Yesterday, I broke a hallowed target betting habit by checking on the New York Mets score long before the game was over, and paid the price by suffering through a 0-2, 2-2, 2-4, 2-6 scenario.
That was a big, huge, enormous (to quote an old friend of mine) bet, after all, and I would have hated to see it go down.
It didn't, and now the target betting bankroll for the current real-time trial, is back on track with a new high and an impressive 55-day performance.
There was really no need for me to sneak an advance peak at the score.
The whole point of this method is to make subjective or emotional involvement obsolete, replacing it with a cold-blooded selection process that depends strictly on the numbers.
Stepping back that way means you can't make bad choices, since you are not making any choices: selections are dictated by the odds, and their order depends on the day's game schedule.
The irony is that after Thursday's big bounce, bet values for today are all over the place, ranging from $25 to $1,200. And that must make my old friend Peter Punter smile, if he's paying attention.
This time last year, I berated him for "throwing away" wins by betting, as I saw it, too little on them - prompted by a bet list that one day ranged from $50 to $3,500.
I defend myself still by remembering that Pete was following the questionable advice of professional "cappers" who make their win records look artificially impressive by picking prospects priced so punitively that paybacks are pathetically paltry. (Sorry about that...today's a P-day, it seems!).
PP wasn't taking my advice and betting in independent series...he was following some cockamamie cancellation system that he tells me is still working for him.
The way I see it (and the math agrees with me), a cancellation method is essentially random because it has no recovery target - and random betting in any shape or form is a very, very bad idea in the long run. Oh, well.
Today's updates:
Saturday, September 18 at 10:00am
Baseball's dogs won 10 of 15 games on Friday and seven of my 12 picks were winners, but target betting fell back again because the day's two biggest bets went south.
Bleep happens!
Busy day today, with 17 bets and a bunch o' bucks on the line
The target betting rules applied in the current real-time test don't change from day to day, obviously, but it is helpful to be able to see from the template what woulda happened if the approach had been different.
The key switches involve the limit on how much a bet can be increased after a win (currently NB=PBx5 max, meaning the next bet cannot be more than five times the previous bet), the win progression (now x1.5) and the number of times the bet can be re-doubled after an opening loss in a new series (4).
These choices have to be made ahead of time, not bet by bet, and the decision must be based on an educated assessment of risk vs. return.
By that I mean that if the objective is to maximize profits and make a living from the sports book, the "switches" will be set higher than if - as is the case with the three InvestaPick funds - all that's required is a decent annualized percentage return on the initial investment.
Given bank CD and savings interest rates falling far short of 1% in today's market, safe bets are in short supply.
Those two goals - a living or an attractive ROI - are not mutually exclusive, assuming a sizable initial bankroll!
As things stand, target betting has more than quadrupled the opening BR in one day less than eight weeks, and its win to date represents almost 13% of total action to date.
Impressive, but it does mean a bumpy ride for that roller-coaster I am always talking about.
Today's updates:
Sunday, September 19 at 10:05am
Baseball's dogs barely managed a 25% win rate yesterday, and target betting's WR was only a little less dismal at 5-12 or 29%.
The good news is that those 12 losses averaged about $120 apiece, and the win average was close to $600.
And that's really the whole point, isn't it?
You have to win more when you win than you lose when you lose so that losing more often than you win doesn't hurt you.
But then, we all know that...
I haven't posted the money-line vs. run-line numbers for a while and when I checked them today, what I found came as both a surprise and, I confess, an annoyance.
Since this real-time trial began on July 24, there have been 200 RL bets and 81 winners for a 40.5% WR, and 452 ML bets with 211 winners (WR 46.7%).
I shouldn't be irritated that RL bets are ahead $14,725 vs. an overall win of $5,410 for money-line picks, but I am - partly because it seems I should have been betting the run-line all season!
Today's updates:
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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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I am happy to hear constructive criticism from people genuinely interested in improving their game, but life is too short for the drivel that too many posters have made their stock in trade. If insults are your game, not blackjack, please go away. If you work for a casino, you will know that progressive betting is only for fools, a surefire way of losing your bankroll. If you take blackjack seriously, as a player, you will know that that is a lie, one that the gambling industry promotes to protect its bottom line. I hope you will find something here of value. Thanks.