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In a nutshell:
"I doubled-up
today to press my winning streak; - now I have to double-up
tomorrow to get even."
- Anonymous
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Check these other pages:
The Best Way to Gamble
Something I Learned
from Sonny Reizner
Handicapping &
Common Sense
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Parlays & Profit
Order
Page
A Crash Course In
Vigorish
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/// Sample
newsletter
A very important
thing to know Much like investing in stocks, you can't expect to make money
every day at sports betting. Here's what you can expect.
Sports Betting Money Management
R.J. Miller sheds light on the business of sports betting!
Debunking the
Kelly criterion
If you think progressive betting schemes can win more than you deserve, buy a round-trip
ticket in advance
Test Your Sports
Betting IQ
Use these questions to check your "expert" friends
Key NFL
Pointspreads
Some pointspreads are much more important than
others
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///
A Crash Course In
Vigorish
...And it's NOT 4.55%
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///
Pro Gamblers
Reizner, McCune, Banker talk about their careers
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EMAIL FROM GAMBLERS
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(NOTE: "Chris" (below) is a friend whose opinions we
greatly respect. He's a professional-level handicapper. This email from
Chris was in response to our going 0-7, including losing with the NBA Suns
-6.5 over the Mavericks, and also losing the 'OVER' 222.5 on that same game
when the Suns won the game, 114-108...)
J. R. : I have given my plays out to a few people (and) it is
really funny. I have a few winning days and they start calling at 8:00 am
wanting to know who I have. I have a shitty day, call them with the plays
and they tell me they're gonna take a few days off. My favorite is when I
bet against a power house team or pitcher, lose, and get to hear what an
idiot I am, and how only a total fucking clueless loser would play against
so and so. And this is from people who I call with my plays daily for
nothing. LOL.....It is unbelievable how most people just can't grasp the
reality that going 0-fer however many bets you have is going to happen, -
period.
When I saw the end of the (Suns-Mavericks') basketball game all I could
think is I feel for anyone on the wrong ends of that. That was really brutal
where you get sick just seeing it. Being a gambler, it always brings back
the tough loss feelings from your past, never the lucky wins when you see
something like that. - Chris
Chris: Thanks for the moral support. Wednesday will
forever be known as Black Wednesday around here. We also had 5 MLB plays and
every one of our teams managed to lose their game by one run...Four of them
lost in the 9th inning and the 5th lost in the bottom of the 8th inning. As
I said in the newsletter the next day, I checked under my car to make sure I
hadn't run over a nun. - J. R.
///
Hi, I took a
look at your site a couple of hours ago and I want to tell you that I'd
really love to trade links with you. I think your site has some really good
stuff related to my site's topic of astrology and would be a great resource
for my visitors.
In fact, I went ahead and added your site to my Astrology HQ Resource
Directory at
http://www.astrology-hq.com
Is that OK with you?
Can I ask a favor? Will you give me a link back on your site? I'd
really appreciate you returning the favor.
Thanks and feel free to drop me an email if you'd like to chat more
about this. Best wishes, Steve
Steve:
Thank you for your interest in our material, but astrology is all bunk.
I don't mean to make you mad, but considering the evil resulting from
supernatural nonsense, I think it's time people with a triple-digit I.Q.
stopped coddling superstition in all its forms. - J. R.
///
Hello, I always enjoy visiting your site and wondered if you will have
something about horse racing on the site. Thank you. - Joseph
Joseph:
Thank you for interest. We're not likely to feature horse racing in the
foreseeable future. Unlike other countries, here in the United States
betting on horses is done using a pari-mutuel system. Elsewhere in the world
you can make money betting on horses, but that's just generally not the case
in the United States. In other parts of the world, the odds you get at the
time you place your bet are the odds you get; - similar to a sports bet. If
the odds are, say, 10-to-1, when you place your bet in Europe, you get paid
10-to-1 if you win, no matter what the odds might be by the time the race
begins. Here in the U. S. that's not the case. In this country, whatever
odds are posted when you make your bet can change dramatically before the
race begins, even after you've laid your bet. In the United States all the
bets are grouped together and as much as 24-25+ percent of the total bets
are taken off the top for taxes and commissions. This 'vigorish' on horse
bets can be as much as 5 times as high as the vigorish on sports bets. Hell,
it's 3 times as high as the vigorish on a Big Wheel game in Las Vegas. In
other words, unless you're in Europe or elsewhere outside the U. S., we
advise you to avoid horse betting altogether. The fact is, after 30+ years
in this business we have never met a rich horse bettor. - J. R.
///
Hi J.R.- I've been a
long times fan of yours and you are truly one of the few I respect in this
industry. I recently re-read
"How Professional
Gamblers Beat The Pro Football Pointspread."
And I had a question. After looking at your website, I noticed that you
recommend a different unit size than what you have in the book. In the
book, you are a fan of using 2.2% of your bank roll and you say that you
feel this is quite conservative. On your website you suggest using 1-2% and
nothing more. Can you comment on this? Many thanks- I hope you are doing
well. Best wishes, John
John:
Two percent is okay if you have another source of income, but if sports
betting is your only income 2% is too aggressive; - too dangerous. Most
full-timers I know use roughly 1 percent. When you're doing it part-time the
main idea is to make money; when you're doing it full time the main idea is
to avoid going broke. - J. R.
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On your website
you say that a professional gambler plays with 1% of his bankroll. Does that
mean for sports only or is that in all aspects (of) gambling?
In the game of blackjack, would a gambler still use 1% of his bankroll?
Playing with a bankroll of 20,000 dollars it seems to me that 1% 200.00
dollars seems to be high considering that you could go through 100 hands of
blackjack in a short amount of time risking your entire bankroll.
Also I play on several off shore sportsbooks to compare lines. On these
websites they have casinos (online) that offer blackjack. Do you feel that
these card games are legit or do you think they may be rigged a bit. It
seems impossible to win.
On those Internet blackjack games you're not
playing cards at all. You're playing against a computer program. The
computer programs are cleverly built to resemble "real" blackjack, but in
actuality they are entirely different. Those times when you manage to make a
few bucks are built into the program to keep you coming back. The cold hard
truth is this: Whether it's a man, a beast, or a computer, if it's backed up
against a wall ready to take on the world, don't fuck with it.
Against real blackjack at a casino with real cards, the common practice
is to use 1% of your bankroll only when the deck is solidly in your favor.
Call it plus 6 or better when using the Hi-Lo method of counting. When the
deck is not in your favor the idea is to bet nothing at all, or as little as
possible. When you must bet when the deck is not in your favor, such as on
the come-out, most pros use no more than one-fifth or one-fourth of one
percent of their bankroll. - J. R.
///
...I have just
started playing a little baseball, in addition to my NFL expertise thanks to
your (football) book.
I only play the elite pitchers. Same dollar amount each play - every
time - Randy Johnson, Kerry Wood, Dontrelle Willis, etc...
In placing the wager I have the option to play the spread which is
always +1.5 or -1.5 or the moneyline. What makes the most sense to bet?
The spread, the moneyline, the "action", or "just pitchers" when betting
baseball?
Thanks again for your knowledge, your excellent site, and your dialog.
- Tuck
Thank you for the nice words.
In answer to your questions, I am afraid there is no single definitive
answer to any of them. In fact, in the first month or so of the MLB season
we have more bets against the "good" pitchers than we do on them. That's
because the general betting public tends to overrate last year's best
pitchers.
Choosing runlines v. moneylines is also somewhat subjective. Usually,
we decide whether or not to use the runline by judging two things: The size
of the differences in our key stats between the teams and whether or not we
expect the game to be high scoring. High-scoring games are more likely to
produce wider margins of victory than low-scoring games. We probably use
runlines in Colorado home games more than in any other stadium because that
stadium produces such ridiculously high scores.
I would suggest you pay more attention to teams' batting records,
relative to who's pitching. Some pitchers look very good because they've
been pitching against bad bats; others look only so-so because they've been
facing excellent bats. For example, we made a lot of money betting against
the Yankees this year because nobody noticed they were struggling at the
plate. (They have recently turned things around, however, and are doing well
at the plate.) We pay close attention to hits, walks and strikeouts as a
function of the batter, as well as a function of the pitcher. - J. R.
///
Hello Mr. Miller, I have been following you for a couple of years now and
consider you to be the smartest man I know about sports gambling
(investing?). With the start of baseball season I am again hearing about a
system of betting streaks. It seems to pop up every year. This system calls
for betting on winning and losing streaks. Now, I have noticed from years of
data that winning and losing streaks are quite common for almost every team
and that there should be a way to capitalize on them. So I come to you...
Is there a profitable way to take advantage of winning and losing
streaks? Do you know gamblers who do use streaks to earn profits in
baseball? Or, are the same people who talk about winning/losing streaks the
snake oil salesmen of professional gambling?
Great work, simply wonderful what you do. Thanks, Tony
I am afraid your suspicions are correct. 'Streak'
betting simply doesn't work, - but at the same time it can appear to be
"proven" to work if you apply it to last year's results.
By examining previous results it can be shown that one or more teams
did not lose more than a specific number of games in a row. For example, it
might be discovered that Team A has not lost more than 5 games in a row
since 1999. The inference is, then, that Team A will not lose more than 5
games in a row in the future.
It can then be shown, of course, that all one had to do last year to
make money was to bet on Team A after they lost 4 games in a row, and to
double up on them if they lost the 5th game in a row.
It sounds great, but it is not sound reasoning. A few years ago a
friend of mine noticed that the Atlanta Braves hadn't lost more than 5 games
in a row for - if memory serves me - a couple years. He decided to bet on
the Braves after they'd lost 2 games in a row, and to double up if they lost
their 3rd game, then re-double if they lost their 4th game, etc. Sure
enough, the Braves lost 6 or 7 games in a row and sunk my friend's
bankroll.
Any 'streak' system is a classic example of misguided reasoning that
appears to make sense; - however, such systems presume that future events
are influenced by past events, and while certain past statistics can,
indeed, help us predict the outcome of future games, 'streak' systems use
past events on a level with the roulette player who thinks red is 'due'
because black has come up 6 times in a row.
We wish that were true, but it isn't. Upcoming bets have no memory of
that kind of past results. - J. R. Miller
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Congratulations! You should frame yesterday's (news)letter and hang it on
the wall. It was a Masterpiece!... - Fred J.
Thanks for taking the time to write. We went 4-0
yesterday and pretty much "wrote the script" for all 4 plays. - J. R.
Miller
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