by Steve ¨Cubby¨ Drumm
The NFL preseason begins this week. Speaking of the NFL, I’m sure that most of you have seen ads over the years for sports handicapping/tout services that claim to win 70-80% of their picks. I’m sure that such sports services also are hoping that you still believe in the tooth fairy as well and that you get really excited when you receive something in the mail that says “You may already have won 10 million dollars!”.
Obviously, no one wins 70% (or more) of their games in the long-run. That doesn’t mean that one can’t win 70-75% of his picks over a span of say, 40-70 picks, as I have done just that several times over the course of the 19 years that I have been handicapping and wagering on the NFL. It’s just that losing weeks and even stretches are inevitable every bit as much as are downturns in the stock market (i.e. when you buy a stock, you don’t expect it to go up every week, do you)?
In fact, if it were possible for one to win 70% of his picks, the linemakers wouldn’t be doing their jobs. This is because although public perception is the primary determinant of where the point-spread gets set (which is precisely why it is possible to win betting football and other sports, even in the long-run), the point-spreads will be set reasonably close to the value line, which means that a long-run winning percentage of 57-61% is the best that one can realistically hope to attain. Or to look at it another way, 40-45% of games are un-handicapable (against the spread), meaning that one play will make the difference between one team covering or the other.
Over the long-run, virtually all handicappers will win 50% of these close games Against-The-Spread. Even if one wins 65% of his other picks (i.e. those games that are handicapable, where no individual play changed the outcome of the Against-The-Spread winner), he’ll still wind up hitting on 58-59% of all of his picks.
The good news is that with proper money management, one does not need to win at an astronomical clip to make really good money betting sports. In fact, let’s assume that one plays a reasonable number of games (say, 200 side and total plays on NFL and college football combined during a regular football season) and attains only a moderately successful winning percentage of say, 55%. That’s 110 wins and 90 losses. Assuming that you are paying the maximum vigorish/juice rate of 10%, you will be up 11 net units (110-99) at the end of the season. And let’s also assume that one is very conservative, and is therefore only risking 3% of his bankroll per play. That’s a net return of 33% on one’s investment. And since the football season is only 4 months long, that’s an annualized net return of 99%. Hence, you’ve effectively doubled your investment. That sure beats the hell out of the stock market, real estate, or virtually any other investment.
Hence, when one utilizes both solid handicapping and proper money management, sports gambling can be an effective investment tool that one can utilize to double (or even triple or quadruple) their capital per annum. If you’d like to go with a sports handicapper who has
a documented record of 775-587-41 (57%) on all of his NFL plays during the past 11 NFL seasons (since the beginning of the 2006 NFL season) during the upcoming NFL regular season (which begins on September 7).
WOULDN’T THAT BE GREAT, IF THE PERSON THAT YOU COULD TRUST THE MOST, WAS YOUR SPORTS HANDICAPPER?