Thanks for the compliment IE. You do an outstanding job around here.
Baseball by far is my favorite sport to handicap, there are just so many stats and trends available. I find that baseball, by far, has the most value in betting of any sport. I do watch a lot of games as I have extra innings and several tvs in my office.
It can become a grind at times and the one thing I have learned after doing this for along time is to take breaks from time to time. It took forever but I finally learned that my luck will run into some very ugly streaks and during those times its best to lower my wager amounts or to step aside until I see an improvement in my plays. I try to limit my plays between 1- 3% of my bankroll per play, occasionally I will play something at 4-5% but that is rare.
I like to look at past history involving series, I prefer series of three games, but four game series are fine as well. I have some past trends I like to use involving teams to continue to follow certain past patterns. For example the Orioles on road series of at least three games have lost at least one game in the series 130 of 140 road series. Also they have gone over in at least one game 120 of the last 136 road series. I use this as a key part of my capping when I look at games. I also recognize that some teams will end up bucking these trends, for example the nats are a bad team this year (playing better lately) so I take trends that favor them with a little less enthusiasm. Of course sometimes the trends lose but over the season I end up turning a nice profit.
There are other factors which I look at as well, of course starting pitching and bullpens are a huge factor as well. I like to map out the three game series ahead of time, you usually know who is going to be starting in all the games in each series so I like to initially look for good matchups that will lineup with some of my bigger trends. I also like to look at the basic stuff like teams batting average against right handed and left handed pitching also bullpen usage and the basics like that. I used to do a lot more involving umpires but they are now just a tiny part of factoring in on a potential play. I also never lay anything over -140.
Thanks for the question IE.
