Hey Scott,
Thanks for the compliments. Considering I wasn't exactly cordial to you tonight, that's pretty big of you. My apologies for going a little over the top tonight. It's not that you lost, but just the whole ordeal that surrounded this one pick/anti-pick, whatever it was. But I'll get to that in a bit. I'm going to answer this in reverse order....
Scott-Atlanta said:
You know something. It is not easy to explain to someone else why you are here. Maybe I should ask you GM .
Why are you here ?
I think I am here for similar reasons that you are here...to learn something and to beat the man. I study this stuff for hours and the NFL is the only league right now that I would consider myself to be "good" at. I'm so-so at NBA, hate baseball, and absolutely suck at NHL. College football....just too many teams, and coverage in Canada is not very good so I've never really gotten into it. So the season is short and I feel I have only about 5 months a year to really make money betting on sports (at least, at this point, maybe if I improve at NBA I can go longer).
I'm also here because I find it helps my picks a lot to write them out. I can't tell you the number of times I start to write out a paragraph on a game and then realize that my reasons for taking a game are weak, or don't make sense, and I erase it all. If I can write it up, re-read it, and it looks good, I post it. I don't like placing a bet on a hunch or just to have action....because if that's the case, you have no edge over the house. I want more than just a 50/50 shot...and I think if we think these things out, we CAN find edges. Perfect example this week...a game I probably wouldn't even have looked at....Hou/Buff. Vanbasten asked a question saying "Would anybody here bet on Houston?". I decided, ok, what the hell, I'll see if I can make a case for them. By the time I was finished my write-up I realized I really liked them this week...maybe one of my best bets of the week. I was short on ideas at that point and that got me rolling. Free money, since I probably wouldn't have bet it unless I came here and read that.
So that's why I'm here.
Ok, now on to this thread and why I got kinda pissed....
Scott-Atlanta said:
Mistakes are easy to make in this field. And sometimes there doesn't appear to be any right answers. But I intend to figure out what it takes to be successfull at this.
Most of what you have written I believe, but I don't think honestly you are trying to figure out what it takes to win or work at it at all. You're not handicapping the games, the lines, or anything that I can see (correct me if I'm wrong). It appears to me you're just picking a game that you sort of like and plopping down lots of money on it, and hoping it all comes through. What does that accomplish? You don't learn anything doing that except whether you are lucky or not. You have had TONS of people come in with recommendations on how to manage a bankroll....people who know what they are talking about....and you refuse to listen to this advice. These people aren't telling you this just to be a pain in the ass. They're trying to help you, and you've just said that you want to learn what it takes to be successful. Well, they have the answer...it's right in front of you! Almost every one of us has learned the hard way by doing what you are doing. So none of us wants to see someone else go bust making the exact same mistakes we've made. Bankroll mismanagement is going to kill you a lot faster than bad picks ever will, and you're not going to get a lot of people on your side by intentionally mismanaging a bankroll and basically telling them where to go. They aren't wrong. There have been hundreds of thousands of people who have tried to be successful at this, and the only ones that are have a solid money-management system. Mooch picks off the people here that you think are sharp if you have to, but spread the risk over a number of bets and keep the bet sizes reasonable and you're going to gradually see your bankroll increase. It takes discipline but most people aren't interested in discipline, they just want to hit the jackpot.
You can't just go picking a team at random, and throwing a lot of money at it, and expect that you'll magically discover a winning system this way. You'll hit your hot streaks, but it is inevitable, no matter how smart you are, you are going to hit slumps. If you're betting a huge portion of your bankroll on one play it won't take much of a slump, maybe just 3 or 4 losses in a row, to totally wipe you out. Betting the % of my bankroll that I do, I would have to lose something like 45 straight games before I am completely wiped out. So I'm confident I will make it through the season no matter how bad it gets along the way. And I am pretty sure that I will have a 1-7 or 2-8 day somewhere along the line....it just won't kill me, that's all.
This is what really got me stirred up though. How could you completely switch sides on a pick, but STILL think it was worthy of hitting so hard? This can't be well-thought out if you would bet EITHER side of the game. If that's the case, it's not a strong pick, cause just think how close you were to going the other way. There are so many games out there to pick from...why go so heavy on one that even you believe is not that strong? I just don't get it, why do it? Combining that with telling people who know what they are doing that they are wrong, and encouraging other people to randomly slam games like this....it's not good. It's not handicapping, it's just gambling. You will go bankrupt...that's pretty much the only sure thing about all of this.
I'm not happy to see you lose; I don't want to see anyone lose. I don't mean you any disrespect, but I seriously question how you are going to survive playing like this. If you don't feel this should be any of my concern than I can avoid your posts. I'd been doing that for a couple of weeks, but this time I just couldn't watch the circus that was going on over this one pick and not say anything. There was almost no logical reason for any of it that I could see. Again, correct me if I'm wrong.
Sorry for the long response.
Good luck,
Greg
