Quote:
Originally Posted by
redietz
My lifetime straight-bet college football ATS is roughly 56%. The number gets skewed up a bit from playing certain teasers
I don't want to pick on Redietz specifically, because this is just an informal recollection. Instead, I want to use this anecdote to illustrate pitfalls of monitoring.
There is the issue of "roughly" and a fallible memory. Records deteriorate under scrutiny. Maybe it was 55.1%, but only if you exclude playoffs, totals, and a disastrous 40% initial season.
Teasers have odds of -120 or worse, requiring 55% to break even. Also, there is the line shopping issue. In the 1980's, you could get a half point or more on many games, including key numbers like "3" and "7". Dan Gordon's book basically added an extra point to enhance his record.
What about other sports? There are ten more major sports if you include college basketball, NFL, NBA, baseball, hockey, both side and totals. There are also halftimes, propositions, boxing/mma, soccer, gold, tennis, etc. Maybe a tout just got lucky in college football while winning only 45% in NFL or basketball.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
redietz
If you can bang out 57% ... managing 10-15 games over .500 in something like, say, college football per annum would require a starting bankroll in the half million.
No, this is mathematically wrong. The number of games per season does not affect your bet size. The Kelly bet for 57% is roughly 10% of bankroll. That means $5,500 to win $5,000 on a $50k bankroll. You do not need this entire bankroll liquid. You might have only $20k, plus the ability to scrape up more over the next year. And you can bet on credit. It might be rough the first season or two. But you expect to double your bankroll in one season. And the college season is only 12 weeks long! You can spend the rest of the year living cheap and working a job to get the bankroll.
KewlJ and DD' from BJ21 followed this approach at blackjack. DD' saved up session bankrolls from his job because there is no point in making minimum wage betting $25 per hand when you can bet $250 and earn $100/hour. He got unlucky and lost his session bankrolls for several months until he went on a winning streak, quit his job, and grew his bankroll big enough to bet $1,000 per hand. Many poker players similarly went from grinding low stakes to winning in big games.
We don't need to rely on my opinion. Redietz bragged about betting $500k+ in one account. What was the average bet size? A winning bettor would accumulate a pretty big bankroll over four decades! It takes more than $1,000,000 to retire. That would support Kelly bets of $100k+. Despite many posts, Redietz has not posted about regularly betting large amounts.