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The Best Way to Gamble

Something I Learned from Sonny Reizner

Handicapping & Common Sense

A Very Important Thing to Know

A Crash Course In Vigorish

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Sample newsletter

A very important thing to know  Much like investing in stocks, you can't expect to make money every day at sports betting. Here's what you can expect.

Debunking the Kelly criterion  
If you think progressive betting schemes can win more than you deserve, buy a round-trip ticket in advance

Test Your Sports
Betting IQ
Use these questions to check your "expert" friends

Key NFL Pointspreads
Some pointspreads are much more important than others

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A Crash Course In
Vigorish
...And it's NOT 4.55%

NBA = $$$  
Here's why basketball - not football - is more important to a full time sports bettor

How to Beat NFL Preseason
There are predictable differences between 'real' games and preseason!

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Winning Percentages

Resource Page

Track Us HERE

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EMAIL FROM GAMBLERS

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I    I often use your free pick but I have trouble getting the same odds at (name of sportbook). Today, your free pick is Dbacks Over 9.0 at -115. (My sportbook) has them at 9.5 -110.....Where are you getting your odds and why am I always having so much trouble getting those same odds?  - J.K.
     We use actual odds from pinnaclesports.com, wsex.com, and/or canbet.com at the time we handicap the games. Other books may have different lines and/or different vigorish charges. Your particular book uses a 20-cent line against baseball, and you should consider switching books as soon as possible. Pinnacle Sports, for example, offers a 10-cent baseball line. Your book is charging you about twice that much.  - J. R.  

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     Your site is impressive- even to a mathematical infant like me. Your articles on money management and bet size have saved me. i recently read Mike Lee's amazing Betting the Bases and the results of his handicapping have been mind blowing for me.  His 10 angles provide a monstrous number of games- and ALL of these angles work perfectly. I'm stunned by the consistency of the results. And by the ease of the method. But his chapter on bankroll management- holy moley!   Please tell me- before he died did Lee become a billionaire? Because his predictions on bankroll return should have guaranteed it. I now understand that increasing bet size with bankroll size is a losing proposition. But I ask you- is there ANYTHING to his system of betting higher on angles that do,in fact, return much higher percentages than other angles. Also- please let me know your opinion of this short book and do u use any of his approach in your mlb picks. Thank u very much for your kind attention.   - M. D. in NY
       I knew Mike. He was a hard worker and devoted a lot of time to his work. His book, Betting the Bases, is a perennial good seller and has lots of useful information. Mike was well known around Las Vegas as an excellent handicapper, and I agree. We had dinner together several times and I always came away feeling like I'd learned something. He always threatened to come to Nashville with me and become a songwriter. (LOL).
    .....Money management..........Wel-l-l-l-l.......Mike seemed to be making a good living, but he was no billionaire. His belief in progressive betting schemes kept leading him back to Square One. Nothing I ever said made him re-examine his logic about progressive betting.
    I can sense from your email (above) that you are already savvy enough to glean from Mike's book only those things that make sense, When it came to handicapping, Mike could make a lot of sense.   - J. R. Miller 

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J.R. I just wanted to let you know I love your page, and I wanted to ask you one question. A friend and I are thinking of moving to vegas in september to gamble on sports and blackjack only. I am a pretty good blackjack player, and not bad in sports. In your opinion is this a good idea. If so how much should are bankroll be, and what percent should we risk per a play. Thank you for your time and experties
     My first advice would be to avoid jumping in with both feet. Eas-s-s-s-s-y does it. If you have outside income - and you really should - you could consider using as much as 2% of your bankroll per bet against sports, but that's way too aggressive if you're relying solely on your gambling for your income. With an outside income, your main goal gambling is to make a profit. As a full time pro, your main goal is to avoid going broke. Most pros I know use no more than 1% of their bankroll per bet.
     I am more pessimistic about blackjack. Defensive moves by casinos have all but eliminated most of a player's advantages. That's not to say you can't eke out a living playing blackjack, but it's become very tough to do.
     As to how big your bankroll must be, it depends on your desired lifestyle. Generally speaking, if you can double your bankroll in a year you're doing well. Lem Banker agrees with me on this, and so did Bob McCune and Jack Painter. A 100% gain in bankroll can be your goal, - less, of course, however much you pull out for living expenses along the way. It's been our experience that we expect anywhere from 30% to 130% gain over a calendar year, but that does NOT always happen. There are 12-month periods wherein we have lost money, and Sonny Reizner told us about a 3-year losing period he once experienced that cost him virtually everything.
     In my book, How Professional Gamblers Beat the Pro Football Pointspread, I point out that guarantees come with toasters, not sports bets, so you must be ready for an emotional rollercoaster ride. After a multiple-day losing streak it takes balls to belly up to the window and place your bets just as if you'd had a winning streak. An outside income can act as an effective partner against the fear of insolvency.
     I wish I could offer more encouragement, but I tend to agree with something Lem Banker says: "It's easier to become a movie star than it is to become a professional gambler."    - J. R.

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     JR, I wanted to ask you if sports betting was legal, if betting with an offshore online sportsbook is legal in the United States. Does it vary from state to state? In general, is it an acceptable and legal practice in the US? - J.F.
    There cannot be any tenable laws against your placing bets at an overseas sportbook. When you deposit your money in a foreign country - say, Australia - and you place a bet on a sportbook's server in Australia, and the sportbook pays money into your account in Australia (or debits your account in Australia), you have done absolutely nothing in the United States.
     Religionists and do-gooders don't like it, but they can't have things both ways. Picture this: Let's say you and I were in Nigeria and we managed to defraud a New York bank out of $10,000,000 over the internet. When we were caught, where do you suppose we would be put on trial, - Nigeria or New York? Did we commit the crime in Nigeria or in New York?
     You can bet we'd be put on trial in New York. That's because, even though we were in Nigeria, we committed the crime on the New York bank's servers, which were in New York.
     In short, there can be no laws in the US against what you do in Australia.
     In fact, it's time US lawmakers were reminded this is supposed to be the Land of the Free. Why are we the only Western country in the world that outlaws internet sportbooks? Why can't Harrah's and MGM and the Horseshoe have internet sportbooks based in this country? Just think of the billions of dollars of taxes we are missing by sending all this business overseas. (Did you know that gambling is the second biggest business in the world? It's bigger than the automotive industry, the music industry and the movie industry, combined. It is second only to religion in gross "sales.")  - J. R.

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     Why don't you have (click-through) ads from sports books on your site?  - L.
     Most of those click-through icons on websites linking to sportbooks are there on a percentage basis. The website isn't paid by the week or month to link to the sportbook; they are paid a percentage of what you lose at that sportbook. The more you lose, the more they make. If we accepted those arrangements, the more money you'd lose the more we'd get paid by the sportbook....Do you see any conflict there? We don't accept any revenues from any sportbooks for any reason. We see it as a conflict of interest.  - J. R.

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     Hi, my name is Frank and I have been watching your website for about 3 weeks.....I am very impressed by your humility. This is by far and away the best material on sports betting I have ever seen. I am 50 years old, I started betting on sports in the early seventies...I used to bet the same amount on every game knowing that was the only chance I had of winning. My problem was that I bet too much of my bank roll on each game. I used to bet 5 dimes on 7 to 8 plays a day on college baskets. In 2 years , I got wiped out and it pretty much destroyed my life. If I would have known you I would have been risking 1 to 2 %. I intend to start again at a very small amount.....I have learned more about sports betting in the 3 weeks that I have been on your site than in my 50 years on my own. Thanks for giving me the inspiration to try again because there is no better life than being able to make a living at sports betting. God bless you J. R....Maybe some day we will meet and you can teach me how to pick them.  - Frank
     Frank...Thanks. I needed that.  - J. R.

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     I notice your doing better on baseball totals than sides.....Are (baseball) totals easier to beat than sides?.....  - W. W.
     No, it's just a temporary illusion. We're currently 16-5 against MLB totals, but we've simply had a winning streak.
     By the way, there is a widespread misconception that "easier" sports return a higher win rate than "harder" sports. Although some sports can be considered "easier" than others, for a real pro that doesn't necessarily result in a higher winning percentage. It simply gives us more "bets-per-game." Against bets wherein we must lay 11 to win 10, for example, we pull the trigger whenever we think we have at least a 55% winning expectation. Over, say, 100 games, "easy" sports simply present us with more betting opportunities than "hard" sports. Over 100 games we may have, say, 35 or 40 bets against the NBA but only 25 or 30 bets against the NHL. The winning percentages, however, turn out about the same over the long haul...Hopefully, somewhere upwards of 55 percent.  The object is NOT to win a big percentage of bets; the object is to make as much PROFIT as possible. Those two goals don't always require the same tactics.  - J. R.

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     ....Up 11 1/2 units in 7 days.....Nice going! How often does this happen?....  - R. K.
     LOL. Not nearly often enough. It's worth mentioning that we are doing nothing different than we always do. We've simply had a winning streak. Winning streaks and losing streaks are inevitable, and shouldn't be taken too literally. Remember, there is no way to know when you're "in" a winning streak. You can only know when you've just "had" a winning streak. We start every day with the same old 55+% expectation. (Track us at our Track Us page.)   - J. R.

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     .....I am led to believe that to make a sole living off of sports betting you would need to start with a bankroll of at least 100 000 dollars to play at 1% and profit 40,000 dollars a year.
     Am I on the right track here. I would appreciate your advice on the subject because after reading your site I respect your opinion. I would love to try making it as a sports bettor.
     I've known some men who were full-timers using less than $400-$500 per play, but they were living mighty tough. I think it would take an average of at least $400 per play to make any kind of headway from one year to the next, and those first couple of years would be void of any high living.
     One of our subscribers told me he risks $11,000 per play.....I personally couldn't stand that kind of action, no matter how rich I was.
     Generally speaking, if I were single and just starting out, I think I could make it by betting $400-$500 per play, but you'd have to live mighty tight.
     By the way, 40-some units per 1,000 bets is at the bottom end of the expected return. We expect somewhere between 40 and 120 units per 1,000 bets, and we expect well over 2,000 bets per year.     - J. R

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     I have been tracking you. As of tonight you are 19-8 NBA playoffs.....Why don't you brag about that?.....  - H.
     Thanks for noticing. We're up 10.4 units against the NBA playoffs, - but with only 27 plays that's really better than we expect. We're not really that "good". It's just a winning streak. (19-8 = 70+%) Our subscribers and any real pro knows that. Nobody's that good. "Bragging" about it would feel like we're lying about future expectations.     - J. R.

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