Ladies and Gents.

I am aware I have had a pretty poor run of late here at BOTW, so I thought I would pop up a quick post with some of the thoughts, analysis, explanations, excuses, admissions and conclusions I came to whilst having my own mental debrief of recent events.

The nature of sports betting is such that you can’t expect to win continuously.  This game isn’t that easy and I would hope that anyone that chooses to read this site fully understands that.

Over the last couple of months the BOTW fund has dropped around 18% during what is turning out to be a sticky little run.

There have been a few football losses in recent weeks (more on those later) but the main element of the loss was the 10% split stakes position on the 2011 MLB Home Run leader.  The biggest chunk of the above was each way positions on Albert Pujols (6th) and Ryan Howard (10th) to make the top 5.  As you can see, there are fine margins and high variance that must be considered when opening up bigger priced ante-post positions.

It is important to remain focussed on the process of identifying value and not get too caught up in the results during a run like this.

Those that are long term followers will remember I once had a similar run to this in September 2010 – during that run the BOTW fund fell by 30% and no doubt some people would have been panicking somewhat back then.

However, as long as you continue to identify and exploit +EV situations the next winning streak is always just around the corner.

Lets have a look at a few of the specific bets and positions.

Read More→

Morning guys.

Six (!) bets from me today – two from the weekend’s coupon and four further ante-post selections to finish off the recent ante-post binge.

First up, lets address those ante-post selections.

The first position we already have exposure to – from the West Ham/Huddersfield double placed on Wednesday.

I am going to take a matching individual 3% position on Huddersfield to win League 1 at 3.5.

Read More→

Afternoon all.

I’ve got a cracking value antepost baseball bet for you today, which simply has to be backed.

The only unfortunate thing is it happens to be due to the increasing rapid demise of my team, the San Francisco Giants.

The Giants are the reigning World Series champions, after a fairytale 2010 campaign.  However, the current squad are injury riddled and materially weaker than last years bunch of misfits.  The Giants have actually lost 5 in a row after last night’s humiliating 9-2 loss to the Minnesota Twins – not usually the point at which you would find me diving in and ranting about value at Speakers’ Corner.

However, the UK bookmakers are asleep on the job on this one.   Either that or they pay even less attention to the finer details of the MLB season that I suspected.

Read More→

Evening all.

As promised, I thought I would pop up a post about looking for value on the baseball coupon.

One of the key factors to assess, which makes betting on baseball quite different to betting on football, is each teams starting pitcher.

In the modern game, all 30 major league teams use a “five man rotation”, whereby they use five different starting pitchers on a 5 game/day cycle.

There are 162 games in a baseball season and, barring injury, each starting pitcher will pitch circa 32-35 games.

The starting pitcher has a huge impact on a baseball teams chances of winning – much more than any individual player could ever account for in an invasion game such as football.

A baseball game lasts nine innings, with each side batting nine times.  An inning doesn’t have a defined length – it simply ends once three batters have been retired.

It may only take five minutes and as few as three pitches.  Equally, it may take over half an hour and involve five plus pitchers throwing 50+ pitches if they are giving up a lot of runs and struggling to get people out.

Your starting pitcher is expected to pitch at least six of the games innings – assuming he doesn’t get knocked around too badly and isn’t removed from the game.

The elite top line starting pitchers will be looking to pitch seven or eight innings, or on particularly good days throw a “complete game”, although these are relatively rare – maybe a handful a season for great, durable pitchers.

Once a pitcher begins to tire (normally after 90 – 110 pitches) they are normally removed from the game by their manager (this is on of the manager’s judgement calls, not the pitcher himself) and substituted for one of the team’s “relief pitchers” from “the bullpen“.

Read More→