[austintx05]

As for myself, I try to keep it as simple as a 55-45 type of season where using exchanges can help earning profit. With football approaching it is almost time to set goals and begin.

How do you approach the season?
What is your strategy?

[Santo]

I don't set targets, I have a monetary idea of where I should be for a month, year etc, but I certainly don't stop work if I've reached that /365 for a day, or for a week /52 etc

[austintx05]

so you just bet the entire season?

[thezbar]

Football season for me begins tomorrow. My approach is recreational and social. I want to win enough to cover the holiday expenses with any off shore accounts I have.At the moment I have some baseball futures working with Guardian {to be used as a reboot in October}. Bookmaker calls bi-weekly wondering when I plan to reload. Will play a suicide pool with two enteries, thats the shot I have for big money. Will buy espn gameplay as soon as it is available.I enjoy the college product much more than the pros.
Money management:I plan to set aside a portion of my wages on a daily basis for football each day during the july month.This is more a mental thing as the money will Mean something more to me during the decision process later on.
Strategy? Not sure yet. Goal? one buck a week win per week and I'm happy'.

[austintx05]

Well good luck with that Z. Mine is more professional approach. While I do not have the $100k roll that is more ideal, I still approach the season with goals as if I had the ideal bankroll.

[Dark Horse]

The keyword to me is balance. If you lose balance you're either going to lose money or quality of life.

To be a successful long term sports bettor is like running a gauntlet or mine field. Nothing is certain, and you never know what may be around the corner. Also, it's like setting out to become an expert scientist without a college education, or a Shakespearean actor without training. Along this road, there are very few who can show the way, yet many who will influence you the wrong way (the action junkies that try to convince everyone else their's is the only way).

There are so many questions that present themselves along the way. How much time do you spend away from your family because you have to watch games? Do you really have to watch games? With what bet size are you most comfortable? What percentage of bankroll is set aside for experimental betting? At what point does our edge start to make way for burnout? What is our ideal balance between number of bets and winning percentage? Do we understand the emotional stresses of gambling, or do we take those for granted? Anybody can win, but do we have what it takes to deal with a prolonged losing streak? The list goes on and on.

It's not that hard to sharpen your edge along the way. But what good is that if you can't keep your balance?

[austintx05]

interesting points.

anyone else?

[imgv94]

austin is the phucking man

Guy had Cards +215
Florida 2 yrs ago before anyone even knew a Shit about em

Indy +1152

Don't question this guy in anyway.. He is one of those people.

[Arilou]

At the end of the day, it's about money won and money lost. How can it be anything else? Where you set the bar for yourself is up to you; I've been told that I set it absurdly high, but I'm always hard on myself. It's not just gambling.

[jjgold]

try and stay around even
don't get bank loans if possible
try and stay away from betting too many games
even is like winning

[THE HITMAN]

No goals or targets. I go with the flow and am of the idea that setting a goal will make you either press, or alter the amount of your bet to reach some arbitrary amount (your goal).
Sports seasons are funny sometimes. If you are like me, I have , not quite a system, but a trend to the way I wager. Sometimes those seasons play nicely into that trend and sometimes they don't. To force a season to hit your goal is not a prudent thing to do. If a season gives me +50 units, fine. If it gives me only +10 or break even, it's OK, too.

I usually go the whole season, sometimes cutting my plays a bit if I am up alotfor the season or on a bad short term streak. I just try to post a + sign at the end of each day, whatever that + may be and take advantage of each wager that looks favorable to me.

[Santo]

Originally Posted by austintx05

so you just bet the entire season?

Not even that, the entire year, the way I bet isn't sport-specific.

[The HG]

The only goal I have for any season is to try to make my assumed edge and actual edge as close as possible. If they're not as close as they should be, I investigate why.

Monitoring yourself is as important as monitoring your teams and bets.

DH, your comments on the "emotional stresses" of gambling ring true, but if I do my homework and do what I do for reasons, I find there is actually not too much stress (and certainly less stress than is caused by a lot of other things in life - women, bosses, etc etc).

For example, yesterday I had both Minnesota as a huge underdog, and the over 9 in that game, the Clemens game. Obviously both lost, but I didn't feel stressed watching it unfold, or discussing it now. I did what I did for what I considered to be the right reasons, and I'm ok with the losses. Obviously, what went wrong in that game was I didn't anticipate Clemens having such a good and deep game. So I review it and see if I should have been able to anticipate that. Statistically, no, but of course there are other factors.

Any time I make a bet, I ask myself, "Am I going to be stressed if this loses?" I imagine watching it turn out disastrously, before the game starts. And at this point (I've been doing this for years now) I'm usually ok with the thought of it turning out completely wrong. If I'm not, I don't bet it.

Going through those kinds of processes, thinking through why you're doing what you're doing, if you do it thoroughly, really reduces the stress inherent in such a small-edge endeavor.

Imagine it another way. Consider one of those games that has a crazy result, say, the Oakland/Toronto 11-7 game yesterday. Now if someone had offered you under 17 in that game, of course you would have taken it, and bet it huge. And when it lost, you would have felt bad. But of course, you would have been "right" for taking it. So if you understand why you bet what and how you did, if you know why you did what you did, and you did it for reasons that are valid, you won't be stressed with the ups and downs.

Now, that example is a bit extreme. Obviously, if someone had offered me under 17 +150 in that game, I would have bet it, and bet a whole lot on it. Even though I would have been careful as always about what I did and why, it still would have been damn tough to swallow that loss. I would have been stressed, for sure. But the point is, when you think about these things in these ways, it greatly reduces the stress.

[austintx05]

Originally Posted by jjgold

try and stay around even
don't get bank loans if possible
try and stay away from betting too many games
even is like winning

this is the worst advice I have ever heard.

even is like winning?

[Dark Horse]

Originally Posted by Ganchrow HG

DH, your comments on the "emotional stresses" of gambling ring true, but if I do my homework and do what I do for reasons, I find there is actually not too much stress (and certainly less stress than is caused by a lot of other things in life - women, bosses, etc etc).

Rings true, but if that means women become more stressful than gambling..., thanks, but muchos gracias.

Originally Posted by Ganchrow HG

Any time I make a bet, I ask myself, "Am I going to be stressed if this loses?" I imagine watching it turn out disastrously, before the game starts. And at this point (I've been doing this for years now) I'm usually ok with the thought of it turning out completely wrong. If I'm not, I don't bet it.

Going through those kinds of processes, thinking through why you're doing what you're doing, if you do it thoroughly, really reduces the stress inherent in such a small-edge endeavor.

Sound advice!

I have to stop watching so many games. Other than wasting time, it also has an unexpected effect on one's vocabulary. (From this I would deduct our friend JJ has watched more games than any of us).

[pags11]

I set out an average season as 55%, a good season as 60% and a terrific season as 65%...