Never Assume the Obvious Is My Heartfelt Advice

Joe Duffy (JoeDuffy.net)

 

I don’t want to toot my own horn, but too late, I’m going to.  I have had many a webmaster, content manager, editor etc., tell me that they love my articles because I actually have original ideas and substance. 

 

But I don’t want to toot my own horn. 

 

The horror stories are the same regarding the gobblygook from the touts-come-lately: 95 percent of the articles submitted fit into one of three categories.  The first is the cheesy sales pitch, “It takes contacts, information and hours of work.  I have that…yada yada.”  No elaboration or substantiation follows, just a rambling sales pitch in which a tout thinks qualifies for publication.

 

The next is the ever popular money management article in which half the touts only expose that they don’t understand the concept themselves. Finally there is the overstating and regurgitation of the self evident.  Topping the list of toutspeak is “bet with your head, not with your heart.” 

 

While I can’t deny there are degenerates who must be reminded of that no-so-enlightened epiphany, every wannabee handicapper believes they are speaking from Mt. Sinai in asserting the apparent.

 

Yet in the favorite-team-of-the-moment that is sports gambling, there is a less glaring truth within the heart/head rule. Bet with your head and not your broken heart.  It’s amazing how many intelligent people with total seriousness have told me that for example the last four of five times they bet for or against the Sheboygan Shamrocks they lost.  Hence they refuse to bet on a game involving them. “I just can’t seem to get a handle on them, so I avoid them altogether” I’ve heard.

 

Sometimes I hear somebody tell me that Team X has been “too good to me when I’ve bet on them. I can’t bet against them”.   Save your loyalties for your spouse or girlfriend…or both.  Betting is often about loving and leaving at the appropriate moment.  

 

Simply put it comes down to what we call “psychological juice”.  The best handicappers will lose 40 percent of the time and accept it as the cost of doing business. When the square player loses with for example Duke over Western Michigan, he seems to find consolation in knowing he lost with a superior team.

 

Smart players find solace only if they canceled it out with two winners.  Yet if somehow the typical gambler has Western Michigan plus-24 points and they lose by 26, it becomes once bitten, twice shy. Losing with the greatly inferior team causes the gambler to second guess himself much more than a chalk coming up short ever will. 

 

The same can be said with totals. There is no glory seemingly in betting the Phoenix Suns to go under the total.  And while I will admit to despising it when my handicapping comes up with Phoenix under, or for example the Rams under in the Martz era, I can’t allow the fear of heart stomping sweating out the total until the end get in the way of my bets.

 

It takes a lot of guts for me to publicly admit to knowing Bee Gees lyrics, but in their song “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” they ask “How can a loser ever win?”

 

A loser can win by not betting with his broken heart.

 

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