A quick summary on what this site is about…

First, I do not in any way recommend you ever gamble a single real dollar on any sports betting.  You are responsible for your own behavior.  We are working with pretend dollars.

I am using money management to limit any possible ‘loss’ to a set amount.  For this RIF ( rolling IF bets ) test, I am using a total season stake of $400 – starting with week 6 of the current college football season and ‘risking’ $40 per week.  This prevents the psychological stress of losing the stake early and not being able to enjoy yourself all season long – or supposedly dipping into your bank account for more pretend money.  You shouldn’t do that with real money, so you should follow the same path for pretend moola. IMO LOL.

What is a RIF?  A ‘Rolling IF’ bet is where you start with a base bet – say $10 on a single college football game.  Now you set up a second bet on a different game, but it has an IF condition – this bet depends on your winning the first bet.  If you lose the first, this second bet is ‘no-action’ and does not count at all, it’s ignored.  If your first bet does win, your second bet is active.  You can also do a third RIF bet that is dependent on your winning the second bet, and so on.  I call this a RIF chain since losing at any point breaks the chain at that point and any following bets are no-action.

Why bother with a RIF chain?  Money management is my thought.  If you do straight bets on say 10 games, you have to risk money on each game.  That is grand if you have a few thousand pretend dollars to risk.  What if you only want to risk $400 for the whole season?  One bad week and your stake could be decimated – ruining your enjoyment of the whole season.  For me, setting a limit of how much to risk each week is a balm to my gambling soul.  Being a risk-adverse person, for this year that is $40 per week.  If I luck out and don’t lose the whole stake or even win overall, any leftover $$ can be used for bowl games or saved for next season.  Moderation – I am a grinder person rather than a shoot-for-the-moon type.

OK, I am hoping for improved performance in week 8 since I am currently at a loss of $35.03 for the maximum of $80 risked on bets year to date.  Week 7 was ugly with many favorites losing badly.  I plan to pick about 20 games of 56 available this week.  Choosing the games, ordering them in the RIF chains, and deciding how much to risk on each game is all part of the fun of this method.  I get lots of action at a low risk to my pretend dollars.

The info I use to choose teams is usually available on Monday/Tuesday so I should be able to post my choices here on this site by 10/18/’17.

Update: 10/17/2017.

Have made my selections for this week.  Could only pick 16 games this week without running out of a reasonable risk range or picking games with dubious stats – no thank you.  When I started to check the games I put in my spreadsheet, the moneylines had mostly changed from this morning, so had to scramble and see if the changes impacted my choices.  Argh – the Oklahoma game went from -475 to -575 which puts it too high to have a decent payout within the RIF chain.  So I filched the Oklahoma State game to use instead, with a line of -275.  The fact that OSU is my alma mater, surely that had nothing to do with my choice!  The net difference in the total payout was only $.16 and the early game payouts improved so that is even better!  Now if the players can focus on the games and not the cheerleaders we may have a good Saturday!

week8 5dimes

I didn’t like the first RIF chain, so I dumped it to zeros and took the $10 first game risk and spread it over the last two chains – still at $40 maximum stake for the week.  I could have erased the first chain, but thought it was better to leave all the choices shown.  Please notice the games 2 to 4 have positive payouts.  Win the first and lose the second is at breakeven.  The example amounts are tiny, but the percentage over the original risk looks pretty good to me.  If the sun, moon, and stars all align properly, I will make $21.88 off a total risk of $67.50 for 32% total profit.  Now we wait for the results on Saturday!

One extra tidbit, here are the games I rejected – I think they are prime for upsets.  South Alabama, Florida St, Miami-OH, Michigan St, Troy, Duke, Army, and No Ill.  In most likely to least order.  11/21/2017 update. Before these games start, I should explain that I consider an upset to be where the underdog has a solid chance to beat the favorite outright or to beat the line spread.  For example Florida St is favored over Louisville by six points.  If I were to play this game, I would pick Louisville and ‘take’ the odds (specifically, my bet would be for win/push Louisville +6 ).  If the game came out where Florida St beat Louisville by exactly 6 points, I would still win the bet because I would be accepting a lower payout because of the ‘push’ option.  If the game was played for +6.5 odds, there would be no need for taking the push option.  You may already know about all this, but some readers may not – thanks for everybody’s patience!

10/22/2017 wrap up on week 8

Not wonderful, but not horrible either!  Breakeven worked out OK.  My ‘wallet’ put out $40 and when all games played, I got back $39.26 for a loss of $.74.  The worst part was losing the first game of a RIF chain – Purdue lost by 2 points.  Also, I backed off the first chain and that would have been worth playing.  Woulda, coulda, shoulda.  Hindsight is usually perfect. LOL.  Picked 56 games this week and won 41 – 73% which is pretty good.  A couple low odds toss up games I didn’t follow the odds – mistake.  Again – I got intimidated by the other pickers in Yahoo leagues and made like a lemming – mistake. Again.  Got to learn to trust my own methods and go against the herd on low odds games.

week8 end