The Graduate

Of the 156 NBA teams that have trailed a best-of-7 series 0:3, and not a single one has been able to rally and win four straight. After last night's Game 3 loss at home to the Boston Celtics, the Dallas Mavericks find themselves the 157th team in this unenviable position. They are currently slight favourites to win game 4, but past history suggests the value is on the Celtics with teams in this position (3:0 ahead and small road 'dogs) 9-4-1 ATS.

In the NHL Finals, the Florida Panthers won the first two games of their series at home to the Edmonton Oilers, and game three is tonight. Historically Western teams returning home as favourites after losing the opening two road games of a Final series are undervalued with seven wins out of eight (small sample size of course, as is always the case with playoffs).

I'll post a review of these two sports once their seasons end, which could be very soon in the case of the NBA with Game 4 on Friday.

The adjustment to retirement continues, and apologies in advance if I waffle on about this too much but it is a significant milestone in life.

I'm sure some of you will have seen it already, but Roger Federer's commencement address at Dartmouth a few days ago is worth checking out. 

I know the word is “retire.” “Roger Federer retired from tennis.” Retired... The word is awful.

You wouldn’t say you retired from college, right? Sounds terrible.

Like you, I’ve finished one big thing and I’m moving on to the next.

Like you, I’m figuring out what that is.

Graduates, I feel your pain.

I know what it’s like when people keep asking what your plan is for the rest of your life.

They ask me: “Now that you are not a professional tennis player, what do you do?”

I don’t know… and it’s OK not to know.

So what do I do with my time?

That's a very good question! Training for the Ben Nevis hike next month is ongoing, although I had another fall last Friday on a local hill which wasn't too clever. No broken legs this time though, but I left some skin at the scene and my coccyx doesn't feel great. Sit ups are on hold for now. Fortunately it doesn't seem to affect me when cycling, and I've been out of the road bike a couple of times a week getting in some miles. 

There was another part of Federer's speech which has received some attention, and that was where he contrasts the percentage of matches he won during his career (almost 80% of his 1,526 games) with the percentage of points he won in those games - "only 54%."

"Only"... Such a small word, but it's a similar situation in sports betting. If you can hit winners betting the dime line at just 51.23%, then with compounding you can be very profitable over time. Of course, no one wants to get rich slowly, so very few people actually have the mindset to achieve this, but as I wrote in 2019 here:

Given that my grandmother would be expected to pick winners at a rate of around 50%, and she's been dead for over 30 years, this didn't seem to be a hugely impossible task.

Most systems can be fairly easily improved and just by eliminating a couple of losing propositions from every 100 bets, you're in profit. 

 

I updated my profile a few days ago. Since day one of this blog, my profile ended with my saying that "retirement wasn't too far off and that anything made from sports investing would bring that day forward." 

Well, it didn't play out like that - it almost made my Chipotle stock split prediction look timely. In March of 2008 I turned 51, so while it was good that I was thinking about, and planning for, retirement, in hindsight the "not too far off" prediction wasn't too accurate. Maybe at that time I was still thinking early retirement was a goal, but as my career progressed it became clear that retirement wasn't the goal I once thought it was. 

Besides, profits from sports investing exceeded my net salary for a couple of years, but didn't result in any change to my retirement date, and work became less like work in recent years - working from home with a little travel was very comfortable and what was there to retire from, or more importantly, to retire to? However, the clock was, still is, ticking, and it's certainly possible to work too long and limit the good years of retirement when you are still physically active and able to travel before the body and / or brain start to give you problems. 

With my redundancy payment now in the bank, my spreadsheet has been updated and projections for the next few years are in place. The markets have been kind to me so far, with Tesla on fire the past couple of days pending the outcome of the vote regarding Elon Musk's pay package. Per the latter:

With the vote still in progress, this statement had better be accurate or there will be another sizeable fine coming.