You’re definitely slowly educating guys like me.
Not to obligate you without a bottle of whisky by your side, but it would be interesting to understand how you divide up the NBA season (i.e. you were in heavy early, backed off leading into the all star break, etc) and the value added situations you seek out (Sunday day games, beginning of road trips, etc).
I think those two spots trip up amateur gamblers like me more than anything. I definitely don’t take those external elements into consideration when considering a spot.
I could sit at a bar and discuss this stuff for an entire night. I spoke last month about the great Alan Boston who influenced me years ago so I’ll steal one of his lines to answer this….”I don’t know, I just know.”
By this, I mean there will be times when you may expect me to play on a team opening a long road trip or fade a team returning home in their first game and I don’t. Why would I play one spot and not the other when they seem identical? “I don’t know, I just know.”
This is similar to poker in that you have gone through so many repititions and are present during the process. When you're present, it feels like everything is feedback for you to learn and grow from. You are not only going through the motions. If you want to use a basketball analogy, and I’ll use an example I’m thinking of as I’m watching this Lakers game, think Ben Simmons as a guy who ISN’T present then a guy with a similar skillset but less talent in Jared Vanderbilt who IS present and has been since he entered the league. One player isn’t growing while the other is improving every day.
I’ve always been present in anything I’ve done. I can identify when the learning process began. I was in my late teens/early 20’s for a couple years and began booking sports bets with 20-25 clients. I’d be next to my landline phone (LOL!) until 1pm on Sundays in the fall then I’d fly down to the sports bar and meet buddies to watch the games.
Believe me when I tell you I’d be petrified on that drive because each week everyone would be on the same team or teams in flat bets, parlays and teasers…..and it was always a team I’d like too! I’d arrive at the bar expecting to get destroyed……yet week after week those teams wouldn’t cover and many times wouldn’t even cover their teaser number. I was present during this time and began realizing that the human brain was not designed to profitably handicap NFL football! So I began looking at these games and figuring out the why. Why is the team everyone is betting on seemingly always the wrong side? Then I did this during basketball season and it was even MORE powerful. This experience, or repetitions, led me to begin analyzing these games as a contrarian. Put it this way…..every single bettor who played with me would have been on the Knicks tonight for no other reason than they were the better team and on fire.