A few weeks ago, after our epic “Black Saturday” crash, we received an email and comment from one of our oldest readers/subscribers, Tom Fennell. Understandably Tom was not too happy with our performance and he let us know (as he has done on several occasions) that our overall performance was “nothing like last year.”
I wrote Tom a fairly lengthy reply (you can read all the comments and my replies here) admitting to this year’s mediocre results. However I also thought my reply was a good time to discuss the subject of luck when it comes to handicapping not just college football, but sports in general.
Luck and College Football Handicapping
I would first like to say that I am not trying to make any excuses for any of TSE handicappers, some of our picks this season have flat out sucked.
But what I would like to discuss/point out, is that no matter how good of a college football handicapper one is, there is still a lot of luck involved in picking winners, no matter how much we choose to admit it.
[box] You can have all the advantages in the world as a bettor but anyone who says luck doesn’t play some role in getting covers is being naive.– Todd Fuhrman (former oddsmaker at Caesars Palace)[/box]
The point that I was trying to make to Tom was that compared to last year, we are experiencing a lot more “bad beats” and our “luck” is flat out not as good as last season.
That is not an excuse, that is just a fact. And the fine line between winning and losing in what we do is sometimes unfortunately determined by luck. Good luck and bad luck.
The best example I can give is Trentmoney’s Week # 12 Picks. Trent went 2-4 (33.33%) when he could have just as easily ended up going 4-1-1 (80%). He experienced a MASSIVE bad beat with the Auburn Hail Mary. He experienced another bad beat with Texas Tech’s missed PAT and he experienced just plain bad luck with the West Virginia/Kansas total going over.
So the difference between a great week and a terrible week literally came down to three statistically improbable plays all going against him.
A Fine Line Between Winning & Losing
Right Angle Sports has been sports handicapping since 1996 and are considered by many experts to be the most successful, respected, and influential college sports handicapping service in the industry.
They hit 55% in college football this year and they express with pride (and rightfully so) that they have a “56% win rate last 2,000+ picks.”
Breakeven for a sports handicapper betting into -110 lines is 52.38%. So we’re talking about 3.62% being the difference between losing and being the “most successful, respected, and influential college sports handicapping service in the industry.”
That’s 3 to 4 games per 100 wagers. Last year our 5 Premium handicappers went 237-171 (58.10%). That is freaking epic. But it also involved a lot of good luck. The kind of luck we are not experiencing this season.
This year the 5 of us are currently 144-137 (51.25%), literally 3 1/2 games below the Mendoza line (breakeven).
That puts our record over the past two seasons at 381-308 (55.30%), and with a sample size of nearly 700 picks the odds of us just being lucky are less than 7%.
[box] =1-BINOMDIST(381-1,689,110/210,1) = 6.74%
– As always, please let me know if these numbers are incorrect[/box]
The point I was trying to make to Tom was that most people do not realize the amount of “luck” that is involved in what we all do.
Perceived Edge
As our reader from England Michael Heanue has continually pointed out in the comments section, TSE is not providing any pot of gold, inside information or guarantees. What we are providing is a lot of hard work, great college football handicapping information, analysis and insight, and unfortunately no matter how much time and effort we put into a selection, the ONLY thing that does is “offer” you guys and ourselves a “perceived” edge.
And even if that perceived edge was in fact an actual edge …… which NO ONE knows what their actual edge is for sure, they’re just guessing ….. we’re still talking about a 2%, 3% or at best a 4% edge. So you’re still going to lose 44%-46% of the time and unfortunately those losses (and wins) are not going to be distributed in a perfect 45/55 split.
The distribution is going to be all over the place over 10′s and 100′s of bets. The real test of how good a handicapper, or group of handicappers truly is, is how they perform over a large sample size. And that is why I am confident that our win rate will be in the 54%-56% range over 1,000′s & 1,000′s of wagers.
However, as we are experiencing at this moment, there is going to be ebb and flow with a lot of winning & losing streaks in between. That is why money management is so important.
Curse of the Tout
Tom also made the following comment a few weeks ago:
[box] “it reminds me of someone in a forum having a good year and then the next you cant find him because he went tout and everyone knows what happens when you go tout based on one good year. im not saying you guys did that it just reminds me of that.”[/box]My first reaction to this comment was that I hope everyone does not view TSE cappers as “touts” and/or the site as a tout site. I believe we offer a lot more than just college football picks, and it was and still is our goal and objective to bring a lot more value to everyone’s Premium Subscription than just picks.
However, I also believe Tom brings up a very good point. A point that GoSooners and I have discussed on several occasions. It’s real easy to throw games up in a thread on a public forum, but it is an entirely different ball game when you are doing it for your readers and subscribers that are paying you for your expertise, knowledge and experience.
Obviously we have not been able to escape this phenomenon. However, I can guarantee that we will continue to provide as much great college football handicapping information and analysis as we possibly can. And it is my belief that our win rate will be in the 54%-56% range over 1,000′s & 1,000′s of wagers.
And with all of your help I believe we can continue towards making The Saturday Edge the best college football handicapping community on the Internet.
So please, let us know the good, the bad and the ugly of what we have done this year. And let us know your thoughts, ideas and suggestions on how we can improve the site for next season ……….. besides of course the obvious …. MORE WINNERS!
MAXIMIZE YOUR EDGE
