Vegas sells guys are making the big calls tonight....

Let's get this one out of the way early. The easiest way to have your outlandish (and totally untrue) win rate validated is to have an independent, honest company monitor your plays and then make the results known to the public. Nothing to it! Many years ago, a pretty smart service (I never said these guys are stupid) came up with the idea of having companies monitor their results and make them available to anyone who wanted to call them or check on-line. All it took was a new 800 number, a company name and a new website. The monitoring industry was born! Problem was, it was owned by the same bogus services you should be trying to avoid. You don't know that the monitor is owned by the handicapping service, so when you call to verify the record and they tell you how good the service is, you think it proves the service is really outstanding. Then, they took it a step farther.

Customers starting asking everyone why they weren't "monitored". So the monitoring service offered other handicapping services the following deal. For $250 a week, you could turn your plays in to them, they would keep track of them and post your record after Monday Night Football for everyone to see. You could advertise that you were monitored and give their phone number and website for verification. For $600 a week, you could turn your plays in Tuesday morning, AFTER all the games had been played. Pretty sweet, huh? Almost as good as the pre-season magazines you get in the mail telling you who the Number One phone service is and who the Number One sportsbook is. 

The only problem is that the same people who publish the magazines also OWN THE SERVICE AND THE SPORTSBOOK! It's public knowledge that a couple of years ago, one of the best known handicappers in the country was tried and convicted for his ownership in an offshore sportsbook. So, you need to understand that this guy was making big money selling his service and then he was making big money when his customers lost on his plays! Maybe just a little conflict of interest?

LOCK OF THE WEEK, OR YEAR, OR YOU NAME IT...

Let's get this straight. There is no such thing as a lock game. There is no inside information. Games aren't fixed. There are no players on the payroll- yes, it has happened a few times, but there are services out there who will tell you it happens every week. There are no Officials on the payroll or Officials who have a grudge against a certain team. A good salesman can make you believe all those things if you let him, but that's all he is- a salesman, not a handicapper.

If you look at a lot of betting publications, have you ever wondered just exactly how a service knows that on a particularly week in, say, October, they'll have their "SEC Game of the Year"? Realizing that all betting publications go to press weeks before the game, how does a service know that a particular game will be their "Game of the Year" without knowing what the weather will be, or who might be injured, or suspended, or sick, or any number of other circumstances that will affect the game? The answer is very simple- THEY DON'T. They're just counting on you not to ask any silly questions and to believe whatever B.S. they give you on the phone about the quarterback who's mad at his coach and is going to deliberately throw a couple of interceptions.

I once ask a handicapper how he could possibly have more than ONE "Game of the year". He said that each week actually started a new, different 52 week period, so it was a different "year". The "Lock of the week" or the "Game of the year" or any other special promotions like them are just that- promotions.