It's not about whether you win or lose, it's how you bet the game . Especially if the odds are that you will lose more games than you win!

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(Please scroll down for target betting updates for Saturday, July 31, 2010)

Pundits who oppose the entire concept of a betting strategy with long-term profitability are adamant that past and present patterns of wins and losses have almost nothing to tell us about the future.

It therefore follows that any strategy that relies on what has gone before (future data being unavailable to us!) is certain to fail in the long run.

The nay-sayers - the phrase nattering nabobs of negativity comes to mind as the sole legacy of a disgraced Vice-president - concede that the house edge is a reliable element of gambling that applies to upcoming games as much as to existing data.

But they argue that because the short-term effects of negative expectation are random and unpredictable, dependence on the repetition of prior patterns or trends is non-starter.

To put it bluntly, You Can't Win.

In fact, the only beneficiaries of the YCW conventional wisdom are bookies and casinos. And luckily for them, the vast majority of punters subscribe to the point of view that has been spoon-fed to successive generations since gambling began.

That leaves just a handful of us to challenge the status quo by first discovering, and then proving, ways to ensure that the average value of all winning bets exceeds the average value of all losing bets by a percentage sufficient to overcome to house edge.

Such proof, of course, is always dismissed as "anecdotal" because it depends on past outcomes that can never be repeated in the same pattern that resulted in a long-term win.

You just got lucky this time, say the experts, and next time or the time after that, you are sure to crash and burn.

I just wrapped up a preliminary analysis of a betting method sent my way by my old friend and collaborator #@&?#@@#$$, aka "Peter Punter," and the news is not good.

The strategy bets fixed amounts in four categories that are differing percentages of the available bankroll, and the focus is on run-line wagers with a few money-line bets tossed in.

One problem is that average odds are high (+141 for today, +148 yesterday, for example) and over time it is safe to predict that longer odds win less often than shorter ones!

The strategy's greatest weakness (as I told Pete before I started the analysis) is that in a sustained downturn, the bankroll diminishes, meaning that bet values that are tied to it will also shrink as resources evaporate.

So far this month, the system has had four winning days and 12 losing days, and has lost more than half of the $5,000 bankroll I put into it on July 5.

Bet values that get smaller with each losing day mean that even when the sustained losing streak lets up, as it invariably will, at least for a while, recovery becomes less and less likely.

Pete was not suggesting that the strategy had long-term legs: He just wanted me to take a look at it, and in passing sent me a link to an interesting news item that suggests that InvestaPick and other sports-related "funds" will soon have some powerful competition.

A European consortium is so confident that sports books can be consistently beaten that it has launched a plan to raise more than $65,000,000 in $125,000 buy-ins from investors who have reportedly already kicked in more than $20,000,000 in seed money.

Pete and I first started talking in August of 2009 about the viability of such a venture, and the idea has been the focus of my research ever since.

According to the gambling experts, remember, there's no sense in studying the past for clues to the future, even though scientists, economists, mathematicians and other very smart people are doing it somewhere in the world every second of every day.

Sports "trading" has been around for a while, but it will take the reported Euro-venture or something on a similar scale to make it respectable, probably.

Pete's request prompted me to take a fresh look at baseball statistics, broadening my attention beyond the underdogs that I have been concentrating on since last November 1 to take in run-line bets on favorites as well.

One thing I have learned (and believe me, there are many!) is that bookies know a whole lot more than anyone else about who's likely to win or lose a given game in any sport.

Duhhhhhhh...?

Not so much, because there are thousands of handicappers in business to sell "inside" information to tens of thousands of eager punters, and countless thousands more bettors who spend hours each day poring over historical data in search of their own special edge.

In my 7-dog trial, I have limited bets to a fairly wide range (+100 to +180), so I took all games from the 2009 MLB season and about half as many more from the current season, and queried the database for results in that range.

I should add that I learned just a few weeks in to the 7DT that the range was a tad wide, but I promised myself and my readers that I would not change the rules in mid-trial.

What I got from 2009 was a 44.15% dog win rate (DWR) at the 7DT range, with a 48.36% win rate for run-line bets in the same odds range on favorites (FRL) that did not clash with the dog picks for the same day. The overall 2009 DWR was 43.2%.

So far this season, the equivalent numbers are 41.02%, 41.37% and 42.2%.

Narrowing the range gets me 44.16% and 47.86% for 2010 so far, with the DWR unaffected at 42.2%, and 45.38% and 43.99% for 2009 (DWR 43.2%).

Anecdotal? Irrelevant?

To some, for sure.

But bookies are just like you and me in relying on the past to predict the future to a helpful degree.

And because their resources and knowledge are far greater than mine, I am happy to rely on bookies in turn.

The strategy that Pete introduced me to a couple of weeks back depends heavily, as I said before, on long shots that fall into the "in your dreams" category. And that just does not make good betting sense.

If the book is willing to give you +180 on a run-line bet (or a bet of any other stripe, come to that) you'd better hope for divine intervention.

Instead, look for a middle ground that recognizes that too narrow a range will not win enough to overcome the house edge, and that going too wide will greatly increase the overall number of losers, increasing the house edge and making your goal ever harder to achieve.

Assuming that you never place a bet at less than even money, just keep in mind that a DWR of 45% would require average winning payouts at (55/45)*100 = +123 at a fixed or flat betting rate to overcome negative expectation.

At the above-quoted WR of 47.86%, the flat-bet payback target would drop to +109.

And, of course, target betting is about as far from flat betting as you can get.

Negative expectation - the house advantage - is a fact of life and a pain in the ass to boot.

But it is NOT unbeatable!

Here's some more anecdotal information (I'm still playing one-thumb blackjack on my iPod, usually while sitting on the can, and I'm hoping to get back to the half-mill in funny-munny profits that I achieved before my last gizmo was stolen!):


Stats like those you see here, with a house edge of more than eight times the expectation for single-deck blackjack, make a crushing long-term loss inevitable, according to all those "experts" I refer to deferentially from time to time.

They also indicate either that I am a very bad basic strategy player with serious death-wish (I'm not), or that something is still seriously out of whack with MobilityWare's iPod blackjack app (it is).

I shoulda lost a bundle, but instead...


The BJ app allows bets from $5 to $5,000, which is a spread I can live with.

It starts a new player off with $1,000 in the bank, then allows markers of $500 each time the cash runs out.

Given the house edge you see above, there's no way in hell I could hope to "win" the amount I am ahead by busting out, and then playing 'til my thumb caught fire, waiting for 23 successive wins!!! to boost my bankroll into six figures.

Do the math, folks: +$500, +$1,000, +$2,000, +$4,000, +($5,000 x 19) is what it would take to cheat the game and achieve an overall win like the one you see above.

Then again, another way to go would be...target betting!

Here are 7DT bets for today, augmented by slim pickings to include some FRL bets as indicated:

1005 951 St. Louis +120 ML 12 (betting closed, game going very badly for my guys as I type this!)
1310 954 Philly Phillies +140 ML 8.5
1610 961 Wash Nats +115 ML 10
1605 972 Baltimore +115 ML 9
1605 971 Minnesota +125 RL (9)
1605 975 Toronto +145 RL (8.5)
1610 963 Atlanta +150 RL (8.5)

Next time, I will post anecdotal data derived from running target betting rules against the 2009 and 2010 bets.

The bets themselves, and their order, are completely out of my control, and are in essence selected by the bookies, since I apply a relatively tight odds range and could not care less which teams I'm backing or who they have to beat.

The more that emotion creeps into the business of gambling, whether it's through subjective selection of bets or that common enemy called greed, the more likely it is that the house will pocket your bankroll.

And who wants that?

Sunday, July 25 at 10:20am

I am racing against the clock, as I am most Sunday mornings, so here are dog picks for today, all of them money-line bets...

1010 903 Florida Marlins +120 8.5
1035 906 Pittsburgh Pirates +140 8.5
1110 909 Washington Nats +120 9.5
1310 914 Arizona D'backs +130 8.5
1310 915 NY Mets +140 7
1005 920 Cleveland Indians +135 9
1035 924 Baltimore Orioles +110 9.5

Placing run-line bets on favorites had me breaking new ground yesterday and making a couple of dumb mistakes. I'll get the hang of it eventually, I'm sure.

Naturally, it would be odd if I did not keep touting target betting as the only sure way to recover from a prolonged downturn, but I have done exhaustive research into this challenge, and no other approach comes close.

Betting a fixed percentage of a shrinking bankroll, for example, is a guaranteed disaster, but that does not stop several online system salesmen from promoting it as the silver bullet.

More about that later!

Tuesday, July 27 at 8:35am

Today's 7DT picks:

1605 903 Atlanta Braves +120 6.5
1610 906 NY Mets +130 7
1710 909 Cincinnati Reds +115 7.5
1740 911 Pittsburgh Pirates +165 9.5
1710 926 KC Royals +115 9
1905 929 Boston Red Sox +115 8

And because I was short a 7th "dog" for today, a run-line pick...

1705 907 Chicago Cubs -1.5 +150 7

Wednesday, July 28 at 12:10pm

A couple of early games slipped by me today (the bets were placed at the crack of dawn as usual, and they should have been posted well before now).

Anyone who imagines that there's some advantage to delaying bets until an hour into a game obviously has not been paying attention!

The recent article about the new European sports book hedge fund that is in the pre-launch phase said the idea will be to bet and cash out at different times during hundreds of games in play all around the world, much as brokers in stocks and foreign exchange buy and sell continuously.

But that's all way too headache-y for me! I don't even pay attention to team names beyond what's needed to place a bet, and who's up, who's down, who's in and who's out is irrelevant, as far as I am concerned.

All I care about is numbers: If the book puts a prospect on the board at odds I can live with, I'm in. Too much personal involvement is death!

Yesterday was the first time in weeks that we managed five right 7DT picks out of seven. Hallelujah!

Today's 7DT picks:

1105 MLB 952 Houston Astros 115 8
1110 954 Milwaukee Brewers 100 8.5
1605 956 Washington Nats 115 7.5
1605 957 Florida Marlins 115 8
1610 961 St. Louis Cardinals 105 6.5
1905 966 San Diego Padres 190 6.5
1110 968 KC Royals 105 9.5

Thursday, July 29 at 10:20am

These crack-of-dawn games really are a pain!

I'm late with a couple of today's picks, but since when I checked a moment ago, the Cards were getting thrashed 3 to zip, I don't think anyone can accuse me of sleight of hand!

Yesterday gave the w-i-d-e spread column in the 7-dog trial a huge boost, bumping it back to 98% of its best win to date.

If it can set a new high between now and the last day of the month, I think I will end the experiment after a neat-and-tidy 9-month gestation.

If not...well, I will probably pull the plug anyway, and be thankful that along the way, the need for a very wide betting spread was once again resoundingly confirmed.

I started out tracking at spreads of 1 to 5 and 1 to 50, as regular readers will know, and neither of those were able to survive a very weak start to the season for MLB underdogs.

The super-wide spread of 1 to 1,000 (about a fifth of what's recommended for casino house games) soared until July 5, then wobbled dramatically for a while before yesterday's lifeline almost pulled it out of the hole.

Selections are being presented somewhat differently today:


The information is all there, as you can see, with the 7DT selections on the right.

On the left is today's betting lineup for a new tracking sheet I started when my pal "Peter Punter" alerted me to a strategy he has been trying since the beginning of July.

More detail later, but for now, know that Pete's new method has so far achieved part of target betting's primary objective, which is to ensure that the average overall value of all winning bets (AWV) exceeds the average value of all losses (ALV) by a substantial percentage.

The method's $W/$L number to date is 123%.

Unfortunately, the L/W number (117/74) since July 5 stands at 158%, resulting in the method losing more than 55% of its opening bankroll in less than a month.

Pete did me a big favor, though: a prolonged slump for underdogs has made the 2010 MLB season tough going for target betting, and run-line wagers on favorites are looking more and more like a promising means of cushioning the fall until "the math" inevitably bounces back in the next few weeks.

Friday, July 30 at 3:30pm

The latest wave of visiting family headed home early Thursday, and I have been busy since then collecting yet more data about the 2009 and 2010 baseball seasons for presentation here in what I hope will be a comprehensive and comprehensible format.

These things always take forever, and it will probably be mid-week before I'm ready to rock the world with verifiable proof that the odds in the book's favor can be vanquished consistently, safely and effectively.

What I don't want is a set of numbers that look anything like the 2009 MLB summary offered as "proof" of the strategy that "Peter Punter" asked me to take a look at.

It shows breathtaking profits for last season, then wimps out on proving that the same method does as well or better for the current half-season.

It is a critical axiom for all system "debunkers" that odds-busting formulas are always developed by tweaking various tricks against existing data until an imaginary big win is seen, with no hope of repeating the performance against future random numbers.

Verifiable baseball results from more than 4,000 games in 10+ months have proved yet again that target betting is a viable, unique way to consistently beat odds that are far worse than anything found at casino table games.

The reason that the strategy stays so successfully in the game in the long run is that while wins are harder to come by, paybacks are almost invariably much better than even money.

It works just fine with money-line bets, but the run-line option, always backing favorites as long as the price is right, adds an interesting new dimension that I will talk about at length when I finally get all my ducks in a row.

Mix the two non-conflicting approaches by opting for RL bets only when a given game does not offer an attractive ML payback, and many of the slumps that occur when underdogs suddenly can't get arrested are made dramatically less costly.

Below are today's picks, in a summary that shows how the 7DT's fortunes have been greatly improved this week, followed by sneak peaks at ML+RL data that I will explain later.





The way target betting is applied in a sports-book setting is much as I predicted it should be when Peter Punter and I first talked about the change of focus almost a year ago.

Multiple bets are placed every day, and their values have no relationship to one another.

Instead, bets are tracked in series, so that the result of bet #1 on the first day determines the value of bet #1 next day, #2 is linked to #2 day after day, and so on.

The MLB data sets for both the 2009 and (part) 2010 seasons require as may as 16 bets a day, and I admit that a month ago I would have said that that much skin in that many games was madness.

I have had to eat some crow over that, although as much in fear of unmanageable paperwork as anything else, I have run tests that reduce the workload by imposing variable odds ranges.

In the 7-dog trial, my range was from +100 to +180.

On the one hand, I was frustrated by the need to stick to seven bets a day, which required me to apply a certain amount of subjective judgment to the task of making selections.

On the other, I got a big kick out of seeing wins that paid as much as $1.80 on the dollar - good news in the era of 6-5 payouts at blackjack!

I have had to build a whole new spreadsheet template to handle up to 16 bets a day in real time, and I decided to do it in the newest version of Excel rather than sticking with my old faithful (QuattroPro in a version so old that it might even pre-date the advent of computers!).

Excel is a marvel, for sure. I have used it to a limited extent for years, but now my demands on it are such that I am having to learn a whole new language.

Getting everything right will take me a while.

One interesting development: target betting is (just!) ahead in the ML+RL trial after six betting days, while Pete's "bookie-busting" method (the salesman's claim, not Pete's) is in the middle of a long slide.

Slumps happen to even the smartest of bettors, but I cannot see how a strategy that values bets at fixed percentages of a diminishing bankroll can ever get out of the hole.

Saturday, July 31 at 7:15am

I have plenty to say about the updates below, but no time to say it (today's a play day for me and the missus!).

So, here are today's picks, in a new format, plus the last 7DT wrap-up:



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._

As every gambler nows, timing is (almost) everything. And just lately, my timing has seriously sucked...

_
(Please scroll down for dog picks for Friday, July 23)

Why, oh why, did I choose Sunday and Monday to sit out betting on major league baseball!

Sunday, dogs won 7 out of 15 games, and yesterday they thrashed favorites in 7 of 13 games.

But there's no use crying over un-won bets...the way things have been going for my 7-dog trial in recent weeks, if I'd put money down, I would have jinxed all those "dogs" and the story would have been very different.

OK, I'm kidding - my three readers and the parrot that poops on a printout of this blog probably do not include people with enough influence to change a game's result just to piss me off!

I may not have placed any bets in the last two days, but I don't consider my time to have been wasted.

Peter Punter's new betting method had two dismal days while I was keeping my money in my pocket (it has had just two winning days in 12 outings since July 5), but by golly, it looks promising!

I can't go into details because that would not be fair to the creator of the betting plan, but I can see from my preliminary analysis that playing the same selections with target betting applied woulda told a very different story for the year to date.

More losing bets than winning ones is not a problem for target betting - in fact, that's precisely the scenario it was created to handle. But a house edge much wider than 10% sustained for a long period stretches it to the limit.

Target betting is a child of casino table games, remember, and even the toughest house game (roulette at -5.26%) does not come close to a 10% rake in the long run.

What I like about Pete's new baby is that while it's deeply in the hole in bet value terms, the frequency of wins, along with their tendency to bunch more consistently than dogs have been able to lately, makes the method a potentially terrific target for...er, target!

Here's a fuzzy screen shot from Monday's MLB schedule, with grateful thanks to ScoresandOdds.com.


From a flat bet standpoint, the betting choices and their combined outcome are unremarkable. But target betting changes the picture quite dramatically in a way that I can't easily detail here without giving away Pete's proprietary method.

Maybe sometime down the road...

Here are today's bets, plus information about the bets I coulda woulda shoulda profited from but didn't.


A reminder about color-coding: blue highlights indicate all underdogs within the +100 to +180 range that I have maintained for the 7-dog trial that began last November 1; bold entries show bets I have actually placed; green and red entries in the run-line columns are new and hopefully self-explanatory!

The 7DT selections for today are clearly indicated, along with no less than TEN promising run-line candidates.

In the last eight-and-a-half months, I have found that managing just seven picks a day is a major chore, and adding ten more doesn't thrill me. I suspect, however, that I won't mind the added drudgery if it proves profitable.

Then again, I'm not expecting a miracle anytime soon.

I have always been a supporter of the caveat that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is, and one of the underpinnings of my pal Pete's new strategy provides a useful case in point.

The method uses a mix of run-line and money line bets, but the emphasis is on the run proposition, and that is not as reliable as it might seem at first glance.

True, favorites will beat the run line more than 70% of the time overall, making the bet sound like a slam dunk (OK, a home run, if you'd rather I didn't mix sports similes).

We know that overall, dogs do well to achieve a 45% DWR, which gives favorites a 55% win rate in the long run.

Once you multiply 55% by 70%, you get a better idea of what you are up against with run line bets: a win rate of less than 40% vs. maybe 45% backing underdogs all the way.

Damn, these bookies are smart cookies...no wonder they drive Ferraris while the rest of us pump gas into comparative clunkers!

The aim with any betting strategy is to make game selection as objective as possible, a matter of math rather than choice.

And that, of course, is where winning consistently week after week, season after season, gets hard. Unless you happen to be making book?

Wednesday, July 21 at 4:05pm

Just squeaking today's dog picks in before game times, with apologies to anyone affected by my tardiness.

My trouble is that I am having too much fun evaluating Peter Punter's new method, which I should perhaps once more explain was not developed by him, but has him quite excited, based upon prior results from the 2009 MLB season.

As I have said many times, past results are all we have going for us when we seek to create a consistently successful betting strategy, because even the bookies do not have access to the outcome of games as yet unplayed!

The problem is that in many ways, present and future data differ from precedent, the good news being that in some ways, they don't.

History may not repeat itself, but sometimes it's awful similar, in other words (it "rhymes" was how Mark Twain put it).

Sorting the wheat from the chaff is a painstaking task, but worth the effort, I believe.

The inventors of Pete's new strategy claim a 2009 MLB win of more than $400,000 on a $2,000 stake, but the 2010 season to date tells a very different story, and since July 5, the method has seen just three winning days in 13 (some days were skipped, apparently).

Believe me, I want every other strategist out there to come up with a surefire winning method. Until someone does, I am sticking with target betting.

Today's dog picks:

1605 904 Pittsburgh Pirates +105 8.5
1610 905 San Diego Padres +135 8
1610 910 Cincinnati Reds +105 7
1715 911 Philly Phillies +130 8.5
1840 913 NY Mets +105 8.5
1910 915 SF Giants +115 7.5
1910 929 Chicago White Sox +120 6.5

Friday, July 23 at 11:10pm

I had planned to post an exhaustive evaluation of Pete's recently-adopted betting method today but was foiled by an early game on the MLB schedule.

So, words of wit and wisdom next time, but for now, today's 7DT picks:-

1120 MLB 901 St. Louis Cardinals +135 11.5
1705 910 Houston Astros +135 8
1710 911 Washington Nats +110 9.5
1705 920 Baltimore Orioles +110 9
1705 922 Cleveland Indians +130 8
1705 925 LA Angels +170 10
1905 927 Chicago White Sox +115 7


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._

Funny: I bust a gut every day to get my picks posted before game time, then InvestaPick comes along with 11 weeks of retroactive picks and scores!

_
(No picks for Monday, July 19, but please scroll down for a few more thoughts!)

I guess it's up to potential InvestaPick subscribers to determine whether or not results made public long after the finals were in have any real credibility.

I am, however, amazed that an investment firm that presumably lives or dies by its reputation would pull a stunt like this.

In the end, all I was interested in when IP suddenly showed a pulse after two and a half months in a cryogenic freeze was how their results compared with what woulda been achieved with target betting rather than a Martingale.

First off, all three "funds" made money while we weren't looking, for a combined added total of $1,607, reduced to $1,157 by commission fees.

That's a whole lot better than the 5x or 50x 7-dog trials, which of course did not have the advantage of posting selections after the finals were known.

The super-wide spread model, however, was $42,000 ahead after five right picks out of seven on IP's last day, April 27, and has won an additional $35,700 since then.

InvestaPick's bet value methodology remains a bit of a mystery to me, but in essence it's a Martingale that is still handicapped by a failure to recover all prior losses before reverting to a minimum bet.

This might help smarter folk than I am make heads or tails of IP's "C" results since April 27, 2010:


On April 27, the target betting win to date (since January 1, 2009) was $6,141 and that number would have increased during IP's long nap to +$6,991, or +14%.

IP's "E" fund stood at +$996 on April 27, and was at +$1,619 on July 15. The matching numbers for target betting on the same selections are $7,681 and $8,708.

The gross win for IP "W" was +$3,319 on April 27 and $3,680 right now, vs. $7,403 and $8,177 for target betting.

This is all anecdotal data, blah blah blah, but it does indicate that in spite of its flaws (and assuming complete honesty), InvestaPick's methods are successful, and could do even better with target betting in play!

I admit that when I see that more than 90% of all IP's winning picks paid less than even money, my confidence in my policy of making +100 the worst odds I will accept wavers a little!

IP's win rate from January 1 last year to July 15 was a hair less than 50% (448/898) and if I had achieved that in my 7-dog trial, I would be delirious, and richer to boot.

The target betting adaptation for the IP experiment requires that any prior losses outstanding after a win must be "mopped up" before the bet falls back to the minimum, and that accounts for most of the difference between IP's overall win to date ($8,105 before fees) and mine ($23,876).

It also accounts for the fact that target betting required more action ($152,000 overall vs. $70,535), a higher maximum bet ($3,200 vs. $1,040) and greater exposure ($1,707 vs. $297) - but, hell, isn't a 145% return on an investment better than 68% (IP's percentage, in case there's any confusion!)?

Time is running out for today, so here are my 7DT picks for today, Saturday, July 17. (Please note, InvestaPick, that none of the games has started yet!).

1605 905 Houston Astros +105 8
1610 909 Colorado Rockies +105 8.5
1805 915 NY Mets +135 7
1605 920 Baltimore Orioles +120 9
1605 922 Cleveland Indians +105 9.5
1610 924 KC Royals +105 8.5
1610 928 Boston Red Sox +135 9

Sunday, July 18 at 11:35am

Slim pickings today, and getting selections posted in time for those early starts is harder some Sundays than others!

Things have been going so badly lately that I am glad of another short break.

I peaked on July 2 and have lost more than $6,000 since then, only rarely doing better than two right picks out of seven on any given day.

At that level of performance, I'd be much better off reversing my choices and backing favorites, off-setting short odds with five right picks in seven day after day!

My old pal Peter Punter resurfaced last week with a new sports book betting method that is proprietary so cannot be detailed here.

The gist of it is separating selections into four classes, betting different percentages of the available bankroll in each class, and focusing on the ability of favorites to beat the runline.

Since bets get smaller when a losing streak eats into the bankroll, I am dubious about the concept in theory, but have to bow to data that claims great success for the 2009 and 2010 (to date) MLB seasons.

Naurally, I accept that the season summaries are totally honest!

My weakness is certainly the selections I make because that is the one part of the strategy that is subjective.

Underdogs have not been doing well in major league baseball lately, but my DWR has been consistently below the overall percentage day after day.

I know the numbers will bounce back eventually, but just lately, waiting has become an expensive game!

Looking at Pete's figures, I guess there's come consolation in the fact that 2010 has been a tough season for his new method, too.

By June 1 last year, two months in, he was up $8,850 on a $2,000 investment.

This year's STLY number is +$1,316 or 15% of 2009's profits. I know the feeling...

Monday, July 19 at 4:45pm

Today's MLB lineup didn't generate enough steam for me, so I decided to sit out for another day.

That gave me a chance to take a closer look at the method Peter Punter has been trying for a while now.

Me, I've had a lot more misses than hits just lately, so I am not about to criticize anyone else for falling foul of a losing streak - the best sports bettor in the world (and I don't know who or where he is, unfortunately) has to suffer a little bad luck now and then.

All I can say at this stage is that the ongoing 7-dog trial has taught me that too many bets a day are a major pain in the underpants, and this new method sometimes calls for not just seven but as many as 14 bets from one schedule.

It takes a miracle to make a profit from that many bets, and I am not about to endorse a strategy that spreads me that thin.

Not until a very dramatic change in its performance proves me wrong, at least!

I confess I love the idea of backing the favorite at odds that pay better than even money, and the best way to do that is to bet the runline, meaning that the favorite doesn't just have to win the game but must beat the other guys by at least two runs.

There are some great odds to be had, for sure, which is precisely why the proposition is a tough one to turn a profit on (and to hell with misplaced prepositions!).

You know when you place a bet at +165 (or even +100!) that the bookie counts your hard-earned money as a boost for his coffers before the game is even played, so chasing long odds on bet after bet is a sure path to heartache.

Believe me, I want to be wrong about this, but so far Pete's new cappers don't seem to be any better at finding winners than I am.

Oh, well...

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._

Target betting recognizes and exploits the simple fact that in all of gambling, how much we bet is the only thing we can control.

_
(Please scroll down for an update for Monday, July 12)

I am still recovering from the hard drive crash that made cheap junk out of my Toshiba laptop more than two weeks ago, and it is going to be a while before I am fully recovered.

I will also have more to say about Best Buy and Carbonite when I'm done reassembling the jigsaw!

For now, I'll try to supply an update on the 7-dog trial's state of play (and losses) with more to come as the dust settles.

June certainly proved to be a deadly month for underdogs, and I'm beginning to wonder if the brains behind InvestaPick's three sports funds did not have the benefit of foresight when they pulled the plug on all bets at the end of April!

The one thing I have remained sure of is that eventually, June's extended slump would have to come to an end, and in the last few days, that has proved to be so.

Remember, the bookies need dogs to win to boost the profits they make from a rake off both sides in each game, so the dominance of MLB favorites since late May has been bad news for them too.

They know, as we do, that aberrations never last forever (they can't, or we'd have to call them something else!) and that the math must always win out in the end.

I have been saying all along that a w-i-d-e spread is the key to success at all games, and throughout the 7-dog trial that began on November 1, I have tracked a 1-5 spread and a 1-50 spread, knowing that wider is better.

The piddling spread (1-5) that most gamblers cling to peaked at a profit of $6,000 in mid-January after two and a half months of ups and downs.

Since then, it has been in a painful tailspin that may never end, racking up more than $37,000 in losses to date. Ouch!

A 1-50 spread did much better, peaking three weeks later (on February 10) before sliding.

A spread of 1-500 did dramatically better yet, overcoming a succession of ups and downs until June's dog slump took hold.

Spreading 1 to 1000 pretty much mirrored 1-500 until baseball dogs started winning again as June wound down.

The point of all of this is that we cannot hope to overcome the bookies' edge unless underdogs meet a win rate expectation that lies somewhere between 43% and 45% overall.

History tells us that 43-45 is a perfectly rational expectation, but that once in a while, that target will not be met for extended periods...hence the need for a wide betting spread.

It's worth noting that at tighter spreads, average bets are higher, along with overall losses.

More about this next time.

Bets for today, Tuesday, July 6th, are:

903 (1605) Atlanta Braves +110 8.5
905 (1610) Cin Reds +125 7.5
907 (1710) Pittsburgh Pirates +115 8
909 (1710) SF Giants +125 9
911 (1740) St Louis Cards +115 9.5
915 (1910) FL Marlins +135 8.5
928 (1905) Oakland As +130 7.5

Here are charts at different spreads. The numbers speak for themselves!





Thursday, July 8 at 3:55pm

Another late post with one game already under way, but I'm still struggling with the aftermath of my system crash and everything seems to be taking twice as long as it used to.

Next week, we're free of summer visitors until the next wave sweeps in on the 20th, so maybe I'll get caught up.

I am intrigued by comments I have been getting about the absurdity (one of the more polite words) of my contention that bookies need underdogs to win on a reliable, regular basis in order to boost their bottom line.

The MLB results for last Sunday, July 4th, serve to illustrate my point.

I know the day's game finals, obviously, and the odds applicable to each team, but I can only speculate as to how much money was actually in play that day.

If we assume a million bucks per game, and assume furthermore than about 74% of all punters put their money on favorites (SOP for the wagering masses) the EIGHT dog wins on Independence Day would have given "the book" (the easiest way to describe bookies en masse) a profit of about $1.56 million on the day.

Not too shabby.

Had all the favorites won their games, instead of just SEVEN of them that day, the bottom line would have looked very different: a LOSS of more than $4 million on action of $15 million. Sad...

Had underdogs won all 15 games, instead of just 8 of them, the book would have profited to the tune of $6.25 million, raking in more than 40% of total action.

It is a fact that far more people back favorites than back underdogs, hence the terms "favorites" and "underdogs"!

Last Sunday, if an equal number of punters had backed favorites and underdogs in all 15 MLB games, the book would have kept just 1.7% of all action, based upon a cool million in total wagers per game x 15.

At 74% on faves, which happens to be the Sportsandodds.com estimate for today, July 8th, the "hold" of all action last Sunday fattens greatly to 10.4%.

Q E D!

Today's dog picks are:

(1210) 905 St. Louis Cards +120 7
(1605) 908 Washington Nats +110 7.5
(1910) 913 Chicago Cubs +160 7
(1105) 915 L.A. Angels +120 8.5
(1605) 917 Minnesota Twins +100 9
(1910) 924 Seattle Mariners +135 7.5
(1700) 603 SA Silver Stats (WNBA) 153/2.5

Wednesday brought just two right picks out of seven, so the MLB is back in a dog slump. Frustrating!

More and more I suspect that the brains behind InvestaPick know something I don't...

Friday, July 9 at 9:25am

I'm a little better organized today!

Thursday was a dismal disaster, the second skunking in a matter of weeks.

Until the 2010 baseball season got under way, I very rarely had days when I couldn't manage at least one right pick out of seven.

All of a sudden, it's bordering on the commonplace! I had no winners on June 2, and again on July 8.

Today's schedule could be interpreted as a classic setup for the bookies if I were the paranoid type (although paranoid is probably the wrong word, since when underdogs do well, the book does well, and when the bookies win on a dog day, I win!).

As soon as I can, I will post detailed numbers from the analysis I referred to yesterday.

Meantime, today's dog picks:

1605 951 SF Giants +120 6.5
1710 959 Pittsburgh Ps +125 9
1810 961 SD Padres +140 9.5
1840 963 Fla Marlins +110 9
1910 965 Chicago Cubs +120 7
1605 968 Toronto BJs +105 7.5
1710 975 KC Royals +130 9

My apologies to one and all for the inconsistencies in the format when I list selections here: I'm going to try to stick with what you see above from now on!

Online odds will generally be marginally better than the ones I quote and it's pretty much standard for scoresandodds.com to disagree with competing services such as donbest.com or Doc's Sports Service.

Doesn't matter much: All that counts is the price you get when you place your bet.

For my purposes, it's best to go with tighter odds for the growing all-sports database, for all the obvious reasons.

Saturday, July 10 at 8:30am

It would be nice to report that Friday was a day when dogs made a comeback...but it didn't happen.

I managed only one right pick out of seven, and the overall baseball DWR was not much better at 33%.

Well, OK, it was a lot better! But I flatly refuse to back dogs paying less than even money, so two of yesterday's winners were not on my list for that reason alone.

Today's bets:

1310 903 Chicago Cubs +130 8
1610 911 Pittsburgh Pirates +160 9
1710 913 SD Padres +130 9.5
1710 915 Fla Marlins +115 10
1310 919 Min Twins +120 9.5
1605 921 KC Royals +160 9
1805 927 L.A. Angels +100 8.5

Right now the DWR for the 2010 baseball season stands at less than 42%. Bummer...

Sunday, July 11 at 9:20am

About the only good news I have had since I hit a new high with the widest spread on July 2 is that major league baseball is set for a mid-season break after today!

I am as confident as ever that the dog numbers will bounce back in time to boost my bankroll to a new max, but after two successive days with only one right pick in seven, I will be happy to suspend betting until the season resumes on Friday.

It may be that I will have to review my ban on underdogs paying less than even money, but I am going to resist that concession for as long as possible.

By Friday, I will have brought all my databases up to date and will be ready to get back in the game with useful current data to back my play.

Here are today's bets:-

1010 951 Atlanta Braves +130 7
1035 953 SF Giants +100 8.5
1035 955 Cincinnati Reds +150 9
1210 961 San Diego Padres +110 9
1705 965 Chicago Cubs +120 7.5
1005 968 Detroit Tigers +105 9
1010 970 Toronto BJs +110 9.5

It would be great if last Sunday's 5/7 performance could be repeated before the break...but this concept doesn't need miracles (however welcome they may be!).

Monday, July 12 at 10:50am

Looking back through the 2010 MLB season to date, I really don't have a whole lot to complain about.

The two tight-spread models sank deeper into red ink, it's true, but since I have always advocated as wide a spread as possible between the minimum and maximum bet values, that comes as no surprise to me or to regular followers of this online soapbox!

The season-to-date DWR stands at 41.32% for my picks versus 42.73% overall, with the deficit easily explained by my policy of ignoring any underdogs paying less than even money.

Spreading super-wide currently stands at 97% of its best win to date, which was $69,400 achieved on July 2.

An important fact: the average bet value to date (since November 1, 2009) is $242, which ain't small potatoes but has been recovered more than 275 times over with the current win of $67,000.

Better yet, the profit to date represents a "hold" of almost 18% of the total action, a margin that would have a bookie salivating. And the maximum strain on the bankroll - risk, or exposure, if you prefer - was less than $3,000.

I realized within a few weeks of the start of the 7-dog trial that the basic target betting rules applied in the model were probably too aggressive, which in this context is a euphemism for risky.

I also knew that changing the strategy after the start date would bring all manner of smart-alecks out of the long grass, so I have left the rules alone.

I cannot say often enough (meaning that this won't be the last time!) that aside from the obvious to bet or not to bet decision, bet values are the only aspect of gambling that are within a player's control.

Target betting requires you to hand over that control to a predetermined strategy or set of rules.

But since that strategy consistently and demonstrably enables you to win more when you win than you lose when you lose, reversing the negative effect of losing more bets than you win, the sacrifice is at least a profitable one!

My hard-drive wipeout came on the heels of my loss of my often used and much loved iPod Touch, and with it went details of the $500,000-plus in "funny money" that I had won against the blackjack app.

I had to start all over again when my new Touch arrived (a 32GB update), and while I don't see a need to reach six or seven figures again, I think my current results are worth noting.


The stats report here shows a house edge of 3.7%, a huge number after more than 1,000 rounds against a single deck.

I am a slave to the basic playing strategy, so dumb moves are not the reason for the preposterous house advantage.

Never mind: what matters is that I won 522 rounds and lost 562, and the -3.7% expectation indicated by those numbers would, according to most gambling "experts," result in a loss of a similar percentage of total action.

Didn't happen.


If there's a way of fiddling the iPod blackjack app to rack up spurious profits, I am sorry to say I'm not smart enough to have figured it out.

The game starts a player off with a pretty decent bankroll, and allows top-ups of $500 which are automatic when the money's all gone but can't be grabbed in multiples.

If you don't have enough dough left to make your next bet, you get a $500 boost, and won't see another until you are broke again, in other words.

Meanwhile: InvestaPick seems to have shut down its website...a big surprise, since all three sports "funds" were well ahead when betting was halted across the board on April 27th.

I'd really like to know what the skinny is on the apparent collapse of what seemed like a very promising "investment opportunity" so if a reader out there has some inside dope, please pass it along!

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._

June's doom and gloom continues for the 7-dog trial with one happy exception: Sunday's five right picks out of seven (finally!).

_
[Please scroll down for "dog picks" for Wednesday, June 23]

The bad news is that while Sunday's sunshine smiled on the bottom line for 5x, 50x still red-lined because most of the wins had piddling returns.

It raises the old question about the long-term wisdom of making each series step up for the collective good when the combined LTD (loss to date) exceeds 7x the minimum bet, 7x being the critical number because we are running seven series or lines per day.

We have already established that 50x is too tight a spread to overcome a DWR (dogs win rate) which for the baseball season to date is quite a bit less than the hoped-for 45%.

At that spread, we are almost $100,000 in the hole and have not seen green ink on the bottom line since February.

Add a zero to the spread (making it x500) and take a zero off the minimum bet (dropping it to $10), and the picture changes dramatically, putting us at above 80% of our best win to date, achieved on June 10.

Requiring each series to bet at least 2% of the collective LTD rather than falling back to a minimum bet after turnaround puts the June 15 win to date at 98% of its best.

All this may be fuel for skeptics who say I keep changing the rules to alter the outcome, but the truth is that I have been making these points - and offering this advice - for decades!

I'm sold on backing underdogs, for sure. The process is so civilized! (No wasted hours at ash-peppered table layouts, fighting an uphill battle against suicidal players who want to take everyone else down with them, or grumpy dealers and suspicious pit bosses...oh, the bliss of it all).

This week's efforts were hampered by a computer glitch that sent my new Toshiba laptop back to Best Buy for a couple of days.

That's a story in itself! The system was under warranty, and according to the BB "Geek Squad" all the hardware checked out fine and required no attention.

Mysteriously, however, in spite of the presence of McAfee anti-virus software, diagnostics found 500 or more "infected files" that would require almost $200 to clean up and eight more days of geek TLC.

I said no thanks to the "disinfectant" and brought the computer home to run tests of my own.

So far, there's no virus anywhere.

I mention all this because Best Buy has been caught before trying to pull a fiscal fast one on customers, and this looks like another classic example.

To wit (or woo): Computers that require warranty work are a drain on the service department's resources because they generate no revenue. Solution: When hardware problems are fixed for free, why not offset that cost by inventing non-existent viruses and make a freebie revenue-productive???

I have no proof of this, of course, but I am sure as hell gob-smacked that not one of 500-plus viruses said by Best Buy to be plaguing my computer can be spotted by virus-sniffing software! (Software that's not being operated by the Geek Squad, that is...).

Here's today's update:-


Saturday, June 19 at 4:10pm

I'm behind start times with today's picks thanks to an odd development in my Toshiba/Best Buy/Geek Squad experience.

Today, after the hardware part of my system was given a clean BoH by the Geeks, my morning began with a rude crash, countless failed attempts at a boot-up, and then (when I finally had all my stuff in front of me) a succession of Windows warnings about an imminent hard drive meltdown.

Best Buy wanted about $100 to back up all my files earlier in the week, and I refused their offer, preferring to rely on the Carbonite account that I set up in late April.

While the Toshiba POC was on a shelf at Best Buy, I tried recovering Carbonite data on a spare laptop, and after much messing about was presented with files that were not current.

So today I sprang for a 1TB backup drive, then had a phone conversation with the Grand Geek in which he conceded that given the relentless "Wait for it...!!!" warnings I have been getting from Windows (along with "Back up NOW!!!") it seems likely that the hardware OK that his guys pronounced was, er, premature.

I'll be closing my Carbonite account, obviously! Why the hell would I want to work on files for the best part of a day only to find that the latest data has not been backed up as promised?

Sorry, folks, had to vent a little.

Here are the latest "dog" selections:


Sunday, June 20 at 10:10am

A squeaker again today, timewise...


Tuesday, June 22 at 5:10pm

It's hell being without LAPZILLA!

I just spent the best part of an hour trying to access my blog because although I carefully backed up the Toshiba POC before I handed it over to Best Buy for an HDD replacement, I didn't copy over the encrypted passwords file.

Dummy!

So, today's bets are late AGAIN, with the usual apologies to anyone who looks to me for inspiration about where to venture their wagers.

This has been a truly awful few weeks for MLB "dogs," with the DWR hitting 40% or better on only four days out of 21 so far. Hell's bells...

Obviously, DWRs below about 42.5% day after day after day are going to hurt my chances very badly.

The worm will turn eventually, but will I still be in the game?

Here's today's update:


Wednesday, June 23 at 11:40am

Baseball continues to defy statistical expectation and deliver a DWR that is killing the 7-dog trial...for now!

Tuesday, there were six dog wins in 15 games, but underdogs won both WNBA games at hefty odds.

No use celebrating bets that woulda won if they'd been placed, mind you!

I am a long, long way from understanding how the bookies set their odds, and because the odds are what they are when my money goes down, I am not going to lose too much sleep over that.

The crappy DWR for the baseball season to date is a cause for concern, though.

By the end of the 2009 MLB season, dogs stood at better than 46% after almost 2,500 games, and while that's not a guarantee of anything, this season's 41% after 1,070 contests (give or take) does seem a tad out of whack.

It's not nearly so much of a problem for a sensibly w-i-d-e spread, but the bottom line for 5x and 50x is dripping red ink more and more each day.

I doubt there will be another post before next Tuesday, June 29, because tomorrow I'm off to L.A. for a long weekend and will not have my Toshiba POC with me.

Meanwhile, here's today's update...


InvestaPick continues to sit out the MLB season, and if they were in the habit of backing dogs, that would seem like a smart move.

But since all three IP "sports funds" have been betting the favorite more often than not since the beginning of 2009, that can't be the reason.

Who knows what's going on? I only care because I was having great fun updating their records at the end of each month and seeing how much better InvestaPick's win record woulda been if they had been using target betting instead of a wobbly old Martingale!

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._

June is proving to be a deadly month for the 7-dog trial and the only way to climb out of the hole is with betting spreads much wider than 1 to 50.

_
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._

No need to mourn the mocked and much-maligned Martingale - it's alive and well and making money for those with the courage to use it!

_
In the cut-and-dried, pedantic and permanently pessimistic world of conventional thinkers, the following statements (among many others) are, to use one of their favorite words, axiomatic.

1. Any betting strategy derived from past results cannot be effective against future outcomes and is therefore sure to fail.
2. Progressive betting in any shape or form (specifically, a method that increases bet values as cumulative losses grow) must fail because it will eventually reach a point at which table or house limits make the required wager unacceptable to the house.
3. Since every casino game or sports book proposition has a negative expectation or a house advantage, anybody who bets regularly is certain to lose in the long term.

All of these points and many others in similar vein have been answered in past posts, but here's a quick recap:

1. In gambling and mathematics, as in life in general, it is not possible to learn from the present and the future until they become the past and can be accurately recorded and analyzed. If it were true that the past has nothing to teach us about how we can best deal with the present and the future, then all of the wins that have been achieved with target betting in the past two or more decades could not have happened, and recent results summarized in this blog could only have been obtained by cheating.

2. The only alternatives to progressive betting are flat or random betting and regressive betting. The first two options must logically fail against any game or proposition in which more bets are lost than won (the inevitable long-term consequence of the house advantage). Reducing wager values in response to successive losses can't work, because at some point the bet value must be increased; the method then becomes progressive and, according to CoWs' logic, it is therefore doomed.

3. Given that all gambling options must in the long run suffer a greater number of losing bets than winning ones, the only logical and mathematically demonstrable alternative to long-term failure is for the average value of all winning bets to exceed the average value of all losing bets by a percentage that is greater than the deficit between wins and losses. Example: 52 losses and 48 wins with an average bet value of $10 indicates a house advantage of 4% and a loss of $40 on action of $1,000 (also -4%); however, an average win value of $11 and an average loss value of $9 results in combined wins of $11 x 48 = $528, combined losses of $468 and a profit of $60/$996 = +6% against a negative expectation or house edge of 4%.

There are only two ways in which a win/loss (W/L) percentage can be achieved that is sufficient to provide a positive long-term outcome against more losses than wins: blind luck and targeted or progressive betting.

CoWs, and their friends in the gambling industry, are happiest when players trust to luck and bet randomly and timidly, win or lose.

That happens to be how most people bet, and it is the reason that very few casinos or sports books go broke.

When "Peter Punter" first lured me into the world of sports betting last fall, he complained that many of the cappers whose selections he was paying for recommended doubling the bet after a loss.

Like everyone else, Pete had been brainwashed to believe that the simplest loss recovery method was too good to be true, and ultimately doomed.

The standard argument against successive doubling - known for some obscure and unGoogleable reason as a "Small Martingale" - is that while prolonged losing streaks are rare in games with a relatively low house edge (blackjack at +/- 1%, for example) they happen.

When they do, bet values rocket off the charts, and if a win comes along before your money runs out, your profit is limited to the minuscule value of your opening bet.

Take a $5 bet doubled nine times, for instance: the hole you're in is $5,115 deep, your 11th bet must be $5,120...and if it wins, you will have risked over ten grand to get ahead by a miserable five bucks! How insane is that?!!!

In real life, most $5 layouts limit the maximum bet to $500, and tables with a cap higher than $5,000 are hard to find outside of Las Vegas. Or so goes the anti-doubling disinformation campaign.

Truth is, casinos set table and house limits precisely because they are aware of the numbers that support the wisdom of doubling.

Blackjack is a popular target for hit-and-run "Martingalers" because a bet that has been pumped huge by a long losing streak can coincide with a 3-2 payout on a natural, or by a well-timed doubledown or split that goes strictly by the book.

The house solution: Block blackjack players from stepping in and out of the game between shuffles, and slash the natural bonus by 60% from 3-2 to 6-5.

Craps is another double-up haven because of the "bonus" field bet payouts on 1-1 (x2) and 6-6 (x2, and sometimes x3).

No doubt the day is not far off when step-up craps players will be barred from placing a bet until a new shooter rolls!

The thinking must be that while it is impractical to stop Martingalers entirely, they can at least be slowed down by defensive rules that have little or no effect on other players.

And the argument that after a high level of risk, the win in the example I quoted is "only five bucks" is specious: that long-awaited win recovered all prior losses in a single bet, plus a profit.

Any other betting method, target betting included, would require at least two successive wins to achieve that end.

So, Pete's knee-jerk dismissal of the double-up response to a loss was perhaps a tad premature...

Sports betting lends itself particularly well to controlled doubling, as these two summaries illustrate.



These summaries cover the same data as earlier versions, with some new questions answered.

The first is for underdog betting, which has to deal with an overall win rate of barely 37%, or far less than the 45% DWR that can be expected when odds are shorter than those shown here, but still well above even money.

There's a lot of information in the summary, but among the most important is the relationship between the average win value ($950) and the average loss value ($345).

Knowing ahead of the game that you are sure to lose more bets than you win, it is absolutely essential to ensure that you win more when you win than you lose when you lose.

You will see that bets at the $20 minimum (26.9%) far exceeded those at the maximum (0.2%).

In the second summary, betting favorites at any odds was also profitable, but the 62.65% overall win rate eliminated the pressure to keep winning bet values higher than losing ones.

Backing favorites, the overall win value was at 3.64% of total action far less than the 33.6% achieved by target betting backing underdogs - but the risk was also substantially reduced.

Playing it safe the way InvestaPick did most of the time until it suspended all three of its sports funds at the end of April means more wins than losses.

That's a good thing, maybe, but probably not if you apply a simple Martingale and fail to cover all of your prior losses before falling back to a minimum bet after a win.

The underdogs summary above shows what woulda happened if doubled-up bets had been controlled by factoring dog odds into the equation before setting the value of the next bet (NB) after a loss.

Suppose, for example, that you're $1,000 in the hole, your win target after eight successive losses is $180, and the dog odds on the bet you are about to place indicate a payback of +140.

At even money, your NB would total $1,180. But to get a payback of that amount at +140, your bet need only be $843 rounded up to $860, because $860 x 1.4 would bring in $1,204 and meet your target.

For most punters, betting is not about the math - it's about emotion or greed or haphazard hunches.

Let the math rule, and you can win consistently, as the summaries above demonstrate.

In a casino, any variation of progressive betting attracts attention, and unwanted attention can lead to all kinds of problems, including being barred from making that critical next bet that you hope will end a losing streak.

None of that applies if you are betting sports.

The process is slower than at any casino table game, obviously - but having no one watching and attempting to block your next move is a big plus!

You still need a lot of guts and big money behind you, but big bets can be spread across several books, and you have all the time you need to figure out the best way to protect your bankroll.

I should add at this point that the 7-dog trial is continuing.

But after seven months of almost daily posts, I plan to reduce the number of updates to a couple every week at the most.

I will post picks when I can, as below, but from now on, some days you readers will be on your own if you plan to do the smart thing and back underdogs.

I will post screen snaps from the Excel 7-dog worksheet from time to time, but bets when posted will be in the format you see here, with upcoming bets at the bottom and prior wins highlighted as shown.

Right picks have been depressingly hard to come by since the end of May. But the math is on our side, and the slump will end soon enough.


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 target betting, most questions worth asking begin with the words "What if...?" So, What if we backed both Faves and Dogs every day?

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One of the hazards of swimming upstream is that every so often, someone comes at me with the accusation that since the results I am getting defy mathematical expectation, I must be fudging my numbers.

That's been happening off and on for almost 30 years now, with the attacks intensifying since I first published the principles of target betting on the Internet in 1997.

There's not a whole lot I can do about it, beyond hoping that from time to time, players with open minds will stumble on this blog and take away from it the realization that losing is not the inevitable long-term consequence of challenging the house advantage.

The results from the 7-dog trial from November 1 through May 31 beg a number of intelligent questions, most of them opening with "What if...?" - words best answered by processing actual outcomes and variable rules through a spreadsheet program.

Some examples:

What if...the 7-dog trial rules could have been applied to all 7,500-plus actual games in the pro-sports database?
What if...the data were sorted in chronological order, and every underdog paying odds of 1 to 1 (even money or +100) or more had been backed?
What if...the same actual games were organized so that as many daily bets as necessary could be tracked in separate series (numbering far more than seven, for sure!)?
What if...the same target betting rules were used to back favorites instead of underdogs in all those real-world sporting battles?
What if...target betting backed favorites AND underdogs every day?

Good questions all.

You will find some answers below.

But first, let's look at the last idea above.

Try picturing a betting situation where you can back both sides by following a strict set of rules that determines bet values by referring to the wager that preceded it...and achieve a long-term profit in both the Favorites and Underdogs categories.

If "hedging to win" sounds far-fetched to you, remember that bookies do that a thousand times a day, in theory offering inducements to encourage punters to collectively match the sums ventured on both the road team and the home team in any given game.

The bookies make a buck or two by setting odds that favor them either way.

Target betting delivers long-term profits by happily accepting whatever odds are offered (there's no choice, after all, except when a bad bet can be thrown away for a better one) and then calibrating wager amounts according to a set of rules every bit as strict as those that protect the book.

Sports betting offers just about the only opportunity for a solo punter to play both ends against the middle.

It's possible in a casino at baccarat or craps, but it would take two players seemingly betting independently to avoid setting off alarms in the pit.

And sports betting has another huge advantage: large bets that might otherwise attract attention can easily be spread across as many books as it takes.

I live in an area where there are probably 20 sports books within an hour's drive, but the expansion of online options offers everyone an array of choices that don't guzzle gas!

Personally, I love the idea of draining a tiny percentage of their profits from online outlets because I know at least one - Bodog - that I believe blatantly cheats with its "virtual" table games (see the note at the end of this post).

But this is not about animus, it's about math!

Speaking of which, it's worth reminding ourselves that bookies do a happy dance when underdogs win, because in most situations, more than 70% of punters will put their money on the favorite.

On June 6 (yesterday!), for example, the San Diego Padres won at +110 against the Philadelphia Phillies at -130; those odds suggest perhaps a 70-30 bias towards the favorite, meaning that in every $100,000 of action, $30,000 backed the Padres and $70,000 went on the Phillies; so, $33,000 was paid out on the dog and $70,000 was collected on the losing favorite - a nice little $37,000 (37%) profit for the book.

Had the game gone the other way, $63,700 would have been paid out on the Phillies, offset by $30,000 contributed by losing dog bettors: a net LOSS of $33,700.

An over-simplification, perhaps, but it helps explain why sports books not only expect dogs to win around 45% of all games, but count on it to fatten their bottom line and salve the sting from winning favorites.

The intricacies of odds-setting are usually explained by supposing that action is equally divided between two options. But that is, to use a non-technical term, a load of old cobblers.

If that were so, the bookies in our Padres/Phillies example would have paid out $55,000 on the dog and raked in $50,000 on the favorite - still not a model business plan, with a 5% loss on the deal.

But it ain't so.

At Scores and Odds dot com, among other excellent online odds sites, you will find a daily breakdown of how the money splits on each game. And while there is no need to let betting trend-lines affect your picks, they supply useful intelligence that confirms the unsurprising inevitability of so-called surprises.

Here's today's breakdown about five hours ahead of the first game, with thanks to the source:


On average, 73% of bettors have their money on favorites, and 27% are bucking the odds. The standout here (the exception that proves the rule?) is the number for the Texas Rangers, who are underdogs at about +105 but have more money on them (61%) than the Seattle Mariners.

It will be interesting to see how that turns out...

Followers of the conventional wisdom (I call them CoWs in recognition of their herd mentality and their bovine stubbornness!) reject the target betting concept entirely and would have fits at the very notion of hedge-betting, and of course that's their right.

They will not be swayed by evidence such as this:


The charts above speak for themselves, but the data needs to be interpreted as follows:

Favorites won 65% of the 467 games in the data set, and target betting delivered an overall win of $11,400 (8.6%) against exposure of $800 and an average bet value of $285.
Underdogs won about a third of their games, risked $13,220, and with target betting made an overall profit of $75,500 (34.6% of all action thanks to routine paybacks far exceeding even money). The average dog bet was $470.
Favorites and Underdogs combined risked $4,700 to win $86,900 (24.75%) on an average bet value of $760.
Underdogs had to battle against a "house edge" of 34% and in consequence had to lay out much larger wagers when target betting was applied, to a maximum short of the permitted $50,000 but not by much: $41,000.
The highest target betting wager on Favorites was a relatively conservative $5,000.

Please try to contain your response to the bet values shown above.

Although the supporting data are real and easily verifiable, this is for our purposes a purely academic exercise intended to dramatically demonstrate that target betting overcomes negative expectation and routinely delivers a "player's edge" against the house advantage that is inherent in all gambling situations.

Here are 12-series summaries for target betting on dogs and faves separately throughout the two-year period reviewed:



No doubt I will be hearing from Cows that all this information is anecdotal and irrelevant because a data set of 7,500 games is not a representative sample.

All I can say to that is...Mooooooooooooo!

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._