Sit down and get learned...
I’m a guy from Alabama who enjoys the finer things in life. Such as food that’s terrible for you, liquids that are terrible for you (no I’m not talking about Coca-Cola) and a hobby that is terrible for you. By that hobby I mean sports. Sports are absolutely EXCRUCIATING. For instance as I’m writing this the Royals are 1 day removed from earning their first World Series trip since 1985. Not only have they not been to the Series since ’85, they hadn’t even made the playoffs since then either. Imagine being a fan and waiting 29 years for your team to have any success whatsoever as it’s measured today. No sane person would want any part in that. The thing is though, that in no way at all is the best example of why sports are so awful for you, not even close. It’s just proof that on damn near any day you can find a reason why throwing your heart and soul into something like this, that you have no control over is the absolute worst.
I’m currently 24 years old and as long as I can remember I’ve been enamored with athletic events. Baseball, football, basketball, golf, you name it, and I’ve watched it. I grew up, like every kid in America thinking I was going to be the next Michael Jordan/Troy Aikman/Ken Griffey Jr/Tiger Woods, etc. I then quickly realized I’m super slow and even more un-athletic. Ask anyone that knows me and the first adjective many of them would use to describe me, after tall, would be un-athletic. So therefore I knew I was pretty much confined to remote duties. Then I discovered the gambling aspect of it all.
Like anyone else, I of course would make little $5 or $10 bets with my friends growing up, but never anything serious. Then my freshman year of college I discovered online gambling. You could bet on ANYTHING. I was a fan. I started throwing some small amounts on marquee college football games, then a few Sunday games if I had a decent Saturday, but never anything big. Sophomore year it grew into some NBA action and a little more NFL action. I was winning some, losing some, probably a little more losing than winning but nothing big. My gambling never caused me to have to resort to ramen noodles; it was more the deciding factor between Natural Light, or springing for the expensive stuff, Bud Light (again, I was in college).
Junior year my passion started to grow. I was a college kid who loved watching sports. I had the sports cable package so there was always something on to watch. So instead of having games with no one to root for, I gave myself a rooting interest. Again, I hovered around .500 maybe won a few more than I lost but never much profit to show for it. It was a hobby. Last part of Junior year and Senior year is when I started my baseball gambling.
Baseball was what really saved me from being a terrible gambler. Before I started betting on baseball I would kind of just look at games and pick them. No research whatsoever. Which, in a word, is stupid. I knew baseball to be a number driven sport, so I figured doing research and actually looking at the numbers would help. Believe it or not putting research into something actually makes you better at it! Who would’ve known? I started doing well enough in baseball, but as many of you know the game is completely random and anything can and will happen on any given night. So there is no such thing as a high success rate on betting on baseball if you ask me.