2010 June at Linesmaker

World Cup Quarterfinals Line-up Set

In the final matches of the round of 16 in the FIFA World Cup 2010, Paraguay beat Asian giants Japan in a penalty shootout, while Euro­pean cham­pi­ons Spain beat Portugal. In the first match of the day, Paraguay squeezed through to the quar­ter­fi­nal stage for the first time in their his­tory, as they beat Japan 5–3 on penal­ties. Dur­ing the penal­ties, Yuichi Komano stepped up to make it 3–3 but struck the ball against the cross­bar as Japan’s dream run ended. In the day’s final match, pre-tournament favorites Spain sent their neighbor’s Por­tu­gal crash­ing out of... 

Dodgers Beat Giants

Casey Blake smashed a tie-breaking, two-run homer in the eighth inning on Mon­day as the Los Ange­les Dodgers routed the San Fran­cisco Giants, 4–2 in the opener of a three-game set. Blake fin­ished with two hits, Ramirez went 3-for-3 with an RBI, and Rafael Fur­cal col­lected a pair of hits and scored a run for the Dodgers, who had lost a series against the Yan­kees over the weekend. Dodgers’ starter Chad Billings­ley sur­ren­dered two runs on five hits and two walks in six innings for the Dodgers. San Fran­cisco starter Barry Zito went six innings, allowed a pair of runs on six... 

Demand for Technology at World Cup

The debate of the use of tech­nol­ogy in foot­ball has cropped up its ugly head again. It is now fiercer and more intense than last time, as last night’s matches were marred by wrong deci­sions by the ref­er­ees at cru­cial stages. In England’s match with Ger­many a shot from Lam­pard struck the under­side of the bar and clearly crossed the line and was not given. While in the Argentina-Mexico game, a goal was per­mit­ted in spite of replays being shown inside the sta­dium that showed that Tevez was clearly offside. Eng­land were thrashed 4–1 by Ger­many in the round of 16... 

Point Spreads Set by the Masters of the Line

Bet­ting on point spreads is a sci­ence that has often been handed down from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion. Esca­lat­ing your bet dur­ing a hot streak is a pre­ferred method of bet­ting on point spreads. The sci­ence of sports bet­ting is a sweet sci­ence often handed down from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion in the same way an heir­loom or other fam­ily tra­di­tion would be passed on for pos­ter­ity. A dear friend of mine had the most won­der­ful, car­ing and gen­er­ous dad that one could ask for. As Father’s Day approaches, we take an oppor­tu­nity to rem­i­nisce... 

Match of Epic Proportions

A mes­mer­ized crowd on Court 18 of Wim­ble­don could not take their eyes off as John Isner and Nico­las Mahut’s strug­gle car­ried on to a record 10 hours and 163 games with­out get­ting a win­ner; as bad light ensured the first-round match will go into a third day. With the score in the decider locked at 59–59 — that is right 118 total games in the fifth set when play was sus­pended just after 9pm, the play­ers will try for a result tomorrow. In his second-round match, Roger Fed­erer again had a tor­rid time against a new­comer before remain­ing on course to defend his title. Ilija... 

Do-or-Die Time for Teams in World Cup

FIFA World Cup 2010 saw another day filled with drama in Group C. The deci­sion to drop Emile Hes­key and start Jer­main Defoe proved to be a mas­ter­stroke by Fabio Capello against Slove­nia as the striker volleyed home to seal England’s progress with a 1–0 win in Port Eliz­a­beth. The USA topped Group C as Lan­don Dono­van hit a late win­ner against Alge­ria to give them a 1–0 win. Dono­van struck after Dempsey’s shot was par­ried away by the goalie, with sec­onds left to leapfrog England. Aus­tralia beat Ser­bia 2–1 as both teams exited this year’s World Cup. The... 

Rangers Continue Their Winning Streak

The Rangers claimed one of their best win­ning streaks in the club’s his­tory and Josh Hamil­ton con­tin­ues to stay at the cen­ter of it. Hamil­ton hit a dou­ble homer and helped lift a run­ner at home on Tues­day as the Rangers increased their win­ning streak to nine games. They beat the Pirates 6–3 at Rangers Ball­park in Arlington. Julio Bour­bon hit a three run homer in the fifth inning and erased a 2–1 deficit, putting the Rangers ahead for good, while Josh Hamil­ton and Michael Young added solo shots. Tommy Hunter 3–0 gave away only two runs out of nine hits in his... 

Group Stages Coming to an End

The last round of the FIFA World Cup 2010 started on Tues­day with Uruguay secur­ing the top spot in Group A. With hosts, South Africa unable to change the goal dif­fer­ence too much in their 2–1 vic­tory over France, the out­come of this match in Rusten­burg also put the ner­vous Mex­i­cans through. France exited the World Cup at the first round stage with­out even a sin­gle win and with barely a whim­per after this hum­bling defeat at the hands of Bafana Bafana. Mar­tin Demiche­lis and sub­sti­tute Mar­tin Palermo scored for the Argen­tineans. South Korea drew with Nige­ria... 

Top Seeds Start Slow

Defend­ing cham­pion Roger Fed­erer and No. 3 seed Novak Djokovic both dodged a bul­let in their first-round matches Mon­day in the first day at Wim­ble­don. The 16-time Grand Slam cham­pion came back from two sets down to beat Colom­bian Ale­jan­dro Falla 5–7, 4–6, 6–4, 7–6 (7–1), 6–0. Djokovic needed five sets to pass over a deter­mined Bel­gian Olivier Rochus 4–6, 6–2, 3–6, 6–4, 6–2. Fifth-seeded Andy Rod­dick was a straight-set win­ner over Rajeev Ram 6–3, 6–2, 6–2.   No. 7-seeded Niko­lay Davy­denko was pushed to his limit in a 6–3, 6–7 (3–7),... 

Progressive Parlays Explained

Don’t know what pro­gres­sive par­lays are? It’s actu­ally quite sim­ple, make your picks and even if they don’t all come in — you still WIN! A Pro­gres­sive Par­lay is very sim­i­lar to a nor­mal par­lay, except for one thing: in exchange for not get­ting as big a pay­out for pick­ing a per­fect com­bi­na­tion, you are get­ting insur­ance for those occa­sions when one or more or the teams in your par­lay loses. These can be between 4 and 12 teams but you can onlychoose point spreads (no totals or money­lines).  In these par­lays you can lose games and...