Stupidity and the gambling Gods
Today is without doubt the lowest point in my gambling career, I’m not sure yet if it means the end of this blog. I will need to think about it over the weekend. I have no one else to blame apart from myself. Today I tried a new strategy relating to line moves which had seemed like a new avenue that could potentially make a nice profit. On my first bet the line moved the wrong way. I could have laid the bet just before the off for a guaranteed loss of $900 but because of the last few months and everything going so bad, I decided i wanted to let the bet ride, thinking (Stupidly), that surely I would need to get lucky at least this time. I really thought I was beyond these sort of bets and I know they never end well, yet for reasons still unclear to even myself I decided to just roll the dice. After 9 months of getting up early every day, placing bets at the correct odds and even after months of losses continuing to follow the rules, I then have a brain fart and do this.
The bet was $8000 @ 1.95 on U 207 in the ORL v GSW game. After doing my research I thought the line on this game would move down a point or two and then i could hedge my bet and potentially win both sides if the game ended in the middle. As mentioned above, the line moved the wrong way and I decided to let the bet ride. My current profit after 9 and a bit months stood at $11,000, so this bet was pretty much the entire last 9 months of my betting career, which included much stress and even more of my own time. I managed to stay away from watching the game by doing some exercise and then playing games on my iphone. I then loaded up the game with 2 minutes to go and was feeling a hell of a lot better. The game was looking like it was going under. I was thinking, thank god, i’ll never ever place a bet like that again, thank you gambling gods, and so on. Golden state go up 101 – 98 with about 30 seconds left and with the ball. They manage to lose the ball and then Orlando hit a 3 pointer with 8 seconds left to tie it up. The game ends at 101-101, which means overtime and my bet losing. I don’t know the stats on how often games go into overtime but they are pretty low. I don’t know the final score of the game nor ever want to.
The thing is, it’s probably a good thing this bet lost, if it had won, I would more then likely off done the same thing in a similar situation in the future. The hurt that I’m feeling now is more then enough to make sure this doesn’t happen again. Right now I’m just super pissed at myself. My total profit after 9 and a half months is now at $3500, and the loss from Jan 1st is about $42,000.
The big test comes now, as until this point it has felt like I have been betting with won money. The bank is sure to dip into negative soon and that means I will be risking my own hard earned cash. I understand that when I was in profit at $46,000 that was real money that I could have taken out and spent, but it is my own fallacy that I made it worth less then it really was worth. I guess we will see if I have that certain something that real profitable gamblers have when they go on a disastrous run. I really hope I do, but at this moment I’m not so sure.
Spot on Steve – there’s a massive difference between money won being risked, and starting to lose your own capital. Especially as you need to bet in big numbers to make anything at small percentage yields.
Fair play to you for laying all that out on the blog, not many would have the balls. If you can’t cut a losing trade though, its probably fair to say that trading isn’t for you.
I think 18-22% of games go to an overtime period in the NBA, so it wasn’t a huge shocker.
You are still in front, and by sticking to what got you in front in the first place, you’ll make it back to the heady heights of $50k profit I am sure.
I’ve read your blog for a while now, Steve. It has (and still does) inspire me that, through discipline and hard work, that money can be made through gambling. I’ve made plenty of stupid bets which I’ve let run and most of the time I’ve come off second best. Every time I feel like you, but then the determination returns. While the money I’ve lost is not on your scale, it shows the processes you had in place work and you’ll make it back. I’ve had a horror run of late myself, mostly on horses, where things just haven’t gone right. Every unlucky horse seems to be the one that I’ve backed. But I need to follow my staking methods and keep taking the value when it’s there. But times like this make it hard, but I think you can make work through it.
Good luck, and stick with it.
Hey mate,
I’ve been quietly reading you’re blog for a while now. Let me say my 2 cents.
IMHO, you’re going to generate no more than a razor thin profit margin doing what you’re doing now (at best). I’ve made many of the same mistakes you have (and more; I ran all sorts of automated programs).
You’re results analysis doesn’t go beyond segmenting your bets by sport and listing ROI%. You’ve got no idea how variance is affecting your results. Betting results should be submitted to various statistical analysis in order to model your actual betting performance compared to projected ROI%.
Right now, you’re deciding whether to keep on with or cut away a betting service without knowing it’s true performance stripped of its inherent variance. A tip for you, scrape the closing line of every single bet you make. You’ll get a good idea of how you’re going if manage to beat the closing line more often than not.
Cut away all free ‘tips’ and betting services. They’re -EV. Why do you think they’re free? Tips are like arseholes, everyone has one. Worst case scenario to some of these tips is that they’re generated by syndicates to attempt a manipulation of prices.
If you don’t know how to program and don’t understand statistics (or are not willing to learn), seriously consider getting out of this game. This is probably my most important point. There are people out there that will always have the edge against you if you do not have these skills, and will take you to the cleaners long term.
Do the hard work and learn how to model for yourself. People in this betting game pay other people to tell them how to bet. People like that will always be on the fringes of profitability.
I don’t mean to sound harsh, but this is the reality. Sports betting has nothing to do with ‘luck’ or the ‘gambling gods’, and has everything to do with hard work.
Cheers
Some great comments and I thank you guys for giving me some feedback, this can feel like a very lonely game at times.
Adam: I did a bit of research and came up with these stats. “If we made the crude hypothesis that the two distributions were statistically independent, then ties would indeed be very rare: 2.29% of all games would reach overtime.” and “But overtime is almost 3 times more frequent than this: 6.26% of all NBA games are tied at the end of regulation play.”
So a 6.26% chance of that happening, but really, that isn’t the issue, the issue was me not laying off the bet and taking the loss. The next day I had the exact same issue and layed it off for a $500 loss. Offcourse if I had let this one run then it would have been an easy win. 🙂
Tim: Thanks for the kind words mate, I think I do need to get back to the basics. Bet the sports that have consitantly shown profit and not add anything new. I still have a 50k buffer as that was my starting bank, But as can be seen, a swing of $40,000 can happen in 3 months. At the end of the day, I’m still currently in profit and there are about $20-30k in mistakes that I have clearly made.
Brett: Thanks, some great points and these are the sort of comments I want here, If I can get more experienced professionals giving me their advice and pointing out what I might be doing wrong then I can only get better.
But I do need to disagree on your first point. I believe with the right portfolio of paid for models I should be able to make between 3-5% ROI. On the amount of turnover I am generating this isn’t a small number.
Yes, my results analysis is very simple, and I should delve deeper in the statistics, do you know where I can find closing lines? What other type of analysis would you recommend?
All free services are gone from my portfolio, it’s been an expensive lesson, but one I won’t be making again.
My degree is in IT and yes I know how to program (although i despise it). With all IT degrees, statistics were a prerequisite also, so I have an understanding there also. But to be honest, I believe others can do a much better job at it and I’m happy to stand on their shoulders. In the end I want this to become a passive income, which involves as little commitment from me as possible.
Not harsh at all, it needed to be said. I also understand luck has nothing to do with it, I just thought it would be a good blog title :).
Thanks again for all your comments and if anyone else has anything to say then don’t hesitate to comment below.