This presented another middle opportunity for Stand. The Hilton line on the Bears-Packers had been Green Bay minus-6.5. However, during the week, the line had drifted to Green Bay minus-11, based on the notion Chicago had wrapped up its playoff spot and Green Bay needed to win to get in. With $52,000 already in the bag, Stand was feeling pretty flush. If Green Bay covered, he would win the $207,000. If the Packers didn't he'd finish second, winning around $80,000. So he hedged again, putting $30,000 on the Bears plus-11. If they lost by between 10 and seven, he'd win his hedge bet plus the Hilton contest. If they lost by six or less, he'd win his hedge and finish second in the Hilton. Either way, he was walking away with no less than $160,000 -- his two hedge wins for $80K total and his second-place finish for the same amount. His e-mail to me just before the game began was, "Took Chicago for 33K. Yikes..."As the game unfolded like the first round of the playoffs -- with the Bears playing their starters and leading 3-0 at the half -- I wanted to tell Stand what I remember from Lovie Smith's introductory news conference years ago. As a Bears fan it always stuck with me. He said his priority was beating the Packers, as much as it was winning the Super Bowl. I decided this would hurt too much to hear, then he sent me this, early in the third quarter: "Need GB to realize they need to win to get in playoffs and need Chicago to realize the game means nothing to them."Isn't gambling fun?The game seesawed back and forth in the third, with the Packers finally tying it toward the end. Stand was awfully quiet on the e-mail. Turns out he was pacing on the carpet behind his cubbyholes at the M. He hadn't eaten anything other than half a slice of pizza in nearly 24 hours. Coca-Cola was the only thing helping him stand. "Everything hurt me at this point."Finally, at 6:30 EST, shortly after Green Bay went up 10-3 early in the fourth, my e-mail blew up with this: "End it now...call in a bomb threat to Lambeau...end it!"For the rest of the quarter, the teams traded punts, until Chicago got the ball back on its own 2 with 4:49 remaining. Thus began the most excruciating 4:49 of Richard Stand's life. Matt Forte went for 4 yards. Then 5 yards. Then Cutler completed two passes in a row to Greg Olsen for 13 yards total. A Cutler incompletion was followed by his 7 -yard scramble and another pass to Olsen for 6 yards.[+] EnlargeJay CutlerAP Photo/Jim PrischingJay Cutler's interception helped Stand win the Hilton Supercontest.Finally, the two-minute warning. The Bears had second-and-4 on the Packers' 37. "I can barely stand," Stand sent me. This was true. He was no longer watching the game. He was crouched behind the chair in his cubbyhole, sucking down Cokes. At one point one of his buddies on the trip asked another friend where Richard was, and the friend just pointed to the floor.The Bears kept driving. Cutler for 4 yards to Rashied Davis. To Forte for 11. To Devin Hester for 16. Then, with 20 seconds left and facing a second-and-10 from the Green Bay 32, Cutler dropped back. He saw Devin Hester on the left side and lofted a beauty of a pass ... that sailed right over Hester's head and into the waiting arms of Packers DB Nick Collins."My friends and I are not huggers," Stand says. "But I think we hugged. I felt horrible, worse than anything I have ever felt in my life. The whole experience was amazing, but painful."He went to the counter, cashed his ticket for the Bears plus-11, and stuffed $85,000 in cash into his backpack. Later that night, he took his boys out to Nobu to celebrate. The bill was $900. Stand paid for it -- in cash.Next month he'll head back to Vegas again to pick up his Hilton winnings (rules preclude the payout from happening for several days.) But, back at home in Boston, even his soon-to-be 3-year-old son knows how big a deal the weekend of winning was. When Stand walked through the door $300,000 richer on Monday night, his boy said to him, "So Daddy, this means I can go to college?"
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)....LET'S DO THIS!!!
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