After a prolonged absence, I've decided that my web presence needed to be pumped back up to a healthier level. All I needed to do was to figure out how to accomplish that feat. After months passed and countless man-hours were spent in the think tank brainstorming, scheming, plotting, and pondering thousands of ideas for the blog reformat project, my people still came up with zero good solutions to the problem at hand.
Who needs a new idea anyway? Take something that is proven, and copy it. Original ideas don't exist anymore, not really. Those ideas that seem new are just copied from something else that is good and probably tweaked just a bit to seem new, but it's really just another form of the same thing.
Example 1: There is an event that will have one of two outcomes. Let people choose between the two outcomes with the promise of a prize. To be eligible for the prize, let people give you something of value that is equal to the promised prize, plus ten percent. After the event reaches one of the two outcomes, return everything plus the prize to people with a correct outcome choice. Keep everything you collected from the people with an incorrect outcome choice. As long as the value collected from either side does not exceed 52.38% of the total value collected, you will have made a gain in your collection. There is one more thing. You can manipulate which outcome is more likely to be chosen simply by adjusting the odds of the outcomes. That way, you can make sure the value of one side stays under 52.38%, thus ensuring you make gains on every outcome you offer to people. It sounds complicated and it is, to the people choosing between outcomes of events. It isn't really that complicated for you, since you are creating a win-win scenario for yourself on every event.
The last paragraph is describing how sports gambling works in the most basic terms.
Event = Any sporting event
Choosing an outcome = placing a bet on a sporting event
Prize = dollar value of payout to correct bets
Something of value equal to the prize plus ten percent = dollar value of bet
Organizations who take bets (from now on known as the house) rarely lose money on bets because they set it up that way. The best scenario for the house leaves them with zero risk (i.e., the value of bets place on each side is split 52.38% to 47.62% or less when using the above bet/payout ratio, which is: Bet $110, win $100. $210 total payout). The house wins nothing on a 52.38% to 47.62% split and loses money on anything higher. As the split gets closer to 50/50, the house makes more money. If bets are split 50/50, the house pays the winners 100% of their money back (50% of the pot), plus their payout, which is 45.45% of the pot (part of the losing side's money). That is a total payout of 95.45%, which leaves the house its cut of 4.55% of all money bet. That may not seem like much, but considering the risk is zero as long as the house keeps the money bet on either side relatively equal, it's free cash. Take $1 million in bets, keep it 50/50 for both sides, net $45.5K. It's lucrative.
Example 2: I don't want to come up with a vague way to describe Fantasy Sports (so I'm not going to), but Fantasy Sports is example 2 of something that is good. By "good," I mean it attracts people to participate. I'm still not convinced it is actually good and have contemplated quitting fantasy sports altogether, many, many times.
Put examples 1 and 2 together, give them a little tweak, and you get the phenomenon that has completely taken over television advertising and happens to be a billion dollar industry: Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) (AKA Draft Kings, Fan Duel, etc.) Two good things put together, tweaked to seem new, but actually is still a form of the same thing. My point is made. New ideas are for the birds!
Please don't try and tell me that DFS is not gambling because it is "skill-based." I'm already not listening. Sports gambling is skill-based too, but it's still freakin' gambling. The people with the skill in either scenario are few and far between. These people also have unlimited information available to them, and even more likely, unlimited funds relative to the typical degenerates who end up losing their house or fingers because they are actually just GAMBLING.
If you are putting money down on an outcome which you have no control over to try and win money, that's gambling. Plain and simple. Playing normal fantasy sports is and always has been gambling anyways. Typically it involves a lot less money, but it's still gambling. Nobody is out there playing fantasy sports for the thrill of victory or pride. If you are, then you are an idiot, or a better man than I. I'm not convinced which one.
There are people with a very particular set of skills that allow them to win money "gambling." Basically they are stealing money from your average joe gambler who thinks they might just WIN A MILLION DOLLARS on a $25 investment. (Sidebar: Hmmmm, that sounds familiar.....oh yeah, it's called the lottery.) Let's call the guys with the skills, Sharps. There are Sharps in both worlds (sports gambling and DFS). The Sharps decrease your chances of winning down to lottery-type odds.
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| This is what I imagine a sharp to look like. |
I used to be one of those guys who thought I could win a significant amount of money on sports betting. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I never won any bets! John Q. Gambler will probably win quite a few bets too! The point is, if you continue long enough and you aren't a sharp, you are going to lose. I carried on betting regularly for just under a year. I wagered as little as $4 on parlays and as much as $67 on straight bets. All in all, I put just under $5K on the line. How much did I have to show for it? A whopping $171.57 (Yes it is exactly that much, I tracked it in a spreadsheet). That's mostly (only) because I put $10 on the Dallas Mavericks to win the NBA title at 20/1. So for all the agony and stress that my gambling gave me, I decided it wasn't quite worth it any more.
Also, I will never do DFS. I think it's the one of the dumbest things you can do gambling. I can't wait for it to actually be considered GAMBLING (it will be soon), because maybe then I won't have to hear all the advertisements. At least with sports gambling, I knew who my opponent was, the house, odds makers that have lots of data to set the line or spread in order to favor themselves. In DFS you are going up against thousands of people in the contests and probably hundreds of them have greater informational and financial resources than me. I think there are head to head DFS match ups, but that seems even more like straight up gambling to me. All of this is leading up to my original point of this post, where I'm going to start gambling on sports again, sort of. I don't know how I got this far off track. I guess I needed to explain it to myself (literally, since zero people are going to read this).
I'm not about to jump back in head first. I'm going to drop a toe in, see how it feels, tease the water a bit. Maybe I won't even get all the way in. Maybe I'll decide the waters aren't inviting enough. As I'm writing this, I remember why I went on a long-winded rant about new ideas and combining good ideas with tweaks! It's because I'm going to copy someone else's good idea as an experiment. ESPN talent Scott Van Pelt has given out 5 bets (he calls the segment WINNERS) each week (for entertainment purposes only) for as long as I have listened to his radio program which has shifted over to his television program. As he has oft said, "I don't want to win 'em all, just 53%." Not sure on the actual percentage he uses in the quote, but he is alluding to what I mentioned before, if you win 52.38% of your bets with the typical bet/payout ratio of $110/100, you won't lose money (of course at that percent you won't win either, but in gambling - a push is a win and if you aren't losing, you're winning).
For the last two years, SVP has done just a little bit better (than 53%) against the spread (against the number), which inclined me to listen up just a little bit, because of his strategy. He does more research than I do (probably), but he basically looks for the worst spreads available and bets all underdogs. The reasoning behind it is very interesting and it has to do with the Sharps. Lines that are stinky (as he calls them) usually show a team that is perceived by public opinion to be much better than their opponent, but favored by a smaller margin. The explanation for that is simple, the Sharps have enough money on one side to keep the line from moving up, even with all the money John Q. Gambler and the public are putting on it. That's it. So if you are good at identifying those lines that stink, you are essentially getting the Sharps knowledge with little effort and all the reward! That's how SVP has picked slightly better than 60% against the number for two years straight. Now don't get crazy, at that rate, you are only winning $14.45 for every $100 you wager, but that's why it's not profitable unless you have tons of money to invest. It's quite remarkable.
I'm going to give out my own winners and see how I do (for entertainment purposes only). SVP gives out 5 each week, so I might limit it to that after a few weeks, but I'm not starting out that way. Have to tweak it a little, right?
+17 @ 
LOSS
+4 @ 
WIN
+2.5 @ Auburn WIN
+10.5 @ 
WIN
+29.5 @ 
LOSS
+1 @ 
WIN
