Inside the mind of a sports “investor”

I have been wagering on sports off and on for roughly 30 years. I have paid a hefty sum for many lessons learned. Unfortunately, many lessons were learned over and over. I have certainly lost more than I’ve won over the years by a long shot. About 10 years ago I learned some forms of money management that I experimented with that kind of turned my fortunes from losing to at least having a chance IF I could keep my patience and not become greedy which has proven mostly impossible for any sustained period of time. Somewhere within the last 10 years my nerves have eroded. I feel pressure with any bet larger than 1% of my working bankroll. I have actually won quite a bit more than I have lost for the last 5 years. Maybe it’s been luck or maybe being older, more patient, and less risky with the bankroll is the reason. Both I’m sure. Im not a good capper because I don’t really have time to be. I make my decisions based in on a multitude of criteria. I live in the Bible Belt where this is largely considered taboo still so I only have two friends that I even talk about this stuff with. One, who has gambled with me since we were teens and the other who just follows what I do for smaller stakes because it’s fun. I had a very big baseball season last year where I won a large sum of money. I lost about half of it during the first 2 weeks of football and then quit until the NFL playoffs started where is started dabbling and built up a head of steam and made a large play on the Super Bowl. I have been on a heater starting with that Super Bowl play and have won a large sum again from then until now. I don’t really know where this blog like post is going or how long it will last, but I thought it would be fun to come on here and put my daily thoughts out there until I lose my current bankroll or just get tired of doing it. I think the main reason for this is that I know the people on this board will get it and have an appreciation for what we probably all go through each day. Stay tuned...

So I’m at work driving around this morning. I had a couple of stops where I had time to pull up the odds. I always look at games going off in the morning. All I see is soccer from somewhere on the other side of the earth. The old me would find a -300 ML and play it for action, all the while not having any idea about it. The today version of me still likes to look and boy do I want to pull the trigger, but today I pass it up with ease. I have a bankroll of 10K after a massive 3 week run. Common sense tells me I need to cool it because all good runs equal out and my last big win was on Arizona 2nd half Sunday night by a lucky .5 point. 

After thinking further about how to manage this bankroll from this point forward I have decided to break it into 2 portions. I am setting aside 2K to go for big hits with and will keep whatever is left as the standard bankroll for all other plays. I like progressive money management plans. To accommodate that, my base bet is .25% of my bankroll. In this case that would be $25. I realize that it is low, but it’s where my tolerance level is now. That is where I have to be to take emotion and nerves out of the equation. With that being said, my 1st play tonight will be taking a shot laying $1000 to win $326 on a ML Parlay with Kentucky and Iowa St. Both teams, obviously, are much stronger than their opponent man for man. The danger here would be a Kentucky emotional letdown. My guess is it will be scary close all the way through with Kentucky closing out late. There are a couple of other things that I am considering as well but haven’t decided yet.

On the System and Strategies Forum there is a 7 game 2 team parlay chase going for the NHL. The person running that has been very successful with that over several years. The current chase has reached game 5. I will jump on that tonight starting with $25 and will be playing Tampa Bay and Pittsburgh in a parlay $25 to win $45. I may or may not have time for more looking tonight. 

Baylor destroyed ISU on the boards tonight and that was the difference. ISU seemed to be playing with not much hustle at all as if they were tired. Just like that 10% of the bankroll is gone. What a frustrating feeling, but that’s how it goes. 

Great read. Stay the course! Iowa State was gonna have a wake up call sooner or later this week and next with that schedule. Good luck going forward 

Quote Originally Posted by SUPEREAGLE43:

On the System and Strategies Forum there is a 7 game 2 team parlay chase going for the NHL. The person running that has been very successful with that over several years. The current chase has reached game 5. I will jump on that tonight starting with $25 and will be playing Tampa Bay and Pittsburgh in a parlay $25 to win $45. I may or may not have time for more looking tonight. 

The thread you're referring to is the work and formulated handicapping of Danrules24...I've been playing it religiously for the past three years; up 36.5k 4 losses in 3 NHL seasons (192-4)

Ok, so here is how the night ended. I got on here to make my final post regarding the ISU loss. I then went to bed feeling very frustrated as I’m sure everyone has done at some point. As I was laying stewing I remembered that there was 1 more game still playing. So I got up and logged back in. The UNLV game was at the half. Out of frustration, I made a total degenerate decision to put my last 1K allotted for big hits on UNLV -1.5 for the 2nd half. It’s funny how, after talking about having much better patience now than in the past, I have already had a cave in moment on day 1 of this post. As I followed the 2nd half of the game I realized that I was going to need everything to go my way to pull it off. I was feeling so angry at this point.  As it turned out, that’s exactly what happened. In the last 2 minutes UNLV hit a 3 pointer and went 100% from the line. Wyoming also missed a layup inside of 20 seconds. I needed all of that to cover by 1 basket, but in the end luck was on my side 1 more time. On to today...

Ok, the bankroll sits luckily in tact at $10,145. Keep in mind, before the Super Bowl I was sitting somewhere under $500. I was willing to lose $500 at the time so I took a shot on the Pats for 1K. If they lost I would have paid up and quit probably until March madness or baseball. As it happened, the Pats won and that began a run of hitting roughly 16 of 20 bets. Most were for $500 vs the spread. The big one came this past Saturday and it was a $1000 2 team parlay that payed $2200. I once wagered on sports because I thought it would be a good way to make extra needed money if you can believe that haha. Somewhere along the way, I guess when I became more fanancially independent, it became more about winning at something that is almost unwinable. I’m not say the money doesn’t matter, but for me it only REALLY matters if I lose. 

That’s a great story Zebra. Glad you were able to smash him and get out. I’m very fortunate with my local. He is a good one. 

Mississippi State plays at UGA tonight -6.5. I really like MSU, Especially against mediocre opponents. MSU is one of the more loaded teams in the country talent wise that most don’t even know about. They have 7 losses. In 3 of the losses they blew double digit 2nd half leads. LSU beat them in OT and UK beat them by 4. Talent wise they are easily a top 10 team. What you have to be leary of with MSU, and this is the reason that they have 7 losses instead of 3, is that they mysteriously go through spells of individualism out of nowhere in the middle of a game. This leads to untimely, bad shot selection and goofy turnovers. They also haven’t consistently shown mental toughness to close out games, only in spots against physically inferior teams like UGA. Because of how their season has played out they have now played themselves into game after game being a must win situation. They now are in a do or die mode regarding the NCAA tournament. This is a team worth taking a chance with in this spot. The only hang up is -6.5. I feel like MSU should win this by double digits, but I feel like it is 100% in a ML parlay. The game tips at 5:30 my time so I have time to decide.

Ok, my 1st play of the night is in. I am laying $200 to win $115 on a 2 team ML parlay with Mississippi State and Nebraska 

Mississippi State made me look like a genius! They matched my description of them to perfection. I got home and turned the game on to see how it was going. I then started looking for something else to bet on as well. There was a little chaos going on in the house tonight with my oldest son thinking he is coming down with the flu. I had to run to the drugstore and pick up a few things. Once I returned home I was ready to find another play when my younger son challenged me to a game of Madden. As we were finishing that up my wife came home. There was no way I could focus on any meaningful research, but something I always try to be aware of is not letting sports betting creep too far into family time. As anyone who bets and has a family knows, betting can certainly get in the way and no matter how hard you try to keep it separate there will always be some overlap. Eventually things quietened down and, just to satisfy my appetite, I made a live play on Arizona State. It was a very small ML to win $13. The bet was tiny because I don’t really know about the two teams, but I knew I would be watching it and needed something to make it more interesting. The game is closing out in my favor as I compose this. Overall, not a bad evening at all.

I was driving this morning and my mind drifted to the fact that there was an early game going today. Now I know nothing about Navy or LMD. At a couple of my stops I stopped and perused the basketball board and saw where a few people liked Navy and how they could not understand why it was +5. That caught my attention. Just looking at the immediate stats of each team they looked very similar to each other. The one place where there was a huge discrepancy was Navy’s road record of 2-12 vs LMD’s home record which was above .500. I was itching to make a play just for the action, so I bet $10 on LMD and was able to get the W and the fix. The bank now sits at 10284. For tonight I have put in 50 to win 35 ML parlay with Jacksonville St and Michigan. There is too much talk of Michigan being upset by Minny. The majority of upsets of good teams happen when it’s least expected, not when people are calling it beforehand. Maybe I will have time, around the fam, to do a little more tonight.