A good sports betting column should be backed by a profitable gambler with a proven track record. It should offer picks generated by a sophisticated and conceptually sound model. Most importantly, it should treat the subject with the seriousness it warrants.
This is not that column.
Instead, this will be an offbeat look at the sports betting industry-- why Vegas keeps winning, why gambling advice is almost certainly not worth the money, and the structural reasons why, even if a bettor were profitable, anything they wrote would be unlikely to make their readers net profitable, too.
While we're at it, we'll discuss ways to minimize Vegas' edge and make recreational betting more fun, explain how to gain an advantage in your office pick pools, preview games through an offbeat lens (with picks guaranteed to be no worse than chance), and touch on various other Odds and Ends along the way.
A Look Back at How We Did
I started Odds and Ends this season knowing I couldn't make you better gamblers, but hoping I could make you better-educated gamblers. We talked about how Vegas makes its money (and most gamblers lose theirs), how to outperform other recreational bettors in casual game-picking pools, how much of your bankroll to bet on individual games, and different kinds of bets you can make that may or may not be more entertaining.
I can't evaluate whether we're all better-educated at the end of the season, but I can test the hypothesis that I wouldn't make you better gamblers. I know I said earlier in the year that you can't really trust touts when they tell you what their record is on picks. But I'm not trying to sell you anything or convince you how good I am, so you can trust me. (Or you can go back through the archives and verify for yourself if you're the skeptical type. When it comes to sports betting, I'm never going to discourage skepticism.)
Final Results Against the Spread
I started the year picking games based on which mascots I'd most like to see interviewed by Larry King. Around midseason, I started picking based on awesome animal facts, and then I switched to selecting the team whose name was worth more points in Scrabble.
These picks are obviously meant as a joke, but the hypothesis is that since none of us have an edge over Vegas anyway, my joke picks are no worse than the next tout's serious picks. And that was probably the case; we finished 19-20-0 on the season.
In past seasons, I've made picks based on "who had that dawg in them", which teams "wanted it more", which teams were looking to avenge a significant loss from 40 years ago, which teams had backups who were facing a former team in a meaningless "revenge game", or silly just-so stories like "Mike Tomlin teams overperform until they reach 9 wins, then underperform down the stretch" or "the Chiefs win every game by 1-2 points".
Over the four years I've been writing this column, those picks have gone 75-64-3. Additionally, my "Lock of the Week" picks (which are largely made using a literal pseudorandom number generator) have gone 35-33-0. Finally, I've added two "moneyline specials" (both related to Tomlin's Steelers and their propensity to overachieve until the moment they've guaranteed a winning record for the season); both hit (at +130 and +140).
In total, I've made 212 recommendations. If you'd put $10 on each of those picks, you'd... have turned a 2.7% profit and be up $57. You could have gotten four years of excitement and sweats and wound up with enough leftover for a dinner for two at Applebee's (provided you don't order drinks). Not bad for a column that runs on memes and whimsy!
Does this mean I actually have an edge after all? Of course not; it just reinforces that betting is random and virtually anything can happen. Sometimes that cuts against us; other times it works in our favor.
The key, of course, is betting responsibly. Sportsbook operators and gambling touts know they're not going to get very much of your money if you're just putting $10 down a few times a week, which is why they devote so much of their budget to figuring out ways to get you to put more money in play more often. They only win when you lose.
But if you gamble responsibly and limit your exposure, it can be a fairly cheap source of entertainment. I always make the comparison with Netflix; over the last four years, my Netflix subscription has cost me hundreds of dollars. Casual recreational betting has cost me significantly less.