Last year was the first year of gambling every week of the NFL season where I ended up profitting. A sharp record of 44-29 in the regular season (an additional 6-5 in the playoffs) led to $605 profit/$88 in postseason. For those of you who know gambling, I'll give you a breakdown on how I did in analyzing certain angles of the games. I'll combine playoffs and regular season:
Betting on:
Favorites - 9-13 (-$257)
Underdogs - 19-10 ($313)
Overs - 13-6 ($430)
Unders - 8-4 ($267)
If only I could have avoided betting on favorites! I had an over/under streak of 10 in a row in December (note: for gambling novices, over/unders are the lines set by Vegas that indicate the # of total points by both teams expected to be scored by both teams), which really pushed me over the edge.
So what does this mean for me this year?
Absolutely....nothing.
Brand new season means blank slate. It means different trends will have to be analyzed, different teams will have to be considered as good teams to back or bet against in favorable spots (i.e. fading teams). It also means that I have to maintain my same discipline that I had last year in order to profit again.
This gambling discipline includes not betting heavy amounts during a streak of winning and not chasing (betting for the sake of trying to "chase your losses"). Another thing I hope to do better this year is betting on isolated (i.e. primetime) games just for the sake of betting. I've fallen into this trap too many times when I don't have a great read on a game.
In order to profit again, I'm gonna need to practice what I preach. While I'm not sure I should expect to do better than last year (59% clip over a season for a full-time gambler is about as high as you should expect), I think my knowledge of teams and trends - in addition to these habits I picked up on last year - should help me succeed in making some more money again in 2011-12.
No comments:
Post a Comment