Hockey Bets Audit

Hockey bets audit 01/26-02/01

Kurt Kuklewicz

What would be a daily bets article without an audit to track how bad we are? Yes, it's true that a lot of bets placed on sports are not successful. However, this week we really proved that point well. Perhaps too well... Overall, it was a really awful week. It cannot be sliced or spun any other way. When trying to understand why, I think there could be a few reasons that attribute to this. We all have to face the music sometimes and when we can admit to our mistakes, we grow from it.

Here is the record:

Pick 1 record (moneyline bets, under / over, period, prop bets, etc.): 6-13

Pick 2 parlay: 1-5

Pick 3 or more parlay: 0-2

$10 on each bet, net profit: -$132.85

Downfalls of this week:

  • Betting with impulse or emotion

  • Making too many bets on one day

  • Posting my long-shot parlay bets onto Stat Glitchers

  • Overestimating goalie match-ups / stats

  • Picking too many legs on a player prop parlay

  • Picking puck line or moneyline bets on too many away teams

The downfalls are long this week, because there was a lot we did wrong. Impulsive betting is perhaps the most dangerous type of gambling. It is very rewarding (and lucky usually) when you are right, but when you are wrong, you immediately see how flawed or biased the bet was. Chris Kreider unfortunately led us down this path this week once or twice. Actually, the Rangers in general did not do us well. There needs to be more logic factored into these bets other than "I want these guys to do well". Goalie match-ups were definitely overworked or over-estimated. "Scott Wedgewood is in net tonight, and this guy is Swiss cheese, which surely means all Bruins players will do well tonight or Mikko Rantanen will get over 1.5 points easily in the match with the Avs". I need to be a little more thoughtful, and scale back some of my extremism just a notch.

A lot of the parlay bets were almost completed successfully, but fell short one leg. The two 3 pick parlay were actually each one leg off. If they were bet individually, this would have boosted our picks by 4-2, which is very respectable and profitable. However, when they are parlayed, we go 0-2 instead. Also, some of the parlay we took were small bets to win potential big reward and were very high percentage to miss. Sometimes, when I win big on a parlay bet in football or underdog in soccer, I set some of the winnings aside for long-shot parlays I may like. I think I will stop posting the long-shots here, unless I am pretty confident they will hit.

Strengths of the week:

  • Betting on home teams in non-divisional games

  • Betting on moneyline

I will continue to bet with hot and / or strong teams, especially while they are at home. However, it's important to avoid the games like Pens / Flyers even if the Penguins are a huge favorite at home and the Flyers haven't won since the Nixon era. It's still the Battle of Pennsylvania. The normal game script and flow just turns off for these battles. The crowd, the hatred the players have for one another, just does something odd with these games. I have learned to not like it.