If you’re doing most of your own work, streaks matter more than most realize, both good ones and bad ones. When we’re running really well it’s easy to get over confident and take short cuts. If we’re running poorly, it can turn into a place where we don’t trust the work and over think the problem. Both are equally harmful.
Streak are just that. Streaks. Variance. And yes, luck. I had a bet on the Yankees and Cardinals “over” 8 on Friday night, and the game was 2-2 at the end of one inning. We know it ended 4-3, but in the interim the teams combined to go 1-16 with runners in scoring position – and leaving a man on third with less than two outs on three occasions. We can’t predict every at bat, and that game could have ended with 12 runs.
Should we change the process because of a few of those losses? Of course not, because there are an equal number of times we win games late, in extra innings, on wild pitches, and seeing-eye hits that are once a season things. That’s the case in every sport, every day of the week. Just as in football, we can have a bet won for most of the game, only to lose in the final seconds to a prevent defense that has no effect on the game, except for our bet, which Brent Musberger alluded to most every game he called.
The point is, let’s not get to high or too low regardless, because those things ARE going to happen. We’ve got to win 52.38% of our bets against the -110 to make money and anyone that’s done a reality check knows the percentage of people that actually do that is very small. That of course is a great topic for an article very soon on just how the tout business works, and by definition I am one.
Streaks matter when you’re handicapping. Right now the Toronto Blue Jays and the Cleveland Indians are the two most costly teams to have bet on this season, something that would have been unexpected. The books won’t adjust right away because they’re both very public teams. We cannot just assume they’ll play to their capability (maybe they already are!) and start betting on them under the “due” theory. Keep fading them UNTIL they start winning.
Conversely, the Reds and the Diamondbacks are two of the most profitable teams this season, and because they’re both expected to be bottom dwellers the books will still offer great prices on them. Keep betting them UNTIL they lose (or maybe they won’t).
Momentum is a great thing to ride, both in our own handicapping and in how the teams are performing on the field. Sometimes we just cannot over think the problem.
