[rmb48]

Hey everyone, I'm new to both this forum and to handicapping. I've been betting for a period of time now, I booked a little bit in college with friends, and I've paid a service or two in the past for picks.

That being said I'm looking to improve. I've been reading the forums a little bit, and I'm going to try my hand at the "intro to research" thread. But this weekend I sat and tried to put a line on as many games as I could without looking at the posted line.

I basically looked at each team's past opponents and results, who was home team and wrote down a line. I then went into some stats for each and wrote down where I thought teams had an edge and I either kept the line or moved the line. Then I looked at the posted line and compared mine with it. The overall results were :

College : 11 correct, 11 wrong
Pro : 7 correct, 7 wrong, 1 push.

The problem is that the games where my line was different by 6pts or more I bet and I ended up with 5 wins and 7 losses. So a negative weekend.

So I'm looking for some advice. What are some key stats you concentrate on when researching, what factors weigh more heavily than others, etc.

I tried using kelly this weekend but my problem is figuring out the win probability.

Again any help/advice would greatly be appreciated and I look forward to being a part of this community and learning from y'all.

[jgilmartin]

If you want to handicap football, you might want to look into Arena and/or CFL instead of trying to beat NFL/NCAAF sides right away. NFL sides are probably the toughest thing you could try to beat in all of sports betting.

[Duff85]

Handicapping is a waste of time for 95% of people at least in the major sports. You are just not going to beat the information advantage that the big sportsbooks have... so why try, use it to your advantage.

Focus 100% on the numbers and beating the closer.