The truth about sports betting nobody wants to talk about + Week 2 bets
I’ve been creating content and having people follow my betting picks for almost two years now. This pales in comparison to a lot of my industry friends who have been doing this for years but still this was by far my worst week ever sports betting.
It’s been extremely tough on me personally to know people are coming to me to give out good quality plays and it not to go right or even turn into a downright disaster. I take pride in my plays and I always want and believe they are going to work out.
The truth is it’s not always going to work out.
Before I get into a Week 1 review, I want to share an experience/journey I went through in my life that hopefully can offer encouragement if you’re feeling frustrated, upset, or even hopeless about our betting NFL season right now.
My journey as a card counter
I knew I was going to use these stories at some point in the newsletter, but I think now is a fun time to share a little about my life as a card counter. This is a fun fact that really not many people outside of my close friend group really knows about me, but it offered me so many life lessons.
I credit my journey as a card counter as a big reason for helping me develop a unique perspective and mindset when it comes to betting.
I had always been intrigued by the idea of counting cards ever since watching the movie “21”, but never really understood how it all worked. During COVID after talking to a buddy of mine, he mentioned that he started counting cards and was making really good money doing so.
Naturally I was intrigued and starting asking every single question I possibly could to figure out how I could do it. He taught me the basics and we would practice counting with shoes (place where the cards are held for blackjack if you’re unfamiliar) and playing at casinos to keep track of the count.
Once he realized how serious I was about it he directed me to a site where they had tools where they would test you out based on basic strategy, variations, and bet sizing based on the count.
I binged watched every video, studied every chart, and kept practicing on those tests until I knew everything perfectly. Once I got to the point where I knew everything like the back of my hand, my friend tested me out in a live scenario at the casino. He would sit next to me, pretend like he didn’t know me and see how I was playing for hours.
Once I passed that final test I was ready to go out on my own and play. I put nearly all my money I had saved up to this point in my life along with some money from my friend who helped bankroll me and starting traveling around the country playing.
If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of card counting it’s as simple as this: you’re keeping track of what cards are coming out to help better predict what future cards will be coming out. If there are more face cards and aces left in the deck, you will have a higher probability of winning your hand. When these scenarios arise where there is a “hot count” you bet much more money than your original bet sizing to take advantage of this edge.
Over time by playing perfect strategy, counting correctly and betting proper unit sizing based on the count, you will make money over the long run.
The issue with card counting is even when the count is extremely hot, the edges are only two or three percent in your favor. This can naturally account for wild amounts of variance that could make anyone nervous.
There’s a golden rule in counting that you need to play roughly 200 hours of blackjack to see at least some form of normality with the variance as it slowly starts to evens out. It’s really 500 hours where much of the variance is taken out as all the positive and negative swings are mostly accounted for.
After playing for traveling around the country, getting kicked out of countless casinos, creating a psuedo name for myself called “Max Dowt” and accumulating 160 hours of playing blackjack, I was still down thousands of dollars (and tens of thousands under expected EV).
There were so many emotions throughout this. I never once was in the black during the 160 hours. It felt like every time I was close to breaking through I’d have another wildly unlucky session.
The amount of times I would be max betting and lose in the worst possible ways was truly insane. I won’t get into them now but you can message me if you want to hear some funny stories.
Throughout these sessions where this happened I had a very positive mindset saying: “there’s no way this can happen again.”
Only for it to happen again.
It was at this point where I started questioning everything. Why was this happening to me? How was I so unlucky? Did I even know how to count correctly? Did counting cards even work? Was it worth it for me to give up my job at a restaurant to pursue this full-time?
A blackjack existential crisis if you will.
I went back to my friend and he watched me play for another session only to confirm I was playing perfectly. I will say it felt very good to get reassurance that I was doing everything correctly and I was just getting absolutely shredded at the tables due to some ungodly variance.
The next day I went to Vegas to just get in more reps not knowing what lied ahead of me.
And then it all hit at once. The variance became my best friend.
It took me all of eight hours to recoup all of my losses and be substantially up in the black. Variance had finally hit and it was so so sweet.
Everything had made sense now and to see the math actually work out in my favor felt unreal as I was so used to losing and constantly being frustrated by the results. It was a freaking long, stressful, emotional taxing journey I went through that some who follow the same path don’t have to experience. But it was all worth it.
This was such a convicting reminder that when betting things that we believe we have an edge on, it will pay out in the long run as long as our process is correct. It’s not always going to be pretty and variance is naturally going to happen, but we have to keep our head down and not worry about what the week-to-week results look like, but rather what a full season will look like.
Going through that experience and betting big when we have an edge has naturally translated to my betting style. I tend to be a bit more aggressive in certain spots than really most people in the betting space and that becomes from me trying to get more of my money in on spots I view with a greater edge.
The bigger the perceived edge the more aggressive I want to be.
Understanding Expected Value
Let’s say for simple math terms that we have a 100 prop sample with 80 of them being a 10% edge and 20 of them having a 20% edge. And let’s say on the 10% edge we can hit 60% of our bets, but on the 20% edge we can hit 70%. Also to make math easy let’s just say every bet is an even money bet.
So we bet $100 on all of these bets equally and we go 62-38 giving us a profit of $2400.
Now what if we split our bet sizing based on the edge? We are now going to bet $100 on the 10% edges and $200 on the 20% edges.
We go 48-32 on the 10% edges for a $1600 profit
We go 14-6 on the 20% edges for a $1600 profit as well
Total we get $3200 profit by increasing our unit sizing based on edges.
Again this is all just simple math and not actually what exactly our edges are or even how well we will hit on these. Even if this was our expected hit rates based on the edge and our unit sizings, in a real scenario in which this played out it would be completely random.
There would be times where we go 61-19 on the 10% edges for a $4200 gain and there would be times where we would go 36-44 for a -$800 loss in a 80 prop sample.
And when we do this with the 20 game sample suddenly there’s a lot more variance because of the smaller sample.
This was just an exercise to show how expected value works and why we want to be pushing our chips into the middle a little heavier than we normally would when we spot massive edges.
But also if total this up and this math was perfectly correct (it’s 100% not) then our expected value off these props would be $3200. Expected value rarely actually aligns with what our actual P/L turn out to be especially in a small sample, but the more we bet when the edge is in our favor the more expected value we can gain.
And by no means am I saying to unleash your entire bankroll on one bet, but to please be disciplined by doing this. Bankroll management is key and it’s important to never overextend yourself. There’s a fine line between being mildly aggressive in certain spots and just apeing into a play.
By the way I’m sure I’ll have more stories about my card counting journey in the future, but I thought that specific lesson I learned really resignated with me after this bloodbath of a week 1 and hopefully could offer encouragement to anyone!
Week 1 review
When losing in betting we have to objectively ask ourselves the following question: “Did I have bad process or was it bad variance?”
And in a lot of cases it can be both! But self analyzing is so important in this space so I’m going to self analyze all my Week 1 official prop plays here with you guys to see what went so wrong.
I went 7-19 on official props, this doesn’t include some alternate lines and some touchdown bets we placed. I just want to highlight these main plays as most of the nuanced ones branched off from these original plays.
All-in-all I was down 16.21 units after Week 1.
Woof.
I took 14 unders and 12 overs. I’m very content with that split as every week I’m focusing on trying to play more unders than overs. Maybe I could’ve leaned more into unders but even then they weren’t successful.
Unders went 5-9 while overs went 2-10.
Considering how gross the offensive landscape was in Week 1 it wasn’t surprising the overs did so poorly. In a world where this was the lowest EPA per play by week 1 offenses since 2001, you’d think that our unders would’ve crushed. Somehow we still got smoked.
That in of itself certainly feels like bad variance.
And considering by my count 23 of my 26 official plays had our lines move in our favor, this is just wild. None of these 26 plays moved against us other than a weird Kyle Pitts mishap where somehow he dropped to 27.5 yards, but he still closed in our favor.
Now I know counting closing line value (CLV) in this markets sometimes is “fake” because these markets are moving off money and action. And since we have some influence on the market, this will happen, but some of these plays moved HEAVILY in our favor and we still lost.
Regardless let’s analyze.
Sam Laporta under 33.5 receiving yards
Win/Loss: Loss, 39 yards on five targets
Analysis: This line closed at 29.5. This was a historical play as rookie tight ends never produce out of the game. In theory I leaned too much maybe on the historical aspect and not enough into camp reports about how they would utilize him early on.
Verdict: Not terrible process, but a play I would likely stay away from next time.
Jahmyr Gibbs over 3.5 receptions
Win/Loss: Loss, two receptions on two targets
Analysis: The line kept moving in our favor as this was heavily juiced on the over by game time. This is actually the inverse of Laporta as I leaned very heavily on training camp reports plus the draft capital they spent on him and just assumed he would have a big role out of the gate. Next season I’ll probably be a bit more careful with rookies week one and fade coach speak. Regardless this felt like a good play.
Verdict: Good process, would play again
Richie James under 23.5 receiving yards
Win/Loss: Win, six yards on two targets
Analysis: The thesis was there was a ton of variance with the rotations behind MVS and Skyy Moore at wide receiver. We knew Richie James made the team mainly because of his special team duties. James actually played more than I thought he would garnering 35% of the snaps, but he still wasn’t productive.
Verdict: Good process, would play again
Rams under 20.5 total points
Win/Loss: Loss, 30 points scored
Analysis: This was bet right when Kupp was announced out and the line eventually moved to 19.5 in most places. A Rams offense with a consensus bottom five offensive line with a wide receiver core of unproven talents like Van Jefferson, Tutu Atwell and Puka Nacua seemed like a complete disaster. I guess the argument that the Seahawks defense was banged up missing Devon Witherspoon and Jamal Adams could be critiqued. Also divisional games tend to be weird as well. Turns out it was a combination of Stafford still being good and these unproven guys having career days.
Verdict: Good process, would play 10/10 times knowing what we knew
Deebo Samuel under 50.5 receiving yards
Win/Loss: Loss, 55 yards on five targets
Analysis: The thesis here was that in games where Purdy started Deebo saw a very low aDOT. Welp that was completely wrong as Deebo had 10.8 aDOT in this game. In a five game sample we had of Purdy and Deebo together there’s naturally going to be variance at play with a small sample.
Verdict: Probably bad process. Wouldn’t play again.
Matthew Stafford under 239.5 receiving yards
Win/Loss: Loss, 334 passing yards
Analysis: This was wild. We got this before the Kupp official news and this closed at 219.5 yards, a massive difference we rarely ever see in the prop market. And it didn’t even matter because we got crushed. It turns out Stafford and McVay had a gameplan for Tutu Atwell and Puka Nacua against a banged up Seattle defense. It took two breakout games from guys we didn’t necessarily have totally on our radar for him to crush. Knowing what we knew heading in I was very confident.
Verdict: Good process, would play 10/10 times as we were correct about the Kupp news.
Mac Jones under 231.5 passing yards
Win/Loss: Loss, 316 yards on 54 (!!) attempts
Analysis: This one hurt. The Eagles got up 16-0 very quickly due to a pick six and and a fumble early on. Halfway through the second quarter Mac Jones had 34 yards passing. He then was almost forced to pass the entire rest of the game due to game script.
The Eagles last year were elite against QBs last year and Mac had averages for his career under this number. In hindsight maybe I didn’t take into account that negative game script was a real possibility and also that Bill O’Brien’s new offense was going to be very fast paced and put Mac in positive situations.
Verdict: Good process, would make this bet 10/10 times
Alexander Mattison over 55.5 rushing yards
Win/Loss: Loss, 11 carries for 34 yards
Analysis: This line moved heavily in our favor closing in the low 60s. The thesis was Mattison was the workhorse running back for the Vikings in a game where they were favorites and should have some positive game script to ride him. We’ve also seen in most of Mattison’s starts in the league that he was very productive on the ground and used as a workhorse. He saw 68% of the snaps and was the clear workhorse over Chandler. The biggest issue here was the Vikings had a +9.2% PROE and threw the ball on 75% of plays. Unfortunately these game scripts are not good for Mattison.
Verdict: Good process, would bet again 10/10 times
Geno Smith over 244.5 passing yards
Win/Loss: Loss, 112 passing yards
Analysis: This line closed at around 250 yards. Seahawks got brutally destroyed and injuries played a major factor. Tyler Lockett left the game for a bit with an injury, but most importantly two of Seattle’s OL got hurt and Smith wasn’t the same since they left. According to Rich Hribar, Geno Smith only had 9 yards passing once they left the game. Despite being in negative game script, Geno only threw for 9 yards after halftime. Wild.
Also the thesis was that the Rams secondary was arguably the worst in the league. And despite Geno’s poor showing, the Rams ranked 30th in coverage grade according to PFF in this game.
Just one of those games where he came out flat and injuries piled up and they couldn’t stop the pass rush.
Verdict: Ran into bad variance with injuries, but still probably a decent play. Would maybe have hesitancy with this over next time and instead have played one of the WRs (JSN).
Diontae Johnson over 4.5 receptions
Win/Loss: Loss, three catches on six targets
Analysis: Got hurt midway through the game. Negative game script was all but set up for him to smash and he looked great. This one hurt.
Verdict: Bad variance, Good process
Jamaal Williams over 48.5 rushing yards
Win/Loss: Loss, 18 carries for 45 attempts
Analysis: We got in before Kendre was officially ruled out and read the tea leaves that Kendre wasn’t going to play earlier on in the week. This line closed in the low-mid 50s. I mean if you told me pre-game Jamaal Williams was gonna get 18 carries I’d say this bet hits 9/10 times. Unfortunately efficiency concerns rang true here and Jamaal somehow didn’t hit this even with requisite volume.
Verdict: Bad variance, good process
Kyle Pitts over 37.5 receiving yards
Win/Loss: Win, two catches for 44 yards on three targets
Analysis: The thesis was Pitts is used as a deep threat and this line was priced as if the offense was going to be as pre-historic as it was last year. Welp we somehow sucked out of this bet as a 34 yard incredible catch by Pitts saved the day here. Ironically this felt like one of the worst process plays of the week, yet somehow this hit.
Ridder threw the ball to a non RB nine times all game and attemped 18 passes. Like this is a serious problem even if this is unsustainable.
Verdict: Maybe bad process?
JK Dobbins over 56.5 rushing yards
Win/Loss: Loss, eight carries for 22 yards
Analysis: This one hurt for obvious reasons. Dobbins was in positive game script before tearing his Achilles. Not really much to say here other than this sucks.
We also have so many futures on him and was super excited to see him this year. Really wish we got to see him play.
Verdict: Bad variance
Anthony Richardson under 199.5 passing yards
Win/Loss: Loss, 37 attempts for 223 yards
Analysis: Line moved down 10 yards from here.
Richardson was never a high volume passer in college and really wasn’t totally accurate in a lot of areas of the field. With Steichen coming over it seemed like they would use a lot of RPOs and get the running game going as well as getting his legs going as the main focal point of the offense. Nope.
Steichen created a very surprising pass first offense with a bunch of short/easy completions for Richardson to get his feet wet. It was evident early on this bet could be in trouble. Despite a bunch of short passes, Pittman was still able to take one to the house.
In hindsight it feels stupid fading a coach as smart as Steichen, but the WR talent the Colts have isn’t anything crazy and the concerns about a rookie QB in his first NFL game were real.
Verdict: Decent process, would bet again
Bryce Young under 209.5 passing yards
Win/Loss: Win, 146 yards on 38 attempts
Analysis: Very similar process to Richardson, where it was his first game and the weapons on his team were mediocre at best. The main differences here is that the weapons were much worse for the Panthers especially with DJ Chark. The other thing was Bryce was actually a very good passer in college!! This was a big play and it paid off as it was clear the weapons on this team combined with the lack of experience held Young back.
Verdict: Good process
Anthony Richardson over 42.5 rushing yards
Win/Loss: Loss, 10 carries on 40 yards
Analysis: Line moved five yards in our favor. Richardson had the most designed runs of any QB in the league in Week 1 he just wasn’t able to capitalize. He also scrambled at a very low rate which is in line with what we saw in college for him, he’s a pass first QB who will run when he needs to.
I was hoping that Steichen would kind of make it a point of emphasis to teach Richardson to scramble more and honestly thought we could’ve saw some ridiculous numbers out of Richardson right away on the ground, but it’s pretty evident for right now he is looking to pass the ball.
If you would’ve told me before the game Richardson had 10 carries I’d be very confident he would’ve hit the over.
Verdict: Good process
Bijan Robinson over 66.5 rushing yards
Win/Loss: Loss, 10 carries for 56 yards
Analysis: If you would’ve told me before the game the Falcons ran the ball on 63% of their plays and Bijan had 5.6 YPC I would’ve probably told you Bijan ran for 130+ yards on the ground. Somehow Tyler Allgeier got 15 carries and Bijan only got 10. I understand the thesis about how rookies sometimes need time to get acclimated to the NFL, but we very rarely ever see top 10 picks not be heavily utilized right out the gate.
In fact Bijan’s 10 carries were the fewest a top 10 selection has had in over 15 years in their debut. Bijan also had a 20-25 yard run called back by holding which would’ve sealed this.
This felt like a very bad runout.
Verdict: Bad variance, good process
Noah Gray under 34.5 receiving yards
Win/Loss: Win, three catches for 31 yards
Analysis: Gray ran a lot more routes than I anticipated as he ran the most routes of any player on the team. Still it felt like he got lucky to even get close as he took a 6-7 yard out route about 25 yards after two defenders simply missed easy tackles on him and he scampered down the field. Still it was clear that this offense was spreading the ball out and because of that Gray only had five targets.
Verdict: Decent process
Jaxon Smith-Njigba over 29.5 receiving yards
Win/Loss: Loss, three catches for 11 yards on five targets
Analysis: See the Geno Smith analysis for a lot of the reasoning behind this. Jaxon tied for the lead in targets for the Seahawks but the whole offense was in shambles. In hindsight I might’ve only played one of JSN or Geno Smith next time instead of both
Verdict: Good process individually, bad process chasing two players from the same team
Aaron Jones under 13.5 rushing attempts
Win/Loss: Win, 9 carries for 41 yards
Analysis: For some reason looking back on this I feel like more of my bets that won were closer to bad process than some that lost. Aaron Jones was surely going to soar over this as they Packers had great game script and Jones was getting work early on. He got hurt and didn’t return which allowed us to catch this bet.
I do think in general if the Packers weren’t crushing the Bears, this likely would’ve been a fine bet.
Verdict: Decent process, good variance
Jordan Love under 210.5 passing yards
Win/Loss: Loss, 245 yards on 27 pass attempts
Analysis: This one hurts the most. Jordan Love had two screens to Aaron Jones go for 86 yards, he also had a fumbled snap that turned into Luke Musgrave being WIDE open for 40 yards.
Jordan Love’s 9.9 yards after catch per completion would’ve been the 5th highest total for any single QB last season in a game.
This bet should’ve cashed well under and just one of those extremely unlucky games that unfortunately do happen.
Verdict: Terrible variance, Great process
Sam Howell over 20.5 rushing yards
Win/Loss: Loss, 2 carries for 11 yards
Analysis: There’s lots of variance in QB rushing yards. Sam Howell had a 13% scramble rate in college and we saw him even get two designed rushing plays for him in his lone start last year. He scrambled last year at the same rate he did in college and in the game against AZ we saw him only scramble on 5% of dropbacks. If Howell’s line drops lower next week I’ll be inclined to hit the over again.
Verdict: Decent process
Devin Singletary under 5.5 rushing attempts
Win/Loss: Loss, 7 carries for 15 yards
Analysis: This one sucked. Singletary had exactly one carry heading into the two minute drill at halftime all while the Texans were down multiple scores to the Ravens. It seemed like a basic lock that this bet was going to hit.
Until the Texans started off their two minute drill with THREE STRAIGHT CARRIES to Singletary. The incompetency to not only run the ball three times during a period in which you have to save as much time as possible, but the fact they were down multiple scores is just horrendus.
And of course even after this the Texans somehow gave Singletary three more carries in the second half despite clearly in extremely negative game script. I will say the one thing that maybe wasn’t fully correct process wise was the Pierce/Singletary split as I thought it would be much heavier in Pierce’s favor but regardless this ridiculous considering game script.
Verdict: Good process
Anthony Richardson under 29.5 pass attempts
Win/Loss: Loss, 37 passing attempts
Analysis: See the other Richardson blurb for more about the process behind this.
In hindsight maybe I didn’t need to double down, but this felt like such a smash spot that I hadn’t seen before and wanted to re-emphasize my confidence in it. Welp…
Verdict: Good process, probably didn’t need to double down
Rashod Bateman over 33.5 receiving yards
Win/Loss: Win, three catches for 35 yards on three targets
Analysis: Bateman saw plenty less run than I thought he would in a game without Andrews, but he’s likely being eased back into the offense. I honestly felt like we were very lucky for him to hit the over considering. The thesis behind betting on the Baltimore WRs with Andrews was strong as all three WRs hit their overs, but the lack of bigger role was certainly concerning and made this fragile. Maybe taking Zay Flowers over would’ve been the better play even if his prop was a few yards higher.
Verdict: Okay process, good variance
Raheem Mostert under 70.5 rushing yards
Win/Loss: Win, 10 carries for 37 yards
Analysis: The thesis behind this was the line moved up too high for Mostert as he opened at 52.5 yards and after the Devon Achane inactive news moved all the way to 70.5. Also the Dolphins were one of the top teams in PROE last season and we saw that play out again here in week 1.
Verdict: Good process