Consistency and Predictability

With the new football season starting to unfold, it is a great time to review what exactly in the wide, wide world of sports you're trying to do as a handicapper.

First of all, allow me to make a digression to one of my long-held observations. Americans, as a whole, are not very smart gamblers. They love to take risks. Many dream of striking it rich. And they love the thought of being a winner.

But, as a whole, they prefer simple games, upon which they can risk a relatively small amount of money for a chance to win big payoffs. And, as a whole, they are content to risk small amounts again and again on games that have a poor percentage of return, but also offer the tiny possibility of a huge prize. Thus, they play state lotteries, with terrible odds, for cumulative millions a week. In casinos, slot machines are usually the biggest winner for the house. But, they're the most popular form of wagering among visitors.

Even when they play casino games such as blackjack or craps, where an intelligent player can substantially lower the house's advantage (the good card counters in blackjack can often turn the game into one with a positive expected return), most people play poorly by making low-percentage plays in craps or by failing to learn even a basic strategy for blackjack. Thus, the edge of the house is even larger. I won't even get into such things as nonsensical money management and drinking while gambling.

Poker players know that, by and by, the player who takes too many chances, who tries too often to outdraw an opponent, who tries to "buy" too many pots, and who is too often "out of line" will eventually be beaten down. Yet, players with such habits are rife.

In sports betting as a whole, in my view, there is also lots of bad gambling, especially on football. People play hunches. They bet "bad" numbers that have been inflated by the oddsmakers to take advantage of the "squares." They play "follow the leader" and bet on games just because somebody else did. They complicate things with totals and teasers and parlays. And they chase the money they lost on bad beats and bad bets by trying to "get out" on Sunday Night Football and Monday Night Football simply because those are the last two games of the weekend. Such bettors are a bookmaker's dream.

All right, enough bashing of the American gambling public. (People from other nations are just as bad, or worse, by the way.)

The point is this: If you're going to be successful in wagering, especially in the exciting but often frustrating field of football handicapping, you have to become determined to be disciplined and consistent in both your habits and your analysis. It was a wise person who first said, "Consistency, thou art a jewel." Yes, all honest sports betting involves a guess. But an informed, educated guess, one which involves knowledge of the teams, the matchups, the coaches, and the psychology of the players, and which incorporates the pointspread value, can result in turning sports betting into a game with a positive expected value over the course of the season. This is good.

Notice that I said "over the course of the season." In football, in any one game, or groups of games, the breaks can go against you, regardless of your sound preparation. But if you are consistent in your study habits, and consistent in your money management, and consistent in your psyche (for example, learn to take a bad beat like a big boy), you will have a chance to succeed this year, or any year. With your knowledge and preparation, wise money management, and "shopping" for pointspread value, you can have a far, far greater chance of winning in football than you would playing the lotteries, slot machines, or casino games. (I'm omitting horse racing because of other complexities involved. But don't get me started on that, either.)

Once you have the right mindset, the next thing you need to do to succeed in football is develop an eye for the consistent teams, players, and coaches. The more consistent they are, the more predictable they are. Developing this eye early in the season is a huge advantage for the profitable middle-of-the-season games. Personally, I don't like to get too involved with wild, widely fluctuating teams, no matter how exciting it might be to watch them. Too much variance is bad. Consistency is good. Consistency means greater predictability, and that means less risk, even in a sport like football, where the points are "lumpy" (that is, they come in threes, sixes, and sevens).

By being consistent in your work habits and your wagering methods, and by zeroing in on the more predictable teams and low-variance games (even if they're not on TV on Monday nights), you're going to have a much better chance to win this football season. Ahhh, consistency, thou indeed art a jewel.

Chuck Sippl is the senior editor of The Gold Sheet, the first word in sports handicapping for 47 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. Look for it at your local newsstand. If you haven't seen it 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.