Not much I can do about mythematicians who wag their fingers at me and say, "See, it's classic - whenever you start to lose, you simply raise your bet limits!"
Never mind that I have been arguing for years that a wide spread (much wider than 1 to 50, for sure) is essential to long-term profit from any game with a negative expectation.
It would be downright bloody wonderful to come up with a wagering method that guarantees consistent profits at little or no risk.
But that is never going to happen on planet Earth, at least as long as casinos and bookies insist on requiring all their games and propositions to include a built-in house advantage.
Looking back on the first couple of weeks of June, it happens that a surprising number of underdog wins have been at +100, or even money.
For the ongoing 7-dog trial, I have tended to make selections that pay at least +110, figuring that if I can't put money on all the promising dogs in each day's lineup (any team at longer odds than +180 being rejected as unpromising) I should target those paying better than 1 to 1.
In the larger analysis, dogs have been doing pretty well this month: I just haven't been making the right choices!
Here are today's picks and Saturday's results:
Yesterday, a minor brain fart stopped me from posting all the info needed to illustrate the merits of tailoring underdog bets to the odds that apply at the precise moment that the wager is placed.
As I explained, the idea is to mitigate risk somewhat in recognition of the reality that whenever we bet on an underdog, the odds are against us, and we can therefore expect to lose more bets than we win.
So if we have lost five bets in a row in a given series, with an LTD of -$420 and a win target of $120 (6 x a minimum bet of $20) and the odds on the next bet (NB) are +130, we can cut the wager from $540 to [540 x 100/130] rounded up, which is $420.
Naturally, this ploy loses less and wins less too!
The reverse can be applied to favorites so that bad ideas like the InvestaPick policy of counting a partial win as a complete recovery will do less long-term damage.
IP basically uses a straight Martingale, or did before it abandoned betting across the board on April 27.
That meant that when, say, an $800 bet intended to cover prior losses of $775 won at -110, the payback was $72 short of the target and InvestaPick simply wrote that off and fell back to a minimum bet next time. Weird! Given odds in their favor, the smart thing to do would have been to allow for the expected payback shortfall and make the bet [$775 x 110/100 = $875ru].
What I intended to do yesterday was put up the summary for odds-adjusted underdog bets, then the matching numbers for dog bets at full value.
So here you go...
As expected, action and exposure was hugely reduced, along with the final win value.
An important reminder: The only person likely to make money out of this blog is you, Dear Reader. There's nothing to buy, ever, and your soul is safe (from me, at least). Test my ideas and use them or don't. It's up to you. One more piece of friendly advice: If you are inclined to use target betting with real money against online "casinos" such as Bodog, spend a few minutes and save a lot of money by reading this._
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