I’m always investigating new and upcoming handicappers. You never know… I might learn a new trick that I can use in my arsenal that will lead to a few more percentage points of wins.
But… more often than not, these guys that are pretending to know what they are talking about, exclaiming themselves experts at handicapping and come up with systems that are questionable at best and at the worst are just scams to take even more of your profits from you.
Case in point…. the last person… apparently well advertised on the net… I’ll refer to him as RA … (some of you might already know who I’m talking about). He sends me an email with a very convincing letter about how he has spent years… coming up with a system that will make money betting on sports.
Ok… I’m interested… I already do make money betting on sports… but if this guy can teach me just one good idea that I haven’t thought of… it will be worth the fee that he charges…
I started following him half way through the NFL season and his system does work… I know it’s the same one that I use.. and his picks are pretty good… not great, but for someone that doesn’t have the time or resources to do their own work, he offers some decent picks. NBA is about the same. I have to wonder sometimes where he gets his picks though … while some are right on.. there are others that are way out in left field.
Now comes baseball… he says it’s his best sport. All of a sudden he abandons his system and starts on something completely different. I work the numbers and there is no way his MLB system could make any money unless he is extremely lucky with his picks and he favors the dogs.
Here is the stats for one month of MLB … May 20 through June 20 2010.
He made 81 picks. This is a little high in my opinion, but not too bad. Of the 81 picks 38 won and 43 lost. This is awful… I could do better tossing a coin and to make matters worse with his system… or lack of one.. if you placed the bets just as he recommends and made the bets at 1,000 dollars each, by the end of the month you would have a net loss of $3,020.
Now, everyone can have a bad day and rarely even a bad week, but at the end of the month you should be able to show a profit. If I took a $3020 loss in one month making $1,000 dollar bets I would be out looking for a job, because I couldn’t survive doing that for long. Heck, even if I made 3,020 profit for that month, I would consider that to be one of my worst months.
RA is not the worst handicapper on the net, in fact I would say that he is probably one of the better ones that I have investigated, but you have to realize that most of these handicappers don’t actually bet their own picks, so they don’t always have a vested interest in doing their homework each and every day.
I’d recommend doing your own homework or find someone that actually makes money betting on sports to give or even sell you the picks they are going to bet and how they are going to bet them.
