I have winning ticket at Suncoast for 30K on tonight's game & need help

I have winning ticket at Suncoast for 30K on tonight's game & need help I have a perfect ticket in the 30K weekly contest at the Suncoast for tonight's game and I have Houston (contest without points). There are 24others in the same position going into tonight's game. If Houston wins straight up I'm guaranteed about $850. First place winner (decided by over/under) wins 10K and the balance of the 30K (20K)is split evenly among the other 23. Aside from the obvious bet of takingthe Jets for a few bucks and having a nice big middle is there a better mathematical way to optimise this position? Fezz is the math expert. Thanks if anyone comes up with any answers -exotic ones. My wife suggested taking the Jets on the ML for a hundered which pays +350

I love this contest. Way to go. The ML solution works, but I've always favored taking the points on the dog for a shot at winning both. Typically the proper EV play is to avoid hedging at all. But since Jets is a Fezzik selection, there's incentive to go that route.

If you do money line, do some shopping way better than +350 out there. Question is how much does the 850 mean to you. If you would love/need to lock in some money do the money line route but if you can live with the fact there is an approx 80% chance you will have 850 in hand and 20% chance you have nothing, doing nothing will cost you the least amount of money in -ev plays. If the Jets are a good play at +9 (fezzik has them) then that isn't a bad hedge either. Capping NFL however gameday is a tough racket needless to say.

Hey that's some good advice. Just what I was looking for. This site just paid for itself. Thanks!!

congratulations on your envious position. Would love to hear the back story as well as details of the contest. Good Luck!

Another option would be to hedge with an adjusted line of Jets +3 1/2 +200. I like that for couple hundred in your position. Good luck whichever way you go. Just curious what your total guess was? Im on the Over.

My thanks to you guys for your input. It helped. One of you wanted to hear the final chapter in this saga and this is what I ended up doing. I knew I had $869 coming from the contest itself (assuming Houston won and I didn't win the over/under), so I took $200 and put it on the Jets at 9 1/2. Sat down to look at some other games and saw it move to 10 so I put another $100 on the Jets and that's the way it went down. I ended up with $300 on the Jets (which as you guys know covered). I don't know about the under/over yet, but I had 44 so my guess is it that that won't cut it. It ended up at 23 to 17 and someone usually has that nailed. But still a good night's work. I ended up opting out of M/L and a few other exotic thoughts, that as you know sometimes course through a gambler's brain and stuck with just a nice middle, which in this case paid off. Nail biter though there at the end, but that's part of the fun.

That's how Fezz won the Hilton one year. He hedged with some halftime bets and won those as well.