Are eight dog wins in nine games a sign that the bookies are in control? Or do the upsets show that they have no idea what they're doing?

_
(Please scroll down for target betting picks for Wednesday, September 1)

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:


(With thanks, once again, to Scoresandodds.com)
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._

We're on another rollercoaster ride, with big wins one day and a cliff-drop the next. What's the alternative? Looks like there isn't one!

_
(Please scroll down for target betting picks for Thursday, August 26)

I have been saying for more years than I can count that high risk is an inevitable component of any and all forms of gambling.

It is an unpalatable truth that is only a little less true if you happen to be a bookie or a casino, and can hedge your bets most of the time.

Yet almost every day, I hear about another "low risk" or "can't lose" proposition that claims to eliminate all those pesky ups and downs, replacing them with a steady stream of wins climbing skyward like the yellow brick road to Oz.

I just wish one of them actually worked.

The most impressive steady winner I have come across so far is the InvestaPick three-pick plan - until its creators mysteriously stopped posting data at the end of April, then came back to life with a bang in July, playing catch-up with bets that avoided the nuisance factor of real time.

Since then, there have been days when InvestaPick shows "Pick Posted" on its website without those picks appearing in its next day updates.

Still and all, I continue to give IP the benefit of the doubt, because just like all you folks out there, I dream of profits without risk, aka gain without pain.

What I find most impressive about InvestaPick's published results is that they were achieved from hundreds of picks paying less than even money.

In essence, the three "funds" use a simple Martingale, benefiting from the mathematical fact that while shorter odds mean smaller paybacks, they also bring more frequent wins.

From time to time, I have posted comparisons between the results achieved the IP way, and my modification of IP's method, which requires prior losses (LTDs in target betting lingo) to be fully recovered before the next bet in a sequence falls back to the minimum.

Around the end of the month, I will update the numbers and post them again.

Meanwhile, here are target betting's picks for today, Tuesday, August 24:


Wednesday, August 25 at 10:15am

Yesterday turned out to be a great day for target betting, less because of the 50% WR from four right picks out of eight, but because of our three good friends, timing, timing and timing.

Wins from bets 1 and 8 lined up with maximum wagers, shooting the method's green line skyward once again.

I can't deliver precise details because my long-in-completion bet calculator blew another gasket yesterday, and a mysterious infection that has me scarfing anti-biotics has left me too cross-eyed to cope with the task of finding the right fix.

Hasn't stopped me from finding more picks for today, though!

Timing really is critical, and it is always a sure thing that eventually, big wins will hit where they are most needed and the target betting principle will be vindicated once again.

Eventually can be a very expensive word, at least for a while, but recovery is made possible by bets that sometimes carry a lot of zeroes, but are never larger than they need to be.

It really is silly to envision a strategy that can avoid digging a deep hole at some point, a delusion matched in dumbness by the notion that cumulative losses can be recovered by making only safe bets in small amounts.

In this business, what the hell is a safe bet anyway?

Look back just a few days in the current baseball season (or any other!) and you will find results that stunned the bookies as much as they did the punters who lost their shirts on them.

At least we hope that the bookies were taken by surprise, in spite of the fact that it is their coffers that get a big fat boost when the so-called underdog thrashes the presumed favorite by 9-1 or whatever (see Chicago Cubs over Washington Nationals two days ago, for example).

Wednesday's bets:


(With thanks to Scoresandodds.com)
Update at 3:00pm Wednesday:

OK, so I munched on my drugs at lunchtime and while the bugs in my bod are still making me feel pretty rotten, the bugs in the bet calculator seem to have been vanquished.

At least until the next little bugger (hah!) pops up...

Turns out Tuesday's win was not quite enough to offset Monday's dip, and right now, today's picks are looking a tad iffy.

If the Atlanta Braves manage to hold onto their 2-run lead, the damage should not be too bad, but they are under almost as much pressure as I am!

The chart for the current state of the bankroll would make me nauseous if I wasn't sick already, but at least we're still in the green (sorry, but in my book, black is not the color of money).



Thursday, August 26 at 9:45am

Ultra-slim pickings today, but enough to keep the pot boiling:


Yesterday, the Braves not only gave up the two-run lead they need to make my run-line bet a winner, but handed the win to the other guys!

But hey, there's always today...

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._

The primary test of a viable, reliable betting strategy is not how much trouble it can get into, it's how deep a hole it can get out of.

_
Please scroll down for target betting selections for Monday, August 23

Trouble, after all, is the name of the game in gambling.

(And I'm very sorry, Teacher, for ending a sentence with a preposition).

The Plus Money system that "Peter Punter" was briefly hopeful about had a stunning ability to lose money, but not a hope in hell of getting it back as long as bet values were calculated as a fixed percentage of a dwindling bankroll.

It is plain common sense that if you bet progressively - or regressively! - smaller amounts in a downturn, the upturn you hope will eventually save your bacon will have to be huge to get the job done.

Losing streaks are, of course, a fact of life.

So are winning streaks.

In a game that is relatively close to a 50-50 proposition (blackjack with a house edge around 1% is a 49.5-50.5 option, for example) wins will pretty much balance out losses over time.

Not so in sports book betting, where the bookie's edge is at least 10%, and often far more.

It therefore follows that whatever the so-called experts may choose to argue, only progressive betting can conquer negative expectation and deliver a consistent long-term profit.

It can't be any old progressive strategy, of course.

It turns out that if a regular old Martingale had been used throughout my nine-month, seven-dog trial, the overall loss would have been in the hundreds of thousands.

Instead, target betting pulled off a win that averaged out at almost $10,000 a month.

And that's without doing what the promoters of TOM (the other method) did, tweaking and twiddling results from the 2009 baseball season until a huge "win" could be claimed for a strategy that could never, ever duplicate that success against future bets.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but not when it is used to produce fraudulent results.

The 7DT played out day-by-day for the best part of a year, and the only rule change that applied was one I predicted in the very beginning: expansion of the betting spread to comply with a target betting rule that has been in place for decades.

As things stand, I am satisfied that the sports book modification of target betting, which recognizes a "house edge" that is at least ten times greater than the negative expectation for table games, is viable and proven so.

What I am concerned about right now is the bet selection process.

For the last few weeks, I have been enthusiastic about the potential of run-line bets as a means of improving the overall win rate achieved by backing underdogs only (less than 42% at the end of the 7DT).

After three weeks, RL bets don't look so good!

Their WR since I rolled out the new betting template is barely 30%, and their notional cash position is a LOSS of almost $4,000.

"Dog" bets, on the other hand, have a WR since July 24 of 46% and are collectively $10,000 ahead.

Three weeks is not much of a test period, it's true, and I will keep going with this indefinitely.

I'm just a little less optimistic now, is all!

Here are selections for Saturday, August 14 (a longer list of bets in the wake of damage done on Friday the 13th!):



Sunday, August 15 at 8:30am

Saturday was a diem horriblis, as the Queen of England might have put it, swallowing all our profits, digging into the preliminary bankroll and putting target betting more than $10,000 behind its best win since July 24.

As I said before, it's easy enough to dig a deep hole. Getting out of it is what counts.

In a rush today with games starting early as usual on a Sunday, so here's the bare bones version of today's picks:


Update at 10:10am Sunday:

The day's pick list looks a little tidier this way:


My primary focus right now is improving the bet selection process.

It has to be entirely numbers-driven, but it's clear that since July 24 the net has been way too wide.

I have to settle on a middle ground between TOM's scatter-shot approach, and the all-dogs method I used before.

Throughout the 9-month 7DT, I fought in vain to eliminate subjectivity, at least on days when more than seven prospects fell into my +100 to +180 range.

I don't want to have to make choices, so for now I am assuming that tightening the range is the best option.

The objective is to make the process so simple that selecting the bets, then placing them (online or at one of my neighborhood casinos) takes an hour a day at most.

For many punters, that would take most of the fun out of sports betting - they love to agonize over and analyze statistics until their eyes cross, thereby (they hope) improving their win potential.

I'm betting that "letting the bookies do the choosing" can match or even improve on an expert's win rate, keeping in mind that I am still reluctant to accept selections paying less than even money.

As I have commented before, assuming InvestaPick's records are accurate, that service seems to do quite nicely with bets at odds as short as -120.

Two of IP's three funds claim a win rate above 50%, a number that would smooth out the roller-coaster ride that makes target betting a little too exciting at times!

Monday, August 16, 2010 at 12:10pm

Today's a keep it simple day:



Sunday was irritating!

Seven right bets out of 12 did not line up with larger values, so the sum total was another small dip into the bankroll.

Target betting's time will come. It always does.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010 at 11:20am

Monday was a thin baseball day as usual, but with an add-on from WBA we managed four right bets out of six picks total.

The boost to the current target betting bankroll wasn't much ($400 and change) but some progress was made, at least.

It's all about timing, as always - right picks have to line up with the big bets or it's possible to win more bets than you lose and still slide further into the hole, as we did over the weekend.

Today's picks, in plain-and-simple format:


Wednesday, August 18, 2010 at 11:00am

The battle to create the perfect Excel multi-series bet calculator goes on, with the fancy goodies in the 2010 spreadsheet still just about outweighing the familiarity of the 1997 alternative!

I have learned that there is a big difference between tailoring a worksheet for thousands of random outcomes that can be refreshed at the touch of a key, and creating one for data that comes in oh-so-slowly in real time.

I have stopped posting Excel screenshots for current bets because when an error in a formula is exposed and then corrected, it will sometimes drastically change the numbers shown on screen.

The actual bets that I place day by day are not relevant to this exercise: What has to be demonstrated (as with the 7-dog trial) is that the same set of rules, consistently applied over a long period of time (for example, nine months!) will achieve a positive overall outcome.

It's not the rules that keep changing as I struggle with this challenge, it's Excel's interpretation of them.

And, of course, it's not the program's fault: I am solely responsible for the content of each of those pesky conditional formulas, and the mistakes are mine, all mine!

Meanwhile, I am getting some great feedback from transferring my databases over to Excel little by little.

I have had the same information at my fingertips for years, but only lately have I started to take a serious interest in the comparative merits of underdog and run-line bets, and the relevance of odds ranges.

Here's a little nugget: Bet a certain range of dog options in the 2009 baseball season and the win rate (WR) woulda been 46.0% for flat bets, without the profit-building benefits of target betting.

Bet the same range throughout the 2009 NHL (hockey) season, and the WR would have been...45.8%

Apply the range to the current MLB season, and the WR is 41.58%

Should we conclude from this that underdogs are statistically certain to stage a dramatic comeback between now and the 2010 World Series? Probably not, but in both the full-season 2009 MLB and NHL databases, dog wins overall held steady at 46%.

In the current baseball season to August 15, the number is 45.2%.

We can improve the WR number by widening the range of "bettable" odds, but then we see a big change in the flat-bet value of those dog wagers.

We have to strike a balance between more wins bringing in less dough, and fewer wins at better odds, which sounds like a statement of the obvious, but is a truth that's lost on the vast majority of sports book punters.

Where's the sense, for instance, in backing primarily favorites in pursuit of a 65% WR when the average payback for all those short-odds picks is -160 or 63 cents on the dollar?

Back favorites if you must, but never place a bet at odds shorter than -120.

Here are today's picks:


Thursday, August 19, 2010 at 7:35am

Short and sweet today!


Keeping it simple again today, and crossing my fingers that stripping down the auto-bet template and virtually starting over has done the trick.

(Not that it's a trick: a trick is when you claim your strategy can win close to a half mill in one baseball season, then it goes pear-shaped almost from the first game the following year! Not much of a trick, come to think of it...).

Right now, using the rules published long ago (but with the double-up error corrected), target betting is up by about 75% of its opening BR, and its win is equal to about 12% of total action since July 24.

Today's picks:


Saturday, August 21, 2010 at 3:25pm

Still battling with the Excel instant bet calculator!

I'm beginning to think I would be better with a stubby #2 pencil and a clean napkin...

Today's picks:


Sunday, August 22, 2010 at 9:40am

Saturday was a satisfying day for target betting: seven right picks out of 15 might not sound like much, percentage-wise, but when the wins line up with the big bets, as they did yesterday, the inevitability of the effect does not make it any less gratifying!

More about that in a day or so.

Meanwhile, Sunday's picks (just in time!):


Monday, August 23, 2010 at 2:25pm

Took a hammering yesterday but we're still ahead of the game.

Thin schedule today, but hopefully it will bring more winners for target betting.


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._

The harder they fall...the higher they bounce. Now's the time when confidence and consistency count the most!

_
(Please scroll down for selections for Thursday, August 12)
Saturday was a lousy day by any standard - just two wins in 15 picks.

Even the most brilliant betting strategy known to man can't make hay out of a 13% win rate. Keep that up, and I'll soon be bankrupt.

But just like a bookie, I know that numbers rule, and that even the most dramatic downturn will be canceled out by a succession of good days in due time.

And speaking of bookies, the only good news to come out of yesterday's mess is that the pattern of wins was hard on them, too.

Confidence is critical at this point.

It's easy to stick with a plan when everything is going well, but the time we need a solid, effective betting strategy the most is when wins are hardest to come by.

Letting target betting play out in real time, as I am doing all over again right now with the 9-month 7-dog trial behind me, is a nail-biting experience at times.

But recoveries that unfold "before your very eyes" are much more relevant to proving my strategy than historical data, however accurate and verifiable it might be.

The clock's running out for the start of Sunday's games, so here are today's updates:




Monday, August 9 at 11:55am

It's as much as I can do today to get the Monday picks posted!

I keep finding bugs in the new Excel template, and I am starting to wish I had stuck with reliable, old-fashioned Quattro Pro 123BC (the prehistoric version).

It's not that the target betting rules are complicated, far from it, but that my brain is struggling with a new formula language at a time when I'd rather be simply kicking back and counting my winnings.

No winnings Sunday, though, and the slide goes on.

I'm hanging in there regardless, and once I get Excel mastered, I will be able to show why.


Note the comments in the list, an indication that subjectivity is creeping back into the picture.

That's not a good thing. I want the numbers to dictate choices, nothing else. And believe me, I'm working on that...

Update at 12:45pm Monday:

I was in a rush to beat the sound of the window slamming on bets for today's early game and was too late anyway, so now I can add the following!

Betting options promising an even-plus payback enables modifications to the standard target betting rules for table games that reflect two important differences in the indoor and outdoor arenas (OK, hockey's played indoors, but work with me a little here!).

Difference #1: blackjack has a house edge that's around 1%, while sports betting gives the book an edge that's generally between 10-15%. It follows that betting sports, you are not going to win as often, but when you win you will win more (Difference #2).

The casino rule in target betting is that an opening loss in a new series may be followed by a bet as high as PB x 5 (5x the previous bet) because there's pretty much a 50-50 chance that the first loss will be followed by a win and if that happens, the series will be quickly turned around with a profit.

Not so in sports. So, never more than double the opening bet, and after that, redouble only once (-1,-2,-4,-4).

Dry spells generally lost longer in sports betting (and not just because at table games, 100 bets an hour is slow going, and at the bookie's, 100 bets a week makes your head spin!).

I'm talking now about the length of losing streaks: usually, you will see more and longer downturns, making it wise to not just freeze your wager value after a third loss, but to start reducing it.

In the 7-dog trial, and now in the new real-time test of target betting, I double twice, then start going backwards until a win prompts a bet that is not more than 5x the pre-payback value of the winner.

That's the biggest change from table games: At blackjack or baccarat, I will react to a mid-recovery win by going for the whole loss to date (LTD) plus one unit because I have about a 50-50 shot at turning things around with a second successive win.

Betting the book, the odds are 45-55 if I'm lucky, so a little caution is called for.

And please, don't confuse odds with win/loss stats!

Odds are set by the bookie to make losing a very unlikely outcome for him, keeping in mind that in most games, more than 80% of punters back the team at the shortest odds.

That's why the book needs underdogs to win just often enough to keep profits high but not so often that they make nonsense of the odds.

Assume 1,000 $100 bets on a given game, with the favorites at -170 and the dogs at +150; a fave win will give 800 bettors a payback of $59 apiece, $47,200 offset by $20,000 collected from 200 losing dog bets (a loss to the book of $27,200).

Flip the result, and the book pays $30,000 to dog backers and collects $80,000 from folks who were sure the favorite was going to win hands down. Result: a smiling bookie.

Once again, an extract from today's Vegas breakdown, courtesy of Scoresandodds.com, an invaluable online resource for anyone dedicated to the challenge of winning at sports book betting.


In sports, winning streaks are both shorter and less frequent, so the target betting casino rule that calls for the next bet after an opening win to be at least PB x 1.5 may not be as effective and may actually be a liability.

Throughout the nine-month 7DT, I shelved the win progression (WP) rule, and did very nicely without it.

Once the new template is fully debugged, it will enable thousands of sports bets to be "replayed" with minor variations in the betting rules.

This is not about fiddling and twiddling until losses become wins but enables a cool analysis of what's smart and what's not in a betting milieu in which stats do not change significantly from season to season.

Here's how the target betting rules look right now:

1. Take no odds shorter than -110
2. Start each new series with a bet that is half of 1% of your total BR.
3. After a first loss, double the bet, and do the same after a second loss.
4. After three consecutive losses, halve the bet, and do that until the minimum is reached.
5. After a mid-series win, bet the LTD rounded up plus a single unit UNLESS that bet would be more than 5x the previous bet, in which case use that value (example follows).
6. If a turnaround bet is lost, follow rule 3 above, always rounding up in multiples of your minimum.
7. After an opening win in a new series, bet PBx1.5 and keep doing that until a loss.
8. When a loss ends a winning streak, repeat the losing bet value, then apply rule 3.
9. If long odds on a winning bet cover the LTD plus a 1-unit profit (a unit being the minimum bet value) call it end of series (EOS) and start over.

Example: A mid-series win leaves you with an LTD of -$411 at a time when your minimum is $25; your next bet should be $411/25 rounded up = $425 plus a single unit (your win target) = $450, but it should be limited to 5x your previous bet if necessary.

As I said, simple rules. I just wish automating them for multiple bets via an Excel worksheet was as easy as it ought to be!

Tuesday, August 10 at 2:45pm

Still waiting for that bounce - and please, no smart remarks about dead cats...

I am as happy as I ever was with the algorithm that drives target betting, but with more bets on each day's lineup, I am becoming increasingly concerned about the selection process I am using.

It's tough for any betting strategy to stay ahead without a reasonable win rate, which I estimate to be somewhere between 43% and 45% (and higher wouldn't hurt).

Now I'm looking at casting an even wider net - something I would not have dreamed of a couple of months ago - and hedging some bets to pump up the WR.

No details yet, but going strictly by the numbers and avoiding the poisonous taint of subjectivity, expanding daily bet blocks over the past 10 days woulda pumped the WR from 41.5% to 45.5%.

The sample is tiny and inconsequential and I need to research this idea by querying the entire database. But big oaks from little acorns grow, blah blah blah.

Here are Tuesday's picks:


Wednesday, August 11 at 9:20am

Tuesday was a kinder day for target betting, with seven wins in 16 bets.

But as always, bets on the day after sky-rocket when turnarounds are incomplete, and in spite of all the totally predictable recoveries I have seen in the past, big fat wagers are nail-biters.

I guess the strategy is akin to a complex, cold-blooded game of Whack-a-Mole, with many more mallets and multiple moles.

Because the selection process is deliberately unemotional and objective, there are days when I look at how picks have lined up with large bet values and worry that if I had had the choice, I would have done things differently.

Today, for example, I'm counting on a run-line bet on the Washington Nats at +180 to give me a turnaround, and everyone knows the Nats are probably the worst team in baseball.

I'm happier putting $1,625 on the Arizona Diamondbacks to give me an underdog win at +115, for some reason.

The truth is that over time, random selection is no better or worse than the subjective process we think of as expertise, which may be bad for our egos but is demonstrably good for our wallets!

Once again, I look at the target betting template after several more hours of debugging and feel confident that now I have it right.

We'll see.

Picks for today, Wednesday, August 11:


Thursday, August 12 at 2:15pm

Wednesday gave target betting another welcome "bounce" and the green line on the chart clicked upwards another notch or two.

No surprises, but good news for all that.

In spite of all the slumps and recoveries I have seen since I started this, with downturns always obliterated in due time, whenever that line heads south, I can't help wondering if this time the hole will prove bottomless.

We're a long way from out of the woods (still in the red with over $4,000 in combined LTDs to be recovered) but believe me, I would not be revisiting the real-time experience if I didn't have faith.

The Excel template seems to be bug-free, at least until the next time, but even the Office 2010 version is giving me some major headaches, slowing down to a crawl and hanging up and sometimes even crashing with depressing regularity.

I can see keeping the day-by-day bet tracker in Excel but relying on wonderful, antediluvian Quattro Pro to do the nitty-gritty work.

Maybe it will turn out that greedy old Microsoft has built a treacle factor into the Home and Student version of Office 2010 that will disappear if I ever break down and upgrade to the Business level.

Don't want to do that. I'm a Student, after all, studying statistics and gambling at Home!

Here are today's picks. Early games are long gone, but as always, the selections were e-mailed out well ahead of game times.


Friday, August 13 at 4:15pm

Let's hope that paraskevidekatriaphobia (the fear that Friday the 13th is always an unlucky day) doesn't prove justified today.

First, today's target betting picks:


I'm not all the way through the woods with the Excel template, partly because the program keeps wigging out on me in spite of my 6MB RAM 'n my Intel Core Duo whatevers, but also because I keep finding earwigs in the formulas.

That's why I'm not crowing about yesterday's notional win, shown at the top of the bet list above.

Problem is, I have egg on my face for posting a recommendation that the next bet should be redoubled twice after two successive mid-recovery losses.

That has never been a weapon in the target betting arsenal and I think I must have been sniffing something when I said that.

The bet after a loss should only be PB x 2 after an opening loss or run of losses, simply because at the start of a new series, the bet value is at minimum, and after a failed turnaround bet, it could be in the high hundreds or low thousands.

Yikes!

I have learned already (I'm quick that way!) that betting way more than seven picks a day is a very different proposition than backing seven dogs, day after day after day.

So, I'm working on those glitches, and cautiously celebrating the fact that so far (since July 24) multiple bets mixing ML and RL picks seems to be a step up from the 7DT that just ended.

Here's something that has nothing to do wth sports betting:


When my much-loved iPod Touch was stolen in June, I was well on my way to racking up a half million bucks in funny-munny profits at one-thumb blackjack, in spite of a house edge that was so far out of whack with real-life negative expectation for a single-deck game that it was almost a joke.

As you can see, target betting is still trouncing the BJ app, and MobilityWare still hasn't done anything about the daffy algorithm behind it, probably because most people expect to "lose" and don't bother to look at the stats.

Have to say I'm happy to be away from the daily casino grind. Mini-blackjack (very mini) is my antidote to withdrawal symptoms...

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._

Just ask your friendly neighborhood bookie: If you want to win big in the long term, you have to be ready to take it in the short(s).

_
My pal Peter Punter continues his brave quest to find a "system" that wins more often than it loses, pays big bucks, and makes a profit without any significant risk.

I stopped looking for that particular brass ring about 30 years ago, and so did every book-maker who plans to stay in business.

Still and all, you gotta dream, don't you?

Target betting is more about waking up to reality and doing what it takes to secure a long-term profit.

I love it when stories break out of Las Vegas telling how after some big game or horse race, the book biz is crying crocodile tears and seemingly begging for sympathy while paying out record sums to delirious punters.

What a croc! (Pun intended).

The book is built on the presumption that if punters don't win once in a while, they won't play, because even gamblers are not total fools.

It is also good policy for bookies and casinos to grab a megaphone once in a while and shout out loud about big wins for the good guys.

It's not really about sympathy, it's about the age-old principle of the carrot and the stick.

Whatever!

Target betting had a bad day yesterday and hopes for a better one today.

That's not gambling - it's mathematics, plain and simple.

Here are today's baseball bets.

(The betting template is humming along nicely, and I'm sitting here waiting for the other shoe to drop!).



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._

The downside of honesty and accuracy: Sometimes making a list and checking it a lot more than twice means the good news is not as great as it looked!

_
But hey, I can't really complain.

There were some accidental glitches in the target betting template that made good days into bad days.

Then again, some good days turned into better ones.

And in the end, the goal of creating a betting worksheet that gets the job done right is worth an occasional sacrifice.

All along, I have been placing real bets that were calculated the old-fashioned way, using pencil and paper - and I'm pretty decently ahead since I began mixing ML and RL bets in the last week of July before wrapping up the nine-month 7-dog trial.

I can't yet be absolutely certain that the model is bug-free, but for now at least, it looks that way.

First, here's a summary of those good and bad days since July 24:


The win-to-date for good old, reliable target betting provides a healthy return on total action (close to 19%) and the risk so far has been negligible.

The most important numbers (other than the win value!): The average profit on winning days exceed the average loss on losing days by more than 3.5 to 1, and the overall average win so far has exceeded the overall average loss by 65%.

The only way to beat negative expectation is to win more when you win than you lose when you lose!

The first few run-throughs pitting target betting against TOM (the other method sent to me by "Peter Punter") had TB risking huge amounts to win more than $20,000 in comparison with TOM's loss of almost 70% of its bankroll since July 5.

With everything working tickety-boo (it's hard to cross your fingers while typing!), the bet values and the final win make perfect sense: a decent win eked out by consistent money management in spite of incompetent bet selection that delivered a flat WR of barely 38%.

The picks, of course, were TOM's...

Here's the comparison between the two strategies:


I could go on about this head-to-head, bet-by-bet comparison for several more pages, but for now I'll wrap up with today's selections (mine, not TOM's - the other method is history, and Peter P. has received his refund by now, hopefully!).

(Above chart courtesy of www.scoresandodds.com)

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.

Today's word from "Peter Punter": TOM (The Other Method) ain't cutting the mustard, and he wants his money back.

_
I really hope he gets it, too.

But there are hundreds of "insider" sports book scams jostling for easy money from busy people who love to bet but assume they don't have the time to do what it takes to make smart choices.

I get quite a few pitches from cappers, who from what I see are mostly slick hustlers no better that those guys who spray a driveway stinky black and claim that it's been "resurfaced"!

All the potholes and pitfalls are still there, but they have been gussied up to make them look good.

The promoter of TOM (my name for it, remember) claims to be as shocked as Pete at his system's dismal performance over the last couple of months.

I said from the start that a betting strategy that reduces wager values in response to a downturn is mathematically incapable of turning a profit, but bad math wasn't TOM's only problem.

It also made lousy choices, reporting an overall win rate about 8 percentage points less than mine (and believe me, I'm no insider genius).

I have been too busy perfecting my target betting template to process a system-to-system comparison using all of TOM's bets since July 5, but I will post the results as soon as I have them.

I can tell you that betweenJuly 24, the day I started mixing run-line bets on favorites with my usual money-line bets on underdogs, and Pete's plug-pulling, TOM was behind $510 and my strategy - same picks, different bet values - was AHEAD $1,435.

Target betting remains far, far ahead of InvestaPick's winning numbers, betting IP's selections game by game but applying my wager values and ignoring theirs.

I have to say that if IP's numbers are honest (and they were offline for almost three months, remember, coming back with all those missed days filled in!) they are doing a pretty good job for their subscribers.

IP's win rates (flat bets, win or lose) are better than mine and far better than TOM's, although they go for short odds almost exclusively.

IPW, InvestaPick's "west coast" fund, has a 51% WR since January, 2009, IPC shows 48% and IPE also scored 51%.

The clock's ticking on me, and I have already missed a couple of Thursday's baseball games, so I'll stop for now and post today's picks.

They went out at 7:00am, so my apologies go only to those who are not on my Early Birds list!


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._

I'd say 9 right picks out of 12 was a good day, wouldn't you? A fluke, maybe, but perhaps "capping" isn't as hard as its practitioners pretend!

_
Tuesday was a highlight in the new target betting mix of run-line and money-line bets, which is now just 11 days along.

It was great to watch all those winners scroll down the screen as I checked the day's finals before bedtime.

Nine out of 12 is a solid 75% win rate, and in percentage terms it does not match the 6/7 (86%) I achieved several times - if not often enough! - during the nine-month 7-dog trial.

But I'm a happy punter, that's for sure.

One great day does not prove anything, of course, any more than target betting's more than $9,000 in monthly profits from the 7DT is a cast-iron guarantee of future bookie-beating.

What it does emphasize is that more often than not, using the numbers the bookies provide is an effective way to pick winners without having to pay cappers or develop a migraine studying form.

Once the numbers are up in the morning, it takes me maybe five minutes to mark up the lineup and get all my bets in a row.

I just sent "Peter Punter" an analysis of TOM's progress since early July (TOM being The Other Method, for those who have not been paying attention!) and the data ain't pretty.

The experienced, savvy old pros behind the method have picked 170 run-line selections and 83 money-line bets in the past month.

RL bets won about 42% of the time and made a profit (based on a $5,000 opening bankroll and bet values in strict accordance with the method rules) of $1,400.

ML bets, on the other hand, were a total disaster: a 25.3% WR resulted in a loss of $4,430 which the RL profit could not cover, leaving TOM down $3,035 since July 5 and fast running out of that $5,000 buy-in.

In contrast, target betting made 43 RL bets in the last 11 days, winning 40% of them, and its 81 ML picks had a 51% WR.

I favor money-line bets on dogs over run-line bets on favorites, but I'm having a great time mixing the two for the first time since "Peter Punter" came up with the idea via TOM (or vice versa?).

The dollar numbers for target betting are provisional until later today when hopefully I'll have the bugs out of the template, but since July 24, both RL (+$740) and ML (+$2,196) bets are comfortably in the black.

I say "provisional" because I want to get today's pick list posted before time runs out on all 14 selections.

Again, sorry some games are already off, but the way things work these days is that I fire the bet list out via e-mail as soon as I have solid odds data, then have to process all the wagers before I can get around to this blog.

If anyone would like to get the bet info well ahead of all game times, just e-mail me at sethbets@gmail.com and I will add your name to the distribution list.

The morning sheet won't include recommended bet amounts for a while yet, but the picks ("M" or "R") come across loud and clear.

There is no charge for any of this, per the long-established spirit of this blog, and if any readers get rich with my method, I will be happy for them. (The one bad thing about freebies, of course, is that there can't be a money back guarantee!).

Here are today's selections:


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._

When it comes to selecting each day's sports book best bets, let your bookie do the hard work for you. He has the time and resources that you don't!

_
(Please scroll down for target betting selections for Tuesday, August 3, 2010)

I have touched on this topic before, but the completion of the seven-dog trial after nine arduous but supremely instructive months make it a lesson worth repeating.

You can't help but admire the regular punters who spend hours studying stats and struggling to sharpen their edge before placing a bet.

And it may be true that from time to time, the odds assessed for a game make no sense to anyone but the book.

But as a rule, the numbers you see in the wagering menu alongside each prospect were arrived at after careful evaluation of all the information available to even the most well-wired bettor, plus between-the-lines factors that we can only guess at.

However you select your daily bets, whether they win or lose is mathematically less important than how you determine the dollar value of each of them.

You know for sure that in the long run you are going to lose more bets than you win, so any betting method that is not in essence progressive is sure to lose eventually.

Haphazard betting can be hugely successful for a while, but The Math shows very clearly with no argument possible that luck alone cannot overcome the house edge that will always make fat cats out of bookies in the long run.

Progressive is a dirty word to a host of self-styled gambling experts and other people who don't know what they are talking about.

But common sense alone tells us that if you freeze or reduce your bet values in response to a prolonged losing streak, and if over the long run you lose more bets than you win, you can never recover your losses.

The hysterically-touted bookie-busting method that "Peter Punter" asked me to take a look at claims mind-boggling wins for the 2009 baseball season and a solid profit for 2010 so far.

But since I started tracking the method on July 5, just 24 betting days ago, it is not the bookies that have gone bust but the system they are said to view with fear and trembling.

I gave the strategy a notional opening bankroll of $5,000 when I started the meter running.

After heavy losses yesterday (July 31), the method had $1,870 left to play with, slashing its initial investment by more than 62% after 16 losing days and eight winning ones.

(I should explain that the data I was sent did not call for bets every day between July 4 and the end of the month).

Intellectual property laws prevent me from naming the strategy or its rules, so I will say simply this: If anyone out there is tempted to put money into a betting method that reduces the value of wagers as the available bankroll dwindles in the direction of zero...please, please don't do it!

The long-term (9-month) performance of target betting in the 7-dog trial that has unfolded day by day since November 1, 2009, tells us that a bookies' edge that ended up at almost 18% can and will be beaten if bet values are determined in a disciplined and consistent manner.

Detailed summaries follow, but all the data boil down to these essential numbers.

Target betting lost 960 bets and won 674, indicating an overall bookies' edge of -286/1634 = -17.5%.
Target betting's final WIN of almost $90,000 in nine months was more than 11% of total wagering action of $780,000 (average bet value: $478).
Based up upon the expert axiom that the final outcome of any betting strategy will be action multiplied by house advantage target betting should have LOST $781,000 x (-286/1634) = -$136,675.
Didn't happen!

Ironically, the target betting rules applied throughout the 7-dog trial were tougher and more aggressive than I would normally recommend.

But their objective was to ensure that with a greater number of losing bets than winning ones an absolute overall certainty, the average value of all winning bets would exceed the average value of all losing bets by a percentage significantly greater than the expected house advantage.

Bottom line: Target betting delivered a final AWV/ALV number of +178.7% ($649 avg win / $363 average loss).

In the next few days, I will be posting verifiable data that demonstrates that target betting "busts the bookies" in all manner of ways and can be relied upon to do so perhaps not tomorrow or the next day but over the long run far into the future.

The "experts" tell us that a betting strategy that beats an existing data set, no matter how large, cannot prevail against upcoming data.

The experts are wrong.

Here are today's updates, including today's target betting selections (posted here well after game time, with the appropriate apologies, but e-mailed out at the crack o' dawn!).

There will be no more 7DT picks. It was fun while it lasted, but it's past time for all those lessons learned to be put to good use.

Those lessons, by the way, did not require any changes to the basic principles of target betting.


The numbers above are important, and dramatically supportive of the target betting method after nine months in which selections were posted ahead of game time, along with their assigned bet values.

Yes, there were big bets and high risk at times, with one series in particular (#5!) suffering far worse "luck" than any of the others.

But anyone who imagines that there can be long term gain without a little temporary pain probably also believes in Santa Claus and winning the lottery tomorrow!

Read the numbers and rejoice: they say YCW (you can't win) but the truth is that SBAWITE (smart betting always wins in the end!).


Here's how individual series did over the nine months of the 7DT.

Tough sledding at times, especially for Series #5, but the upward trajectory of all seven betting lines is proof that not only is it possible to win more when you win than you lose when you lose but that it is absolutely bleeping essential.

There's no jiggery-pokery here, no retroactive sleight of hand. What happened really happened. And it will again.


The worksheet that tracks past wins and losses and sets bet values before the start of each new day is still evolving, but will probably look pretty much like the screen shot you see above.

Betting a large number of picks every day would potentially require paperwork and brain strain that I personally would rather avoid.

Hence the need for a totally accurate automated means of avoiding decisions and the mistakes that invariably come along with them.

The selection process is as easy as pie (or pi?) but the task of setting bet values in order to win more when you win than you lose when you lose takes rather more effort.

For now, I am content to keep plugging on with the new (to me) idea that money-line bets on underdogs should be mixed with at least a sprinkling of run-line bets on favorites.

Dogs come first, but games that the bookies decree are too close to call often include very generous run-line odds.

The one frustration of an all-dogs selection plan is that when favorites rule, even target betting has to take it in the shorts.

On those sad days - too common in baseball this season so far! - the fall can be cushioned by RL wins.

And I'm all for soft landings if a sharp drop can't be avoided.

As always, more details to come...

Monday, August 2 at 8:45am

It really does feel strange picking even more than the seven daily bets that at one point I thought of as overkill - but so far, it's working out well.

Sunday, target betting made a profit of $180 on, gasp, 15 bets.

The Other Method (TOM!) lost $265 on eight bets.

I am still working on a spreadsheet template that applies the target betting rules to each new day's selections, and when I have it in place, I will plug in all TOM's bets since I started tracking on July 5 and post the outcome, win or lose.

Meanwhile, selections for today, without recommended bet values. I may add those later.


The above chart comes courtesy of Scoresandodds.com, an invaluable online resource for anyone dedicated to the challenge of winning at sports book betting.

Later...


The above is the current state of play for target betting against selections that have been posted here daily ahead of game times.

The numbers have changed (somewhat!) since last time because rounding up increased some bet values.

That's what I get for putting up snips from a work in progress.

But since the job still isn't over, I obviously never learn...

The bottom line is unchanged: target betting is viable, effective, consistent, reliable, sensible and, above all, profitable.

Tuesday, August 3 at 10:45am

I am going not so quietly nuts trying to get Excel conquered so I can create a flawless target betting template, and I don't plan to publish any more outtakes until I get it right.

The strategy is way ahead in the first few days of the new ML+RL experiment, with yesterday bringing the biggest win to date.

TOM had a positive day, too: +$28!

Can't help but smile and wonder how many people are buying their wares when I get one of those e-mails from a professional "capper" offering inside dope on the day's best bets.

How hard is it to be right more than half the time when you tout favorites at odds so short they make a grasshopper look like the Empire State Building?

Today, for example, brought a message suggesting three bets at odds ranging from -150 (2/3) to -260 (less than 2/5), winners all probably, but hardly requiring unique insight.

It did occur to me that if I'm ever comfortable with placing considerably more than seven bets a day, why not widen the net to include favorite wins and over/unders at decent odds?

Down the road, maybe...

Again with thanks to Scoresandodds.com, here are today's target betting selections. It would be great to see a repeat of Monday's 60% WR, but I'm not counting on it!



Update at 11:45am - Fix one glitch and another pops up, but I do believe I'm getting closer to the perfect template.

Monday turned out to be target betting's second best day since I jumped with both feet into the murky pool of ML/RL propositions.

It's way too early to claim anything other than potential, but I can tell you that in ten days, target betting had four losing days averaging -$109 and six winning days averaging +$365.

TOM, meanwhile, has had 17 losing days and just nine winners since July 5, and has blown more than 64% of its opening bankroll.

Ouch!

Can't see how TOM can turn the tide with bets shrinking in value day by day, but then again, I'm not a professional handicapper, am I?

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._