Welcome to My Substack / About Me:
I'm not sure this is the right place to do this, but lets drop in a short bio
Hey there, I’m Mike. Welcome to my Substack and thanks for being here!
I’ll make my first bet and say you are here because you’re interested in winning at sports betting. While we will certainly get into that side of things, let me tell you a bit about myself and how I cracked the gambling codes.
I believe my elite skill in life is pattern recognition.
When I was younger I took speed chess lessons and taught myself how to solve a rubix cube. These activities are the definition of recognizing successful patterns and building off of them. I have a strong sense of the people around me because I am observant of the patterns in their behavior. Stay around me long enough, I’ll end up having a killer and hilarious imitation of you.
I also have a certifiably insane memory. Take me to a place once, I can drive there and back anytime for years to come. Show me how to cook something once, I can replicate it with no recipe for eternity.
Before you think I’m a lunatic doing cubes, playing chess, and memorizing streets as my childhood, I did have a wet jumper and could throw a missile spiral. My hand eye coordination has always been very good, my movement and explosiveness is, um… lackluster. I’m a solid 3rd round pick at the basketball courts. I have also always been very good at video games, that is another perfect combination of hand eye coordination + pattern recognition, and memory in the buttons clicked.
So how did I get into sports betting?
I have been studying professional sports gambling on NBA and NFL games since my freshman year of college.
The story goes that my mom was dating someone who, like me, was a big sports fan. Likely as a means of trying to get to know me better and bond, he set up an online sports betting account, put $500 in it, and we would throw $50 on the games we watched together (sidebar: thats way to big of an avg bet size compared to bankroll, that exposure will kill you). This was also in the time pre legalized sports gambling, so when he set up the account he was wiring money to an offshore bookie and using some bootleg site. Shoutout to him for the effort, it paid off quite literally. So when I was home from college for things like Thanksgiving or Christmas, we’d throw some bets in and watch some sports.
Until I returned to college my second semester freshman year and called up mom. I asked to speak with him and said, “can i have that username and password so i can throw some money on the games I watch with my friends.” I’m sure at that moment, while saying yes, he was happy I was enjoying it, but was confident that money was soon to be toast.
Well… I ended up consistently going to the library at college, having spreadsheets, tracking professional gamblers, studying and mimicking their picks. I figured, if they have a 55% hit rate, and I only the copy the bets at the exact same number, exact same odds, exact same exposure, then I would also likely return a longterm net 55%. And then my pattern recognition skills started to kick in, and I was noticing patterns in the plays and figuring out the why behind them. In about a year, that $500 account turned into $18,000. I was onto something.
While probably best for mom in the long run (hi mom!), that relationship did not last and I never logged into that account or reached out to my moms ex again. Heres my second bet of this post, I bet that account still exists somewhere with 18 stacks in it. So I figured out a way to start a new account, put $300 in it, and have been building it up ever since.
I have now been handicapping NBA and NFL games for 11 seasons. I have never had a losing season. The question is not will I beat the books, its how much will I beat them by?
While I am a very successful gambler, I still lose about 45% of my bets, so let me briefly humanize myself and talk about my weaknesses.
I struggle with chronic pain. I broke my back in a bad car accident at 19, and was diagnosed with a rare degenerative bone disease at 27 (Scheuermanns Disease). I’ve had 5 orthopedic surgeries, and at this point the majority of my spine is metal and surgically repaired. I’ve learned to get my stuff done in life while having no expectation of a consistent schedule because I never know when pain will force me to stop, and when I’ll have a random bout of good energy to get to work. It’s not easy to live with such physical unpredictability and pain.
I’m dyslexic… I remember taking some weird cumulative knowledge and skills test as a child. This lady asked me to do a series of random tasks. She showed me 5 Chinese symbols in an order and would take them away in differing time intervals, and then ask me to reassemble it. I could do it fast, and I could mess with her and do it backwards even. This was my pattern recognition and memory showing its glory. But then she would have me read, time it and answer basic reading comprehension questions. I was a disaster. I remember her saying my cumulative intelligence was in the 91st percentile, but my reading speed and comprehension were both in the low 30th percentile (heres my insane memory, I am 100% sure those were the reported scores). She told me I was dyslexic, and its very very true. Sometimes I will read a word and think, wait that does not make sense, I’ll go back and re read it and its truly shocking to see the corrected version.
Last, I think I’m too wordy. And with my dyslexia, theres bound to be plenty of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. This probably doesn’t bode well for starting up a longer form writing page. Stick with me, maybe this will be a mind strengthening endeavor. I probably could have written this bio in like… 140 characters or less.
Ok, that should be my queue to end this. Let’s get out of here. I’m excited to have you here, I look forward to connecting and talkings odds and bets and building a great community!
Let’s beat the books!
Mike
PS: In addition to being amongst worlds best sports gamblers, i consider myself to be amongst worlds best chocolate chip cookie connoisseurs. I would love to hear what type or where you think worlds best cookie is.