MONEY MANAGEMENT
To be a successful sports bettor, you need at least three things: good picks that have a decent chance of winning; a sufficiently large bankroll so you don’t play too little on any given pick; and just maybe (based on decades of our own experience), the most important factor is money management.
The GOAT of Sports Handicapping
Tom Brady is the GOAT in the NFL.
Dr. Bob Akmens & BASports.com are the GOAT in sports handicapping.
Here’s what you get when you search for
On Google…Google AI [Artificial Intelligence] gives you this answer, right at the top of the page.
Google’s $100 billion AI [Artificial Intelligence] program, created by their DeepMind Lab, analyzes all the content of billions of websites to come up with its answers to your search questions.
Any search engine’s regular search is “dumb” AI because it just spits out what’s on those websites it finds.
Google AI is now the gold-standard in search because it analyzes the raw data, just like a superhuman being might do, and comes up with the best answer that has the greatest relevance to the search term you asked.
We really are the GOAT…The Greatest Of All Time…in sports handicapping…and, that covers all the major sports…and that’s why the #1 trusted Internet brand, Google, tells you that fact.
We can’t tell you how many folks have been our customers over the decades who, after joining us, were given maybe 60-65% winners for an extended period of time…and then one day, they call or email or text with a “woe is me” story about how they’re tapped out.
And of course, we know exactly why they’re tapped out: because they got greedy. They weren’t used to winning like that. And frankly, they had no experience consistently winning like that, so one fateful moment, they thought they weren’t betting enough and they’re saying to themselves, “If I’d only been betting a lot more on each pick.” And then, suddenly, for whatever reason came in their head, they decide to bet their lungs on one given play.
Which loses. One play out of maybe hundreds that they’ve gotten, which is nothing special as a play. Because they’ve been told by us: either something is a play or it’s not a play. They’re all about equal. Period.
This is why we’re going to teach you how to avoid running out of money when you bet on sports.
The very first thing you need to do is this: establish what the size of your bankroll is. Let me explain this. If you don’t have a lot of money, and you really can’t afford to lose everything, you may have a set figure that you’ve decided that you can lose.
We’re going to throw in here a caution flag just like a ref throwing that flag on the playing field: never, ever bet all the money that you can’t afford to lose [which is fittingly called “scared money”]. Because the chances are extremely good you will lose it all. And you’re going to do that because you’re not going to think rationally when you start losing.
Now, if you’re like us, we don’t have a set bankroll because we have the ability to replace pretty much any money that we lose. We made our first million in the third year of this business [in today’s inflated money, that would be $3.5 mil], so these days we set up a figure that we use in our head for sports betting [which is a big figure], but let’s just say I could lose it all and I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.
Let’s say you start betting our picks with a $5000 bankroll.
First, we need to explain to you the difference between any one random pick we give out compared to any other pick: the short answer…virtually no difference.
That’s because our computer models work like computer code, which is either a zero or one. Or like a switch, on or off. It’s one or the other, so for our models it either is a pick that can be played…or it’s not a pick, and it shouldn’t be played.
Because we’ve done this for so many years, and we know some folks will always come to us and say, “Dr. Bob, I just want to play one game. What do you think is the best one?,” we’ve long since anticipated that question. When we have a set of plays, let’s say 3 baseball plays for that day, our team uses that unmatched computer between our ears to decide that one of those picks may be marginally better than the rest.
And on the report that you’ll get by email from us daily, that play will be listed first for that sport, and it will have a single [*] next to it, and we call that the Play-of-Day [P.O.D.] for that sport.
If you’re an All Sports pick customer getting a report with all the picks, in all the sports that day, there may be several Plays of Day on that report; for instance, 1 in NFL, 1 in NBA, and maybe 1 in NHL.
Because we actually have plans where we sell the nominal overall best play that day, of all the plays we come up with for that day, we would put two [**] next to the overall Play of Day.
Now, having said that, let’s talk about the mechanics of betting and how you allocate your funds.
Let’s go back to that $5000 starting bankroll. We suggest that you set up a fixed percentage of your bankroll that you’re going to bet on each and every play as you get them…and this is very important…without varying that fixed percentage from one play to any other.
Based on our own results in our long experience, were pretty comfortable with saying 3% of your total bankroll per play is reasonable & prudent.
A quick note about the [*] and [**] type-picks we just told you about. If you wish, but you don’t have to do this, you can bump up those picks, maybe to 20-30% greater than other plays. Understand what that means. It means maybe extending that fixed percentage to a max of 4%.
Not betting some insane amount of money of any given play – ever. There is no such thing as a “lock” in sports betting.
Now, in a money-line sport like baseball or hockey, we would suggest risking the money-line on the pick we give out X 3%.
So let’s do the math: 3% of $5000 is $150. If you have a money-line play that is, let’s say, -120, that 3% is your goal to win on that pick. Meaning, you want to win that $150 and to do that you would have to multiply the $150 × 1.20 which would equal $180. So you would risk $180 to make a $150 profit.
If we gave you an underdog, of which we’ll have plenty, you would risk the $150 to win the underdog price. To illustrate, if the underdog were +130 you would risk $150 to win 1.30 × $150 which is $195.
On all point spread sports, even though you may get slightly better deals with vig than the standard -110 or you may have to lay just a little bit more in certain situations, just calculate on the basis of -110 to a dollar for every bet. Which means in this case of 3%, you would be risking $165 to make a $150 profit.
Why does this system work, and why does this work like a charm? Why are you virtually never going to tap out of your bankroll?
Here’s why. We wouldn’t have stayed in business for 47 years if we lost more than we won, long-term, doesn’t that make sense?
We will obviously have some losing slumps because everybody who has ever bet sports has losing slumps. Everyone. The greatest handicappers the Earth has ever seen have losing slumps. They are absolutely, positively unavoidable.
We have an edge on probably 90% of the people who do bet on sports because long-term, we win more than we lose.
So here’s how all this works: let’s say you’re on a winning streak and you continue betting the 3% of your bankroll on every single pick we give you. But your bankroll is expanding…it’s getting bigger…because you’re winning picks and making more money and adding it to that bankroll…so as you’re winning, you’re still betting 3% of your total bankroll on every play but the dollar amount that you’re betting on every play is increasing because your bankroll is growing.
You following us so far? Good.
Now, let’s reverse the situation and we’re in one of those short-term losing slumps. Again: to repeat: if you expect to win virtually every week of a year, we’d suggest you team up with the tooth fairy in some alternate universe. You will continue betting 3% on every single play that we give out, but your bankroll will be shrinking a bit because we’ll be losing some money. There is nothing whatsoever of a speculative nature on this Earth that only goes up. Markets go up. Markets come down. There is an absolute ebb and flow – up – down – up – in sports betting, as well.
The beauty of this procedure is that as you’re winning, your bankroll is getting bigger because you’re betting more dollars on each bet while still sticking to the 3% limit per bet. When we do have one of those unavoidable slumps, your bankroll is getting smaller, but only incrementally smaller, because you’re betting fewer dollars on every bet.
So, if you can forget about everything you’ve done in the past when it comes to your sports betting, and follow our advice, and drill this discipline in your head even if you have to end up with that initial $150 a bet limit get smaller for a while, the probability is that long-term we’re not only going to bring you back to your original bankroll but it will go beyond that with profits. Because that’s what we do…and have done since 1978 for more than 676,000 of our customers.
Finally, make straight-bets only. We cannot emphasize this too much or too often. Do not bet parlays. Do not bet teasers. They are sucker bets. Bookmakers love you when you bet those. You will not end up a long-term winner betting parlays or teasers or half-time bets, etc. How do we know this? Because in 47 years of running what many consider the best sports info service in this great country of ours, we have never seen a single pro gambler who bet a ton of parlays or teasers who was a long-term winner. Not a soul.
Follow sound advice and bet only sides & totals.
And become what maybe 90% of sports bettors are not:
A sports-betting winner.
With us.
