Richard, NFL finalist and his Look Ahead Strategy

 How long have you been doing handicapping sports? What are your
favorite sports to handicap?

2. I have been betting on sports since I was 19 years old (currently 43). I love NFL and College Football and College Basketball. Just started following NBA the past couple of years. I was excited about NHL this season (I grew up playing hockey) so this has been disappointing. Baseball has always given me fits. But I learned a great deal from the ZCode community and I am looking forward to next season.

Your College Basketball and Look Ahead Picks started with a good
success. Please tell us more about this system. How long ago did you
start following it? Did you try “backtesting” it?

3. For years I have seen inflated college football lines and I used to be all about the favorites. Every week: how can they lose? And they lose. Just this year I thought about Look Ahead strategy. You hear announcers talk about it all the time. So I started testing on my own. The first two weeks that were not documented the plays went 7-1. The first two weeks I posted the plays were on fire. In my opinion College Football is affected by emotion. I am a Big 10 fan (Penn St). I follow Pac 12 very closely. And I live in the SEC. It was evident this year that college teams tend to look ahead. Teams may want to rest players or give 2nd and third team players some game time. This allows lesser opponent to score some points and possibly cover the spread. Or win outright as we have seen. I also posted College Football Strategy Picks this year. This really isn’t a system but a popularity contest. I am in a pool with 100 other college football pickers. We basically pick 6 games each week. All I do is see which picks are the most popular. Last year was much better than this year. I think we still finished around 60% and we have about 35 bowl games to look at. College basketball  has not been successful so far. But I am cutting my units in half and sticking with it.

Why college sports? What are the main differences to major leagues
in a way you analyze them?

4. You have 16 (give or take) NFL games every week. You can have 100 college football or basketball games any given day (usually Saturday). That’s a lot of games to set lines for. There are bound to be errors (value) in the lines. You have to do your homework and find the value. College basketball is a little trickier because you have a short period of time to analyze and determine. Historically I have had more success with the college sports than the pro sports. I watch a lot, read a lot and learn as much as I can about teams in the major conferences. I think emotion plays a much bigger factor in college sports than pros. Pros are paid millions. Do you think these professional athletes really care about rivalries? Hell no. They care about their paycheck. But emotion plays a huge part in college sports. I take that into account when I am analyzing.

5. I have never planned systems before this year. I was really influenced by the members of the community and I started thinking about ways to look at games. If I think of something that may work I will share with the community. But there are already great systems in place. All you have to do is follow and stay disciplined.

You are one of the finalists of Zcode NFL championship. Since the
start you are on fire, winning nearly every single week. What is the
secret? Please don’t tell you got lucky, because such consistency
every week can not be pure luck 🙂

6. I got lucky…;) First you have to analyze which I usually do on a Tuesday. I used to use other sources but ZCode is terrific to start to get your thoughts in order. Then I start reading comments by great members like Mark, Jonathan, P, and many others. I love looking at trends. This will not make decisions for me but may help sway me. At this point I probably have it narrowed down to a few games. And I am in a NFL pickers pool as well so i will look and see what the popular picks are within the group. What usually ends up happening is my opening guess is usually confirmed by research. This NFL season had a horrible start. But the past 6 weeks or so have been very profitable.

7. Of course I always start with the VIP page. I love the forums. Line reversals has always been one of my favorite tools as well. Hot Trends is great to quickly get to winning forums.

Your words of wisdom to new members and people who just start sport
investing?

8. Discipline. Start with an amount you are comfortable losing. If it’s $500 that’s fine. If you risk 3% on each bet you will be betting $15 each bet. Stay disciplined. Don’t chase- make bigger bets to make up for a loss or betting Sunday 4:00pm games because you lost the 1:00pm games. Stay consistent whether it’s a system or a member you follow (I am religiously betting JPM NBA). Personally I like betting a small amount of games. I perform better when I only have a few plays going. This past weekend was a great example. The only game I absolutely loved was Houston. The other games split and I lose juice. Why didn’t I just stick with Houston??? Bet the amount of games you are comfortable with. Stay within your bankroll. Be consistent.

Follow Richard and other great winners inside Zcode VIP Club at http://zcodesystem.com