Written By @Hookslide23
It was bound to happen eventually, right? As the famous Winston Churchill quote goes, “you can’t play jump rope while drunk without eventually falling down, and don’t you dare quote me on that.”* Yes, I got shut out this past week. Three good matchups, three solid bets, and zero winners to show for it.
*Obviously, this is a joke, and Churchill didn’t really didn’t say that. Abraham Lincoln did.
I’m still in the black and profitable on the season, but I’m only up two betting positions. I’ll need to pick up another winning weekend, or I’m going into the red. That’s how this business goes, though, so we’ve got to stay focused on the long game. Game by game results aren’t important, really. Week by week, there will be ups and downs, but I’m only concerned with what the ledger looks like at the end of the season. I know that’s a tough pill to swallow, and everyone wants to hit the big score, or chase the hot ‘capper on Twitter, but it’s about the process (until your Sixers are above .500, Mr. Embiid, I’m taking that slogan).
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Which brings me to the topic du jour (literally, “topic in the soup”): what’s your end game? This is important, because your ultimate goal will dictate your betting strategy. There are basically two ways to approach NFL betting:
1) Get in, win big, then get out fast
2) Grind away and make consistent profits long-term.
A lot of people try the first approach, hoping to quickly land a big payday and walk away. If you’re going that route, your best bet is to put money down on the most unlikely underdogs and cross your fingers.
Hey, it’s a legitimate strategy, even if it’s a very, very bad one that sports books like BetOnline.AG would love its bettors to try. It’s a highly volatile approach and it’s very much like playing the slot machines. You’re going to lose a lot of spins before you land one, but you’re just trying to stick around long enough to hit that mega-jackpot (that likely never comes).
The results swing wildly from one end of the spectrum to the other. If you had bet every NFL team in 2017 that was paying at least +300 on the money line, you would be up +13 bets, and that’s great! Who wouldn’t want that? Had you followed that exact blueprint in 2016, you would have finished the season down -19 positions. Your wildly improbable 2017 success wouldn’t even cover your 2016 losses.
What if we raise that minimum payout to +500 or better? Believe it or not, restricting yourself to higher payouts also means you’re playing against longer odds, which means you don’t make as much money. Playing the 500-or-better strategy in 2017 would yield +6 positions at this point in the season, and that same strategy in 2016 would have left you down -9 bets. You’re still in the red overall, but…
Playing “hit-and-run” like this is certainly an adrenaline rush, and if that’s all you’re after, have at it. Hope you hit a string of wins early in the process, and cash out, because this strategy can put you in the hole quickly.
I like a more consistent strategy that pays off in the long run, and a method just about every successful bettor employs.
It’s not super flashy, this thing I’m doing. The teams I’m betting have at least 47-50% true odds of winning, so the payouts are never going to be ridiculously high. I’ll win three, lose two, make a small profit, and do it all over again next week. That’s the grind, you see, the slow but steady steps in the right direction.
There will be weeks like this week, where I don’t win a single game. And there will also be weeks where I sweep the board and win every single game.
So for now, I lick my wounds and get ready for Week 8 with a little help from this NFL Podcast. I’ll stay focused on the end game, stick to my grind-em-out strategy, and let the process (see, I did it again?) work itself out.
