Here we are at the mid-point in the NFL season and we can finally get a feel for what each team is capable of. I've been betting most sports for 5 years now but have only been posting a picks across all US based sports for about a month now and have posted the following record:
12-5-2 (accurate estimate, not exact, feel free to scour the threads and find em all) "Ain't nobody got no time fo dat!"
Outside of my posted picks I've done really well with my local book. Since the start of the NFL season my weekly numbers are as follows:
Week 1: -$550
Week 2: +$275
Week 3: +$325
Week 4: +$575
Week 5: +$660
Week 6: +$565
Week 7: +$1200
Week 8: +$1045
Despite these numbers, I've been down each of those weeks at one point or another, usually in cases where I'm negative on Sunday I try to balance out by increasing the bet size on the SNF game and make it all back (Dangerous obv.) So I've been lucky thus far, and would like to settle into a Unit based system to protect my now, healthy, bankroll.
To keep myself honest & grounded, I've decided to start up a thread and post my picks + number of units each week. I'm a psychology grad and think that the psychology and emotion of sports is a greater indicator for predicting the likely outcome of a game than statistics. Obviously statistical trends are important to know and understand, but lets just say I don't think a stat like "DET has gone 15-2 on Thursday night games since 1997" (fictional example) means anything to me. How many player/staff/coaching changes have taken place since 1997, its a totally different team now! How can that stat help us predict this weeks game? No good imo.
To make my picks, I handicap each game before looking at the spreads, based on my own interpretation of the match-up. I then combine those spreads with the posted vegas spreads and analyze the reasons for why my spreads are different, was I wrong, why? Are they wrong, why? etc. Then I read the "Free picks" articles on this site and others, and, by analyzing the language used by the writer, and looking at their week-week stats and trends, I decide to either tail, fade or just stay away from them based on the reasoning and language they use.
For example, if they make a pick based on a bunch of muck stats that I think are meaningless, and I have reason to believe they are wrong for other reasons, I will fade. More specifically, if they say something like, "the last time I picked this team I wasted my money" well that obviously says that their pick is based on emotion, pertinent only to their situation (i.e. not a good indicator of actual outcome) = FADED or AVOIDED
There it is, all you need to know before you tail or fade this pick thread!