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Strategy, Commentary, Ramblings & Wagering
Good morning!
It’s not the topic I am here to discuss today, but before I get to that topic I just have to note that preseason football content went a PERFECT 9-0 on angles reported across TSP Live, Telegram and Twitter! It amounted to an average of three angles each week of the preseason, and culminated last night with the DCR Selection on Houston UN37.5! Hopefully just a taste of the season ahead…so be sure not to miss ANY of the regular season action!
The FOOTBALL SEASON and SEPTEMBER subscriptions for TSP Live and the All-Inclusive are OPEN FOR SIGNUP!!! The “All Inclusive” package includes TSP Live and the Financial Market [stocks/options] Analytics subscriptions. You can purchase any of the subscriptions by visiting https://TSP.Live/tsp-live! For further details on the Financial Market Analytics subscription, visit https://TSP.Live/fma. I appreciate your support which makes everything you see here under The Sharp Plays umbrella possible! Here’s to a GREAT season ahead!
I figured one last TSP Live Insider in the recent barrage of TSP Live Insiders the past week was important because I want to cover a question I will get asked in various ways throughout the season. So, perhaps if I put it in a TSP Live Insider I can just refer people to this message along the way when the question is asked. What is the question? It will come with various wording, but the general idea will be to ask me how I wager and how I use all the TSP content (Twitter, Telegram, TSP Live, TSP Newsletter, TSP Audio/Video, etc.) in my wagering.
It’s a topic I have discussed in the past, but of course not everyone reads everything I put out. So, given I should have a lot of attention on the Monday TSP Live Insider leading into the first full week of NCAAF regular season action, I figured I would touch on it today. Most people asking this question want me to give them a rigid plan…”Bet KB Consensus, TSP Live Radar 74+, Oddsmaker’s Report, DCR Selections, etc….every day…every time they arise.” Meaning every selection that fits one of those classifications…bet it blindly all the time! Unfortunately, for those looking for this sort of answer, that’s not what I do. It’s not that such a strategy would not work based on past performance, but past performance is just that…in the past. When I am making a decision in the present, I want to assess a number of factors that exist in the present before risking my money. Gambling is never straight forward nor mechanical. If it were we would all bet the same way and print money. The gambling environment is ever changing. Who has momentum right now, sharps or the public (TSP Index)? How has the content or the specific angle type that I am assessing been performing? Is it hot…and possibly due for regression or is it ice cold and I might want to take a shot on some progression? How do I feel today…do I want action or am I too busy to concentrate on wager assessment and I would be best suited by passing? Do I like the wager myself? Beyond what sharp money is doing, does the bet feel right to me? There is a laundry list of questions that go through my head each day when I am debating wagers with my best friend…me.
So, I’ll give you an example, just from yesterday of how I looked at the action and wagered…and yesterday was hardly a unique snapshot of my wagering activities or assessment style. Not to mention my method of wager assessment yesterday, which involved a car wash visit and then a red light moment of reflection was not exactly scientific.
Yesterday, I started the day just with 1 unit on the DCR Selection of Houston UN37.5 in preseason NFL plus the tiny DCR rollover action. That was it…the DCR was published, the bots monitored the action for me, and I went about about my day. Then about 30 minutes later I decided to take a parlay of San Diego and Pittsburgh in MLB, Houston UN37.5, Villareal +240 in soccer for 0.3 units (pizza money)…it ended up losing. I then took another parlay when Villareal was down of just Pittsburgh, San Francisco and San Diego for more pizza money…it lost too. As the day went along, 4-5 hours after the DCR and my initial wagering and pizza parlay chasers, the public fade on San Francisco for Sunday Night Baseball, an angle (fading the public…especially medium and heavy public bets on Sunday Night Baseball) that has been good, not just this season, but since the late 90’s when I was making SNB markets at WSEX. So, to say fading material public action on SNB is a good long-term angle is a bit of an understatement. Anyway, the bet just kept calling me…knocking on my head here and there throughout the day. While I was waiting at a red light I opened my lines app on my phone and checked current market prices on San Francisco… hmmmmm….price has only gone up since the DCR this morning. The public fade is looking juicy. The light turned green, I put my phone down and the chaos of all my thoughts on a variety of topics popped back into my head and I traveled down the road. Then as pulled into my destination to get my vehicle washed, with nothing to do but watch the soothing suds splashing against the windows, this inner peace moment prompted me to say…you know…I am going to grab San Francisco +110 for the 1st 5 innings. The specific wager (1st 5 Innings) was nowhere in the content. Yes, San Francisco was fading medium public action on Atlanta, but there was no discussion on specifically taking 1st 5. The reasoning behind this thought by my subconscious was likely that I could see San Fran getting an early lead at home under the ESPN lights, and then finding a way to blow it late. As the wash concluded in a hurricane of generated wind, and I pulled out of that wet and peaceful tunnel to get the interior done, while waiting and listening to the symphony of vacuum sounds off to the side, I went about reading an article on the Washington Post about a woman who was dying at age 49…very sad and beautiful at the same time because of how she began embracing the important things in life. It’s worth a read if you have some time today (published yesterday). When the detailing was done I got back in my vehicle and began driving home. A couple stops at lights brought my mind back to wagering and as I pulled up to an intersection with an Olive Garden at it (not sure how that plays into things) the gambling advisor in my brain said…dude…what if San Fran loses the 1st 5 and wins the game…you should probably have action to the full game too and the even better SF price (+122) than you got on the 1st 5 (+110). So, I quickly logged into my book and placed a 1 unit wager on San Francisco for the game too. There’s the green light, time to go!
What a moron…2 units tied to San Francisco over Atlanta…there was a good chance I would be down 2 units by the end of Sunday evening. Not to mention, how could I ever pass this potentially awful idea along to everyone reading this right now…which includes a not so small minority of maniacs who actually shit their pants when they go 0-2 on a given day. “How is it possible to lose money in gambling at all and at any time…let alone a MASSIVE 2 units?!?!?!?!?! AHHHHHHHH….THE HUMANITY!!!!!!” Once again, many of you think I am joking. I will say the same thing I said in yesterday’s TSP Live Insider…YOU HAVE NO IDEA THE PEOPLE OUT THERE AND THE MESSAGES I GET ALMOST DAILY from the lunatic fringe that follows The Sharp Plays. Yes, there are haters who just make up bullshit and post here and there how they are getting killed on the content…yet the continue to subscribe…you make sense of that…I’ll avoid that rabbit hole. Anyway, the haters are not the ones I am talking about. The haters know they are full shit of and are at least conscious of it, they just like hating. Sadly, those haters get more respect from me than the crybabies who have an 0-2 day or lost 3 to 5 units and think something must be broken….they should never, EVER lose that much in a given period of time on gambling. How does one possibly address messages of this type?!?! I don’t have the time nor the energy if that’s the direction you are coming at things. Even when I was starting out in gambling in the early to mid 90’s, new to the business and holding on to the dream of living the life of a professional gambler, I always accepted that an 0-5 or 0-10 run was possible…at any time…and it’s just the nature of the beast. If you want to go 10-0 on a hot run, you have to be accepting of 0-10 on a cold run. Anyway…I digress!
In the end San Fran came out to a nice lead, and then blew it in the Top of the 5th…but then thankfully grabbed 4 runs in the bottom of the 5th to get the 1st 5 innings win…and then held that lead to the end…winning the game…a nice 2-0 result. No, it doesn’t always work out this perfectly for me…it just did yesterday. I’ll take it! So, if you are complaining I did not share this incredible car wash and red light epiphany with you, it’s easy to be annoyed when you know after the fact that it went 2-0…again it could have gone 0-2 very easily as well.
So, that’s how I used the content yesterday. There was absolutely no form or mechanical plan. Yes I did bet the DCR somewhat automatically because it is graded and NFL preseason had been running PERFECT at 8-0 up to that point…now 9-0. However, San Francisco ended up carrying more weight (2 units between two separate wagers) than even the DCR. Yet San Francisco was nothing more than a public fade play that caught my eye…and kept poking me in the back of my head. Other non-graded plays caught my eye too and I put them in parlays which lost. The content was provided to me though The Sharp Plays “sports information buffet” of things to choose from, and kept San Francisco in the back of my head until, for really no apparent reason other than the thought arising during a wash, I decided to make a move on San Francisco. My gut just said it was worth it…and it was. My gut does pretty good, but not always right by any means. Why not tell everyone what I was betting? Roughly 92% of the bettors reading this today could not handle my action or the ups and downs of it. Not to mention, I barely had the time to toss the bets in myself, let alone setup an alert each time I placed a wager just during my ride to and from getting the vehicle washed.
Not to mention that in sharing my bets I would get to deal with people completely beside themselves messaging in panic and agony when my bets go 0-3 for -3 units (happens all the time). To me, that’s a normal sized losing day…to some that is an occurrence that should never, ever, ever happen in sports gambling…EVER!!!!!!! How do you deal with such low betting intelligence maniacs? I prefer just not to get involved. Not to mention, as I say ALL the time. There are days the content kills it and I lose because of what I chose to bet. There are also days like yesterday where I outperform the TSP content because of my betting choices. TSP content just had the DCR Selection as the rated play for the day, yet I had a nice outcome on Sunday Night Baseball. Information that was provided to everyone else in the DCR and to which I stated with regard to the TSP Index in yesterday’s DCR that “I would be open to NFL and MLB…but not firing like a maniac. I would keep my risk low.” To me 2 units is “low risk”. Medium risk in a given day is 4-6 units and heavy right is 7+ units. Again, to some 2 units of action is heavy. It’s all relative and you have to decide where your comfort lies.
For those looking for a mechanical plan for wagering, it is very tough to give it to you because my wagering plan each day is incredibly fluid. There are some occasions when there is a lot of good content in the DCR, good rated content…and I decide to take a pass. Sometimes I miss a big day because of my pass, sometimes I miss a losing day. Why do I pass? It could be 100 different reasons. Sometimes just because I had to get the DCR published and head to an appointment, then forgot to bet! Other times I just want to take a day off and do nothing to clear my head. Some days I pass or bet very light and the content goes 10-0. I celebrate the success, but not because it meant anything to my bankroll…just because I want the content to be successful every day. Some days the content goes 11-3 and I bet the three losers…or it goes 3-11 and I got lucky to grab the three winners. It all shakes out in the wash. There is no perfect and mechanical way to play the content day in and day out. I have yet to find it for myself.
However, because the content as a whole is positive year over year and provides a good return, I am able to put myself on the winning side just a little more than the losing side…and because of that I achieve a nice profit each year. I don’t bet all the winners and I don’t bet all the losers…but I get a nice cross section to make the time and effort worth my while and then some in my wagers! Parlays and rollovers are big in my strategy and provide very nice leveraged returns too.
Not a whole lot in the way of early sharp buying. We have BOSTON -135 in MLB. Over in US Open action, which is very messy so FYI, we have minor sharp activity on the men’s side in BORGES +108 (going on now…currently an even match so perhaps watch in-play) and SHIMABUKURO +113. The women’s side is very messy. Tomorrow gives a little bit of a cleaner read, but volume is lower and I don’t want to make any assumptions because those reads could easily be wiped out with just a little counter action.
That’ll do it for me today. I hope you have a wonderful day and good luck in your action!