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

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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._