As I said in Part 1 of this newsletter - The topic / question I get asked the most about on twitter DM / email / or wherever people message me is what type of things that have made me a successful and, most importantly, profitable gambler long term. This is a great question and one absolutely worth the time to discuss (sorry about the length).
Why I do this
Buying picks
The 3 Magic Words
Part 2 covers:
Gambling Math
Bankroll Management
Radical transparency
Part 3 will cover:
Trust the Process
What not to do
Betting Math
Let’s kick off Part 2 with the topic everyone LOVED in school….MATH!!!!! Okay okay I won’t get into too much detail and I promise this won’t get into multivariate calculus but there are certain things you need to know.
Okay, first thing we need to do is be able to take a money line and turn that into the % chance we think it will happen aka the implied odds. There are two equations you need (X represents the odds you see):
For negative MLs → X / (100+X)1
For positive odds → 100 / (100+X)
Let’s do two quick examples with odds you see frequently like -150 and +300:
For -150 we have 150 / 250 = 60%
For +300 we have 100 / 400 = 25%
Now when you hear gamblers talk you will hear them throw around the term “EV” as in “+EV” or “-EV”. EV stands for Expected Value and what this is referencing is “if this exact match played out multiple times how many times would this bet win?” and this simplistic answer is that you want to bet any time you have an EV advantage.
What does this mean practically? Well if you bet a 10-1 parlay (~9% chance) and you feel the true odds are closer to 6-1 (~14% chance) then you should absolutely bet it because while the books might be pricing in that you would only win that parlay 3 times over 30 bets so they get a profit, you actually will win it 5 times and you will have the profit!
You ONLY want to make bets where you believe you have +EV.2
Getting used to doing this math and be able to do it quickly will really help as you on your gambling journey.
Do you enjoy my content but wish you had more of a say in what it looks like? Great!
Bankroll Management
I wanted to start Part 2 with one of the biggest areas where gamblers make mistakes and go broke and that is bankroll management. Let me lay out my basics:
Your bankroll should be the money you are willing to risk and lose gambling- THIS SHOULD NOT BE FOOD / RENT / MORTGAGE / COLLEGE MONEY
I use the 1% method. What that means practically is that for each sport I bet on I set a certain bankroll and 1% of that bankroll is my standard unit. For tracking purposes with my models, I use $100 per unit and that equates to a bankroll of $10K. Yes, that means that because I bet NFL, NBA, and PGA I keep 30k total as a baseline. Now that is likely excessive and you can do a 10k total bankroll and keep 1% across all sports and that is just fine!
If you losing 1u of your bankroll gives you stress / bad feelings, lower that number. DO NOT BET MORE THAN YOU CAN AFFORD OR ARE COMFORTABLE WITH
I bet in increments of .25u, .5u, 1u, 2u, 3u. Generally speaking the frequency of my betting decreases as I add risk. For example, in the entirety of the last two NFL seasons my bets were as follows:
3u - 11 bets
2u - 45 bets
1u - 274 bets
0.5u - 179 bets
A natural drawdown can be 20-30 units. That is normal variance. That is why you need to make sure you have the bankroll to withstand those dips. Smart gambling is not eliminating cold streaks, that’s honestly impossible. Smart gambling is extending your hot streaks and cutting your cold streaks short. This is one of the main reasons I take issue with twitter touts and those that sell picks as they usually have zero concept of bankroll management.
Now, while I am a proponent of tiered betting there are many very successful gamblers who believe in flat betting. The Sharp Plays3 is one of them and here is a link to his article on the topic.
Once you start winning, it is important to make sure you are being smart with your money across seasons. I would give you my thoughts, but honestly Pam Maldonando4 published a great article Betting 101: Football is over. Now what?. It gives some great advice as to what to do with your hard earned winnings and bankroll management. I generally bank half my winnings and roll half of them into the following year to increase my units size, but what you do with your money is up to you.
Radical Transparency
As they say in 12 step programs “the first step is admitting you have a problem”. If you do not track every bet you make and do so with an amount of detail that allows you to analyze it then you are unlikely to be profitable long term5.
Yes this take lots of effort, but the reason I am saying this is so important is because the real fact that sports betting is set up for you to lose. You winning is the exception, not the rule. Unless you can figure when, how and why you are losing you have zero chance at fixing it.
It is really as simple as that.
The largest hedge fund in the world, Bridgewater Capital, got that way through what they call “Radical Transparency” and this is something I encourage you all to do with yourself and your betting.
If you have followed me for any length of time you know I practice #Transparency, but what you do not see is that I am maniacal behind the scenes about tracking literally every bet I make (I have for years) as well as making sure I understand why I am winning and why I am losing.
I interrogate my picks and my models like I am a CIA agent and as soon as I see something is not working I drop it, just ask all those who were with my for the disaster that was my NBA TitanicModel v2.0. I spent well over 100 hours building it and all it did was spit out losers. You need to be robotic in your decision making and take emotion out of it. It killed me to realize I wasted all that time, but that was a sunk cost and I was never getting that time back and all I could do now was either try to fix it for a 3rd time (first 2 fixes clearly failed) or take a deep breath, know it didn’t work and move on.
Always remember, the most important person you can be transparent with is you.
Part 3 should be out in the next 7 - 10 days so be on the look out for that!
I hope you have found this information helpful. My DMs and my email (titanic.gambler@gmail.com) are always open for folks who have questions, want to chat or discuss my picks, betting strategy, their picks, or really anything.
Make sure you are using the absolute value of X
Okay, this might be me shoe horning it in here but I am going to go off for a minute….but Darren Rovell is an absolute clown who should not be trusted. Believing that if you read anything he puts out will help you get better at gambling then you also likely believe eating McDonald’s will help you get in shape. He has been found to push fake tickets and then there was this whopper that violates all that is holy in betting:
Give TSP a follow. He gives TONS of great information and a lot of it is free
Make sure to give Pam a follow on twitter and read her articles. She is fantastic.
If you do not know how to do this, email me - Titanic.Gambler@gmail.com. I have created a tracking spreadsheet I am happy to send to you. You can also use ActionNetwork (they have a pay and free product) that can allow you to track your action.