The Curse Of Reality, And Goats

A good night for the UMPO System last night with ace pitcher Clayton Kershaw coming off the bench and recording his first ever save for the Los Angeles Dodgers. The 4-3 score meant a push for the Overs, so for the first time this year, both post-season systems are in the green:

The MLB Playoffs are now down to four teams, with the ALCS (American League Championship Series) starting tonight in Cleveland (Indians v Toronto Blue Jays) and the NLCS (National League Championship Series) starts on Saturday in Chicago (Cubs v Los Angeles Dodgers). The series winners play for the World Series, with many eyes on the Cubs who look to put to rest the Curse of the Billy Goat after a mere 108 years. 

After winning two of the first five World Series, the Cubs have lost in seven subsequent appearances, the last one in 1945. The Indians last won a World Series in 1948, the Dodgers in 1988, and the Blue Jays in 1993 so there's some fresh blood this year. 

There was also a Vanilla Thursday NFL game last night, but while the Unders came in supporting a theory that I have little confidence in, and even less money on, the Road Division System took a loss. 

James had a comment on yesterday's post:

Oh well, another one for Green All-Over's betting blog cemetery.

Your blog lists are piling up at the bottom of each section with blogs that have bitten the dust.

Tales of initial exuberance brought crashing down to Earth by the Gods of Mean Reversion.

Some people haven't been reading their Buchdahl.

Not a Buch by Mr Dahl but Squares & Sharps, Suckers & Sharks by Mr J. Buchdahl.

http://www.betfairprotrader.co.uk/2016/09/squares-sharps-suckers-sharks.html

The book James mentions (as do others by Joseph Buchdahl) has pride of place on my book shelf, and is well worth reading and re-reading, as is James' review of the book in the link above. 

Reading it will help you to understand that profitable betting is not easy. As James suggests, and as I myself have mentioned in the past, enthusiasm for blogging about your betting soon fades once the harsh realities set in.

Few bloggers are as honest with themselves as Sammy, Betfair Tennis Trader, who concluded his blog with the epitaph:

This is most certainly the last post for this blog. I quit trading this late summer basically. Since about May the markets where not the same, at least for me something had changed. I don't know if the merger with Paddy Power had something to do with it but I noticed something after May, that the markets wasn't the same. For some this maybe haven't been a problem but I didn't find spots as I used to. My motivation for trading sports pretty much dried up as well. So I felt it was time to do something else.

Unfortunately the next paragraph opens with the words:

You might wonder what my next adventure is? I've decided to try to learn a new game. And that's the stock exchange game. I've been grinding the Stockholm exchange roughly the last 2 months. My goal is to be break even for the first 6 months and anything better is just a bonus. Its a totally different beast the stock exchange compared to the sports exchange. But it's a lot of fun and I'm learning a lot of new things. We will see how it goes. =)

While the goal of breaking even isn't unrealistic, if the intent is to make money by day-trading, I suspect he is in for a rude awakening. Some of you may remember the tale of my chemist friend who gave up a lucrative career to make a fortune day-trading from his bedroom. It turned out that his edge was trading in a bull market.
  
I see that a fair number of blogs in my blog roll haven't been updated in several months - not quite 108 years, but time for a clean up. On the other hand, if any of you have any recommendations for additional blogs to add, please let me know.