Know Thy Odds....

by: Pointspread Pros

The reason I stress to my clients that in order to be successful betting NFL games, you need to play as few games as possible is in part simply a matter of statistics.

The more picks you bet, the worse your odds that you will come out ahead. Lets use as an example, our computer systems record from 1998 - 2006. In that time period, our system won 116 and lost 64 from weeks 6 - 17. That is a winning percentage of 64%.

That is a total of 180 games. Divide the total games by the number of bettable weeks (6 - 17 for 9 years) and that gives us an average of 1.66 picks per week. Not a lot right? But if you had bet ALL of these plays at $100/game you are up $4560 and if you bet $1000/game you are up $45,600.

Got your attention?.... By being very selective, you have netted a nice profit. Sure it is more fun to bet a $50, 3 team parlay, looking to get that big return, but it is a sucker bet and a losing proposition over time. Why? If parlays and teasers were in our favor, the bookies and sportsbooks wouldn't offer it!

Now, lets get back to the statistics lesson. Lets say you are a decent handicapper and can hit about 58% of your picks.

Lets say, you usually bet FOUR games per week.

Probability theory says that if you have an event that happens 58% of the time, and your events(games) are not dependent on one another the probability that you:

do NOT go (4-0) : 89.7%
go (2 - 2) : 51.2%
go (4 - 0) : 11.3%
go (3 - 1) : 8.1%
go (1 - 3) : 4.3%

So based on these numbers, you only have a 19.4% chance of being profitable if you are betting 4 games and remember, this is assuming a VERY GOOD win rate of 58%!.

You can see how the odds are stacked against you, so my advice if you are serious about making money, is to bet MORE money and LESS games and your bankroll will thank you!. Take your best bet of the week and pound it.

I use the Kelly Criterion to figure out what the best amount to wager given a predicted win rate. The Kelly Criterion is a money management strategy to maximize your winnings. You can read about it here http://www.albionresearch.com/kelly/default.php

Best of luck!
James McGuiness (PointSpread Pros)

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