Sports betting : Correct Number of Games to bet per Week :

[Kramer]

Sports Handicapping
Play the Correct Number of Teams
you should play the correct number of teams when making selections.

By making the wrong number of plays, mathematically,
you could make it harder to have a winning week.
The correct number of plays to make are one,
five, seven, nine, eleven, fifteen and twenty-one.

Play five games and you need three winners and two losers to make a profit.
This is 60 percent winners.
And 60 percent winners is considered to be the standard
for measuring a winning and losing season.
Seven games is 4-3 or 57 percent winners.
Nine games is 5-4 or 55 percent winners.
Eleven games is 6-5 or 54 percent winners.
Fifteen games is 8-7 or 53 percent winners and
twenty-one games is 11-10 or 52.38 winners needed to make a profit.
The wrong number of plays to make is two, three or four games.
Play only two games and you need 2-0 or 100 percent winners to make a profit.
Play three games and you need 2-1 or 66 percent winners just to make
.9 percent of a profit.
Play four games and you need 3-1 or 75 percent winners to make a profit.
The theory is that you should be able to pick at least half of the games
you bet on correctly or 50 percent winners just like flipping a coin
for heads or tails, no matter what you do.
If you play the correct number of plays
Then you can go over the 50-50 mark by one game and win
at 4-3 or 5-4 and so on and then win a small percentage for that week,
instead of just breaking even.

[The Judge]

The correct number of games to wager on is every one of them that you can find which you have identified as you, the player having a clear advantage.

Not one game more or less.

[Kramer]

judge , if you play two games , you need to win both
to make a profit
go 1-1 you lose vig on the loss , so you are constantly losing money each week...

What are the odds of winning 2 of 2 games?
you can lose both,
win one ,
win both
so the odds are 1/3 ...

there's no "clear" advantage to me ,
perhaps to you,
just mathematics at work...

betting on two games mean you are betting on two outcomes
of which neither game has nothing to do with the other
( Say you bet Chargers to beat Oakland and
Eagles to Beat Redskins)

[The Judge]

Kramer, I understand the math behind the article you posted (which may be your own thoughts) but it fails to address circumstances when a player wins (or loses) more wagers than the medians listed. Regardless, my point is that if you can identify value in ANY game, you should be betting it. Furthermore, a single day's wagers should never be any gambler's benchmark so the point of the article is moot; at least in my opinion.

[Kramer]

Judge , i respect your opinion of the
utmost highest
among posters here .

i think i see our difference...

you are talking a single day ,
where as i'm talking a single "week"...

Gambling deserves a "LONG TERM "plan,
like a war where you lose battles
but hopefully win the long term war ...

Kind of like when every one sees the DJIA down 40%,
but don't remember it made 100% over last 10 years ...

[The Judge]

I just realized that my previous post may have lacked some of the politeness that I intended. My apologies Kramer, as I have always appreciated your "out of the box" approach and insight into sports gambling.

[BigdaddyQH]

Kramers post has a lot of merit. He was explaining the correctnumberofwagers to make per WEEK, not per day. He based his post on statistical information and simple math. The Judge claims that value is the biggest criteria. For any specific wager, he is correct, but for a weeks worth of wagering, Kramer simply stated the number of games that you should be looking for. If you opt for 5, then you find the 5 best values for that week.

[Kramer]

Good Read On Difference between Winning and Losing
(not much)

According to Money Magazine (April 2008), had you invested
in an S&P 500 index fund in August 1997 and sat tight for 10 years,
you’d have racked up an 88% return.
Had you missed just the 20 best days in the market over that period,
you would have had a 20% loss!
Think about what that means.
Out of 3,650 days, 20 were big winners and the rest,
in aggregate, was losers!
Stock returns come in bursts.
The same is true in sports betting
(especially when picking underdogs in moneyline sports like baseball and hockey).
Streaks happen. Winning streaks happen.
And, as much as we like to deny their existence,
losing streaks happen.
Even in a season where you hit an unbelievable 60% winners
(as good as it ever gets), there will be losing days,
losing weeks and maybe even a losing month.


Over the past 75 years stocks have returned around 10% per year.
Now what about sports betting? ROI is calculated simply by taking
the net winnings or losses and dividing by the amount risked (invested).

So, if you put up $110 to win $100 and win the bet, your ROI
on that single bet is 90.9% ($100 / $110).
So, if you have 100% win rate, your ROI is 90.9% - not too shabby!

But, as we know, a more realistic expected win rate over
the course of a season is probably in the 50%-60% range.

With a 10% vigorish, you need to hit 52.38% to break exactly even –
an ROI of 0%.

Here’s the ROI at various win rates assuming a 110 risk to win 100:
50%: -4.55%
52%: -0.73%
54%: 3.09%56%: 6.91%
58%: 10.73%
60%: 14.55%
62%: 18.36%
64%: 22.18%
66%: 26.00%
68%: 29.82%
70%: 33.64%
Now, let's quickly talk about timeframe here.
When we refer to the stock market returning 10%, that means 10% per year -
or 5% for six months. Since most sporting event seasons are about six months,
our benchmark, to do as well as the stockmarket, is really just a 5% return.

So if we use stocks as a benchmark, you need to hit around 55%
to match the benchmark return for stocks.

A 57.6% winning percentage nets you exactly a 10% return -
or double what you could expect from the stock market. Not bad!

You probably detected a pattern there as well. Basically,
for every 1% increase in win percentage, you can expect a 1.9% increase in ROI.


Consistent day-after-day winning just does not happen.
Read that over again if you must.
The point is, you need to expect losing streaks.
And, you can't get too bent out of shape when they happen.
If you expect them, you won't get too upset.
Getting upset only makes things worse as that emotion forces you to do the wrong thing (chase or stop). You need to stay the course, again, shooting for 55%-60% winners over the long haul.
What's the difference between winning and losing? Not much.

To further demonstrate how hard it is to "win" consistently, check out these probabilities, presented so you can get a feel of what winning feels like.
The best way to describe what winning feels like? It feels like losing!

You are a long-term 55% handicapper, yet somehow it doesn't feel like it is supposed to feel.
Here is your answer:

Let's say you average between 3-5 plays a day, let's say on average 4 plays per day. If you are a 55% gambler making 4 plays per day this is your statistical expectation:

WINS LOSSES PROBABILITY
4 0 9.15%
3 1 29.95%
2 2 36.75%
1 3 20.05%
0 4 4.10%

So, what does this tell us? It tells us that the chance you'll have a winning day,
after the juice/vig is considered is less than 50/50!
To have a winning day in this scenario, you need to win 3 or 4 out of 4.
The chance of that is happening 39.1% (29.95% + 9.15%).
So, over 60% of the time you - a winning gambler - will be losing money!

Now you can see where the problem lies. A gambler goes 2-2 on his well capped plays, but after a 2-2, or 1-3, or the rare 0-4 decides he needs to make money for the day, and plays an ill-advised game. Or, he bets too much to try to catch up. Unconsciously he has just reduced his chances of being a 55% capper, even though he is!

[BigdaddyQH]

Excellent read. And this informatin is just on straight wagers. Throw in teasers and parlays and you see that your winning percentage has to be even higher because the vig on teasers and parlays is higher than 10%. The same holds true for "prop" wagers.