The Parlay of Shame Wall

Michigan versus Michigan State. A man sat down at 2 PM on a random Thursday and decided his entire emotional wellbeing for the next 96 hours would be determined by whether or not college students could put a ball through a hoop. He called his wife. He said "I'm about to do something." She said "Please don't." He did it anyway.

He built a 6-leg same-game parlay based entirely on "rivalry vibes" and a YouTube video from 2019 about "why Michigan State always plays up in big games." The video had 47 views. He found it compelling.

He posted this to his group chat with the message "this is the one, boys." His group chat has heard "this is the one, boys" fourteen times since September. The lifetime record on "this is the one, boys" parlays is 0-14. Tonight will determine if it becomes 0-15 or if one man's vibes-based YouTube research finally pays off. His wife has already prepared a backup dinner conversation topic about literally anything else.

In September, this woman told everyone at her office that she had a "feeling" about the Super Bowl. She wrote it on a sticky note and put it on her monitor. "Chiefs vs Eagles, Eagles win 31-27." She told her coworkers she was a "low-key psychic." She is not psychic. She is a paralegal from Cincinnati who watches football twice a year and picked the two teams she remembered from last year's Super Bowl.

She has now built an entire Super Bowl futures parlay based on this prophecy, which she has since upgraded to include prop bets she "received in a vision" during a particularly long Zoom meeting about quarterly compliance reviews.

The potential payout is nearly $2.85 million. She has calculated this number seventeen times. She has a Google Doc titled "What I'll Do When The Parlay Hits" that is four pages long and includes a section called "People Who Doubted Me (For Later)." Her husband asked her what happens if it doesn't hit. She said "It's going to hit. I visualized it." He has started researching therapists who specialize in sports gambling adjacent delusions.

This masterpiece came from a man who told his wife he was "investing in the market." Technically true, if you consider the sports betting market a legitimate financial institution, which it absolutely is not.

Seven legs. Seven confident decisions made during a commercial break. The first six hit like he had insider information from God himself. Steph Curry needed one more three-pointer in the fourth quarter to complete the sweep. He was 8-for-12 on the night. The man was already calculating how to explain a $14,000 deposit to his accountant.

Curry finished with exactly 5 threes. Five. Not five and a half. Not six. Five. He went 0-for-3 in the fourth quarter from deep while this man aged 15 years in real time. The Warriors won by 12. Every other leg hit. The universe specifically, deliberately, personally attacked this man.

A self-described "numbers guy" who works in IT and swears he ran the probabilities through a Python script. He did not. He used the FanDuel parlay builder at 2 AM after four Modelo Especials and a Wikipedia article about expected value.

The thesis: pick the five biggest favorites of the night across three sports. "They're all -300 or better. The math literally cannot fail." The math, as it turns out, not only can fail but will do so in the most humiliating way conceivable.

Four of five favorites lost. On the same night. The Panthers, the only team that won, were playing against a squad missing their top three scorers. The one leg nobody was worried about was the only one that survived. His Python script, when later reviewed by a coworker, was just a grocery list with "import numpy" typed at the top.

A man placed a 4-leg parlay on his wedding anniversary as a "romantic gesture." Each leg represented something about their relationship. His wife's birthday (over 28.5 points for LeBron, because she turned 29). Their anniversary date (3.5-point spread, because it was March 5th). The year they met (over 215.5 total, which he rationalized as "close enough to 2015"). And their dog's name (Broncos ML, because the dog's name is Bronco).

He told his wife during dinner. She did not find it romantic. She found it "a perfect example of why we should probably go to couples counseling, Kevin." LeBron and the over came through, because even the basketball gods wanted this to hurt more. The dog, Bronco, reportedly showed no remorse. The Broncos lost by 17.

The revenge parlay. The most dangerous weapon in the degenerate arsenal. This man lost $800 across six straight bets during the NFL Sunday early window. Rather than accept the loss, go for a walk, maybe call his mother, he decided the rational response was to put half of what he lost on a 10-leg parlay for the late games and Sunday Night Football.

"I just need to get back to even," he told his group chat. His group chat, which had already stopped responding after bet number four, offered no counsel. They were busy placing their own revenge parlays.

Nine of ten legs hit. Lamar Jackson threw for 244 yards. Two hundred and forty-four. He needed one more completion. One more screen pass. One more anything. Instead, Lamar ran for 112 yards because Lamar Jackson does not care about your over. The man did not get back to even. He went from down $800 to down $1,200 and reportedly did not speak for the remainder of the evening.

She dreamed the final score would be 24-21. She told everyone at brunch. She showed them her dream journal, which was a Notes app entry from 3:47 AM that read "24-21 buffalo idk." Her friends, who should have been better friends, encouraged her to "trust the vision."

She bet the exact score. She bet the first half total. She bet the margin of victory. She built an entire 6-leg parlay around a dream she had after eating Thai food at midnight. The payout was going to be over twenty grand on a $50 bet.

The final score was 31-28. Not only was it not 24-21, it wasn't even close to the genre of 24-21. The Bills won, but by the wrong amount, in the wrong way, with the wrong total. Her dream was technically a nightmare. She has since stopped eating Pad See Ew after 10 PM, but not because of the gambling. She just doesn't like the dreams anymore.

While his VP of Engineering was presenting Q4 revenue targets, this legend was constructing a same-game parlay under the conference table. His screen was reflected in the glass partition behind him. Three people saw. Nobody said anything. This is America.

He built the parlay in exactly the time it took his VP to explain "synergistic cross-functional deliverables," which was about four minutes. He hit submit right as someone asked him a direct question about sprint velocity. He answered "bullish" and it somehow worked.

Jokic had 9 assists. Nine. He needed one more in the final four minutes and Denver decided to run isolation plays for the rest of the game. This man watched it happen during a 1-on-1 with his manager, who noticed he was "unusually distracted" and "made a sound like a deflating balloon" at 9:47 PM Eastern during their async Slack call.