Keep with it, keep with it, keep with it. Heading into my 2nd year of “professional” sports gambling I was ready to get to that next tier. I felt great about my Super Bowl pick; I had a large number of units on them. Once I won that game, I’d be up to $500. Well, that didn’t quite work out like I expected. After that big loss, it was back to the drawing board.
Well, almost a month later, I made up for that Super Bowl loss, and then some. Heading into March, I finally made it to that $500 level. I was hot in the NBA up until the All Star break, and then caught a little fire on College Bball. I won a pretty decent size NHL bet in there too. It all adds up to the highest point in my Draft Kings account. I’m pretty proud of this. Now what?
Will be upping my unit size from $5 to $10. You know the second I do that I’m going to go on a losing streak, right? I still need to work on my system. I started taking some notes. I have my routine which starts the night before, checking the games in the NBA, NHL, and College Bball, at least I try to stick to that. Some days/nights, it’s not that easy. Things get busy at my day job, and ugh… I fall behind on everything else, including this here blog. I don’t like to take time during family time to do this, although when we’re vegging out, I’ll jump on and take a peek at the games. The first part of my “system” will be recording my “IL”, which stands for Initial Lean.
I have to start somewhere, and it might as well be there. In the NBA, I could have a lean on every game; for a while there, I did. And that’s OK, I think. It’s what will follow that IL that really matters. In the NHL and NCAAB, I won’t have an initial lean on most games; I don’t know the NHL as well as I know the NBA. There is no way I can know about all the 351 teams in Division I college basketball. I know the “big teams” from the “big conferences”. I know a little something something about hockey. So yeah, I will have some ILs coming from those two sports, but the NBA, yeah, pretty much every game I can give you my gut feel off the top of my head after looking at it for a minute. How do I get that gut feel?
This is really where the guts of the system will be; it’s still a work in progress, but involves recent matchups, recent success, the “spot”, revenge/motivation, homecourt advantage, injuries… it’s all part of it. There’s got to be more too. The more data the better. How you treat each piece of data is important too. How can I get all this data for each game? The first cut isn’t that bad; it’s going the next level down, and then the next level down, that will take time, time I don’t really have. So, can I survive on my IL after a review of the first cut of data? Well, that’s basically how I’ve been doing it so far, but I know I can be better… at least I think so. Getting to that 2nd and 3rd level are the keys to success.
For now, we’ll enjoy the milestone; we’ll keep at it. Following sports has always been a passion of mine; I’ve done it all along without betting on it, so… throwing a bit more time at it, throwing a little money at it, is the natural progression IMO. We’re marching on…
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