Official Year-to-Date Results Thread

[MMA_scientist]

UFC 109 losing 7.95 units on Rolles and Nate put me in a huge hole to start the year.

I lost 11u on 109. You just need to bet more fights.

[SPX]

I lost 11u on 109. You just need to bet more fights.

I done been telling him this!

The problem with always trying to only bet on "safe" fights, or locks, is that once you do lose one or two you're way deep in the hole.

I was actually pretty surprised to learn that I've bet 45 individual fights this year. I had no idea it was that many.

[Mr. IWS]

I lost 11u on 109. You just need to bet more fights.

I done been telling him this!

It worked out pretty good for me the last few years. Ill get it back....Hopefully.

[SPX]

It worked out pretty good for me the last few years. Ill get it back....Hopefully.

I'm sure you'll get it back.

My biggest concern is not that you won't be profitable . . . but that you're minimizing your profitability by limiting the bets you make. But we have fundamentally different philosophies when it comes to betting. I see every fight as an opportunity to make money and take a more scattershot approach to things.

Of course, if you're cool with the way you do things then that's fine. It's not like you want to make a living out of it.

[MMA_scientist]

I bet more fights than Zak, but still only like to bet on fights where I feel there are so few variables that you can nail down a winner with pretty good accuracy.

I think I have bet on 23 fights in 2010. I won 36.86 units on 18 wins... then lost 18.5 on 5 losses. If it hadn't been for 109, I would be killing it. Of course, I barely won on 110, and broke even on UFC 1 on Versus. I had a horrible dry spell.

[Mr. IWS]

but still only like to bet on fights where I feel there are so few variables that you can nail down a winner with pretty good accuracy.

Im with ya on that. But lately, with the lines being what they are, I really dont feel too comfortable laying big numbers like I did Saturday. I never layed anything over like -400/-450 before, but Im kind of getting desperate for some winners.

[SPX]

Im with ya on that. But lately, with the lines being what they are, I really dont feel too comfortable laying big numbers like I did Saturday. I never layed anything over like -400/-450 before, but Im kind of getting desperate for some winners.

I think this is a big reason that I bet more fights. I really don't even like to bet more than 2 units on a single fight, much less 4 or more.

Almost all of my bets are 3 units or less, and typically less. I like to be able to survive a loss and not have to go on suicide watch.

[Luke]

I dont care if I bet 10 or 100 fights in a year I bet what I like .Last year I only bet 18 fights but won 14 of them and profited over 1000 dollars .Thats plenty enough for me. If I can make 10 units a year I'll be more than happy

[Luke]

Uh oh. . .

[SPX]

I dont care if I bet 10 or 100 fights in a year I bet what I like .Last year I only bet 18 fights but won 14 of them and profited over 1000 dollars .Thats plenty enough for me. If I can make 10 units a year I'll be more than happy

I'm more like Scientist in that I want to build this up into something that I can live off of, or at least rely on as a SIGNIFICANT side income (at least $10K a year).

The dream is to make $50K a year or more. The biggest problem is the relative infrequency of events. I mean, basketball fans have it good during the season. There are games every fucking night! But for MMA you're lucky if there are 4 or 5 events in a month.

[MMA_scientist]

The dream is to make $50K a year or more. The biggest problem is the relative infrequency of events. I mean, basketball fans have it good during the season. There are games every fucking night! But for MMA you're lucky if there are 4 or 5 events in a month.

Don't let the dream die.

[Luke]

if I go 14-4 every year and make 1000 why cant I over 5 years get to the point I'm betting 1k a fight instead of 100?
If I bet 1000k per fight then I'd make 10k in a year. The only reason I dont bet more fights is because I'm the only one that cares for boxing around here so theres no one to discuss it with.

I dont think I'll ever be the person to bet 100 fights in a year because I dont like the up and down swings .If I just picked and choose my fights I bet I should hit 3 out of every 4 all year

[Luke]

Another thing .We better start getting use to taking dogs because the line on favorites is skyrocketing lately imo

[SPX]

Another thing .We better start getting use to taking dogs because the line on favorites is skyrocketing lately imo

You know I'm already on that bandwagon and I'm +2.49u for the year on dog bets.

I think the key for dogs is proper bet sizing and really making educated plays. I mean, if you think a fight's a toss up and you can get +150 on either fighter then that's the definition of value. But I have too many times heard people say "this fight's too close to call." Well if it's too close to call and you can get a decent dog price then it's worth a bet, in my opinion.

I really had no idea who was going to win between Mir and Carwin, but at +150, I thought it was worth a full unit bet (pretty much my max for an underdog).

You also have to get used to losing more fights than usual. I mean, my dog record is 6-11 but I'm still ahead. You definitely can't do that with favorites.

[Luke]

I bet alot of dogs last year and I think I only lost one. I wont bet a dog if I think its 50/50 I have to think the dogs is going to win or I'm just wasting my money imo

[SPX]

I bet alot of dogs last year and I think I only lost one. I wont bet a dog if I think its 50/50 I have to think the dogs is going to win or I'm just wasting my money imo

I don't see how it's wasting money.

Let's say you have two fights that are ~50/50 and on each fight the underdog is +150.

You bet one unit on the first fight and lose and you are -1u
You bet one unit on the second fight and win and you are +.5u

How is that wasting your money? I mean, if in fact they're truly 50/50 then over the long run you can expect to win about as many as you lose, but you're getting paid out 3:2 when you win.

It's like getting a blackjack!

[Luke]

Because 50/50 is always 50/50 just because you lost fight A that was 50/50 doesnt mean you'll win fight B that is 50/50. You could lose 10 fights in a row that were 50/50 because one fight has nothing to do with the next

Its just like the roulette table just becaus Red hit this spin doesnt mean black is anymore likely to hit next spin. One fight has nothing to do with your chances of hitting the next fight.

[SPX]

Because 50/50 is always 50/50 just because you lost fight A that was 50/50 doesnt mean you'll win fight B that is 50/50. You could lose 10 fights in a row that were 50/50 because one fight has nothing to do with the next

Its just like the roulette table just becaus Red hit this spin doesnt mean black is anymore likely to hit next spin. One fight has nothing to do with your chances of hitting the next fight.

That's why I said, "if in fact they're truly 50/50 then over the long run you can expect to win about as many as you lose."

Let me ask you this. If you have a sufficient bankroll to withstand the swings and someone offered to flip a nickel 1,000 times, and every time it lands on heads you give them $1, and everytime it lands on tails they'd give you $1.50, would you play it? Sure you would, or at least I hope so!

One thing you'll learn about me--and I'm not sure how much I've talked about this around here--is that a lot of my gambling ideas and philosophies come from casino games, especially blackjack. I used to be obsessed with blackjack. I wanted to be a pro blackjack player and maybe even put together a card counting team and go the whole 9 yards. The problem is that I'm just not good enough with numbers to do the calculations--even though it's simple math--fast enough in a casino setting to maintain the count and correlate my bets.

But one thing I picked up from blackjack is the idea that you should almost always bet when you have an advantage. And a +150 line in a 50/50 fight is a huge advantage! Another thing is the idea of volume. A good card counter--while playing with an advantage in a plus count--has a mathematical expectation of winning money. He may not win every hand, and he may even lose a string of hands, but he knows that it's best to play every single hand he can in which he has the edge. He may go through swings in his bankroll, but in the "long run"--usually defined in blackjack as hundreds of thousands of hands or more--he will come out ahead. It's a mathematical fact, not opinion, not luck.

Of course, betting on fights, we don't have hundreds of thousands of fights. But what will happen in the long run usually approximates the sort of behavior you'll see in the short run. So I want to place bets on EVERY SINGLE line that's off.

[Svino]

The fact that all betting events are independent is one of the few advantages of sports betting over other types of investing, where (say) a market crash can make all your stocks drop at once. When events are correlated, your variance is raised, which is bad. It would suck if we had to worry about a "combat slump", where most of the fights on a card were lost by both fighters.

I think for many people (self included), the biggest obstacle to living off gambling is bankroll size. Basically, even if you can make 20% ROI per year at low risk (which is crazy good), you need a $250,000 bankroll to make $50k per year. It's not quite that high, since you can put some of that nest egg in safer (say +5% ROI) investments and gamble with 100k or so, but then there are bet limits and other problems of scale.

As for my own year-to-date numbers: 23 bets so far, +7U. Profit / (Cash Wagered) ratio of 13.6%. I'm doing much better on favorites than dogs because of a disastrous UFC-Versus card, which was my only losing night.

Luckiest win: Lawler
Biggest facepalms: Vera, Stevenson
Most profitable plays: Carwin, C. Miller

[Luke]

Because 50/50 is always 50/50 just because you lost fight A that was 50/50 doesnt mean you'll win fight B that is 50/50. You could lose 10 fights in a row that were 50/50 because one fight has nothing to do with the next

Its just like the roulette table just becaus Red hit this spin doesnt mean black is anymore likely to hit next spin. One fight has nothing to do with your chances of hitting the next fight.

That's why I said, "if in fact they're truly 50/50 then over the long run you can expect to win about as many as you lose."

Let me ask you this. If you have a sufficient bankroll to withstand the swings and someone offered to flip a nickel 1,000 times, and every time it lands on heads you give them $1, and everytime it lands on tails they'd give you $1.50, would you play it? Sure you would, or at least I hope so!

One thing you'll learn about me--and I'm not sure how much I've talked about this around here--is that a lot of my gambling ideas and philosophies come from casino games, especially blackjack. I used to be obsessed with blackjack. I wanted to be a pro blackjack player and maybe even put together a card counting team and go the whole 9 yards. The problem is that I'm just not good enough with numbers to do the calculations--even though it's simple math--fast enough in a casino setting to maintain the count and correlate my bets.

But one thing I picked up from blackjack is the idea that you should almost always bet when you have an advantage. And a +150 line in a 50/50 fight is a huge advantage! Another thing is the idea of volume. A good card counter--while playing with an advantage in a plus count--has a mathematical expectation of winning money. He may not win every hand, and he may even lose a string of hands, but he knows that it's best to play every single hand he can in which he has the edge. He may go through swings in his bankroll, but in the "long run"--usually defined in blackjack as hundreds of thousands of hands or more--he will come out ahead. It's a mathematical fact, not opinion, not luck.

Of course, betting on fights, we don't have hundreds of thousands of fights. But what will happen in the long run usually approximates the sort of behavior you'll see in the short run. So I want to place bets on EVERY SINGLE line that's off.

The only thing I'm good at is numbers.When I was 19-21 I counted cards in BJ at Casino Windsor.I'd go up there once a money and try to win 500 then I'd leave .I won way way more than I ever lost. But its very hard to do.Sportsbetting is 10x easier than counting cards.

I'm not changing how I bet .I'm never going to bet a fight thats 50/50 but I will bet a fight thats 55/45 .I have to think my guy is going to win for me to make a bet plain and simple.

You say you bet Carwin because you thought it was 50/50 ,well really Carwin should have been a big favorite because I see him winning that fight 80% of the time.

The way I look at it if I hit 65-75% of my bets ,have a real low average juice then someday I will feel confortable betting 5k a play.Now if I'm hitting 55-60% of my bets and going on swings I dont think I could ever bet big bucks.

Thats just me though,everyone is differnt