The Origins of Dr. Bob

My illustrious sports handicapping career began at Berkeley when I entered a $2 NFL pool and, after doing a few minutes of simple math, won $100. I was pretty much hooked right out of the gate.

From that point on, I started using my statistics classes as excuses to feed football data through the campus mainframes. In those first three years I won a respectable 63% and decided I'd had enough of school. I quit and became a tout.

The first thing I did was publish a betting guide. After that was released I started advertising a 900 number, writing columns for gambling publications and appearing on radio shows. It wasn't all easy street though, believe me. I was forced to wait tables for a long time on the side. Finally, in 1998, as 900 numbers began to fall out of vogue, I decided to make a desperate move: I equipped my new website to take credit cards. This turned out to be the best bet of my career. Over the next six weeks I made $30,000 "and that was that!"

For most of my career I handicapped teams by looking for situations or "angles" that had a way of predicting future results. If a college football team was favored by seven points or more in a minor bowl after losing their last game, for instance, I would know that the last 36 teams who met that criteria had covered the point spread only eight times. If one of these strong angles applied to a team, I would bet accordingly. This became the basis for my sports betting advice at the time.

However, I suffered a pretty bad losing season in football in 2003, and decided to tweak my method with another layer of rigor. For NFL games, I built a mathematical model to project how many points each team was likely to score in a coming matchup. Eventually, with three years of data and hundreds of hours of tinkering, I built a similar math model for college sports betting.

As well as these methods have worked, they have done nothing to my workload though. I'm constantly looking for ways to improve my win percentage and pass them on to my subscribers. In the months when basketball and football overlap, I tend to work about 18 hours a day nearly every day, sleeping in bursts of no more than four hours. The carpet below my desk chair has been worn bald! My wife has to come in and remind me to stand up periodically so I don't get blood clots in my legs!

Most of my time working is spent making tiny adjustments. If a team loses 12 yards on a running play, I check the game summary to make sure it wasn't a botched punt. I also try to compensate for the strength of every team's opponent. It typically takes me around eight hours just to calculate a rating I invented to measure special teams! Trivial as this seems, all this work makes predictions at least 4% better, and that 4% can have a huge effect when spread out over an entire season. It can sometimes be the difference between finishing with a winning percentage and a losing one.

As always, check out www.DrBobSports.com for picks on every game, every week.

Why the house always wins

Tired of losing his money to the house, a bored millionaire in Las Vegas turns to you and offers you a proposition that you can't refuse. He pulls out a stack of casino chips and declares:

"I've got a 100-sided, evenly weighted die, which I am going to roll. If it comes up 1 through 57 you win, if it comes 58 through 100 I win. We're playing for even money. How much do you want to bet?"

How would you respond? Obviously you accept, but you are uncertain as to exactly how much you should wager - you are a solid favorite, but not an overwhelming one. The answer to this question is much deeper and more important to an investor's bottom line than the average sports bettor ever realizes.

Now let's say that the bored millionaire had one constraint. He tells you you could start with no more than $500 (your bankroll) and if you ran out of money, you couldn't re-load. Also, every roll of the dice costs $100, or essentially 20% of your bankroll on each bet. Would you still take it? Think you could still come away with a profit?

You had better not! You are virtually guaranteed to go bankrupt in this situation. Over the long haul, you will win about 57% - it's a mathematical certainty. But, over the short term, you are not guaranteed a thing. You'll have ups and downs that not even the most sophisticated football analysis computers in the world could predict. On your first twenty rolls you could easily go 2-18! If I forced you to bet 20% of your bankroll, you'd be crazy to do it because I would take your money like taking candy from a baby.

Yet,if you think about it, most bettors routinely do the equivalent of taking this bet every day! Nearly every sports bettor bets too much per game relative to the size of their bankroll. It's insanity, to me, to think that someone would risk half of their "stack" (to borrow a term from poker) on one game of Football. But that's exactly what the house banks on...

THE HOUSE WINS BECAUSE YOU BET TOO MUCH PER GAME.

The average sports better runs out of money before they have a chance to let the odds work for them. They bank on you not knowing this simple rule. It's the main reason why they win time and time again.

It is very tempting to put down a lot on each game, especially when you are winning. Most betters do it for the added excitement it gives you when you watch the event. I'm telling you though, if you want to win money, the only way to do this is to BET BORING. Everyone goes through good and bad streaks in sports handicapping. No one can win EVERY bet. Do yourself a favor though and allow yourself to "stay in the game." Don't miss out on that late-season run of luck because you dropped you whole roll on a "lock" that busted!

To me, knowing that I control the biggest impediment to my winning is empowering! Regardless of whether or not you follow my other sports betting advice, this is the single biggest thing you can do to prevent yourself from going broke. Be disciplined. Bet boring. And win more money.

Maximizing your utility in sports betting

When deciding on your sports betting picks, you should seek a strategy that maximizes their utility. For the uninformed, utility is a measure of relative satisfaction (ie. success or value for your bet). In other words, it is a term referring to the total return that you can expect to receive from your bet.

In all of my sports handicapping strategies, I aim for utility maximization, because depending on a bettor's long-term financial goals, they can have very different marginal values for their money. Betting strategies can be aggressive or conservative, although in reality even my aggressive strategies are somewhat conservative compared with the ridiculous over betting advice that one will often find online.

Sports betting advice can also either be flat (where every unit is the same) or progressive (where units grow or decrease with the bankroll). For both flat and progressive strategies, bet sizing is correlated to confidence (more confidence = larger bets). Yet where other touts' unit sizing is arbitrary, I size all my wagers as described by mathematically optimal ratios for growth as correlated with win percentage confidence. Furthermore, all necessary precautions have been taken to avoid over betting, which can be dangerous to your bank roll and your bottom line.

You can learn more about this and all of my other strategies for sports investing at DrBobSports.com!

Looking To Make A Little Money Doing Sports Betting Handicapping

There are bettors everywhere hoping to earn some cash placing winning bets, but the seasoned ones knows that simply looking at the spreads on games is not enough to make an informed decision. They understand a sure thing is never a sure thing. There are always other variables that must be studied before doing sports handicapping can be effective.

Some of these people will tell you that one of the first things to understand is how well the players play together and work as a unit. Did someone special that most of them relied on recently get traded, or did someone that most dislike get signed to their team?

Another consideration is what their track record has been over the past few games they have played. Are they on a losing streak or on a winning streak? These things have a tendency to go in spurts.

Of course, knowing what your team is doing is important, but it is just as important that you study the team you are betting against. Do they have a tendency to always perform poorly against your team, or do they seem to dominant them every time they play each other?

Everybody has issues and problems in their lives and athletes are no different than the rest of us. There are things that can happen that affect their emotions that will determine how well they play. Maybe they recently lost a loved one and are either inspired or depressed. Perhaps they are suffering from an injury that will let them still play, but not at their best level.

When it comes to sports betting advice it is as much a science as it is in understanding human emotions. If you are going to be good at it you will need to understand the dynamics that goes into creating a spread.

Are you tired of making poor sports betting choices? Would you like your friends and colleagues to value your wager decisions? Then check out Dr. Bob Sports for the best in sports handicapping! The world famous Bob Stoll offers wagering tips on collegiate and pro football as well as the NBA. Free analysis is available on the site, along with essays on sports betting, money management, football analysis, and other useful information.

Week 3 College Recap Recap: Turnovers and Variance

There’s a difference between a bet that loses and a bad bet and this week I had 3 Best Bets that lost that were no doubt good bets. There are weeks when I lose because I happened to be on the wrong side of some games but this week I was on the right side of 6 of my 7 Best Bets and went 3-4 on those Best Bets thanks to random bad luck. In the tough world of sport betting advice, the only thing you can do is chalk this up to variance.

The bad fortune started on Friday night as my Best Bet on Central Florida +3 lost by 7 despite UCF out-gaining BYU 400 yards at 6.3 yards per play to 260 yards at 5.4 yppl. You can lose games when your team dominates when you lose 2 fumbles and the other team loses none, which happened in this game, and when the other team returns a kick for a touchdown. Fumbles are 90% random, so being -2 in fumbles lost is just bad luck and there is no doubt that UCF was the right side in that game and should have won easily as the underdog if not for the random miscues. On Saturday Ohio, a 4 ½ point underdog, averaged 7.1 yppl while Rutgers averaged just 5.3 yppl but the Bobcats fumbled 4 balls away (just 1 lost fumble for Rutgers) and didn’t cover despite dominating from the line of scrimmage by 1.8 yppl. Despite those two undeserved losses I still had a chance at a winning record for the week with my late game on Utah State but the Aggies managed to lose despite out-gaining Colorado State 5.5 yppl to 3.1 yppl. The reason, as you may have guessed, was 4 fumbles lost by Utah State and just 1 turnover by Colorado State. A difference of 2.4 yppl would normally result in a 13 or 14 point win, so it was certainly no guarantee that the Aggies would have covered at -9 ½ without the -3 in fumbles, but it is certainly at least 60% likely that they would have covered had it not been for the randomness of fumbles working against them. This is what can sometimes make sports analysis frustrating.

So, there were 3 games that I had the right side on and lost and the randomness of fumbles was the difference between a great 6-1 day a losing 3-4 day on my Best Bets. Overall, I was a ridiculous -11 in fumble margin on my 7 Best Bets, worth about 44 points (a turnover is worth about 4 points), and my teams still were a combined +11 in point spread differential. I’m not making excuses for losing, as I readily admit when I lose a game in which I had the wrong side in, but fumbles are a reason for losses that in the case of the 3 games mentioned above were undeserved losses in which I certainly had the right side. That’s why there is no such thing as a lock and I will win considerably more games than I lose over the long run when turnovers tend to even out.

In other Best Bets, SMU -21 ½ dominated Memphis 42-0 while out-gaining the Tigers 522 yards at 7.2 yppl to 139 yards at 3.4 yppl and covering easily despite being -3 in turnover margin. Illinois -12 ½ only won by 3 points although they played pretty close to expected with 463 yards at 5.9 yppl while allowing 341 yards at 4.9 yppl but being -1 in turnovers hurt their chances of covering – although I don’t consider that an unlucky loss. Georgia -9 won 27-13 over Ole Miss but the Bulldogs dominated by more than that score, as they out-gained the Rebels 475 yards at 5.8 yppl to 183 yards 3.3 yppl. That game was closer than it should have been because Ole Miss returned a punt for a touchdown and Georgia missed 3 field goals, but at least Georgia covered despite their special teams meltdowns. My Best Bet on Bowling Green +4 ½ was an easy winner, as the Falcons won 37-23 while out-gaining Miami-Ohio 310 yards at 5.0 yppl to 308 yards at just 3.8 yppl. Overall, a very good day of handicapping with my Best Bets being the right side in 6 of 7 games, but good handicapping doesn’t always lead to good result when the randomness of fumbles is -11 against you. I’ll have a great year if I keep betting games like the 7 Best Bets I played this weekend, as it’s highly unlikely that turnovers will be against me in the future like they were this weekend.

I was a frustrating 3-4 on my week 4 Best Bets and 7-11 on a Star Basis and just 1-3 on my Strong Opinions. For the season my Best Bets are 6-7 on 14-19 on a Star Basis and my Strong Opinions are 12-13. Thanks to my bad fortune on turnovers in week 4 I am now down 6.9 Stars at -1.10 odds (instead of being 22-11 on Best Bets and +9.9 Stars had I won the 3 Best Bets I lost due to fumbles) but I'm going to have about 100 Best Bets over the course of the season and I'm going to have a great season if I keep picking games like I picked last weekend. That's pretty likely given my 57% lifetime record on my College Best Bets

Of course for all of your college football analysis needs, you can always visit DrBobSports.com

Marquee Week 3 Matchup: Eagles vs. Giants

Eagles QB Michael Vick left last week's game against the Atlanta Falcons after a vicious hit, in which he was clocked and then fell awkwardly into his own lineman. He struggled to stand and then spit blood as he walked to the sideline. It goes to show the toughness of professional athletes, however, as Vick has been all but cleared to play this weekend. In a fierce rivalry, Vick's Eagles will face Eli Manning and the Giants in a conference matchup.

With Vick healthy and the triple threat of RB LeSean McCoy, DeSean Jackson and Jeremey Maclin, the Eagles will simply be too much to handle. The offensive weapons on the Giants side of the ball pale in comparison, and the Eagles defense is much stronger. The 7.5-point spread should be easily covered by the Eagles as they run out to an early lead.

For more free analysis plus Best Bets for Week 3 of the 2011 NFL season, head over to the ultimate resource for sports handicapping.

New York Jets vs. Dallas Cowboys

Although the Dallas Cowboys have long been known as "America's Team," the sentimental favorite tonight may very well be the Jets as the entire world turns toward New York today to remember the tragic events of September 11, 2001.

After the somber and emotional pregame events conclude at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., though, two of the organizations boasting some of the most bombastic characters in the NFL will take the field.

Rex Ryan's Jets have reached back-to-back AFC Championship Games and are looking to finally reach the Super Bowl. For their part, the 'Boys are just looking to regain contender status. And a large, physically and otherwise, reason they feel confident that they can accomplish that goal is Rex's brother, Rob. The long-haired Ryan brother has come down to Dallas to take over the defense. But can Rob and the revamped Cowboys' defense embarras Jets QB Mark Sanchez any more than those GQ photos?

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