Revealing

Barrie sent me an email with details of another baseball system. He wrote:

...Also here is another one which again I can't support with stats, perhaps you can?

Again it concerns losing home teams but this time teams that have been embarrassed by a defeat by three or more runs and are playing the same team still at home in the next game, the theory is they will seek revenge and so should be backed but avoid weak teams by only betting if they are favourites. This is claimed to have shown a profit on both the money line and the run line for the last two seasons, your view would be appreciated and whether you put this on your blog for your other reader is up to you, I'm not sure systems being published makes much difference, maybe punters don't have the resolve to stick with it!.

I did take a look at the numbers on this, and whoever is claiming "to have shown a profit on both the money line and the run line for the last two seasons" is indeed absolutely correct. The 2014 and 2015 seasons would have made a total profit (Straight Up and Run Line) of exactly 110 points from 1,150 bets, an ROI% of 9.57%, which is very impressive.

No one should get too carried away over a couple of seasons though, and if we go back three seasons the profits and ROI% drop to 44.19 points and 2.65% respectively.

Last four seasons, and we're down to 4.56 points and an ROI% of 0.002%. Last five and we're in the red, so the likelihood is that this system has just been lucky of late.

I went back 10 years (actually 9 on the Run Line, as those stats for 2006 aren't available), and here are the numbers in full:

Playing the Run Line was more profitable than the Money Line in 7 of the 9 seasons, and that ROI% of 2.45% is quite respectable from 2,632 bets.

Anyway, thanks Barrie for the input, and the logical constraint to improve the SG3 system has been sent as requested.

A couple of spin-off thoughts from this post, the first being Barrie's suggestion that "I'm not sure systems being published makes much difference, maybe punters don't have the resolve to stick with it!". I tend to agree with this thinking. There are certainly some disciplined individuals around who do their research and eke out slow but steady profits in a rather boring manner, but most people are looking to get rich quick from gambling, and it doesn't usually work that way.

The Secret Betting Club's Peter Ling sent out an email the other day which contained this paragraph:

It’s fair to say the record is OK with only a 5.2% ROI and 156% ROC (AKA betting bank growth) over 2,400 bets. Certainly it isn’t the flashiest of services, yet does appeal to some due to the steady profits made, consistency and professionalism.

OK?  "Does appeal to some"? Good god people, is it just me who thinks that an ROI% of 5.2% over 2,400 bets is a little bit more than OK? If those returns are actually attainable, that is quite astonishing.

That the sport in question is horse racing just makes such numbers even more incredible, but it's that the service is described in such negative terms that I find so revealing.

This idea that betting is about being 'flashy' is surely one big reason why sports betting is still very much the bastard child of financial betting - I mean investing.

Daily25's Steve is in his sixth year of investing and sports, and his numbers (taken from his blog) are currently:

1.58% is fairly close to the current 1.71% I have for my Systematic bets, but I'd be happy with 1.58% after five years with them!

My old friend James had an interesting observation somewhat related to the topic of publishing systems on his blog last week. In his "Do Something Weird To Win A Bet" post, he wrote:

If you share ideas then those ideas will lose their value through being arbitraged away. By that I mean any strategy that has a positive edge will see that edge lost as money, from other traders with the same idea, moves the price to where there is no edge.

After many years of profitability, that may finally have happened to the Bundeslayga selections, which with just eight rounds remaining, this weekend dipped into the red after all four lay selections won.