After a stomach-churning few weeks in the real-time, real-money trial, Target went back to basics and is almost on top again.

_
June and July kept up the pressure that began to build through May, and as I type this update, we're still $15,000 away from getting out of a hole that has been swallowing our bankroll in big chunks almost every day since the end of April.

I called a temporary halt to betting when it became painfully clear that the "purple protection plan" I introduced back in March to relieve at least some of the stress caused by any major slump proved to be doing more harm than good.

By the July 4 weekend, Line #10 (the source of all Target's woes) had seen two winning bursts of three wins apiece, but because of the protection plan, they were not enough to effect a recovery.

Obviously, when three wins in a row won't deliver a rope to pull us out of the hole, something's seriously wrong.

I stepped back for a while, did some serious number-crunching with the data collected since this real-time, real-money trial began on July 24 last year, and learned that the brake on bet values was not the only problem.

Around the time that I chose to trim risk, I also deduced that from a logical standpoint, it made sense to match large wagers with shorter odds.

That meant that each day's biggest bets were paired up with what the bookies indicated were the most likely dog winners that day.

I discovered that in fact, dogs at odds of +105 or less have a much higher loss rate than those in the +106 to +140 range—at least throughout the 3,400-bet data sample collected since July 24 last year—and that tying big bets to low odds was a very bad idea indeed.

Here's an odds breakdown of Target wins and losses since the beginning.


Now that we are once again within reach of a new best win to date, I want to explain how this seemingly miraculous change of fortune was achieved.

There was no sleight of hand, I promise you.

I simply went back to the original method of taking bets in numerical order (using the bet numbers the bookies and the leagues supply), and ignoring both "dog" odds and bet values.

The first qualifying bet of the day (no more negative odds, just +100 to +140) went to Line #1, the second to Line #2, and so on.

Once Line #10 was left as the only one of 20 lines still in the red, I stopped placing bets on 1-9 and 11-20 and zeroed in on the cause of all Target's recent pain.

Because I have learned that subjectivity is the enemy of profitable betting, I made up each day's wager list as if all the other lines were still in play, took the 10th qualifying dog per the official schedule, and made that the Line #10 selection.

I did that to avoid laying myself open to claims that I was somehow manipulating the numbers.

I'm not interested in cooking the books...just the bookies and their golden geese!

As of today, the bookies' edge for Line #10 (which has been bleeding red ink by the gallon since April 20) was down to 11.0%, or close to statistical expectation, after topping 30.0% for day after day after day.

Anyone who bets knows that the value of negative expectation is always a "big picture" number and that major short-term deviations from that percentage value are inevitable.

For that reason, a viable betting strategy must have the resources to slog through the bad times until statistical expectation is once again being complied with.

The core truth in sports betting will always be that underdogs must win a substantial percentage of all games in order for bookmakers to make the profits their boundless greed demands.

A meager rake from both sides of any given proposition just isn't enough.

In the long run, that dog win percentage must always be less than half, and in every sport, 45% seems to be the magic number that keeps the bookies rich and the punters happy.

Nobody knows the numbers like the bookies do, and while I was surprised that dogs at shorter odds do not, in spite of what logic suggests, win more often, we can all bet that what seems odd to us is just fine to the folks who take our wagers.

If you think about it more than I did before making my wrong assumption, longer odds on the underdog drives more punters to bet on the favorite, and more money on the favorite means more cash in the bank for the bookies when—surprise!!!—the favorite bites the dust.

They're a clever lot, those bookies, which is why we have to do our best to figure out what their odds are telling us, then bet with them rather than against them.

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._

Say a little prayer for the poor bookies (and Target!) as baseball's underdogs hit a new statistical low.

_
May was a challenging month for underdogs, to say the least, with the bookies' edge running at more than double the norm of ± 10% and Target's prior winnings dropping by more than $40,000.

The YCW ("You can't win") experts constantly remind us that past trends do not predict the future, but if that were true of sports betting, the bookies would have to make their odds assessments by picking numbers out of a hat or hurling darts at each day's schedule.

As far as I know, there is no data in the public domain to provide a definitive percentage for underdog wins, which is why I spent several months building my own archives from MLB, NFL, NHL and NBA records.

History (dating all the way back to 2008, at least!) confirms that a 45% underdog win rate is a realistic long-term expectation, with NFL teams falling short of that number, and baseball, ice hockey and basketball contenders topping it.

Last month, Target saw its WR drop from 45% to less than 40%, amounting to a bookies' edge that the strategy simply could not overcome. We're not out of the game by any means at this point, although we would have been close to throwing in the towel but for the bankroll protection strategy that I reluctantly introduced to the protocol in the second week of March.

Comparisons between MLB 2011 and the first two months of the 2008-10 seasons confirm that something went seriously awry for baseball's dogs this year, and about all we can do is hope that it's a temporary slump and keep on slugging.

Since July of 2010, Target has permitted up to 20 sportsbook bets a day, and right now, 15 of those 20 lines or series (75%!) are in the black, and only one line, #10, is in serious straits.

Of course, it only takes one monster loss to upset the whole applecart, which is why each major threat to the bankroll prompts suggestions that I permit a losing series to be abandoned once it reaches a predetermined low point.

Fact is, since last July, five of the 20 lines have fallen below -$20,000 before recovering and four of them hit $-40,000 before turnaround. Giving up is therefore not really an option, as long as there's money left to bet with!

If we had capped any series loss at -$10,000, we would have about $80,000 less in the BR right now (5 x -$10,000 plus about $30,000 in subsequent profits) and that woulda left us in even worse trouble right now.

We have to keep reminding ourselves that the bookies need underdogs to win almost as much as we do.

Those experts I mentioned like to tell us that because they shave a little off the odds on each team in a given game, bookies don't care who wins or loses, they just take their "vig" to the bank at the end of the day.

That might be true if punters could be counted upon to bet about the same amount of money on each side (or if bookmakers were not a greedy bunch!) but that very rarely happens: favorites routinely attract more than 80% of the action, and when there's a so-called "upset" the book cashes in bigtime.

There have not been many of those in the 2011 baseball season so far, and with an above average number of favorites coming out on top day after day, the bookies must be feeling about as frustrated and disappointed as we are.

They always get their way in the end, and when that happens, we'll be back on top along with them. Keep checking the Sethbets website.

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._

A Sethbets real-time trial update, and some credit where credit is due...

_
The ongoing real-time trial applying Target rules to short odds underdogs started its 10th month this week, and established a new high-dollar mark yesterday.

There's a quick visual update below, and more information at the website.

I don't see how after all this time anyone can have any doubt that backing dogs within a tight odds range is a far better bet than following the herd and chasing negative paybacks (less than even money) on favorites.

But most punters are happily stuck in their ways, and we have to respect their right to choose.



And now for something completely different...

A few months back, I spared no effort in lambasting Bodog for a blackjack game that was clearly crooked, with a house edge exceeding 60% overall and an algorithm that handed out wins on small bets but snatched bigger wagers in dealer streaks that were beyond suspicious.

We all know that in small samples, the predicted house edge for any table game is meaningless and wild swings in either direction are common.

But the longer you play, the more likely it is that negative expectation will match the known HA of 1.0% or less.

It's often said that anyone who risks real money in an online "casino" deserves to lose, and that may be true.

But when an online operation promotes itself as King of the Hill, it seems reasonable to expect fair play.

There is, of course, no way that Bodog or any of its competitors can rip off a sports bettor, aside from refusing to pay out on wins and vanishing into the virtual ether.

But games of chance presume a degree of trust, and in my experience, Bodog blew it.

I told myself that in future I'd stick to bets on outcomes that are a part of the public record, and stay away from ventures vulnerable to Bodog-style skulduggery.

But then a friend tipped me off to table games offered by an outfit called 5Dimes.

I have been very cautious in easing back into what may yet prove to be another snake-pit, but I have tracked every one of hundreds of bets in the past few days.

And I have to give credit where it's due and congratulate 5Dimes on playing it as straight as any of the "land-based" casinos in my neighborhood.

They have some pretty quirky "casino" offerings: reverse commission on Pai-Gow Poker and 3x paybacks on both 2 and 12 in the field at craps, for example.

But when I'm not backing underdogs, Target-style, blackjack is my favorite way of passing the time and hopefully making a few bucks.

I am not, as a casino shill called the Wizard of Odds would have it, a sore loser. I expect to lose about as often as I win, and rely on consistent money management to make me a modest profit along the way.

I also rely on the casinos I frequent to offer games that are honest and above board, a concept that perhaps escapes the Wiz and his sponsors at Bodog!

This is not, I promise you all, an ad for 5Dimes.

I just felt that having blasted Bodog, I am obliged to give the nod to a competitor with higher standards.

This is also an expression of profound relief that somewhere online, a fair game can be found.

I am sure there are others, but I doubt I will spend any time looking for them - sports betting long ago eclipsed table games, as far as I am concerned.

Bet randomly or emotionally or get greedy when things are going right, and 5Dimes will beat you, as it expects to beat the majority of players, however straight the game.

Most players play badly, remember, and beat themselves without needing an extra push over the edge by a crooked "dealer"!

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 in a new slump, facing the same old question: Do we bet "cautiously" and go broke, or do we stick with the Target rules and turn things around?

_


This just posted to the www.sethbets.com website:

With Thursday's relatively large loss (over $11,000), we are now in the middle of the fourth major slump to hit us since the real-time trial began last July 24.

Whenever our upward momentum slows and the roller-coaster takes us into a scary dip, the same people react the same way, with advice that we have to "protect the bankroll" and back off, perhaps by abandoning the line that is (for now) dragging all the other lines down.

The truth is that panic and an excess of caution are exactly what the bookies expect of us.

You cannot protect the bankroll by reducing bets to a level at which recovery becomes a mathematical impossibility.

And if you "spread the load" by relying on multiple bets to offset the losses, you will need to be very lucky indeed to avoid delaying recovery indefinitely.

The old Las Vegas cliche scared money never wins describes the dilemma perfectly. Abandoning a seemingly doomed line is always an option, but if you do it once you will be obliged to make a habit of it, and whatever profits you may have achieved will soon dribble away.

I often quote a good friend who I call "Peter Punter" and he recently supplied me with a perfect case history of a cautious but fatally flawed betting strategy that cost him winnings that took months to accumulate.

He thinks the Target Betting method is "too risky" but time and again, he sets aside a few thousand for a new assault on sports betting, wins for a while, then gets blitzed by precisely the kind of slump that we are in the middle of.

This time, he was sitting pretty until seven successive losses wiped him out. A day or two after his bankroll was annihilated, the handicapper who was the source of all his selections hit a three-bet winning streak.

If Pete had followed the Target method, he'd be at a new high right now. Instead, he's out of the game. Until next time, when he will probably repeat the process.

I feel particularly frustrated right now, because for the sake of partners who are almost as risk-averse as poor, broke Pete, I applied a conservative modification to the Target rules, running it alongside the regular rules in my daily bulletins.

Because of that, we missed a classic turnaround situation at the beginning of this week, and now we're headed south in a slump that will probably end soon (they usually do!) but will in any event have proved to be a much bigger threat to the BR than if I had refused to apply so-called protection.

It's no one's fault but mine: I could easily have said NO. But I'm not in this thing alone!

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 reality of Target Betting since July 24th, 2010...

_
From the Sethbets website:

Summary posted April 1st, 2011: March was a great month for Target, rewarding the highest risk to date with the biggest monthly win since this trial began last summer. We're now ahead $131,630 deducting the original $5,000 investment from the current BR, and the profit is our "hold" of action of $1.21 million on 2,418 bets - an average win of $588 a day vs. an average bet value of $501. Staying more than one average bet ahead of the game each and every day isn't bad. The bookies' edge for the data set is 8.4% but our win represents 10.9% of overall action, indicating that Target has turned negative expectation upside down and created a long-term player advantage. The average win value to date is $638 vs. an average loss value of $439, which is how we managed to beat the bad guys: We won 45% more when we won than we lost when we lost in spite of the fact that every math "expert" out there will tell you that it isn't possible to do that unless you know ahead of the game that you're going to win. I'll say it again (because I love hearing it): It takes balls to beat the bookies, but not crystal ones. You all get bet schedules ahead of game times every day, so you know what I know, and what I know is that I can't be sure of anything until finals are in. We don't win every day by any means (116 up days and 107 down days in 223 betting days since last July 24), but I'd say a $130,000 return on a $5,000 investment is acceptable. Now for April...

Seth

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._

Six months of silence, but now to celebrate all that time off, the sound of me blowing Target's trumpet!

_
I have spent most of the time I saved by not blogging almost every day digging into sports betting trials based upon a mix of archived and real-time results from games that were actually played, not random output from simulators.

I'd love to be able to claim that I have learned all kinds of new stuff since the last post here on September 25, but all that has really happened is that the theory and philosophy that I have been spouting over and over since the blog began early in 2009 has been confirmed.

I haven't changed my belief that it is impossible to win consistently without occasional heart-stopping risk.

And my opponents have not stopped saying that as long as you lose more bets than you win, it is impossible to win at all.

I should say at this point how grateful I remain to ScoresandOdds.com for the invaluable service they provide, and add thanks to DonBest.com for their daily schedules, which I recently started to use regularly because they show not only current odds from multiple sports books, but also each day's opening numbers, team by team.

It really is helpful to know which direction "The Money" is pushing odds on propositions that fall into the +100 and up qualifying range that I established soon after stepping back from casino table games to test Target Betting as a viable means of beating the bookies.

Most of the time I have been away from the blog, I have applied a "dogs only" range of +100 to +125, but just this week I decided to widen the filter a little to a cap of +140.

I did that because the stats that have accumulated in the 2,200 or so bets placed since the ongoing real-time began last July 24 told me to.

It stands to sense that when you choose to play out a real-time test of a betting strategy before an audience, you will feel obliged to listen to and sometimes even (gasp!) accommodate criticism, and I have learned that very few people Out There like the idea of putting their bankrolls at risk, even when the outcome looks like this:


I understand, I truly do! When you get $60,000 ahead and all of a sudden, you hit a tailspin in which almost every selection gets thrashed by the favorite day after day, it's tough to back your faith with $40,000 or more of the profits that took weeks to accumulate.

Even the old "It's the bookie's money, not mine" argument sounds hollow when you have had all that green stuff actually in your hands and counted it into tidy piles before having to push wads of it back across the sports book counter.

Unfortunately, even bookmakers and casino operators - the guys with the long-term numbers indisputably in their favor - suffer downturns once in a while, and coping with them without contemplating surrender or suicide is an essential part of their business plan.

Whoever said You can't win without losing wasn't being a smart-ass: He was simply telling the whole truth and nothing but.

I will say again what I have hollered here many times: If you respond to pressure on the bankroll by reducing the size of your bets in the mistaken impression that you will thereby keep risk under control, you are far more likely to lose everything than if you stick with the Target rules.

I did cave into outside pressure and try tying bet values to a maximum percentage of the available bankroll, predicting from the outset that there was no way it could work.

I knew primarily because it's common sense, but also because of the swift and total failure of a Las Vegas handicapper's "Plus Money" system, which crashed and burned in less than two months last summer because of a rule that capped bets to 3% of a rapidly-dwindling bankroll.

It was kind of like a platoon of soldiers under heavy fire being ordered to conserve their RPGs and respond instead with a barrage of rocks and sticks. Conserve your ammo when the battle heats up, and you're likely to be toes-up before you get a chance to use it. And what the hell is ammo for, anyway...?

I started out last July selecting bets in the order that they were listed on each day's schedule - in other words, not selecting bets at all.

That was to test my belief that the more subjective we are when we put our money down, the more likely we are to pick losers. Let the bookies choose for us, I said - they know more than we do anyway!

I still rely almost entirely on the bookies' numbers (the odds), but for months now, I have applied the shortest odds to the biggest bets.

So for example, if a given line or series in trouble requires a next bet (NB) of $8,000 and teams that qualify according to my +100-plus range are quoted at odds that are all over the place, I will look for the team that the bookies say is the likeliest winner that day.

After all this time, there remains no doubt in my mind that the only way to beat "The Book" in the long run is to back only underdogs.

Plenty of people disagree, but the mathematical truth is that if you accept paybacks at less than even money and set your bet values in a manner that is essentially random rather than systematic, you may win more bets than you lose, but eventually the bookies' rake of 10% or more will swallow your bankroll.

A typical Saturday for Target Betting vs. the sports book looks like this:


And as with the Target rules that began to evolve more than 30 years ago, we know going in that we are going to lose more bets than we win, so we have to be sure that we win more when we win than we lose when we lose.

Before today's finals are in, the tally since last July 24 is 1,009 winning bets worth an average of $688 apiece, and 1,218 losers costing us an average of $463.

The shortfall between winners and losers amounts to a negative expectation of 9.4%, suggesting that with total action of $1.19 million over 211 days - an average of $535 per bet - we "should have" LOST $111,860.

We didn't.

Because our average win value exceeded our average loss value by more than 30%, we trounced that 9.4% "bookies' edge" and turned it into a 10.9% "hold" of our total action.

Put another way, we WON $129,500.

And we haven't stopped counting yet.

Sure, there have been some really rough times along the way, and every once in a while, it looked as if the bad guys were going to reclaim all our winnings.

But let's put this whole thing in perspective: Last July 24, we began with a notional bankroll of $25,000 but put just $5,000 of that into play.

Since then, that opening bankroll - "our money" - has been exposed less than $2,000 - and the profit total I just quoted does not include the original $5,000 investment.

We could at any point have taken the money and run.

But the whole idea of applying Target rules to sports betting is that it has to be an ongoing project, one that may take a licking now and then while repeatedly bouncing back and keeping those profit numbers ticking ever higher.

The one substantive change I allowed to the rules was my own idea, so no one else can claim any blame: As the bankroll grew, I let the minimum bet value grow with it, from a start-up $25 after each turnaround or new series to 0.1% of the available BR, rounded up in $25 increments.

That may have contributed to those deep slumps you see on the chart above, because when a progressive betting method is applied to a number 5x or more the opening minimum, in a downturn the zeroes multiply a whole lot faster.

I have since mended my ways and reverted to a $25 minimum whenever end-of-series (EOS) is achieved. Right now, that more timid approach has shaved about $3,000 from the win to date - but we won't know until the next killer slump comes along whether or not abandoning the "tweak" was the right thing to do.

There's much more about all this at www.sethbets.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._

The latest real-time sports book trial ended Thursday - but Friday's target betting results were just too good to ignore! Hey, I'm in charge here...

_
[I am no longer posting daily selections and finals
here - but I'm still an enthusiastic winning patron
of my local bookies]

All joking aside, the whole purpose of this blog and the countless samples and examples posted here is to demonstrate that losing more often than you win does not have to mean losing more money than you win.

Random betting means that in the long run, you can only make a profit if you win more bets than you lose.

And unless you have somehow managed to find the only game in the world with a positive expectation, that's just not going to happen.

Target betting ensures that over time, you will win more money when you win than you lose when you lose, making playing - not gambling - a profitable venture.

Gambling means losing for the vast majority of punters, and strangely, most of those people truly believe that they are having fun in the process.

Maybe they are.

But to me, there is no sense at all (and, for sure, no fun!) in playing a game that you can't beat.

For the first six months, this blog was focused entirely on casino table games, with the primary emphasis on blackjack and baccarat.

Then I started looking at sports betting, which has the great advantage of eliminating the need to spend countless hours in dim-lit casinos, sucking up other folks' cigarette and cigar smoke and (in blackjack, at least) sometimes suffering when they make suicidal mistakes.

In all betting situations, the key to success is the obliteration of subjectivity, replacing it with a method that chooses both bet targets and bet values by the numbers.

In casino games, you have to bet the next hand of cards, roll of the dice or spin of the wheel, but how much you bet each time determines whether or not you make a profit in the long run.

Betting sports, you get to pick what to bet on and when to bet on it as well as the amount to put at risk - and all that choosing makes for a potentially dangerous, expensive game.

Far better to let one set of numbers over which you have no subjective influence - the odds - make your selections for you, and another objective reference (your win target) determine each bet's value.

Subjectivity, aka emotions, hunches, insight and even experience, is the enemy of winning.

But then, regular readers already know all this...

The latest two-month, real time trial of target betting principles applied to the sports book, "officially" ended after finals were in on September 23, and at that point, my opening $5,000 bankroll had ballooned to $24,105.

Not much wrong with that!

But I was disappointed, because the total was about $1,000 shy of the best win to date ($25,430), and the collective unrecovered loss to date (LTD) was almost $10,000.

If only...

Obviously, it was not my plan to stop betting just because I was no longer posting selections ahead of time on this blog - the whole idea was to put more time and energy into winning, not less.

So Friday brought a full bet schedule, putting almost $3,500 in play.

At the end of the day, target betting's tally looked like this:


So even though I shoulda quit posting finals on Thursday, setting a new best win to date called for celebration.

Before a 20-bet schedule meets its fate when all today's playing is done, target betting's current state of winning looks like this:


As always, the most noteworthy numbers cover the average win value vs. the average loss value (+$280/-$175 = 160%) and the comparison between winning days and losing ones (37 profitable days worth an average of $1,220 vs. 26 losers setting me back an average of $930).

Readers are invited to draw their own conclusions.

Meanwhile, I could use some help with target betting's next phase!

From now on, as daily betting continues, I plan to post selections 1-10 minutes after game times, via e-mail and text messages instead of in this blog.

Finals (win or lose, of course) will be distributed the same way on the morning after.

Anyone out there who would like to continue tracking target betting's performance in the real world in real time is invited to e-mail me to be added to the distribution list.

My thinking is that target betting has already proved itself in two major real-time trials stretching over 11 long but exciting and satisfying months.

So there is really no need for me to keep giving away daily selections along with the betting method that can already be found here free, gratis and for no charge!

One last screen shot, showing how the primary 15 series or lines were doing at end of play on Friday:


Just TWO of 15 series or lines containing enough bets to make them worth tracking are in the red after 63 days.

I expect dangling LTDs to be recovered soon (although it's my job to expect that, and today's heavy betting load my thwart my cock-eyed optimism - who knows!).

The most important message in all of this is that stepping back from emotional involvement and betting strictly by the numbers is, in my experience, the only way to win in the long run.

Unless, of course, you get lucky...

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._

If you don't believe what's happened in the past can help us beat the bookies (and the house) in the future, this blog is a waste of your time!

_
(Please scroll down for updates for Thursday, September 23)

For almost a year now, the focus of this blog has shifted from casino table games such as blackjack and baccarat to a gambling platform that does not require you to inhale second-hand smoke or watch other people flush their money down the toilet.

Back in the summer of 2009, I had zero interest in sports betting, and so obviously had no idea that it would enable me to find a way to make steady money at gambling without going anywhere near a deck of cards.

Credit for my awakening goes in part to my old friend "Peter Punter" (who prefers to remain anonymous, especially when I am writing critically about his ideas).

Not that Pete was out to do me any favors.

He knew I am obsessive about the unbreakable link between mathematics and successful gambling, and was confident that if he bombarded me with enough e-mails, I would take the bait and look into his outrageous claims.

Pete is not a numbers man himself. He barely knows one end of a spreadsheet from another, and lacks the patience to thoroughly research a new betting method before putting actual money at risk.

He's a gambler - but not an entirely foolish one.

In all the years I have known Pete, the one thing we have had in common is the belief that math can be every bit as effective at beating the odds as it is at making losers out of more than 99% of all players.

But our approaches to the challenge are very different.

In July of 2009, Pete got the idea that since the most widely-marketed sports handicappers (known as "cappers" for short) claim year-round win rates of 65% to 85%, there had to be a way to exploit all those accurate predictions and make big bucks out of them.

My immediate response was that a 65% win rate is nothing to boast about if all of your "brilliant" selections pay a whole lot less than even money when your followers cash in their winning tickets.

It's just the numbers: A 50% WR from hundreds of selections paying even money, on average, means a long-term wash or break even if all your bet values are randomly determined.

Still assuming random bet values (because most gamblers bet random amounts), a 65% WR will make a profit only if paybacks average more 54 cents on the dollar or -185, a number that indicates that you must bet $185 to win $100.

In 100 bets at a fixed $100 each time, you would then win 65 bets at $54 ($3,510) and lose 35 bets at $100 apiece ($3,500), for a grand profit of $10, derived entirely from rounding your wagers up or down to keep things relatively simple.

Professional handicappers will often post picks at much better odds than -185, but you can be sure that the higher their verifiable long-term win rate, the shorter their odds on average.

(And it should not come as a surprise to anyone that the shorter the odds on a given team, the more likely they are to win - unless the bookies know something they're not telling us! It's also no surprise that when cappers list their successful picks, they never detail paybacks, just WIN!!! or, shhhhh, lose).

Early on, I advised Peter Punter that betting odds shorter than even money (+100) was a sure way to kiss his bankroll goodbye. S-l-o-w-l-y, maybe, but surely.

Instead, I recommended backing underdogs, never favorites, as a matter of policy, while capping acceptable or qualifying odds at +180 to keep the dog win rate (DWR) as close as possible to 45%.

On a season-to-season basis in all bettable sports (which covers pretty much everything, including tiddly-winks), underdogs do in fact win 40-45% of all games, enabling bookies to make a sizable profit that would not be achievable if favorites won more than 55-60% of the time.

The most important advice I gave Pete was that he should apply the target betting rules he knew from baccarat to his sports bets, creating series, or lines, of wagers in which the first bet on one day would be linked to the first bet the next day, the second to the second, and so on.

There could be no cross-pollination whatsoever, no switching large bets from one series to another, no reduction in bet values to "reduce risk," no deviation from the simple but strict set of rules.

Too risky, said Pete. And he embarked on a cancellation system that cost him thousands of dollars...before he stopped sending me his daily betting records.

I have no way of knowing how much Pete has won or lost since he cut me out of the loop at the end of September last year. I hope he's a long way ahead. But I doubt it.

One of the greatest strengths of target betting, other than its proven long-term profitability, is that it enables the player to bet by the numbers, meaning without any subjective or emotional involvement.

Bet values are set by the rules, which never waver. Unless, of course, the player wavers.

When betting on sports events, all that matters is the information the bookies give us - odds being the final arbiter of which teams are worth a bet and which are not.

Forget team stats, individual player performances, weather conditions or any of that tedious stuff: It might make the process marginally more involving for a true sports aficionado, but it won't win money in the long run.

I learned from the nine-month "Seven-dog Trial" that played out in this blog day after day from November 1, 2009, to July 31 this year, that +180 is too high a "cap" on qualifying dogs, and since then I have lowered the ceiling and raised the floor.

Thanks to Pete and another of his brief enthusiasms, I have also learned that so-called "added value" bets (run- or puck-line, spreads and over/under bets) can increase the overall win rate and make it just a little easier for target betting to make money over the long haul.

The "floor" limit for all those bets is the same as always - even money, not a penny less - while the upper limit is a tad lower than it is for straight money-line or "sides" bets.

As I write this, target betting is 60 days and 702 bets into the current two-month real-time trial set to end this week, and its win of $18,160 on top of its opening bankroll of $5,000 represents almost 13% of total action ($142,050 churned so far, giving an average bet value of $202).

Other important numbers show an average win value ($281) that is 59% more than the average loss value ($177), enabling me to smile yet again at the memory of the target betting critics who used to scoff, "Yeah, we get it, you have to bet more when you know you're going to win than you do when you know you're gonna lose!"

As I remarked at the top of this blog, target betting does not require psychic ability - just guts and discipline. Oh, and a little money...

The risk or exposure for target betting in the current trial is, at $285, far less than I would expect and perhaps the result of our old friend blind luck.

But it happens to be a demonstrable fact that more often than not, a betting method that seems to be less "aggressive" than target betting will actually increase risk.

That's because when bet values are capped too low, potential recovery or turnaround opportunities are inadequately exploited, causing battles to get "out of the hole" that drag on far longer at much greater cost in the end.

Right now, we stand at 34 winning days and 26 losing days, and I believe the credit for that goes to the revised selection rules I mentioned earlier.

All in all, I am more than happy with the way the sports book experiment has turned out, and relieved that from now on, I won't have to spend as much time in casinos to make money out of beating the odds.

Naturally, not every day will be a walk in the park!

Yesterday (Tuesday, September 21, 2010), for example, I managed an unprecedented win rate of 0-10.

The only positive comment to be made about a day like that is that things can't get much worse.

And to be fair, target betting has delivered some pretty spectacular successes in the last few weeks.

My critics like to quote something they call the Law of Large Numbers, which states in essence that individually and in small groups or samples, outcomes are always unpredictable.

Given that unpredictability, the L of LN comes down to three little words: You Can't Win.

That's what every casino and every bookmaker needs you to believe. And happily for them, most gamblers subscribe to the conventional wisdom.

Target betting proves otherwise, again and again.

But it is never likely to catch on in a big way because, according to many punters, it drains all the "fun" out of gambling.

It rejects the comforting notion that inside knowledge or expertise that took years to develop is the most effective antidote to losing.

Instead, it tells you to bet strictly by the numbers, banishing ego, emotion or anything else remotely subjective from the gambling experience.

To me, it's a small price to pay for long-term profitability, because in my book, losing is no "fun" at all. And losing is the fate of most gamblers.

Today's updates:




Thursday, September 23 at 9:35am

Another skinny day at the salt mines - although yesterday's short list brought in some decent money, so I shouldn't complain!



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'll be wrapping up the current real-time trial this week, win or lose, so today's skimpy pick list is a disappointment!

_
(Please scroll down for selections for Tuesday, September 21)

But hey, that's how it goes sometimes.

Between them, the MLB and the bookies have made today's already thin schedule unappealing.

For a while, I toyed with the idea of sitting on the sidelines until Tuesday - but in the end, I decided that in the last days of this experiment, a little action was better than none at all!

The money-line plus run-line trial will have run for two full months come bedtime on Thursday, and that seems like a reasonable cue to wrap it up and move on.

I know I'm not up for another nine-month slog, and given the success of both trials, I don't believe another real-time marathon is necessary.

After this week, this blog will morph into an occasional bulletin board for my comments (and sometimes, tests) on betting strategies that come my way from time to time.

Seems to me my efforts are better applied to making money from my ideas than on teaching others how to beat casino table games and the sports book!

The blog has been updated almost daily since March of 2009, and if nothing else, it provides a historical record of target betting and an insight into its on-going evolution.

Sunday was frustrating: Baseball dogs won more than 65% of their games and my picks had a 55% win rate, but I still ended up more than $100 out of pocket.

Small potatoes, for sure, but like I always say, winning is more fun than losing, even if most gamblers behave as if they don't believe that to be true.

Today's numbers:



Tuesday, September 21 at 10:15am

Target betting scored an equal number of wins and losses yesterday (3-3), but winners were worth more than losers, on average, giving the bankroll a small but welcome boost.

That's what we're here for.

Not a lot of attractive betting options today, Tuesday, but we'll do what we can:



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._

OK, everybody, to the tune of "Love the One You're With," sing along with me: Win the ones you need...

_
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:





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._

Winning bets worth 65% more than losing ones, winning days netting 30% more than losers, and 30 profitable days vs. 20 losers - all blind luck!

_
(Please scroll down for target betting picks for Wednesday, September 15)

That's what the "experts" say, at least...


Saturday was another solid winning day for target betting, providing me with an opportunity to review how these impossible results are being achieved.

Firstly, picks are being posted here every day ahead of game times, most recently with target betting dollar values included.

Next, the applicable target betting rules are always summarized at the top of each "pick list" - and any change would have an immediate effect on the overall result shown, destroying my credibility in the bargain.

Third, selections are entirely By the Numbers, eliminating any possibility for me to apply subjective judgment or to move options up or down the list to line up with optimum bet values. And selections must "qualify" according to odds ranges that are set ahead of time and are inviolable.

Lastly, results for individual series are being regularly posted here, demonstrating that target betting rules are effective and profitable not just overall, but series by series. Right now, just two series out of 15 being tracked day by day are in the red.


Is it possible that target betting is headed for a dramatic crash-and-burn scenario?

Possible...but very unlikely.

Applying the same by-the-numbers selection and betting rules to the entire 2009 baseball season woulda resulted in an average profit of $195 per day in 195 days (an odd coincidence, but I'm bound to report whatever the databases throw at me!).

In the next few days, I will post a more detailed summary of Baseball 2009, knowing that notional profits achieved retroactively are much less impressive than wins achieved day after day in real time.

I'm going for shorter odds these days, based upon my analysis of more than 8,000 games from the baseball, pro football, hockey and pro basketball databases.

Shorter odds (but never shorter than even money) result in more wins over time, making results for the first 50 days of the current real-time trial (30 wins, 20 losses) predictable but very welcome.

Here are Saturday's results in full, followed by today's target betting selections (a heavier day than usual, and a good thing too!).

Please note that a critical selection rule outside of odds analysis is that whichever sport is the lead on a given day is always listed first - meaning that baseball will head the list until early November, when the NFL schedule will take precedence.



Monday, September 13 at 1:00pm

Wow!


It would be crass idiocy to pretend that days like Sunday are the norm for target betting - but when a 70% win rate happens and all the bets line up for a big, fat payday...hell, it's worth crowing about.

A pattern might be said to be emerging in the first 51 days of the current real-time trial, given that we have achieved substantially more winning days than losing ones (31 winners averaging +$1,154 and 20 losers averaging -$851).

These days, I am less concerned with proving the efficacy of the target betting principles (been there, done that!) than with improving the win rate by honing my bet selection method.

The range for money-line bets is +110 to +140, and for run-line bets, it's much tighter at +100 to +115.

That's not my idea: The ranges currently being applied are dictated by "the numbers" established in the 2009 baseball season, and 2010 to date.

As I have said before, bookies are not infallible. But they are creatures of habit, and from our point of view, that's a very good thing.

I admit that whenever I'm in the middle of one of these real-time trials, with picks posted ahead of game time and complete transparency applied, I worry that today or tomorrow will bring total collapse.

I have been proved wrong so many times that now that I just tell myself that the moment I assume target betting and my bet selection method are bullet-proof, I'll go down with one to the heart or the head!

Here's the updated chart for results since July 24, followed by selections for today, Monday, September 13.



Tuesday, September 14 at 10:15am

Like I said, life's a roller coaster...

...and the analogy is especially apt in gambling!

It's hard to imagine a roller coaster that did nothing but climb skyward: After a while, gravity would have to intervene, and a backward slide to rock bottom would wipe out prior gains.

Monday brought a disappointing performance by underdogs, resulting in a loss of $775 for target betting.

But target betting, like a roller coaster, needs regular downward plunges to gather the momentum required to climb to a new high when an upward trend comes along.

Hey, just look at the latest chart below!

Today is potentially even scarier than Monday in my view, since most of the selections are run-line bets, and I am still not entirely comfortable betting on favorites.

RL bets don't win as often as ML bets do, at least in the first 7+ weeks of the latest real-time trial for target betting:


As you can see, run-line picks have scored a WR of 39.5% so far, compared with 47% for money-line selections.

Overall, my stricter selection process is averaging a 45% WR, vs. 43% for underdogs so far this baseball season. Two percent doesn't sound like a big deal, but believe me, those "piddling" points really matter!

Monday, my picks delivered 4-4 or a 50% WR.

It didn't help, because the big bets tanked.

C'est la vie...

More updates, including picks for today, Tuesday, September 14:





Wednesday, September 15 at 11:10am

The roller-coaster slipped a few more notches yesterday, giving target betting its second setback in succession.

The charts posted here in the past few days confirm that the current pattern is far from unusual.

There's some big money at stake today (most of it depending on a win for the San Diego Padres in an early game!) and I confess I always feel a little nervous in these situations.

The upside is that wins in the last seven-plus weeks of the current trial mean that today's big bucks don't eat into the opening bankroll.

You gotta speculate to accumulate, remember!

Today's updates...



Thursday, September 16 at 11:45am

One word covers yesterday's final outcome: Ouch!

As always say in this situation, I wish I could win every day, but years of experience and research tell me that's just not possible.

Here are today's updates:




Wednesday's big losers for target betting, the San Diego Padres, highlight the occasional hazards of betting strictly by the numbers.

The rule I apply in the selection process requires me to opt for the shorter odds when the numbers for a run-line or money-line wager are close.

With the Padres, the odds for the RL bet were +130 and the ML bet was at +125, making ML the required "choice" (in quotes because since the rules dictate the bet, it was actually no choice at all).

I have no regrets about the bet because I know that flouting the by-the-numbers rules is a fatal error more often than not.

But I would be a liar if I didn't concede that a situation like this is very frustrating, especially after a boffo succession of wins!

The topic of rule-fudging leads naturally to an update on InvestaPick!


What's going on here...?

IP's slow and steady wins the race performance since I first started monitoring the website's three "funds" always achieves added allure when target betting is demanding huge wagers that go south.

Smaller bets and reduced risk invariably equals smaller wins and less dramatic long-term returns, but after a day like yesterday, I am tempted to think that's an acceptable trade-off.

On the other hand, if IP is suddenly breaking its own rules to keep its funds afloat, the rose's bloom becomes no bloom at all.

Why would a bet that the IP rules (as I understand them - and remember I have no connection or contact with InvestaPick) say should be $260 show up as a WIN worth $520-plus?

How come on other occasions (usually during a losing streak!) the next bet value stands still instead of doubling?

IP's method is (or used to be) a simple Martingale made effective by a selection process that mostly plays it safe, rarely straying from odds shorter than -110.

The policy works, it seems, with the single drawback that I have mentioned many times before: a failure to offset the shortfall from paybacks that return 90 cents on the dollar or less.

Yesterday was the mid-month marker, so I updated my file on how target betting woulda performed against the bets selected by IP in each of its three funds since January 1, 2009.

Given the, let's be gentle here, flexibility of IP's rules of late, I should emphasize that the target betting rules applied throughout are rigid and unchanging.

Here's the latest comparison:


Both InvestaPick and a target betting approach to the same selections show results that call into question the skeptics' axiom that a betting method that prevails against anecdotal outcomes will always fail against games as yet unplayed.

I'm hoping to be back tomorrow with better numbers in the ongoing real-time trial.

And I promise I won't achieve them by changing the target betting rules retroactively...

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._