No one much likes the idea that the makers of the book have the power to pull strings to get the results they want.
In fact, if we had the slightest suspicion that any outcome was unrelated to a given team's sporting chances, we would be crazy to place a bet.
It's a debate that might provide fodder for several books of the literary variety.
But what it comes down to is this: Thursday, August 26, 2010 was a very good day for baseball bookies!
It was a thin schedule, six games shy of a regular line-up, but it lent a little added credence to my long-held contention that backing underdogs is not an entirely insane way to beat the odds and make a few extra bucks.
Scoresandodds.com offers a very useful daily summary of betting trends that I don't always remember to refer to or save, but it happens that yesterday I somehow managed to do both.
At -210, the Cards were a sure thing against the Nats, and any game the worst team in the league plays against anybody can usually be counted on as yet another loss for them.
But somehow, just this once, the gods of baseball opted to shake things up a little and hand the Nats a one-run win that also dumped a bleepload of boodle into the book's back pocket.
I bet knowing that makes you feel really good...
Yesterday was the 2010 baseball season's 144th day and the windfall it brought the bookies does not prove a thing.
As it happens, it was not a bad day for target betting, either: nothing spectacular, with just three wins in seven picks, but once again the inevitable happened and one of those wins lined up with an extra-high bet.
It happens. A lot. And that's really the whole point.
Here are today's target betting picks:
Saturday, August 28 at 12:30pm
I really can't over-emphasize the importance of eliminating subjective judgment from the selection process, at least if you plan to use a consistent, non-random betting method to beat odds that are always against you in the long run.
And of course I am aware that for the vast majority of gamblers, choices - aka gut feelings, hunches, educated guesses or whatever - are the name of the game.
I am also aware, as you are, that most gamblers are losers.
Faithful followers of this real-time adventure know that selections are drawn from the daily schedule in the order that the masters of the games dictate, and posted in chronological order with bet numbers thereby in sequence.
So when a day like Friday comes along, with far more losses than wins but with most of those wins lining up with big bets, no one is surprised except the true believers in the notion that it takes knowledge and experience to make the right choices.
Quelle crappe! as my Parisian punting pal Pierre would put it.
All right, there are days when I wince as the small potatoes get green checks and their big fat neighbors in the line up draw red exes, but I tell myself it's all for the greater good.
Right now, the numbers back me up: The latest trial began 36 days ago, and the opening BR has been more than doubled with several series still in mid-recovery.
I like that.
Next up are today's selections, a couple of which are already in play (my lists are always e-mailed before game-time, remember, even on those rare days when I post them late here!):
My one-thumb blackjack number passed a milestone in the dumpster today, clicking up a total "win" of over $200,000 in funny-munny since I had to start over after the theft of my last iPod Touch.
Target betting was created for blackjack and baccarat back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth and casino gamblers revered Ed Thorp.
As far as I know, Prof. Thorp remains extant, although I haven't laid eyes on him since we met at a Pebble Beach wing-ding way back in 1978.
His ideas remain relevant, too, although his take on keeping emotion and subjectivity out of the betting process is quite a bit different than mine.
The iPod blackjack app remains a frustrating opponent because the house edge is preposterously unreal.
Never mind, target betting beat the "house" anyway.
Sunday, August 29 at 10:10am
Gravity grabbed the wheel again yesterday, but no doubt the downhill rush will generate just the momentum needed to power us skyward yet again today or tomorrow!
Slim pickings today, but we're staying in the game with these selections:
Monday, August 30 at 11:20am
I guess it's a tough break when you score six right picks out of eight and all you get for it is a tiny step towards a full recovery.
But that's how it goes sometimes.
There were only eight qualifying bets on Sunday and it happens that the series (or lines) that are in greatest need of help right now are Nos. 9 through 15!
Today's MLB lineup gives us 12 acceptable bets, so we'll have to wait and see what happens next.
Overall, we are still in profit since this new trial began in late July, and profit is always a good thing.
Today's picks:
Tuesday, August 31 at 12:15pm
Six right bets and six wrong Monday, giving us a 50% win rate that would not produce a profit without target betting...or blind luck!
The current multi-bet, mixed (money-line and run-line) trial blipped up a few more bucks yesterday, coming tantalizingly close to its best win to date since the first bet was put in play on July 25.
Bet randomly against random, or essentially unpredictable, outcomes and your are sure to lose in the long run.
That's a universal rule of gambling that comes as no surprise to anyone except dreamers with get-rich-quick schemes beckoning them in the direction of the next deep hole!
Of course, everyone is in gambling to make money - or so they think.
Losers would never admit that they actually enjoy getting taken to the cleaners, although once in a while I come across someone who tells me that gambling is the most fun to be had in his or her life, and losses are the acceptable price of all that entertainment.
Casinos and sports books can't do without people of that particular persuasion, so more power to them.
Once again, I am grateful to my pal "Peter Punter" for sending news of yet another doomed GRQ scheme my way.
This one (from the same source as the PlusMoney ticket-shredding machine) has to do with Show bets on horses, and already I am agog to know how past profits can be as "HUGE" as they are claimed to be.
Personally, I would rather be at a racetrack than in a casino or sports-book any day, having been hooked on horseflesh (alive and on the hoof, not the way the French like it) since I was a teenager.
When we lived in Southern California, it was a family tradition to take a picnic into the infield for opening day at Santa Anita the day after Christmas, and there's nothing to match seeing a field of thoroughbreds thundering by with clods flying and steam rising.
That said, betting on a horse race is about as iffy a proposition as any you can find.
For fun, live and in person, it's pretty much unbeatable. As a long-term profit source, forget it!
I wish Peter P. all the best with this one, of course, but with show bets paying even less than short-odds bets on games with, in effect, only two participants, I am not optimistic.
Those HUGE wins are alluring, maybe. But once again, there's no proof - and the very first "system" bet, in the second race at Suffolk Downs on Monday, was, er, a no-show.
The three horses that did show in that race paid $3.20, $2.80 and $3.00 on a $2 bet, which effectively demonstrates the hazards of the game.
An 80-cent payback on a $2 bet is not much to celebrate, let's face it. In sports book parlance, it would be expressed as -250 (bet $250 to win $100), and odds that short do not a profit make for anyone but the book!
Meanwhile, back at games with two-legged contenders, target betting is doing tolerably well against the odds.
The template seems to be bug-free at last, and here's a summary of where the top 15 series stand before game-times today:
The above is not offered as "proof" of HUGE wins to come.
But hopefully it serves to illustrate the wisdom of applying the principles of target betting to lines or series that function independently of one another.
To date (since July 25, that is) there have been as many as 19 bets on a single day, which created 19 series, not 15 as shown.
But above #15, bets occur so rarely that tracking series activity is pretty much of a waste of time - or, given the limits of a worksheet screen, space.
Figures on the far right of each series summary show the total number of bets for that series and how many of them won, so Series #15 has so far seen 11 bets in 39 days, with 4 of them winners.
Just three of the 15 series shown are in the red right now, and overall, target betting is just a hair away from its best win to date.
The method, already anecdotally validated by the nine-month 7DT, has more than doubled its opening bankroll and has achieved a 14% "hold" of overall action to date.
That's a number that would make a bookie proud!
Today's target betting picks:
Wednesday, September 1 at 11:20am
Some days it's tough to squeak past the game-time deadline, especially when someone on high decrees that the first pitch has to be whizzing through the air by 9:05am.
Do any fans ever make it to the field on time when that happens?
Tuesday was a so-so day for target betting, with the potential damage from just three right picks in ten softened by the fact that two of those three wins matched up with bets above $100.
The overall season-to-date win rate for underdogs remains behind the number for this time last year, but certainly not by a gap wide enough to discredit the notion that dogs are a good long-term bet.
Peter Punter's new horse-race scheme had a winner yesterday and another today: at Delaware Park today, Sparkling Spirit in the 1:15 race paid $2.10 on a $2 show bet, a level of payback that according to my math cannot prove profitable in the long run.
Hope I'm wrong. Pete deserves a break!
Today's target betting picks:
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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