I do not encourage anyone to break the law. If gambling is illegal where you live, don’t do it. Please check with your local law enforcement officers for the gambling laws where you live. I am in no way, shape, or form, responsible for your actions. SouthSeaSports.com does not accept or place bets, and is NOT a gambling site. SouthSeaSports.com is for informational purposes only. Obviously I do not want sued or arrested. I hope this covers that.
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FYI
You can follow me on twitter, you’ll get alerts when I post my bets. You can also receive emails of my posted bets. The emails are sent daily between 11am and 1pm (EST). The emails are best for tracking my performance. Twitter is in real time so if you plan on betting that’s probably the best way to get alerts.
The lines I use when I post my picks are lines that are currently available. All lines are subject to change and often do change. I try to pick games with lines that are largely available. I realize most gamblers aren’t going to shop for the best lines, but they should.
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(The following is based on the NFL and NBA against the pointspread. Using the pointspread is easier for tutorial purposes than using the moneyline that’s used in MLB.)
Winning sports betting is investing, not gambling. Winning sports betting is not about finding “sure things” or predicting the future. This is something far too many sports bettors don’t understand. Consider a craps table. Does Vegas know the outcome of the next throw of the dice? No. They don’t even expect to win the next throw of the dice. They expect that in the long run the odds will be true and the casinos will win. What happens on any given throw of the dice (or game) is meaningless. Vegas does not try to predict the future on the football field any more than they try to on the craps table. Too many gamblers can not grasp that concept. Betting sports is not about predicting the future. It’s about getting the right number, and even then, Vegas and the pros know there will be a lot of losses. The edge is only a few percent, which in gambling terms is huge. Just like at the craps table, in sports, Vegas can only gain a limited advantage.
Winning sports betting is a Knish-like grind. It takes 100 bets against the spread to win 55 bets. That means if you make 1000 bets over the course of a year at $10 ($11 with the juice) per bet, winning exactly 55%, you would lose $4950 and win $5500, for a net profit of $550 or 5% of your investment (money risked). Hardly enough to make you wealthy over night, but certainly enough to make a nice hobby. Professional gamblers have very, very large bankrolls because they are investors not gamblers. Also, the percent of return is most likely higher than this demonstrates, but I’m not going to go that in depth here.
I make picks based on mathematical probabilities. It is very important to understand how this works. Most gamblers have no understanding of the underlying mathematics involved. Because of that ignorance, they are doomed to fail. Even with winning picks many sports bettors will lose money because of poor money management. To avoid this pitfall it’s important that you manage your bankroll wisely. I can give a winning bet to someone and after a few losses they think I’m an idiot. They don’t understand how gambling works. A winning bet is not necessarily a winning ticket at the end of today, but it will be a winning ticket on 55 days out of 100.
Consider a coin toss. If the bookie has the line listed with heads -115 and tails +105, it would be very obvious what to bet. It’s quite possible to bet tails several times in a row and lose, however that does not make tails a losing bet. Tails is a great bet! Any gambler would want to bet tails as much as possible because it’s a mathematical certainty to walk away a winner if given enough bets. It’s also a mathematical certainty that half the bets would lose. When I make a pick, I see the lines with the same clarity as in this coin toss scenario. I know I’ll lose around 45% of my bets against the spread, much like I know tails will lose 50% of the time. I have to lose bets in order to win in the long run, because there is no avoiding the 45% losers and betting just the 55% winners. If I told you to bet tails and just avoid the losing heads bets, you’d tell me I’m an idiot. That’s essentially what I hear when someone tells me I made a bad bet because it lost. Nobody can pick above 60% in the long run without inside information. Anyone claiming to pick over 60% over 1000′s of bets is a fraud. That’s not to say I can’t increase my winning percentage. I could easily raise my winning percent by simply cutting out the bets that have less of an edge. However, the goal of betting is to win the most money possible. It would be foolish to not make bets that have a 53% chance of winning because I don’t want to hurt my overall win percent. 53% will help the overall money won and that is the goal.
If a bettor fails to understand that all of my bets should be viewed as having about a 55% chance of winning then it’s quite possible to lose money. If I pick 10 winners in a row, the odds of my next pick winning is roughly 55%. If I pick 10 losers in a row, the odds of my next pick winning is roughly 55%. How good or bad a team has looked in the past or how many times that team has burned me in the past is meaningless to the odds. Stick with my picks the way you would stick with tails and you will win. Know this and remember it. Understanding that there will be good swings and bad swings is vital for keeping your sanity. In the long run, the numbers will play out and you will have a profit. That is the only certainty. In the short run, it will be a bumpy ride.
Having an understanding of the massive statistical swings of the good and bad luck that will occur is important for your bankroll. I suggest betting 2% or less of your bankroll on any single bet and preferably the same amount on every bet. (I do increase my bet size on optimal bets. It’s rare.) If, after winning ten $50 bets in a row on tails, you decide to increase your bets to $100, you’d better have the bankroll to do it because 10 losing bets are sure to happen eventually. It’s a mathematical certainty. If you’re making $100 bets, you’d better have $5,000 in your bankroll to withstand the extremes that are inevitable, regardless of how “hot” you’ve been lately. If you bet more than you should, you will be in for a rough ride and quite possibly lose your entire bankroll.
It’s very possible that you can make 200 winning bets and be down or have a very small profit. It can take hundreds of bets before the profit separates out. Having a bankroll that can withstand the ups and downs is a must. If you’ve only got $500 then you should only be making $10 bets. $2, $3, or $5 bets wouldn’t be a bad idea if you want to avoid the Maalox. Most gamblers bet far more than they should, essentially putting themselves in an all or nothing gamble on a few bets. This is fine if you go to Vegas for a weekend, but it’s not a wise long term strategy. Sports betting is a long term proposition. It’s investing.
If you make 200 bets to win $10 and you win precisely 55%, something that’s unlikely because of the constant statistical swing and so few bets (200 is a relatively small number), you would have won 110 bets and $1100. You’d have lost 90 bets and lost $990. Your profit would be $110. How would you feel if you lose the next 10 bets you make? You would be back to zero! It’s very possible. I hope this example illustrates why it can take hundreds of bets before a profit may be seen. I wouldn’t expect to see a profit for at least 400 bets or more. However, just because you don’t see it does not mean it’s not there. Think of it as saved profit. It’s there and eventually it will pop up above your bank roll and you will clearly see it. I think this concept is difficult for a lot of people to understand. A good way to grasp this concept is to take a coin and give yourself +105 on every flip you win and -100 on every flip you lose. Keep track of your wins and losses for a few hundred flips of the coin. Do this a few times and you’ll see how bumpy the ride can be even when you know you have an edge.
Sports gambling is not the “go pick winners and get rich” undertaking that most people believe it is. It’s about finding lines that have value and grinding out a profit. If a line has 3 points of value it’s a great bet, but think about all the fluky things that can happen which quickly take away that 3 point advantage. You can and will lose 10 winning bets in a row just like a coin can land on heads 10 times in a row. I do not pick winners. I pick winning bets. Big difference.
In all my gambling research there are 3 constants when finding an edge in gambling. Poker, sports, and horses. (Blackjack is beatable under ideal circumstances, but it’s not worth the work for the rare occasion you may find a beatable game.) If you want to be a professional gambler, you have 3 options. No matter which you choose, it will be a grind. Winning gambling is a grind. Professional gambling is a life of bad beats.
(I assume anyone reading this has a good understanding of Texas Hold ‘em because that is the poker game I’m using in this example.)
You’re in a Hold ‘em tournament. You have pocket 2′s and you’re heads up against a player who unknowingly showed you he’s holding a 4 and 9 off-suit. It’s preflop. What do you do? Game theory aside, the obvious thing to do is to get as much money in the pot as you can, go all in. When the odds are in your favor, you bet as much as you can. In this scenario the odds are about 55% in your favor. If you could make this bet hundreds of times a year, you would. It’s easy to see that in the long run the profits will come pouring in. That is sports betting.
I can guarantee I will make some picks that will look ugly, very ugly. The reality is that 45% of my picks will lose. How they lose is irrelevant. If you have pocket 2′s and the guy with the 4 and 9 catches a 4 and 9 on the flop and a 9 on the river, you’re going to look pretty silly sitting there with your pocket 2′s. However, the pocket 2′s were the right bet preflop when you committed. We know they will win about 55% of the time and we also know that some of the time they will lose big. How ugly the loss is does not matter. A good bet is a good bet.
In poker terms the scenario I gave you is called a “race” or “coin flip”. If you’ve played or watched poker I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of races. Every pick I make against the point spread has about the same chance of winning as the pocket 2′s do over the 4 and 9. That is how gambling works. You get a small edge and then you exploit it many, many times and you are left with a profit. The sharp sports bettor doesn’t know when the wins will come in any more than the pro poker player knows when the wins will come in.
The poker player with the 4 and 9 is the underdog. The player with the 2′s is the favorite. It may not seem like much but the 2′s are a huge favorite. Very small percentages are very big when it comes to gambling. There are bets on the craps table where the house only has a 1% edge. Casinos make millions with that small edge. Unfortunately sports betting is slower than a craps table. We’re lucky to get a couple thousand bets a year. A craps player can do that over a weekend. The craps gamblers betting against the house are losers, even though they may walk away winners on a lucky weekend. The poker player with the 4 and 9 made a losing bet. He has to get lucky to win. Casinos don’t need to get lucky. Sharps don’t need to get lucky. Luck is for losers. It’s what keeps them coming back.
