Retirement, Death, Anniversaries and NCAAB

It's been almost one month since my last update, and a lot has happened. The meeting in Phoenix I mentioned last month was delayed, I aged another year as did this blog, but most tragically of all one of my team at work passed away at the young age of 56. 

He'd booked a few days off work for a 'minor back surgery' and recovery, but he never made it out out of the anaesthetic. He went into liver failure, had some internal bleeding, extremely low blood pressure and passed away almost a week later. What made it even more tragic was that just two weeks prior to the surgery, his first grandchild had been born. 

All very sad, and one of those events that makes you reassess your life. When I heard from one of my Directors that he was having 'minor back surgery', I actually said to him that there was no such thing, thinking that he may have complications with his back, but never imagined the events that unfolded. 

With everything that was going on, I missed the February wrap-up and with the current month almost over, I'll combine the February and March summaries in a few days time. The blog turned 15 years old a couple of days ago, and I turned a little older than that. 

On April Fools Day three years ago, I wrote:

My trip to South Africa seems to have marked the end of an era and seems a long time ago now. I returned with a pretty firm retirement date of March 2021 in mind, but after a first quarter loss of 10.2% (a record) and a poor start to Q2, that date is looking unlikely. We'll see. One of the consequences of COVID-19 may well be an appreciation of what is really important in life, and while accumulating money is certainly important, it's only important to a point. It can't buy time.

As bad as March was, perspective is maintained by seeing that I am simply back to where I was last June, and last June I was pretty happy. In other words, things could always be a lot worse.

That 'firm retirement date' is still anything but. I had my annual review and while the percentage pay raise is fairly meaningless with my working days running out, the bonus, stock options and RSUs were of interest. As I've mentioned before, I'm in the rather enviable position of working from home most of the time, with 'working' consisting of a handful of Teams meetings with my afternoon calendar usually free by noon or early afternoon. The upside of walking away is minimal, but if / when they realise I don't do a lot and send me on my way with a severance package, I'll be quite happy. Speaking of walking, and the target of 2,023 miles in 2023 may need to be raised as I am already at 586 miles, putting those free afternoons to good use. 

First a little catching up to do, as while I reviewed the NFL's Small Road 'Dog System back in January, I don't believe I ever published the results of the similar College Football version.

Better late than never, and 'officially' we made a profit of 5.03 units (ROI 6.7% with a 41-34 record) but individual results will vary quite a lot in this sport with the matches available varying by sportsbook. The 'official' results are those that can be verified using the Killer Sports data. 

Over the past 18 seasons, the ROI is 9.2% in the recommended range with just two losing seasons, although two more would have been losers after accounting for the vig.

At the College level right now, all the focus is on 'March Madness', the end of season single elimination basketball tournament which is hugely popular. In recent years, Unders and the 'Dog have been the value bets with winning percentages of 55.3% and 53.6% respectively since 2016 although two years were lost due to the pandemic.

This season has seen that trend continue on the Totals with Unders hitting at a lovely 67%, but not so much joy for the 'Dogs with a 26-27-1 record. The tournament wraps up next weekend with the final on Monday 3rd April. Unfortunately my Arkansas Razorbacks were eliminated last night.