Penny Parlay Pain
@Johnny_fb13
The other day I was looking deep in some of my settled bets when I stumbled on a bet during my junior year of college. A simple penny parlay. A pretty common thing for college kids with no steady income.
I took the Steelers +180 ML over the Rams, Dolphins +380 over the Colts and Titans over Chiefs +230 in a whopping +4335 three-leg parlay. Shockingly, it hit. I used what was probably the last 50 cents in my DraftKings account at the time for a $22.18 payout. While that 22 bucks probably bought my next 30-pack of Natty Light, I couldn’t help but feel the pain and regret of only putting 2 quarters on the damn bet. A simple 20 dollars would’ve paid out $887 (about 62 thirty packs of Natty Light in Muncie, Indiana).
Can’t dwell on the past. That might be a little harder for New Jersey DraftKings bettor Kevin Maselli. This man nailed 14-leg parlay (+961169) during the 2019 NCAA college basketball tournament. Those are odds that people can only dream of hitting. He’s the next millionaire, right? Wrong. Unfortunately, Maselli only put 14 cents on the lottery ticket parlay, winning $1,345.64.
Still a nice payout, but it’s hard to not imagine the possibilities. Wanting to dig a little bit deeper, I got in contact with Maselli who is a special education teacher in New Jersey. “Placing bets under a dollar is something I have always enjoyed! The underdog for sure. Do I wish I put more than 14 cents? Yeah... but I wouldn’t have placed a parlay with those odds no more than $1,” said Maselli.
Since hitting this one in a million parlay (16,384-1 to be exact), he’s been featured all over the internet and was even featured on last week’s episode of Bettor Days on ESPN with Mike Greenberg. “ [It] definitely sped up the process of putting a down payment on a ring to engage my now wife… I guess having a tv episode and article on ESPN is pretty cool but I’m just a normal dude who lives in Asbury Park NJ and is extremely close to family,” said Maselli.
I’ll leave it up to you to decide what the moral of this story is. Does all this college basketball betting talk get you excited? Good. We’re exactly 9 weeks away from college hoops! Until then, continue to CUE IT UP!
Follow BeatinTheBookie.com site contributor Johnny at @johnny_fb13.