Finished my book. If you’ve been reading along, you know I’m pretty much gambling on games every day; nothing major, but yeah, Action Jackson over here. It’s been fun, mainly for a couple reasons. I haven’t lost any money. Yes, lately I’ve been in somewhat of a holding pattern… losing on the NFL, winning on the other sports, hovering… and in turn, secondly, and more importantly, it hasn’t effected my day to day attitude. Although, on one hand, yes, I am consumed by it, it’s honestly just a bit more of following sports, like I already do. On the other hand, I’m still doing everything I have to do. To get really good at this, I need more time… don’t we all. I thought this book “Gambler” by Billy Waters would be an excellent read considering my current spot; I was right. I burned right through this book, starting with our trip to Florida and finishing a couple days ago. It was excellent.
He has an insane story; I guess you have to have something along those lines to get a book that folks are interested in. Of course, I was most interested in getting betting tips from “the Michael Jordan of sports gambling”; there were chapters on that, which I will need to reread. His something from nothing story is a lot of fun to read. His run ins with the mafia in Vegas, including the Joe Pesci character from Casino, were really good. His relationship with Phil Mickelson, and finding out how big of a degenerate Phil is… wow. I liked all the GOOD stuff he’s done with his money, especially out there in Vegas. I got choked up reading about Opportunity Village… His relationships with other Vegas guys, like the bookmakers, the poker players, the casino owners… he is intertwined with the history of Vegas. His work ethic, the amount of folks he has working for him, his experience that is golden… to win money every year for like 30 years in this line of work… nothing short of amazing. It’s funny… when you start winning like this, people start looking at you… accusing you of doing something illegal, of cheating the system… how he had to hide the fact that it was him gambling on all these games to allow the casinos to take the action, because if you win too much the casinos will cut you off… it was all kind of nuts. I guess when you’re betting millions of dollars per week, AND WINNING!!! Understanding that Vegas wasn’t built on winners, his story and success is truly one of a kind.
So you’re saying there’s a chance… yeah, well, I found out (duh!) that I have a lot of work to do. There are things that I’m proud of in my current run. I have improved on the discipline, and in turn, doing pretty well on money management, but that’s about it. The biggest missing part of my game right now is true handicapping. I already knew this, but… I need a system. A system that will help me rank teams and players, updating them with week to week performance, injuries, etc; this system will help me predict my own lines, and when my system is fine tuned, when the line that comes out for the game, and it doesn’t match mine, I can pounce. So, yeah, lot of work to do. A couple other things that I’ve slowly been learning, but he really pounds on, is the importance of a half a point and the timing of a wager. I’ve lost plenty of games by a half a point; I’ve lost games because I either bet too early or too late on a game. He also talks about how key the field and weather is; two factors that I don’t always consider. He talks about the key numbers that a game moves through. I understand this, but don’t necessarily place enough importance. He talks about shopping around, getting the best price; I don’t do that at all today since I only have one account. Bottom line, if I really want to be successful at this, I need to put a lot more into it… Maybe more than I think… maybe less… but definitely work.
OK, that’s it for now. Part of this “work” is probably reading some more from the experts. Time to look for the next book to read; time to start developing my power rankings across the sports. Time to quit my day job… haha. With the win in the Bears game this week, plus some success this week, I made November my 5th winning month out of 6… let’s keep plodding along, in the right direction, while adding in some work… let’s do this!
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