The biggest decision a handicapper has to make is what game to wager on. The second biggest decision a handicapper has to make is how much to wager on that game. In a nutshell, these two decisions will ultimately define you as a handicapper, marking the difference between a winner and a loser.
The beauty of this business is the bottom-line nature of it; it doesn’t matter how noteworthy your write-up is on a game, or how confident you sound, or how interesting your view is on a particular matchup. The only thing that matters in this business is what your P/L sheet looks like at the end of the season.
The essence of how you end up with either a “P” or an “L” in that all important column is defined by, and only by, these two decisions. So in reality, you should not consider yourself as part of the wagering business, but as part of the risk management business!
Betting choices are nearly endless
On any given weekend in the fall, there are at least 50 lined college football games to wager on. When you consider that each of these has a side and a total, right off the bat there are 100 bets available to you (on 200 choices). Throw in 1st half lines and that makes 200 bets available to you.
Most books these days not only have team totals (the amount each team will score), but for the game as well as the first half. That ups the total to 400 bets at the start of the weekend (on 800 choices) that are available to you to wager on. And that doesn’t even include 1st quarter lines or 2nd half lines!
So as you can see, the need for risk management is crucial to survive in this industry. And unless you’ve conquered the task of playing every wager on the board on a given weekend, you’ve used certain risk management principles already.
Whether it be only playing sides and not totals (that’s a start…), or only playing the Top 25 games on TV (a little better…), or focusing on just one conference and only playing those teams (now we’re getting somewhere..!!), the first step in Risk Management is to establish some sort of filter to your game selection.
Introduction to game filters
There are countless filters that can be used in determining game selection, and as long as you study and research their results and can find a positive expectancy from these filters, they can be used to fill out your betting card for the week.
I like to use the three basic tenets of handicapping – Matchups, Line Value, and Situation – to see if any games fall into these categories. There are different ways to determine these, and it sometimes can be more “art” than “science”, but using these core concepts will not only trim a lot of fat (and vig..!!) off of your betting account, but will also lead you to a more structured wagering lifestyle.
In the rest of this seriesI will attempt to develop a foundation for filtering games to wager on (what to bet), and then decipher a proper unit system to maximize profit potential (how much to bet).
MAXIMIZE YOUR EDGE
