Football season: What do you plan on doing differently?
RightAngle
Admin
(If anything)
Just wanted to get some thoughts from the BT community on plans for upcoming football season.
How much your focus changes each year can vary a lot depending on how successful you've been, but just wanted to see what people are thinking heading into 2016 Football season.
Will you use more outs or less outs?
Bet earlier in week or later in week?
Focus on sides? totals? halftimes?
More college? More pros?
Will you be following others more or less than in the past?
Watch more games? Less games? Focus more on injuries?
Preseason NFL? First half of season? Second half of season?
Will you be making your own numbers or relying on someone else's?
Planning to bet more or less than previous seasons?
Working more? Working less?
I'm sure there are many other questions that could be asked. Just want to get a sense of how everyone is evolving and approaching this upcoming season.
Just wanted to get some thoughts from the BT community on plans for upcoming football season.
How much your focus changes each year can vary a lot depending on how successful you've been, but just wanted to see what people are thinking heading into 2016 Football season.
Will you use more outs or less outs?
Bet earlier in week or later in week?
Focus on sides? totals? halftimes?
More college? More pros?
Will you be following others more or less than in the past?
Watch more games? Less games? Focus more on injuries?
Preseason NFL? First half of season? Second half of season?
Will you be making your own numbers or relying on someone else's?
Planning to bet more or less than previous seasons?
Working more? Working less?
I'm sure there are many other questions that could be asked. Just want to get a sense of how everyone is evolving and approaching this upcoming season.
Comments
Added more podcasts to my iphone
Only bet totals in bowl games!!!!!!
Bet games bigger that I think I have a big edge in
More. I would rather not go into more detail from that standpoint.
One thing I will touch on a bit is the man power needed to run and maintain accounts. It’s not an easy job, especially if you’re doing it in addition to originating plays. Something I really struggled with when entering this gig full time was the grind of not only originating (or when not originating, waiting on information), but then having to place the bets, update accounts, manage spreadsheets, etc. It’s all very time consuming, even if you’re automating what you can. Then, on top of that, you have dealing with agents, stiffs, moving money, etc. If you’re responsible for all of these tasks, you’re likely going to burn out very quickly and be unsuccessful. This year I plan on really limiting my workload outside of originating and making sure my overall process runs more efficiently from start to finish.
Bet earlier in week or later in week?
Later. Analyzing market conditions is something I do a lot of. Knowing who is behind what moves is great knowledge to have. You’re the only originators I fear during the week. Overall the last several seasons we haven’t had too much overlap as far as releases. Last offseason, I worked extremely hard on successfully increasing my volume of full game totals. This offseason, I did the same with 2h totals. The two will help combat the plays I miss out on earlier in the week. I know I’ll be sacrificing some volume, but the liquidity I’m gaining makes it worth it. Having access to huge limits, with Grande, CRIS, and Pinny all in the mix, is necessary.
You guys released around 12pm on Wednesday last year if I recall correctly. The screen is always a gong show at, during, and after your release. All kinds of people trying to get their money down before you due to how respected you are. This makes the screen REALLY noisy. I’m not worried about any of these individuals going when you are. After the screen calms down, there really isn’t many groups out there moving between your release and full limits or close to (I say close to, because Grande doesn’t come online until about an hour or two after CRIS and Pinny reach full limits on Saturday morning, so in theory, one with all 3 accounts, may have better success at maximizing by playing on Friday evening. It really depends what structure Pinny goes with). Thursday morning typically brings some noise, but none of the elite groups are out shit blasting stuff until Friday evening and Saturday morning. I watch the screen obsessively. I know how these groups operate. I know a high majority of my plays over the last several years have still been available for them to bet. I’m very confident in my ability to compete with these groups, so playing later just makes the most sense.
Focus on sides? totals? halftimes?
I understand how small edges are and the difficulty behind winning, no matter the market. Admittedly, my sides model isn’t nearly as good as totals. That’s the big reasons I never offered sides as part of the service, despite posting a record of something like 40-23 on BT. I just understand the math behind advantage gambling too much to offer them as a paid service. I would consider them breakeven-to-slightly +EV when tying strong subjective factors with a strong model edge. And that’s at openers basically. Therefore, I’m likely to eliminate sides or at the very least reduce volume significantly. Specializing more in totals is never a bad thing. This offseason I spent a lot of time tinkering with 2h totals, so that’s where the added focus will be put.
More college? More pros?
College only. I used to do some NFL and had a pretty decent record here at BT when posting openers. I even offered NFL totals the first year of my service. The CLV was pretty solid, but they ran terribly. I’d put them in similar territory as my CFB sides. There might be some value behind the information, but it’s at the point where the time spent just isn’t worth it. Originating CFB and NFL on an elite level simultaneously is impossible as an individual. There’s too much time and information needed to keep up in today’s markets.
In addition, I need to be able to keep my brain as fresh as possible. I’ve found that “going to battle” for lack of a better term on Saturday-Sunday, back-to-back, to be too grueling. A lot of the success I did find in NFL was in the bigger, more widely available props, team totals, and other game day betting, all in addition to in-game. It was just brutal to work all week on stuff, bet all day Saturday on college and then bounce back early AF the next morning and do it all over again. I need to stay sharp and avoiding NFL allows me to do so.
Will you be following others more or less than in the past?
Less. It’s just so damn hard to win. I understand both the amount of time it takes and high quality information needed to win. For me to follow someone I really need to know their track record, in addition to having discussions with them about the markets. Their work ethic is big too… and that’s a tough one to be able to evaluate. There’s no one out there I follow blindly in the football markets, mainly because I trust my own work so much. The only person in general I follow blindly is Dr H baseball and that's because I know his work ethic, his CLV is great, and I can get his release lines.
That’s not to say there isn’t good publicly available information. There is. You just have to be able to filter through the noise and find it. This is one of the most underrated qualities of a successful bettor. Finding quality information and being able to successfully incorporate it into your handicapping takes great skill.
Watch more games? Less games? Focus more on injuries?
More. The quants are quick to say the stats tell the story, your eyes lie. That might be the case for the vast majority of people, but I value my subjective analysis and understanding of teams strongly. The best plays are when I’m able to combine strong subjective analysis with strong model edge. So watching more games, putting in more time at adjustments, etc. is always something I try to do more of on yearly basis.
Injuries are something I look at, but I don’t have the information or betting resources to be able to take advantage of anything that’s worth something significant. By time the information becomes available it’s already too late for someone like myself to take advantage. The screen is LIT. That’s not to say you can’t have strong subjective analysis and pick up on something here or there that could be worth something, but it’s certainly not something I spend a lot of time on. It might help confirm a play, but never push me on to one.
Preseason NFL? First half of season? Second half of season?
I kind of answered this already… I’m really big on specializing these days.
Preseason NFL is OK if you can get ahead of the game from an information standpoint. The thing is, it’s become very competitive over the last couple of years. People are well aware of the opportunities it presents, so they get gobbled up pretty quickly. Though, if you’re going to do anything with the NFL outside of props, I would start still start here.
Will you be making your own numbers or relying on someone else's?
I make and rely on my own numbers, but I’m always curious what quants have on particular games.
Planning to bet more or less than previous seasons?
These questions are so difficult because of market conditions. One thing I absolutely hate with my service is attempting to put a number on how many releases I’ll have. It’s so tough to say.
Working more? Working less?
More. It’s really, really, REALLY hard to win. Things can change so fast. One week you can be on top of the world. The next week you can be dusting off your resume. I cut more and more out of my betting each year, but it seems like I always end up logging more hours. You just learn with experience how hard it is to win and the time and effort it takes. I will log a sick amount of hours this college football season. Watching more games, reading more articles… you know the drill. I just leave it all out while I can. As an individual, there’s just no way of saying when your edge could dry up. My CFB totals model is outstanding and I do my absolute best to improve it on a daily basis to ensure I still have an edge. But unfortunately, even all the work in the world doesn’t make edges any bigger or winning any easier.
Best of luck to everyone this football season.
Good stuff man I'm glad to see you're still at it.so many people come and go in this business. Looks like you're in it for the long hall.there's no better job in the world.
Good luck going forward
Eddie
EDIT: I just looked again, the information is updated. Could have sworn it wasn't earlier today.
good luck
This has been nagging at me too.
You put in a shitload of time, maybe identify 60 to 70 plays (NFL) that are +EV over the course of a season and barely come away with 10 units of profit....... if your lucky. And that is looking at it from a positive perspective.
Good luck with fantasy and poker.
Bet bigger units, problem solved :smile2: