A regular Joe has beaten the wiseguys from Las Vegas.
Damon G., a 32-year-old barista, is reportedly walking away with more than $900,000 in his pockets after winning the football handicapping contest and Vegas institution, Westgate Las Vegas SuperContest.
ESPN’s Dave Tuley said the barista, who used the contest alias “pops2008,” went 5-0 against the Westgate’s contest spread in Week 17 and finished with an overall record of 54-28-3 (65.8 percent).
The prize for winning first place in the contest is $895,482, to which Damon added $10,000 for sharing a mini-contest title—where he went 13-2 ATS (86.7 percent) during the last three weeks of the season. According to Tuley, Damon had two entries in the recently concluded SuperContest.
The other entry, Damon’s “main” entry, was entered under the alias “pops3284” and finished tied for 40th, which gained the barista an additional $2,217.38.
The barista’s $3,000 investment earned a grand total of $907,699.38, according to reports.
Damon told Tuley he enjoys sports betting, although he’s not a big bettor. He said he had been entering the SuperContest since 2013 with one entry and was able to finish only above or right around .500 each year.
This year, Damon said he went with “the maximum two entries but was in the middle of the huge pack for a good portion of the season before finally breaking into the Top 50 (that’s how many places cash) after Week 12. Even then, he was 3.5 games out of the lead with his top entry and 5.5 games back with the eventual winning entry.”
Damon’s big move was in Week 15, when he went 5-0 with his pops2008 entry and 4-0-1 with his pops3284 entry to move both into an eighth place tie. Both of Damon’s entries were actually tied for fourth place in Week 17. His five best bets on the card were Houston 3 at Tennessee, Buffalo -3.5 at New York, Baltimore 2 at Cincinnati, Dallas 4 at Philadelphia, and Miami 9.5 at New England. He put the opposite plays on his pops2008 card, and that one went 5-0 in the early games on Sunday, according to Tuley.
The SuperContest, which costs $1,500 to enter, is often described as the sports betting equivalent of the World Series of Poker’s Main Event. The contest’s popularity has exploded recently, going from 345 entries in 2010 to 1,854 this season, Tuley said.
