Quote Originally Posted by BainMasters:
Concur. He had a good intuition especially about the really popular games. The conspiracy stuff he was on is over the top. I have friends who believe that too, and none can give me a reasonable answer when I ask how Vegas rigs an NFL game? Which players get the call to suck? Which coaches are willing to throw their careers away when a 10-6 record can get you fired?
Exactly. Intuition was the word I was thinking of and couldn't get out. And you are right, especially in the prime time games, he really did have a good gut instinct not so much on how these games were "rigged", but the extra TLC the books used to come up with the lines and even the NFL themselves and where their best interests were.
But, it was wrapped up in a bunch of nonsense conspiracy theories and as I was a young gambler myself 10-20 years ago, I ran the gauntlet of trying to find the holy grail of beating the man. Different theories and schemes. Touts and systems. Fixes and stats and you name it, I explored it from as young as 11-12 years old. I took my beatings. I had my glory, but in 2001, I had a week where I lost my a&$. Wound up -5000 and the chain of events to lead me to that....amazing actually. As a 35 year old dude, losing 5k isn't exactly the world changing event it was for me back in the day, but as a 21-22 year old broke kid who needed his dad to bail him out; it was a life changing sort of thing.
And then the next 2 years paying my dad around 50 dollars a week until I paid him back every penny....I learned my lesson and I realized that from there on....betting sports is no longer a fun thing to make baseball, basketball, march madness, and football more interesting. I sat back for those two years and without actually betting a dollar, I kept a log and I studied and broke down every sport there was. I made my "imaginary" 100 dollar a game wagers and started to use the power of the Internet to help me keep statistics and logs. I experimented with hockey and quickly ended that experiment. I realized as much as I love hoops especially in the dark times between the Super Bowl and first pitch MLB, it was the weak link in my capping and cut that out. I tried every possible exotic wager from my reverse phase to parlays to props to hedging, all keeping notes of every second of it.
And after it all, I learned EXPERIENCE and trusting your EYES and GUT were as important as all the statistics available in the Internet age. I was a middle man for many years for a friend of mine and I studied the accounts of the guys who I collected from and watched to see how they won or lost. I learned that eyeballing a game from start to finish is 100x more insightful than any box score or newspaper article could be. That the almighty "stat" and "trend" are not the be all of betting, but just a small part of a very complicated puzzle. Once I moved in with a chick who had a kid and I became "dad" and didnt have the time to study football all day and night and I couldn't just sit in front of the TV every Saturday from noon to midnight, I realized I could bet college half asssed or cut it out...and I cut it out.
When the smoke cleared in 2005-2006, I knew my best chances at a profitable year of gambling laid with MLB and NFL only. College I watched as much as I could and the last few years I learned that with stats and help from the covers boards to get INFORMATION from the intelligent posters....I learned I could profit in bowl games.
So after it all......IMO the most important things to being a profitable gambler. Set a bankroll(to this day I literally keep a shoebox under my bed with my bankroll in it) and set goals. I flat bet and rarely step above or below a unit. All straight bets with very very few exotic bets. Here and there, I'll toy with a ML parlay, or horse around with a 7-8 team parlay or a round robin for a little fun if I'm hot, but I bet straight and keep my bets the same no matter how hot or cold I am. I use stats and keep trends in mind, but most of my bets come from a combo of gut instinct and knowledge of the sports I wager on. I try to eyeball every minute of every NFL game all year(I can't say strong enough that if u have the NFL package, u have to take 5-6 hours of your week and watch the "shortcuts." CONFIDENCE is key and I find that to this day, that's my weakness still. I can go 3-2, 2-1, 3-1, 4-0, 3-2, to start the season, but ONE week of bad luck and I can be a raving maniac and lose my mind. But its important to fight that urge and stick to the script. Also, I like to set my own lines at the start of the week. One set of lines, I guess what the books are doing. Another set of lines for what I think the line SHOULD be and not so much what it WILL be and then I get the real lines and look for value plays. Quick example the Saints this week. My one set I had at -10.5(guessing the real line). -17 is what I think it really should be(almost like a "guess the final score" set).
So basically discipline on the money side, knowledge in the sports you are betting, confidence and being even at all times and not letting your emotions get the best of you. EXPERIENCE. Sprinkle in the wealth of stats us gamblers all have at our fingertips. GETTING THE BEST LINE at all times(experience plays into that). Situational spots. Motivational spots. Its all a big puzzle and the ONLY way IMO to beat the man and be a steady winner in sports gambling is to figure out those things and put it all together.
Holy crap I'm babbling.
I'll second that 
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