LAS VEGAS — Last fall, I hesitated ringing Chicago native Sam Panayotovich, who had invested in Rome Odunze getting more than 850.5 receiving yards in his second NFL season.
The Bears receiver had 559, extrapolating out to 1,056 for the season. Panayotovich harbors zero superstitions. I flirt with a few. Balderdash, Sammy told me with harsher words. Let’s talk, he said. I penned the piece.
In his next three games, Odunze had only 41, 53 and 8 yards. Left-foot issues sidelined him for the Bears’ last five games.
“I knew he wasn’t 100%, but I certainly didn’t think he’d miss five games,” Panayotovich told me two weeks ago, just after he had moved from Boston to Chicago to become Fox 32’s new sports anchor.
“But to your point, I don’t believe in jinxes. A guy doesn’t stay healthy, it’s out of my control. He plays 17, he’s getting 1,000 [yards]. I talked it up. We make bad bets that win, good bets that lose.”
He scans his DraftKings app to find Odunze yards for 2026 at 799.5.
“I’m blasting that!” Sammy said. “They got rid of DJ Moore, so that will open up more opportunities. Honestly, 799.5 is almost disrespectful.”
Kiss of death
I cashed tickets recently at M Resort’s William Hill sportsbook, and a teller handed me a $50 bill among a small pile.
I slipped it into its place in my wallet; facing into the fold, it’s 1s, 5s, 10s, 20s, the 50 and 100s. Grants don’t spook me, but they must be housed properly.
But Vegas sports-betting pillar Michael “Roxy” Roxborough despises the currency that features President Ulysses S. Grant.
For a gambling-jinx magazine feature I wrote six years ago, Roxy called 50s “anathema to old-time gamblers like me; similar to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Black Spot, they are considered the kiss of death.”
Roxy landed in Las Vegas in 1972 and learned about the cursed note from mentor/oddsmaker Herbie “Hoops” Lambeck.
“Back then, all bettors shunned 50s as bad luck,” Roxy told me. “Just a given. Bookies and the sportsbooks never paid anyone with them. Hoops would rather trade his $50 for a $20, if the alternative meant he had to keep the $50.”
Some link the bill’s bad luck to Grant supposedly being the lone U.S. president to have declared for bankruptcy, but Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Lincoln and Truman were all familiar with penury.
If they receive one, Circa Sports tellers don’t recirculate it.
“Most gamblers refuse them,” Circa director of operations Jeffrey Benson said, “out of superstition.”
Second-generation handicapper Kenny White was informed of that jinx by his father, Pete.
“It’s very important to believe in superstitions,” Kenny said, “but I’d love to have a Brinks truck full of 50s!”
No garlic or hunches
Long Island handicapper Tom Barton heard of 50s tales about 20 years ago; hence, he never enters a sportsbook with one in his wallet.
“That’s garlic to a vampire, for a bettor!” he said. “I never say the words ‘lock’ or ‘guarantee,’ and I hate when people say a game is over before it actually is.”
Vegas Stats & Information Network (VSiN) host Tim Murray keeps his betting tickets in a Cuban cigar box, as I do (Romeo y Julieta, coronas); losers must be extracted quickly so others don’t get tainted.
Southern California handicapper Tommy Lorenzo started out betting horses. It took years, but he finally stopped making “hunch” wagers.
“Like a horse named after the street I grew up on or one called ‘Tommy Tuff Knuckles.’ I burned so much money on hunch bets that I swore them off decades ago.”
Paging Dr. Phil
VSiN senior host/scribe Matt Youmans believes Dr. Phil would do this topic justice. Intelligent people, Youmans emailed me, know superstitions are stupid.
“But they do serve a purpose for gamblers who always need some good fortune for things to go their way. We sometimes have ridiculous routines to help feel a sense of control over the uncertainty of the games we’re betting.”
If he has a successful Saturday betting college football, Youmans will wear the same shirt, socks and underwear for the NFL games on Sunday.
If he patronized Burger King for breakfast on such a Saturday, he returns Sunday morning. The routines don’t alter until his luck fizzles.
When a Mush texts him with a play, it gets deleted immediately “to erase any bad vibes.”
He has more, but Youmans is saving them for Dr. Phil.
Horses and a hearse
Eddie “Mush” Montanaro played himself in actor Chazz Palmintieri’s 1993 movie, “A Bronx Tale.”
The moment Chazz, as mobster Sonny, and crew hear Mush barking for a certain horse at the track, they rip their tickets on that horse, which had been winning. It loses.
The Bronx-born professional bettor Bill Krackomberger has lived in Las Vegas for nearly 20 years.
“But I can’t get the New Yorker out of me,” he said. “There are guys like Eddie Montanaro out there who can’t win no matter what they do. If I find they’re on a certain bet or side, I have no problem betting the other way on general principle.”
Montanaro, Krack says, is infamous.
“A lifelong string of bad luck. The legend of his misadventures was cemented at his funeral, where the hearse suffered a flat tire right outside the church.
“An ironically fitting finale to his colorful life.”