Submitted by rsteel on
As regular readers of my grapevine have heard before sports handicapping is so much more than number crunching to spit out value. When you analyze the box scores the stats the current form of teams constantly ask yourself:
What is real an emerging pattern that will likely continue? Conversely what is not real and is a pattern that will regress to the mean?
Bettors make the big mistake of believing these patterns will continue because it is the easy lazy way of thinking. Something to grab onto a security blanket to place a bet. Avoid what we refer to in the industry as regency bias. Avoid letting short term small sample sizes change your outlooks.
Use your mind your cognitive skills dig deeper understanding there are ebbs and flows to all teams every season.
That is why it is so common for bettors to get off to good early starts to each sports season. They have no pre-conceived notions no large database to draw from. However, by mid-season their success is gone. Why? Because they are using stale numbers from September that have no meaning as to what the team is like in December.
Focus on your decision-making process of finding value not the final score. Similar to poker if you played the hand correctly but lost the hand it is one hand someone got lucky so be it. Luck comes and goes it is fleeting skill does not. That is why successful sports bettors have such a high degree of humility. It is not about volume or the size of your bets or continually patting yourself on the back as to how smarter you are than anyone else.
We tend to give ourselves too much credit when we win and too much blame when we lose. More importantly enjoy the process make the smart bets (notice I did not say winning bets) and profits long term will follow.