I'll try to make sense...
my fiscal year begins when college football begins, I havent wagered on baseball daily until this year, so in the past I considered the last NBA game until college kickoff to be party time with random baseball games thrown in (I generally take all NFL preseason dogs on the ML for small amounts without any real work put into it). I took all the MLB playoff unders for a couple of years and made real good money on that angle until last year, after the first few games I stopped- when I realized that this angle might have become too public and lost value, I also realized at this point that if I was going to make money in bases I was going to have to put in a lot of work. During the latter stages of the MLB playoffs last year, I went on a big run which boosted my interest.
I mention fiscal year because it relates to my goals. My goal for this fiscal year was to wager on 3000 events at an avg of 1% per wager, with a win rate of 55%. The win rate is adjusted for dog ML's of which I play a LOT of, and of course I have several really large wagers that are around 5%-6% and those add up quick. 3000@55%,1% is big, big return, and I have blown this return number out of the water for 3 years now. My first goal 4 years ago, was 1000 wagers at 60% win rate. My strategy was a lot different than it is now, and it was a LOT harder to hit 60% because you have to pass on so much value.
One of my main points is that everyone's strategy is different so let me start at the very beginning. I knew NOTHING about betting on sports until I was 23, I went to the University of Texas Business School studied accounting then worked for a Fortune 500 company for 2 years. And HATED it!! I am not an accountant, I am very wild, have just recently managed to cut back on partying 5 or 6 days and nights a week so my personality was not cut out for my role there. My family is small, but they are all keen investors in real estate and stocks, bonds etc. I think that contributes a little to my ideas, as does my schooling (of which I paid zero attention to). OK, so I quit my job, and partied for a year or two, moved in with some friends on the lake and had really good times. One of my friends had been a bookie at Southwest Texas State University when he was in school there, I had always played and loved sports (I paid for school playing semi-pro beach volleyball) and watched football all day with him- one day I asked him, "What is this local line thing in the back of the sports section?" He told me it was for betting- you had to choose the right side. He had to explain to me several times which side was getting/laying points. This still cracks me up. I had saved some money from my previous job, and of course knew regional college football fairly well so he found me a bookie and I started betting 100$ a game. I won the first four games. Then the bookie tried to sell me on betting even more- 500$ and I fell for it. Except that I took UT at home +4 against NEB on a hunch, and I'll never forget being so drunk and happy when my team pulled off the upset. We also rode the Redskins and the over SU and in parlays for 3 or 4 weeks, I must have won at least 15 out of my first 20 wagers. I thought I could win 70% of wagers and take over the world. I rely a lot on instinct, and that has helped a lot, and it is hard to explain a lot of the time. For some reason it dawned on me that maybe the Redskins and the Over might actually lose a couple times and SOON. After we saw the crowd for the Notre Dame at Tennessee on ESPN SAT night, we went a dime a piece on the VOLS and won it easily. Then partied all night, that's when I got a little worried about the Redskins and the Over, and tried to explain it to my friend, but he didnt listen and he was so drunk that he put a dime on WASH, a dime on the over, and a dime on the both of them parlayed. To this day we still call it "Black Sunday", lol. From that day forward he started listening a little bit, and the first inklings of money management had been born. Then my 'good friend' the bookie disappeared with 7K. That's when I started scouring the net for anything having to do with betting on sports. You can guess which site I found first- betonsports.com, lol. After being ripped off, I found the idea of wagering on-line a god-send, but again for some reason something told me this site was just a little too easy to find. They did have a posting forum, which I visited for a couple of years- some of the most entertaining degenerates I'll ever read. But what struck me was the fact that some people actually bet on the WORST team in the league with the points!! And on random totals!! Then the wheels started turning, and I wondered about getting a little group together, maybe some guy that was good in the PAC 10, another in the Big East, another good on 'random' totals. Well the next stop on the tour was, you guessed it- TOUTSVILLE!! The first tout site I stumble across was ALLRANK. I was skeptical b/c they 'only' showed 58-62% winners (varied by sport), but my buddy wanted their services and shelled out a little cash. I have nothing against ALLRANK and though this was several years ago, in hindsight I feel they were honest and if their records are correct did a solid job. However they had some 'WAR ROOM' picks that were supposed to be wagered at 5X the normal picks, and that Sunday they gave us one. I think it was against GB and my buddy and I were real confused because I had the opposite as our strongest play. We decided to say "screw you, war room" and went with our play, which won. Bye-bye toutsville. I have always been curious about bankroll turnover- how to grow it and as quickly as possible and I remember reading some stuff from the Consensus Club and J.R. Miller as well as posters (that usually got heckled into oblivion) about ideas. I also noticed that a lot of the time posters with a lot of picks each day did well in rankings or units won. Hmmmm...
I dont know, but I may be a little lucky. I have never lost money betting on sports, I still have the bankroll that I started with from day one- in fact the ninety-one dollars that I won on my first game I keep laminated in my desk- it has special significance because the bookie had to explain to me why I didnt receive 100$, I knew NOTHING about vig!! I played a lot of parlays and did all right. In fact, when I first bet the NBA, I always told my friends "the first two are easy it's the third game that can screw you" when referring to 3 team parlays. I didnt have much of a clue, but I must have lost more often than not by less than a basket on the third leg. I think one thing that really saved my ass quite a few times was the fact that I never chased, I always realized that there was always the next day, and if anything went a little smaller for a while to get back to where I used to be, or passed. But I have always been good on games that I wagered big, I still have a handful every year that I get excited about.
About 3 years ago I got more organized. I tracked every play, paid attention to line moves and put more effort into totals and handicapping those 'random' teams. One thing that I have always liked about professional sports is the fact that the teams play each other over and over again. In college games I know little about the Florida Internationals and William and Mary's so I dont like to wager as much on unfamiliarity. I also started what I call 'subsets', categories of games in which I historically have a higher win percentage because of one or more correlations. They range from simple ones such as the playoffs, where I look at where my bankroll is from reg. season profit, and from that I increase wager size after estimating the number of plays during the playoffs that I will have (I try to plan it so that if worst case scenario occurs I will still be up.) and I do this by round. If I make 10% during round one, then I add a little to big plays or have more of them, marginal or regular plays stay close to the same. A good example this year was San Antonio -121 to win it all for 5%. I had already taken SA as a long shot after the All Star break when they kept winning on the road, but I did well in the playoffs and was good on nearby SA, so I dipped into the profit pool and threw some down on a play that normally I would either pass on or throw 1% on. I dont like futures much because you can make more (usually) by just betting on that team during their run, but I thought SA should have been closer to -500 at that point. Another subset example is NCAA football dogs of 40 points or more, 35 is a little less (throw KSTATE out), another is NFL teams up by 17 or more at the half (2nd half under) one of my best is NCAA bowl game dogs on the ML (may change but it has been a goldmine). Even if a subset starts to lose, the way I see it is that I'll still be up, way up over the term, even when the value is gone because you can stop or lower wager size at any point, and the winners are already yours. Most of my subsets are strong enough to bet blindly, (playoffs are a little different obviously) and the reason that they are so strong is because I have correlated them to VALUE. This last sentence can start numerous arguments which I'd like to avoid. Most people who speak of correlations refer to them in a purely statistical sense. But betting on sports involves PEOPLE, Human Beings are NOT pure numbers, and this why things such as Favre in domes and due theories, etc apply, IMO. Take NCAA bowl game dogs ON THE ML. The correlation is that there is value on the ML 1. very long time off between games, dog has time to get better and plan/exploit as does the favorite but IMO the time off helps the lesser team catch up more than the other way around. 2. NEUTRAL SITE!! 3. The dog knows it's a dog and is usually out to prove something, MOTIVATION (huge in college games) the favorite may be favored b/c it is commonplace for this team to do well in this bowl, the dog may find this bowl victory more meaningful. 4. A lot of bowl matchups pair two teams that never play each other, this pushes the outcome closer and closer to a toss-up, value on the +. There are other reasons, but I'm ready to go downtown.
I always have a plan B, and C, havent had to use a plan D yet, knocking on wood. For example, I had one hell of an NBA season. I was up over 40% on just the NBA before the All-Star break. I had a terrible FEB, but caught fire heading into the playoffs. I always get nervous before subsets when I increase wager size, but did swimmingly for the first few days. Then I decided to take some shots, I put 2.5% on LA -10 over MINN which lost and I ended up going on a bad, bad run which put me DOWN for the playoff subset in less than 3 days. I was pissed, but more disappointed and embarrassed b/c I send guys plays via email. I felt lost. But I put importance in goals, I had set out to do x% and I WAS NOT going to take a break during the subset in which I make the most money, period. Enter PLAN B. My PLAN B was what I did not want to do, it was a grind approach. No glamourous 2.5% plays, no drinking (much) or watching all the games at a bar or at parties. PLAN B was "damnit I have an edge, and I'm going to apply that edge even if it's .5% over as many plays as possible, which means I look at every prop, 1st,2nd,3rd,4th quarter total, ML, and start forecasting halftime numbers as soon as the game starts. I will grind my way with small wagers back into respectability because "anything less than 20% will be a HUGE disappointment in these playoffs". I became so focused on recognizing value that I didnt pay attention much to my overall profit for almost two weeks. PLAN B worked, and worked well. I learned so much about myself, I gained so much confidence. I got to the point where I was getting chills in the Finals from OLY's bad opening numbers, I could almost perfectly visualize some exact totals and win differentials (a lot of it is there in my NBA playoff thread SA/NJ). I always THOUGHT that I had an edge, but even after thousands of wagers I didnt KNOW it until early JUNE 2003. When you KNOW something there exists NO DOUBT. I pushed myself and exceeded my goals when I didnt think it was possible, when I could have been content with a great regular season. I even picked up some new playoff angles. Plan C I seem to have to revert to each February, I dont know why. Plan C is simply I dont give a f***. Every February I lose money. I hate it, especially after winning so much on the NFL playoffs and baskets to that point. During Plan C I spend little time looking at games when the losing skid starts, it doesnt help, and just frustrates me more. I flat bet for the most part during this time, and usually choose fewer games, and eventually break out with a GREAT March, good April, and May and June I described above.
You never know for sure when a losing skid starts, and when a winning streak ends. I made a mistake at times last NBA season by thinking that there was little chance that I would win the next day. I won 24 days out of a month, and by the time the streak ended my wagers were appx. half of what they were when the streak started, I was convinced that I should limit my exposure b/c I was 'due to lose.' Maybe not a bad idea, since I lose 17 out of 20 wagers during at least one stretch of each year, sometimes in ONE DAY! I lost nearly 20% in one day during football season since I put about 1.5% or more on each game, but that's why there is money management, in three weeks I had made it back and then some. I probably lose more games by two points or less than some people win each year. I remember one NBA week (Feb of course) in which I lost over 10 games out of maybe 30 total by less than two points. Plan C illustrated. All you can do is laugh about it. I'm almost positive that I lose far more games by that small margin than I win by that same margin, some people say that it good from a value standpoint, I'm an optimist and try to agree.
I felt it was necessary to give a 'brief' background of myself to help with your question. I think it is best to use a variety of opinions and pick and choose those which best suit your ambitions. My bottom line is profit, I dont give a rat's ass about wins versus losses, they do help form an outline and a with proper organization can show where your strengths and weaknesses are. I look at how I do with home dogs at +10, +8, +6 etc, away dogs, by conference, after line moves, on a .5% wager, 1.0%, 1.5% etc, etc, just as an example. Be VERY careful with away favorites in the NFL, NBA, and in colleges, you can pick and choose spots, but many of these are losing subsets.
In order to optimize your profit, you need to know your historical win %. If you look for a 60% chance of winning before making a wager you are passing on too many plays for optimization. 55% is good enough and with lower vig that is now available the value add up. If you specialize in certain areas and you have several seasons under your belt, increase those wagers a bit. I emphasize several seasons, that is far more important than having thousands of wagers as a sample size. Each season offers a myriad of changing scenarios to deal with, recognizing value in those changing scenarios which can drastically change by season is more beneficial than having hundreds or thousands of wagers in just a couple of seasons (you may have been sticking with a couple of teams that you rode the entire season which skews your overall advantage). Keep track of how you do on each team. I do better on some teams than others, but I like to be able to spot value on each. Start playing on your leans. When I start playing leans I go small and flat bet for about 1/3 of a regular play. I'm doing this in baseball now, reg plays are .5 to .6% good value is over .7%, leans are .4% or less. Your leans show strengths and weaknesses, if they make money then start upping them, they are a strength to your portfolio, if they lose money, look at the reasons why, if you can correlate it then DO THE OPPOSITE and make money!! If you have a lot of close losses on positive expectation wagers (ml dogs) then a lot of the time the value was there, and these should start falling your way.
Take notes. Pinpoint matchup weaknesses even if you pass on a game, this is how to isolate correlations (subsets are born!) after a number of events. For example, I'm charting WHIP differentials versus moneylines between pitchers in baseball.
I start with bankroll 100% at point 0. If I increase bankroll by 15% then I add that to my bankroll so that a wager of 1% increases from 1% to 1.15% in actuality, but only after I show 15% profit and there are nuances involved such as how favorable the value looks for the next few events. I dont decrease wagers until I lose 20%. If you have an edge you are slightly more apt to win after a losing day. Dont increase wagers each day after a win, that inceases the win% needed to break even from one day to the next. Some days have more value than others, I frequently increase wagers a bit on all plays b/c I feel I have a high probability of showing profit on that card. Just my 2 cents, best of luck.
