The Hilton SuperContest is coming down to the wire with two contestants using the aliases of Sans Souci and Pagermager hitting more than 70 percent of their NFL picks against the spread to pull away from the field and seemingly headed for a photo finish for the first-place prize of $310,200.
The other big season-long ATS handicapping contest in Las Vegas – the Cantor 2011 Football Contest – was a relative walkover.
While the SuperContest has had a $1,500 entry fee for more than 20 years and this year attracted a record field of 517, Cantor’s entry fee was $10,000 this year after being $100,000 last year and $3,000 the year before that. This year’s Cantor field had just 15 entrants, but the $75,000 winner’s share of the $150,000 purse isn’t chump change.
Another difference in the contests is that while the SuperContest allows aliases in its standings, Cantor only lists a contest number, so the player that cantered (see what I did there?) out to an early lead, pulled away from the field with a five-game cushion most of the season, and clinched last Saturday with more than a week to go has been unidentified.
Until now.
A 34-year-old from Chicago, David Frohardt-Lane (he said the hyphenated last name is a combination of his parents’ surnames), is the runaway winner as he has compiled a record of 54-32-4 (71 percent after pushes disregarded) against the spread in winning the Cantor Gaming Football Contest. His nearest competitor is 47-31-2.
Frohardt-Lane said it was a bit of an accident that he even entered the Cantor contest.
“I used to bet more offshore before that got harder to do,” he said. “I wanted to be involved and have weekly action. I’ve known about the SuperContest for years and always wanted to enter it. When I was coming out here I heard about the Cantor contest and decided to try that, too.”
Vegas contests allow the use of a local proxy to put in weekly plays as long as the entrant shows up and registers in person. Frohardt-Lane used Vegas Matty of footballcontestproxy.com for both contests.
