As One Shining Moment plays for the last time in our heads for the season, we look to other sports to fulfill our degenerate needs for action. Here are 5 random thoughts that can help you along your gambling ventures.

1) Betting Baseball

When wagering on Baseball, things work a little different than in other sports. Lineups are not released until closer to the first pitch making it harder to take advantage of "early" lines. Taking certain things into factors such as umpires, pitching rotations, ballparks, and teams giving players days off are all things to keep an eye on. Baseball has a ton of variables; you must stay on top of it to be successful.

2) Baseball Home Field Advantage?

When betting sports, we put a tremendous amount of emphasis on Home Field advantage. Especially in the NFL, where playing at home is usually worth 3 points to the handicap, but when betting on the MLB, playing at home may not play as much of an impact.

                                                              Sportsrefernce.com

As you can see, in the regular season, Baseball carries the least amount of advantage of playing as the home team, while the NBA leads the way where teams hosting win 59.9% of the time.

In the postseason, however, things change, and the NFL takes the front, and home teams win 64.7% of the time.

3) Hottest MLB team to start the season

The season has just begun, and the journey is long-drawn, the Hottest teams thus far:

Runline Records
Minnesota 4-0-0    
Seattle       4-0-0
Tampa Bay    4-1-0
Houston    4-1-0
Colorado    3-1-0
Washington    3-1-0
NY Mets    3-1-0
Pittsburgh    3-1-0
Toronto    4-2-0

Best Over-Under Records
Atlanta    2-0-2
Arizona    3-1-0
Colorado    3-1-0
San Diego   3-1-0
Seattle       3-1-0
Pittsburgh   3-1-0
As of 10:41 PM 4/3

The Hometown Defending Champion Astros (feels great to say that) have come out scorching hot as expected. The Astros are 5-1 vs. the Runline, and straight up. When the Astros win, they do it in fashion and cover the run line by an average of 1.7 runs.

The Over/Under in Astros games are 3-3 thus far, and much has to do with the inflated totals books are setting as traps knowing the public has caught on to this team's bats. A better strategy could be to bet Houston's Team totals separately, as they have scored 6+ in their last four games.

4) Rockets Playoff Run Update

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece on what the best strategy to profit on the Rockets down the stretch is. At the time, you could get the Rockets in the +180/+210 range. Earlier this week, Bovada tweeted that for the first time all season, the Warriors weren't favored to win the title by themselves. Both Houston, and Golden State now sit at +120 giving merit to the mechanical parlay strategy I spoke about. If and when these two giants collide in the Western Conference Finals, the odds you get by rolling over the initial amount round by round will profit substantially higher odds than the current +120.

5) Poker tip of the week

A problematic situation you can catch yourself in on a poker table can be that of falling victim to an over-aggressive player. When playing vs. one of these table bullies you must:

A) Play position carefully, ideally you want to be sitting behind them, being you would like them to act first.

B) When involved in hands with the "hyper raiser," try and find yourself raising more often, rather than calling the villain's hands. To stop an aggressive player, you must take command of the hand when the time is right. When executed correctly, a good old fashion check-raise can be enough to get the bully off your back. Play the game, don't let the game play you.

For any question or comments reach me @JerryBoKnowz on twitter.