2nd Half Strategy

Before baseball's second half kicks off tonight, I thought I'd lay out my money management strategy for the 2nd half of the season. In the first half, my degree of confidence in my pick (units bet in other words) was determined by my system which measures essentially, just how anti-public a team is when compared with the prevailing line for that team's game. The flaw in this was that I wasn't taking into account the line that I was actually getting on that team. In retrospect, it made no sense for me to bet the same amount regardless of what kind of an "edge" I had vs. the prevailing line.

So in the last few days, I've attempted to quantify my edge. I figure any advantage I have comes from two sources: 1) finding teams with a better chance to win than their line indicates, and 2) the price I can get at Matchbook vs. the market price (I use the lines from Pinnacle as a proxy for the market).

From now on, I'll combine those two advantages into a single number that is my approximate "edge" and use the Kelly Criterion to determine the actual amount of my wager. I will then multiply this by half to guard against the fact that I really have no clue what I'm doing here and that my approximations of "edge" are based on half a season worth of data.

If you don't understand what I'm talking about here, it's ok, I don't really either. This is still a work in progress and it's not like I'm going to go bankrupt doing this. At this point, it's still all about perfecting the method. If you have any ideas, want to see my assumptions in more detail, or just want to tell me I'm an idiot and in way over my head, let me know at losingmoneyquick@gmail.com or in the comments.

Be back soon with tonight's picks.