Know Your Style

Now that the college bowl season has concluded, the basketball season takes center stage in collegiate action. The intersectionals and holiday tournament games of November and December give way to the conference races with all their grudge matches, paybacks, and positioning for the NCAA tourney in March. Unlike so many of the games in the NBA, most of the college games at the start of the conference season are played with great intensity as coaches try to mold their teams and players fight for their minutes and precious TV time.

Because of the many games to choose from – especially on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays – the real challenge for the handicapper becomes not so much to uncover which are the good and bad teams (that's generally pretty obvious by now), but how to trim or expand your list of wagers, and how to decide when to go with a team, to go against it, or to lay off and watch.

Of course, you must keep track of pointspreads, power ratings, motivation, injuries, scheduling dynamics, and the like. They are essential elements involved in sound handicapping.

But every handicapper who intends to do well over the long haul should also be aware of his own style for picking and choosing among the dozens of games in college hoops each week. For example, some Las Vegas veterans like to handicap mainly by searching for significant differences between their power rating on a game and the pointspread. Other handicappers like to stick with the power teams, figuring they're more consistent and reliable than lower-echelon teams. Some like to stick almost exclusively with underdogs, always looking to grab an extra couple of buckets with a team they like. There are others who like to lay low during the first go-round of conference play, then focus hard on revenge matches the second time through. Some like to concentrate on mismatches and class differences. Some favor streaks and trends.

Just about everybody has his own preferred style or mixture of methods. Even if you're not aware of it, you do, particularly if you've enjoyed some success. Once you start cashing some tickets on a consistent basis, you tend to repeat the same methods that enabled you to be rewarded. Subconsciously or not, your methods help you to simplify matters by skipping over many games on the big hoops cards each week and to focus on the type of games that tend to be formful and rewarding for you.

The key is this: You should know your own style when it comes to selecting games, because if it's not working that season, you'll be ready to change.

Three decades of following sports betting very closely has made at least one thing very obvious to me. Not everybody's style works every season. Each campaign seems to take on a character of its own – with upset after upset and the underdogs dominating, or the top 10 power teams repeatedly blowing out every weak opponent they play seemingly regardless of the spread, or the revenge teams getting the money 65 percent of the time, or the home dogs working like a charm. But a style that enabled you to hit nearly 60 percent one season might return only 40 percent the next.

If you know your own preferred style and methods, you have a big advantage. If the same style won big for you last season but is unsuccessful this year, you'll be ready to change. One of the biggest mistakes in handicapping is being stubborn and inflexible. For too many people, sports betting is an ego thing. People don't like to admit they are wrong. After all, when you wager, you're essentially trying to show that you're smarter than the oddsmaker and/or bookmaker, at least on that game.

The worst thing you can do is stick with a style that isn't working that season. So, if you know your own handicapping and game-selection style, you're in position to either alter it or to move away from it if things aren't going your way. Also, if you know your own style and you're winning week after week, you'll know it can be financially unhealthy for you to diverge too far from it by getting involved in a different group of games.

If you don't know your own style, and you don't begin the conference season on a winning note, chances are that you're going to be "all over the place" trying to pick a winner. Much like poker, if you know your style is not working, you can change tables, change the game you're playing, change the stakes, or do a little homework and change your style. The worst thing you can do is be stubborn about it and get your brains beat in.

If you are vague about your own primary method or approach when you begin the season-long journey in college hoops, you are inviting the possibility of a chaotic ending if you don't get off to a winning start. Self-awareness is usually beneficial in most aspects of life, including sports betting.

Chuck Sippl is the senior editor of The Gold Sheet, the first word in sports handicapping for 48 years. The amazingly compact Gold Sheet features analysis of every football and basketball game, exclusive insider reports, widely followed Power Ratings, and a Special Ticker of key injuries and team chemistry. If you haven't seen The Gold Sheet and would like to peruse a complimentary copy, call The Gold Sheet at (800) 798-GOLD (4653) and be sure to mention you read about it in Card Player. You can look up The Gold Sheet on the web at www.goldsheet.com.