The downside of honesty and accuracy: Sometimes making a list and checking it a lot more than twice means the good news is not as great as it looked!

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But hey, I can't really complain.

There were some accidental glitches in the target betting template that made good days into bad days.

Then again, some good days turned into better ones.

And in the end, the goal of creating a betting worksheet that gets the job done right is worth an occasional sacrifice.

All along, I have been placing real bets that were calculated the old-fashioned way, using pencil and paper - and I'm pretty decently ahead since I began mixing ML and RL bets in the last week of July before wrapping up the nine-month 7-dog trial.

I can't yet be absolutely certain that the model is bug-free, but for now at least, it looks that way.

First, here's a summary of those good and bad days since July 24:


The win-to-date for good old, reliable target betting provides a healthy return on total action (close to 19%) and the risk so far has been negligible.

The most important numbers (other than the win value!): The average profit on winning days exceed the average loss on losing days by more than 3.5 to 1, and the overall average win so far has exceeded the overall average loss by 65%.

The only way to beat negative expectation is to win more when you win than you lose when you lose!

The first few run-throughs pitting target betting against TOM (the other method sent to me by "Peter Punter") had TB risking huge amounts to win more than $20,000 in comparison with TOM's loss of almost 70% of its bankroll since July 5.

With everything working tickety-boo (it's hard to cross your fingers while typing!), the bet values and the final win make perfect sense: a decent win eked out by consistent money management in spite of incompetent bet selection that delivered a flat WR of barely 38%.

The picks, of course, were TOM's...

Here's the comparison between the two strategies:


I could go on about this head-to-head, bet-by-bet comparison for several more pages, but for now I'll wrap up with today's selections (mine, not TOM's - the other method is history, and Peter P. has received his refund by now, hopefully!).

(Above chart courtesy of www.scoresandodds.com)

An important reminder: The only person likely to make money out of this blog is you, Dear Reader. There's nothing to buy, ever, and your soul is safe (from me, at least). Test my ideas and use them or don't. It's up to you. One more piece of friendly advice: If you are inclined to use target betting with real money against online "casinos" such as Bodog, spend a few minutes and save a lot of money by reading this.