Aggressive vs. Conservative gambling

[Nick Douglas]

I was flipping channels today and saw WSOP champ Chris Moneymaker saying that he tends to play aggressive when his chip stack gets low and more conservative when he is in the lead. This strategy falls in opposition to the strategy that most sports bettors use. Usually I hear people say that they will lower their bet amount when they are losing and that they will play larger when they are on a hot streak.

Of course poker and sports gambling are a lot different. In poker you have an amount of chips at a table, but not a full bankroll. If you lose all of your chips, you are not losing everything you've budgeted for gambling.

In sports gambling, usually one has a relative bankroll that fluctuates. Generally the person will be basically out of gambling money (at least for a short time) if they were to lose their entire bankroll.

But what if you were to look at it like poker. Rather than sitting at a table for a session of gambling, say you are treating a week of sports betting as a session of gambling. You have a certain amount of money on the table each week. If you drop that amount, you quit for the week no matter what day it is. If you start winning, you get a bit more conservative to make sure you "walk away" from that week a winner. If you start the week slow, you get more aggressive to make sure you have a shot at getting back into the black for the week.

I don't know if this would work better but I do see the logic in it. I guess the one caveat here is that it doesn't protect you from catastrophe all that well. If a week starts terribly and one is too aggressive in trying to recover it, one could dig so deep a hole that several winning weeks would not even make up for it.

The week-to-week thing is how I am playing now and I do see where problems can bite you. Even though I've had a profit in 11 of 16 weeks, the overall profit is only about 2000. That is because my losing weeks have tended to be larger on average than my winning weeks. I am still going to stick to the system posted on my page. I just thought I'd post this in my continuing effort to win as much money as possible.

 

[lowell]

good write up.my week starts on tues.usually if i win the first 2 nights i seem to continue thru week-end.its when i get down and on sat there are so many games to choose from i make mistakes.trying to learn to just chip away at figure if i am down.i do not double up.trying new tactic-2 or 3 games per night 2 units each.thanks

 

[ocelot]

Increasing bet size when losing is known as suicide progression. Not advisable but I see people do it all the time.

 

[Nick Douglas]

ocelot,

I didn't say increasing bet size, I mean playing more aggressively. Say you have a $1000 weekly max. If you have $400 of action on Monday and lose $300 or $400 of it, I'm saying that an aggressive move would be to risk a good 50% or 60% of your remaining weekly bankroll the next day. Not saying that you would actually risk more than $400 the next day.

 

[ocelot]

Sorry Nick.

Just didn't want anyone to get bad ideas and get too crazy with their bets. I've been burned both when increasing bets after a losing streak (mistakenly thinking I was 'due') and when increasing bets after a huge winning streak (mistakenly believing I had it all 'figured out'). Money management, money management, money management is my mantra.

As far as your question on the conservative / aggressive approach I don't know the mathematically correct answer (though I have been meaning to investigate this whole area). Offhand I believe that if you have a winning system you need to not get too aggressive in order to allow your system enough time to work without getting taken out by a bad early run. If you don't have a system then you are really just depending on luck or your feel which can come and go. Then you probably want to go aggressive when you are hot, conservative when not but then you run the risk of overconfidence and then it becomes as much about emotion management as money management.

This is a good thread.

 

[HONUS]

Nick, the only difficulty I have with what you are suggesting is that the concept of a week as a session becomes an artificial limit/barrier.

I keep very good records of all my wagers. I sum the wagers at the end of the week. The week for me is Monday to Sunday. But the summation of my week's performance is done on a weekly basis for convenience sake alone. It is a logical place to break the year and to keep track of how I am doing in each sport.

However, to use the week as a session concept, could result in a situation where my bankroll for any particular week is exhausted and there is a game I love on the seventh day of the week. What then? Am I forced not to bet the game because I have no cash remaining for that week/session?

Don't let artificial barriers impede your decision making.

 

[Nick Douglas]

I'm sure you don't agree with this, Honus, but my opinion is that if you used up your money for the week, then you pass on that game no matter how much you love it.

The rationale here is that you just have to budget your money. It is like if you sit at a poker table with $100. If you lose your $100, you don't cash another $40 thinking that this next hand is bound to be the hand that I win. Maybe you will get pocket aces in that hand, but over the long term, you will probably be better off chalking up the $100 loss and coming back for your next session.

I don't have all the answers. This week-to-week style of wagering that I have been doing for only 16+ weeks. This week has been a bad one (0-6 so far) so assuming a loss on the week, I will have 11 winning weeks, 6 losing weeks and an overall profit of about 1400. There have been a good number of situations where I have seen a play that I liked a good deal but my rules have kept me from making a wager. I haven't tracked my exact record in those, but what I do know is that I have at least temporarily turned around what was the worst losing run of my handicapping life and I think that these artificial restrictions have helped a bit.

 

[THE KOD]

, I will have 11 winning weeks, 6 losing weeks and an overall profit of about 1400.

.........................................................................

Nick

If my figures are correct that works out to a overall profit
of 82.3 dollars a week. It don't hardly seem worth the effort.

What do you think about the concept of winning $100 per day
for the 11 weeks ?

KOD

 

[Nick Douglas]

Obviously I'd like to be up more than $82 per week, but it's better than being down.

 

[THE KOD]

it's better than being down.

................................................................
Nick

thats for should.

I was thinking of setting a goal for myself this year to win
$100 a day. If it is one winning play or going 3-2 . Just play the best plays. When I win the 100 I stop for the day.

To win 20 grand in a year is enough for me. That would mean I would have to go 200-160 for the year on 100 dollar plays.
What is that 55 %. You really don't have to hit 60% to win big.
If 55% is not attainable, we need to find something else to do with our time.

Thats a goal anyway. Not sure how it will work out.

KOD

 

[yyz]

but what I do know is that I have at least temporarily turned around what was the worst losing run of my handicapping life and I think that these artificial restrictions have helped a bit.
-----------------------------------------------



Or, it could be that the tide was about to turn.

I have to side with HONUS as far as the artificial barrier goes. I have stated time and time again, there is only a first wager and a last. Everything in between is apple sauce.

Nick, it sounds great to tinker with methods of wagering or handicapping, and to a ceratin extent, some of those things seem to pay off. Let's suppose you are really clicking on totals in the NCAA hoops. I mean, you are nailing 75% over the last 6 weeks. There is something in your noodle that says, "Hey.....I must be doing something right with these totals."

On the other hand, you handicap the exact same manner on NBA totals, and are in the toilet. Now, your line of thinking states that you need to re-tool your NBA work, but the NCAA work is dead on. My contention remains, you are getting lucky in the NCAA, and having bad luck in the pros.

Now, the same can be said about splitting your play into "sessions". What makes success? A winning season? A winning week? A winning day? You are merely tallying up certain "stop points", and using them to define winning versus losing. (Again.....I say only your final wager determines if you are a winner of a loser.)

You say that if you reach a certain level for the week, you are done. You might love another game, but you won't wager, because "you are done". We could do the same on a daily basis, too. You might love 7 games, but why not wager just the early three? If you go 2-1 or 3-0, you stop. You have made a profit on the day, and that should be that.

Once you have made the decision to stop wagering, you must do that......STOP! If you start again "next week", it really makes no difference that you stopped during the previous week. You merely "put off" the next wager. It is just a mind game we play on ourselves. It doesn't affect the final outcome in your wagering lifetime.

It sounds good to say, "I am 11-5 in the last 16 weeks", but that just happens to be where you are in your betting "cycle". If you extrapolate that out over the next 48 weeks, you could well be 30-34, and back in the hole. At that point in time, you would start back up with the "I need to re-think my methodology".

I still maintain that at some point, you will realize that this is a less than break even proposition. I just hope it doesn't cost too much to reach that point.

 

[THE KOD]

"I need to re-think my methodology".

I still maintain that at some point, you will realize that this is a less than break even proposition. I just hope it doesn't cost too much to reach that point.

...........................................................................

yyz

lesser words were never spoken.


KOD

 

[yyz]

As a matter of fact, pretty much all of your posts meet that criteria........

 

[THE KOD]

As a matter of fact, pretty much all of your posts meet that criteria........

...........................................................

yyz

which criteria is that ?

extrapolate. please stop using big words your confusing me.

KOD

 

[freelancc]

:lol:

 

[Nick Douglas]

I'd have long since given up this method before I was 30-34 on weekly results.

I understand completely that wagering like this goes against general logic. It does work on one level, though. I will try to explain....

Go to your wagering spreadsheet and look back at all of your weeks where you got to at least +500 to +1000 (assuming you risk about 500 a day or slightly less). How many of those weeks did continuing to bet more towards the end of the week benefit you and how many did it hurt you in that week? Then look at weeks where you started out cold (-500 to -1000). How many weeks did it actually help to try to keep betting after you were already down 1000+?

When I looked back at my results, I found that if I had these rules in place earlier, it would have helped me. fletcher had been telling me for years to following a wagering system like this and finally I decided to give it a try. So far it is working out well, but handicapping is a dynamic business so I'm sure that somewhere along the way I'll have to make changes somewhere.

 

[yyz]

I'd have long since given up this method before I was 30-34 on weekly results.

That illustrates my point about winning and losing. You currently tout this 'system', because it is working. It validates your opinion that you can win at sports wagering if you put in some hard work. Once you start to lose, you are saying the system is wrong, and needs to be abandoned for something new. (As you have done with other methods.)

A lot of services go with the week by week method of keeping score. It looks real nice to potential clients. I still propose that if you use any method of handicapping, and mirror it with the same amount of plays flipping a coin, your results we be alarmingly similar over the course of time. I would ask you to try this, to see if I am wrong.

 

[Nick Douglas]

yyz,

Handicapping is a fluid process. Things change. Why do you think I lost so much from 6/02 to 9/03? Do you think I put in any less work or that I suddenly forgot all the things that made me so much money from 9/00 to 6/02? No. I lost so much primarily because I stuck to old handicapping methods that were losing value.

Look, you can continue flipping a coin if you'd like (even though I know you don't actually do that) but it is rediculous to give that as advice. My goal is to make money and only a fool would tout that flipping a coin would make a person money. Hard work, discipline, patience and the ABILITY TO ADAPT are what earns you money in this biz.

 

[yyz]

yyz,

Handicapping is a fluid process. Things change. Why do you think I lost so much from 6/02 to 9/03? Do you think I put in any less work or that I suddenly forgot all the things that made me so much money from 9/00 to 6/02? No. I lost so much primarily because I stuck to old handicapping methods that were losing value.

What does that mean? "I stuck to old handicapping methods that were losing value."

They lost value, because they no longer worked? What changed? Did the way the game is played change? In your own words, you admit that you feel 80% of all games a guy handicaps come down to luck. The other 20% are won or lost based on that persons handicapping ability. Who in their right mind would think they can beat a system that has the odds stacked that poorly against them?

Look, you can continue flipping a coin if you'd like (even though I know you don't actually do that) but it is rediculous to give that as advice. My goal is to make money and only a fool would tout that flipping a coin would make a person money. Hard work, discipline, patience and the ABILITY TO ADAPT are what earns you money in this biz.

My sentiment about flipping a coin was that if you actually did it, I think you would find that the results would be quite shockingly similar to "actual handicapping" results. Give it a try! However many plays you make in a given day, take that many games at random and flip a coin to determine your "play". Track the results, and let me know what you find. I will run a similar test to this once I return from Las Vegas.

Another thing I was curious about:

When you reach your goal for the week, do you at least still handicap more games, even if you will not bet them? I was wondering if you tracked their "potential" results? If you meet your goal after only two days of wagering, what about the games you would have played the rest of the week? I know you said that even if the game intrigued the hell out of you, you would not wager. That is where the artificial barrier come in. If you are willing to put that cash into play again once the day is over, there really seems to be no reason to not wager it today. To me, that is a false sense of discipline, and doing a disservice to your handicapping. If you like a wager, have the bankroll to back it, then it is pointless to sit on your hands in order to "save face" for an artificial weekly record.

This will be another issue on which we fail to see eye to eye, i guess......

 

[Nick Douglas]

When I reach my goal early, sometimes I will continue to handicap, sometimes I will take the day off. When I hit +500 last week on Saturday, I took Sunday off. Other weeks I will keep handicapping if I am looking for something specific.