Four friends from Los Angeles and Boston who beat the house in a Vegas contest and won $736,575 didn't do so well with their Super Bowl pick.
Their last tweet on game day gave Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll a back-handed compliment:
Earlier in the week, the group said they had invested heavily in their choice., but they did not say who they bet on until Sunday morning.
The four friends from Los Angeles and Boston may not have won their Super Bowl bet but they beat the house in a Vegas contest 76 percent of the time during the NFL’s regular season, winning $736,575 — a record.
More than 1,400 teams and individuals paid $1,500 to participate in the annual SuperContest at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino. The game challenged them to pick the team to beat the sports book's point spread in five games in each of the regular season's 17 weeks.
The four friends, calling themselves the CH Ballers, picked correctly in 64 out of 85 games.
"This is like the World Series of sports gambling," said Justin Green, 30, one of the four friends.
The “CH” in the group’s name refers to Campbell Hall High School in Los Angeles, alma mater of three of the four friends.
Green said it was the group’s first time playing and none of them is a chronic gambler. Green said he is in the entertainment business; Andrew Leff, 29, is in commercial real estate; the other two are in private equity and the financial industry and asked to remain anonymous (even though they appeared in publicity photos).
A duo who took second place in the contest are both investment managers, and they also chose to remain anonymous to avoid worrying their clients.
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The CH Ballers said they worked together to figure out their choices, and there was some luck involved, as well.
"Some of those games almost gave me a heart attack," Green said.A duo who took second place in the regular-season contest are both investment managers, and they also chose to remain anonymous to avoid worrying their clients.
AP contributed to this report.
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