Wagering Guidelines

Matchup Handicapping can provide cappers and bettors with a “house advantage” in picking NFL pointspread winners. Since it requires 52.38 percent pointspread winners to break even at 10 percent juice with all wagers of equal amount, the house advantage is defined as a long term winning venture that can provide 54 to 58 percent against the spread (ATS) winners over the course of an NFL season. Such an advantage realistically places cappers and bettors in a winning environment and I maintain that an ATS winning percentage of 54 to 58 percent over an NFL season is a highly realistic and an optimistic expectation and REALISTIC.

Now, many people may think this is too low of a winning percentage to be worth risking hard earned money, but I beg to differ. The key to winning and maximizing profits with a "modest" winning percentage is to have a sufficient number of plays. For example, a bettor actually turns a higher profit with 56 percent winners over 100 plays than with 70 percent winners over 20 plays assuming all wagers are equal amounts. Besides, most cappers and bettors love the greater amount of action. Thus, Matchup Handicapping was designed to achieve a modest winning percentage with a relatively high yield of plays. Besides, I have no idea of how to pick consistent 70% winners. I'll leave that to the scamming touts.

Since a moderate winning percentage should experience a variety of winning and losing streaks, there is no guarantee on any specific time frame for posting a winning record. The cold reality is that there will be losing streaks that could last weeks or even months. Why? Because 55 percent winners equate to 45 percent losers that will certainly lead to down periods. Remember, sports handicapping is not an exact science and there is no such games as locks or guaranteed plays. Again, I will leave the locks and guarantees to the sales pitches of the tout services. Have your credit card number ready!

Think of a weighted coin that will flip the heads side up about 56 percent of the time. Would a bettor feel good betting the heads side up? You better believe it. With a 56 percent advantage, the proper wagering strategy would be to risk small amounts on many coin flips. Sure there will be losing streaks where tails are out-flipping the heads, but the 56 percent advantage should certainly provide a long term winning prospect. The absolute wrong strategy would be to risk large amounts at a time since a 56 percent advantage hardly qualifies as a can’t lose proposition. If the wagers are too high, a losing streak could wipe out the bankroll, nullifying the 56 percent advantage.

Any wise and disciplined money management approach requires a bankroll to begin the season. The bankroll amount is a lump sum of cash set aside in a separate account and is what the player can afford to lose without undermining or destabilizing the bettor’s livelihood. Think of it as strictly disposable income for investment or venture capital enterprises. The paramount question to ask of oneself is “can I afford to lose all this money?” If and only if the answer is yes, then you can start making wagers.

I recommend that all wagers during a season be 5 percent or 1/20th of the starting bankroll amount for a winning wager for two reasons. One, a winning strategy risks small wagers over a frequent number of plays; and two, there just isn’t a large enough winning percentage disparity to warrant some plays being worth more than others. For example, if your starting bankroll is $10,000, your betting unit will be risk $550 to win $500 per each and every wager.

Matchup Handicapping generally offers about 5 NFL plays per week during the regular season weeks 4 through 17. Another 4 or so plays occur during the playoffs on average. This generates about 75 plays per NFL season. A 55% winning percentage would yield about 41 wins and 34 losses ATS, or a gain of 3.6 units to the bankroll, assuming a 10% juice. Using our starting bankroll of $10,000 and assuming the 55% success rate, the season winnings would be 3.6 x $500 = $1,800 for about 5 months of work. Under this scenario, you would exit the season with $11,800. How is your 401K and savings investments performing lately?

Gambler’s Fallacy

Many bettors hold to the mistaken belief that the chances of winning increase during losing periods. For example, if a handicapping method typically produces 54 to 58 percent winners and the last five bets were losers, bettors suffering from gambler’s fallacy will believe that their next wager will have an increased chance of winning. Often times this disastrous thought process leads to larger wagers because the gamblers feel they are “due” to win. Unfortunately, anyone who believes they are due to win are many times only increasing the probability of losing. Progressive betting schemes are the result of gambler’s fallacy and have caused the ruin of many a gambler.

The problem with this logic is the handicapping method is an inanimate entity with no memory. Each pointspread selection is unbiased and unprejudiced and independent of the last. Regardless of the outcome of prior wagers, each and every future bet will have the same 54 to 58 percent chance of winning, provided the handicapping method is truly capable of producing 54 to 58 percent winners over time. Winning and losing streaks should not be confused with gambler's fallacy.

Take note that the single biggest mistake made in sports betting is viewing it as a short term prospect. On the contrary, a successful winning strategy involves a long term and disciplined investment approach. While there are no guarantees in a winning percentage, Matchup Handicapping has a realistic understanding that a 54 to 58 percent winning percentage over an NFL season is both attainable and acceptable.

NFL Preseason

I view NFL preseason football handicapping as a total crapshoot and nothing but an exercise in forcing the action to generate an interest in a meaningless NFL pre-season game. Think about that. You are placing a wager on a meaningless event. How does one even begin to handicap such an affair? Were not the hapless Lions undefeated last year in the pre-season?

The Matchup Handicapping picks begin on week four of the NFL season as the first three games are used to generate accurate team performance ratings. Needless to say, preseason stats are not used.