Exhibition Games

West Ham United sent Burnley packing easily enough to complete a nice weekend for my FA Cup picks, (three for three) and with Real Sociedad beating Mallorca, Football Elite went four for six this weekend, to complete one of the 'better' weekends of the season.

Mug (hopefully not his given name) had a comment on my Shoot Out Logic post saying:

tonight the same logic we meet in NBA all star game

which I think means that in an exhibition game, go for the outsider. This strategy is profitable for pre-season games in many sports, especially NFL, where the price seems to assume a competitive game, whereas these games seldom feature many starters, at least not for long. Winning is not everything in these matches - no one cares - so there seems to me no reason to back the favourite. In the NBA All-Star game, no defence is played, and the outcome is a crap shoot. How the West getting 1.5 were available at 2.22 was very strange, but despite thinking this was great value, these are not games to go too crazy on. The Totals Line of 268.5 shows just how seriously the players take this game.

Jake over at The Bankbuilder blog wrote an excellent post which I'm unashamedly copying here (in part so that I know where to find it in the future):

J.P. McManus "Racing is a great leveller. The day you think you have mastered the game, you will be made to pay for it the following day.What you must do is build up a bank of experience that allows you to reduce and eliminate as far as possible the factors that make for foolish betting. In a word, you act to strict ground rules always and you endeavour to become an investor rather than a pure addictive gambler..."

Very strong paragraph. What does this mean to me?

(1) Betting bank...An amount suitable for the inevitable losing runs.
(2) Plan..What bets to make and how to bet them in order to maximize your gains and minimize your losses.
(3) Loss acceptance...Ability to accept a loss and make the same wager the next positive betting opportunity.
(4) Never willingly settle for less then acceptable value.
(5) Patience to wait for and invest only on the advantage spots...and the rule is sometimes you wait a long time.
(6) The ability and willingness to work hard and gain an edge on the competition ie. the bookmakers or the betting public.
(7) Playing to win and not playing to lose. There's a big difference. This means passing winners (below fair odds), avoiding guilty throw-away bets, races where there are too many variables for a confident wager etc.
(8) Confidence in making your own decisions and avoiding the influence of so-called experts and 'smart money'.
(9) Emotional control. Avoiding emotionally connecting to wins and losses and their sequences.
(10) The positive belief that you can win and once you seriously believe this you'll have all the confidence to make the decisions which in turn will make you successful.