Article involving Dr. Bob

[FixerWins]

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB116796079037267731-wjPu4ACcg5J5Qvjh05IYEI_Ooeo_20070112.html

an interesting thing I pulled from this

But over the years, Mr. White says he's seen enough touts get hot to know how the story ends. The more the point spreads move, the less effective his advice becomes. And when the bookmakers figure him out, his disciples will drift away. "He needs to enjoy this while it's going on right now," he says.

This pretty much sums up what we talked about with the difference between the art and the science of handicapping.

[ProfessorWins]

He now has this posted on his website "recapping" his college football season....looks like some damage control to me after everyone jumped on his back this season after the articles, and his plays went straight in the tank.

Rick

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College Football Recap - 2007

I know you're all very disappointed with what happened this week and with the season overall, as this will turn out to be my worst College football season in my 21 years as a professional handicapper - and only my 5th unprofitable season (only the 3rd under 50%). Those of you that are sophisticated sports bettors know that there is variance in sports betting and that my 3 seasons at 64% prior to this year (and my 59% college record over the previous 9 years and 57% over 20 years) didn't guarantee a winning season.

I can assure you that I didn't suddenly forget how to handicap or that I am not working as hard because I'm working more hours than I ever have. The difference between this year and other seasons is negative variance and that variance has come in the form of numerous games in which I clearly had the right side and lost anyway due to a large number of turnovers, missed extra points and other random occurrences. Those sort of losses happen every year (although not as often as this year), but what has made this year different is that I haven't had my share of lucky wins on games in which I was on the wrong side. In fact, I have not had one lucky win all season and I challenge any of you to find a game I was lucky to win in which I obviously had the wrong side. I have won a few games that could have gone either way, but I have a decidedly losing record on toss-up games this season.

I though perhaps it just selective memory that I was getting screwed a lot this year on games I should have won and maybe I was just forgetting some fortunate wins. I decided to go over every box score and play by play on all my Best Bets this season to find out if I had conveniently forgotten about a few lucky wins.

Below is a recap of every College Best Bet this season and I put each game into one of three categories. A game in which my team should have covered based on yards per play and other predictable events was considered being on the right side. A game in which I deserved to lose based on yardage is considered being on the wrong side and games that really could have gone either way based on the yardage and a reasonable turnover differential was considered a toss up game. You'll see me refer to turnover margin a lot in this recap because turnovers are 75% random in college football and often determine which team covers the spread. Anything beyond a -1 or +1 in turnover margin in a game is random as even favorites of 28 points or more would not be forecasted to be +2 in turnover margin very often.

The results of my study are pretty much what I thought they were.

I have had 29 games in which I was on the right side and I'm 23-5-1 on those games, which is a win percentage that is about normal for being on the right side of a game.

I have had 22 games in which I was obviously on the wrong side and I have lost them all (where are my lucky wins???).

I have had 15 games that I consider toss up games based on the stats and my record on those toss up games, which should be 50%, is just 5-10.

So, I have been on the right side 7 more times than I've been on the wrong side and my Best Bet record would be 36-29-1 if I won the 29 games in which I was on the right side, lost the 22 games in which I was on the wrong side, and went 7-7-1 on the 15 toss-up games. Because I've had 5 unlucky losses, one unlucky push, zero lucky wins and have a record of just 5-10 on the toss-up games my record is 28-37-1 instead of 36-29-1.

So, my analysis has not been nearly as bad as my record indicates. I usually wait until the off-season to do this analysis and I've certainly had years when my record was better than it should be (I was 74% on a Star Basis in 2005 and should have been 66%) and the last time there was significant negative variance was in 2003 when I was 46-55-2 on my College Best Bets when I graded out at 54% that year. People doubted me after that bad 2003 season and then I went 64% on my College Best Bets over the next 3 seasons combined, so one bad year that is the result of negative variance and not bad analysis does not mean that I am suddenly a bad handicapper.

[Spanky]

I have purchased many handicapper services picks in every sport. I have been a client of Dr. Bob in the past. I decided to not purchase his picks this season because when he releases his picks the lines move so quickly that I could not keep up. He may have had a bad football season this year but there is not one service out there that wins every season. Long term I would recommend his picks against any handicapping service out there. He is a honest handicapper and my guess is by the way he moves the line, he is also a feared handicapper in many circles. Handicapping services that try to portray him in a negative light are just jealous of his success.

[FixerWins]

Handicapping services that try to portray him in a negative light are just jealous of his success.

LOL, YA THINK!

We officially got into this business in 2001 and for every 1 good person I met in this business, there were 10-12 slime balls. That is one of the reasons we are out of the business now and just happy running a forum.

[FixerWins]

Rick, I finally read this and think it is pretty weak also.

Also, I am not ripping him either, because I do agree with everything Spanky says. You just don't win every year and I respect every capper that works honestly in this business, because it is a ridiculously tough business to succeed in.

However, I hate the backcap I should have won every game type of analysis. You can do this on every single capper in the world to come up with any number to go your way based on any of the variables you set.

So what he is saying was he had 29 games where he went 23-5-1, which were all games he should have won. He had 22 games where he went 0-22, which he had no lucky wins, and the remaining 15 games went 5-10 that could have went either way.

So his total is 28-37-1, 43.1% for the year.

So going by this article, let's look at his 57% record over 20 years, by using these numbers assuming every year his plays are 29 right sides, 22 wrong sides, and 15 toss ups.

29-22 with no lucky wins or bad losses is 56.9%.

Taking the other toss ups, at 7-7-1, his record is now 36-29-1, 55.3%.

So basically he is saying that he should probably hit 55.3% every year. Since he has been hitting 59% over the last 9 years, then more than likely he is going to hit well under 55.3% the next 9 years as that 59% will then drop to 55.3%.

So he basically wrote an article to fade himself going forward. That the product of his high percentage was due to getting his share of lucky wins, staying away from the bad losses and getting the toss ups to go his way in the past.

I was personally happy about Dr. Bob's success as it has brought honest handicapping to the forefront which will help the industry in the long run. However, it would have been nice to see an "I lost, my record is still excellent over the long run, and we move on to next year." Then the "I have been working more hours than ever" statement would be disconcerting to me as a customer, because your capping should be consistent enough after 20 years, where by this time, you should know how many hours it takes to complete your capping for the week. The more hours you put in the more it drains you and the worse your senses get when looking at games. And the "I did it before and bounced back so I am not a bad handicapper" comment was weak. Dude you have been the Vegas bookies moving lines on air due to your picks, you don't have to justify yourself to anyone. That is the highest form of respect any handicapper can get.

[Spanky]

Ten or Twelve slimeballs in the handicapping industry is being nice. There are hundreds of scum balls out there trying to sell their picks by whatever means possible. This does not mean that there are not a few honest hardworking handicapping services out there. In my opinion, Dr. Bob is one of the most honest consistent handicappers I have ever talked with. He does not win every week or every season, he does provide his clients with the best he can week in and week out. If you had the amount of clients and were making the money Dr. Bob does you would still be selling your picks. I was also a client in the past of both Professorwins and Fixerwins, the only reason I decided to purchase your picks was because I thought you were trying to provide a honest handicapping service. You did not decide to start a forum because there were so many scum balls in your industry. You decided to start a forum because making money selling your picks along with the daily grind of trying to handicap all the games is hard work. My guess is that you decided to start a forum because you thought it would be profitable and a little easier to operate compared to running a handicapping service.

[FixerWins]

?????? How would you know what we do and why we do it ???????

We haven't made a profit from running a website since we started, we take whatever money we do make from this and just reinvest it into the site and try to improve things constantly. We take no money out for personal use. This is more of a passion than anything. I absolutely love doing this stuff and our ultimate goal is to provide a full service handicapping information stop without an agenda. That agenda is to not pilfer from people.

Also, we had a pretty long conversation about this a few months ago when talking about this Dr. Bob thing. Even if you are an honest legitimate handicapping service that becomes very successful, you will not be able to win. The books will catch up to you just like they did to Dr. Bob. The lines will go against you, it will hurt your plays, and your people will lose anyway and then disappear. So you can not win either way by becoming an honest handicapper in this industry. Bottom line. You just added more proof to my point in the forum thread we had a few months ago, where you said he is honest, nice, a good capper, but I didn't purchase from him this year. There is absolutely no use in running an honest handicapping service.

The easiest way to become profitable in this industry is to announce you are hitting 75%, put a few ads on sports radio shows on Monday Nights from 6-8 PM EST, and have Games of the Years every week. That would actually be the easiest way to make profit. There are so many nieve people out it is ridiculous. PT Barnum was right.

BTW, I am actually working harder running this thing.

[FixerWins]

If you had the amount of clients and were making the money Dr. Bob does you would still be selling your picks

How many clients does he have and how much money does he make?

[Spanky]

In response to both posts. First of all, I have no doubt that you love being involved in the world of sports, handicapping, forums ect. Unless this forum is run as a part time hobby, you have to run this forum to make a profit. I have no idea if you and your employees like working for free. This would be the first forum that I have ever been on that the owners are not here to provide a service but in the meantime make some money doing it. As far as me not re-signing up for Dr. Bobs picks is not because he was not giving me good information, but because many of his clients have the time to sit by the computer and wait for him to release his plays. They are able to get the recommended number ( spread ) he wants you to bet so those clients who have access and time to a sportsbook on release typically are more prone to getting a winner than someone like me that was not able to get his picks until after work. As far as a service having to be dis-honest to be successful in the handicapping industry is simply not true. There are many handicapping services that have been around a long time that I feel are providing a honest service. I think Doc Sports has been around since the 70's. I can name at least ten others that I would not have any problem purchasing their plays. Not all of them would win every week but I know they are not releasing both sides of the game. How successful is Dr. bob. How many clients does he have? I have no idea. I will say this. He is the only paid handicapper that moves the line when he releases his games. He is the only paid handiapping service that sports books take down lines until he makes his plays. He is the only paid handiacapping service that I have seen interviewed on ESPN. I do not recall seeing Fixerwins picks move any lines at any sports book. For you guys to try and put down Dr. Bob is like Kmart telling the world Wallmart doesn't play fair just as they got done going to court for bankruptcy. Just because the handicapping industry did not work for you doesn't mean everyone in the industry is a dis-honest and trying to cheat their clients.

[ProfessorWins]

Spanky,

I don't think either of us (I know I haven't) ever put down Dr Bob. My comment was that he was doing "damage control." He had tremendous seasons in college football of late (2004-2006), and as a result I am sure got a lot of new membership this past year. Unfortunately, this season was not up to par and I am sure he got pounded with tons of emails from clients complaining about his picks. Of course, taken into consideration with the big picture (his career and even past 4 years) his plays are still profitable, but a new customer doesn't care about that. They want to win now...its that simple. I am confident that he wrote this recap of his season as a response to the many emails he was receiving, and through damage control to attempt to keep some of those new customers on board for next year. He is a tremendous, cutting-edge handicapper that I personally respect (and I don't respect many in this business). Unfortunately, I doubt many of his new 2007 customers that dropped 2K or so (not even counting bets) on his college football package feel the same way.

Yes, he has been interviewed by the Wall St journal, ESPN, etc....I give him props for all of that. He is one of the "good guys" in an industry filled with slime.

I agree with you that there are a dozen or so services out there that are respectable. However, realize that while you would have no problem purchasing from them, you do not represent the masses. You seem to understand that they will not win all the time, but joe blow doesn't realize that. He buys into the "GOY" thing, and the "inside information" thing, etc, etc. You are the exception and not the norm. Those respectable services will see their clients eventually go away, but the Fiest's and Root's will get new customers each week simply through their marketing. That was what Ed was talking about.

Oh, and by the way, Ed was 100% accurate in saying we hadn't made a penny of profit off this site since we stood it up 3 years ago or so. If there is one thing I would love to do with regards to this site, it is to educate folks to be able to handicap on their own and not need me, dr bob, or anyone else in the future, and especially not the Fiest's and Root's out there. That would make me happier than making a few thousand a week on this site. That is the reason every one of my writeups in the members section above details each angle, and the rationale for the play. If people are smart, they are writing the stuff down somewhere so they utilize it down the road to strengthen their own handicapping toolbox.

We can discuss more later, but I am getting writers cramp and tired.

Rick

[FixerWins]

Rick's point is correct. You seem like a sharp individual who is the exception more than the norm and are the type of person we want to more than welcome here. Someone who can provide a stimulating conversation.

I also know a few of these good successful services, and not to run anyone's business out there, but they don't make a living just selling picks. They also sell publications, newsletters, make money from betting the games/horses, and also have other various investments that provide income.

Listening to Phil Steele on the radio before football season. They were questioning the fact that he has posted back to back losing seasons in College. They said how does that affect your business. Phil responded, I lose 50% of my clients every year I have a losing season and it takes me 2 winning years to try and get them back. I'd bet more than 50% of Dr. Bob's clients have signed on this year after reading all of the media outlet hype, and I bet out of those clients, 95% won't be back next year.

Once again you proved the point I am trying to make through this statement.

As far as me not re-signing up for Dr. Bobs picks is not because he was not giving me good information, but because many of his clients have the time to sit by the computer and wait for him to release his plays. They are able to get the recommended number ( spread ) he wants you to bet so those clients who have access and time to a sportsbook on release typically are more prone to getting a winner than someone like me that was not able to get his picks until after work.

By being an honest and successful handicapper, you will lose business in the long run anyway because if the losses don't catch up to you, the books will catch up to you, and no one will even be able to get the numbers you need them to play it at. Dr. Bob is in a tough spot right now, the books have caught up to him, and the losses have caught up to him this year, so now he has two sets of people providing him pressure, the books, and the customers. Would I want to be in his position right now? Not for all the money in the world.

However again I will mention it since maybe it didn't come through clearly the first time. I totally respect anyone who tries to make a living doing this honestly and sure hope Dr. Bob pulls through this, because I can only imagine the pressure he is feeling right now. If he pulls through it, it will be a WIN for the good guys in the industry.

[FixerWins]

I do not recall seeing Fixerwins picks move any lines at any sports book. For you guys to try and put down Dr. Bob is like Kmart telling the world Wallmart doesn't play fair just as they got done going to court for bankruptcy. Just because the handicapping industry did not work for you doesn't mean everyone in the industry is a dis-honest and trying to cheat their clients.

By the way, these are personal attacks on credibilty, and this is something we want to stay away from in these forums, because having to respond to these takes away from precious time from handicapping.

I love stimulating conversation and being questioned! However, any personal attacks will get deleted going forward.

You don't even know who we are and what we are about.

Like Rick said, our ultimate goal is to get people to instill confidence in themselves and try to prevent the next 17 year old kid (or adult) who is making $7.25 an hour at the local grocery store and is down $500 going into Monday Night with the local bookie from falling for the 6-billion star inside information parlay **** of the century, and end up getting into more trouble than it's worth. Why do I want to do that? Because I was that kid one time.

We tried to do that through an honest handicapping service, but A) we realized that it was just too hard to compete and get our point across and B) when people looked at you as a handicapping service, they just want to be spoon fed winners and don't really care about the long run as you mention and C) we were grouped in with the rest of the "touts" in the world anyway, when most of that group was what we were trying to break away from.

Rick and I knew that doing things this way would piss certain people off but as Rick stated our goal here is to build a handicapping network information sharing vehicle that could help all of us who wish to do this on our own in the long run and not fall for the sleaze.

And finally, yes welcome to the first forum with owners who are not into this for the money. Rick and I are men of faith and family oriented individuals who judge our success in life by our faith and our successes as a family. I would not say this is a hobby, because it is too serious of a passion for us to be a hobby. We don't look at how much money we make in life as a measurement to our success.

Also, of course the people who work for us don't like working for free. That's why they are listed as expenses on our balance sheet.

Unless this forum is run as a part time hobby, you have to run this forum to make a profit.

Why do I have to make a profit from this?

[Spanky]

To put the Dr. bob thread to rest, I do agree with your earlier post. I do agree with the point that there are a lot of dishonest handicappers who concentrate on dis-information marketing to make money rather than concentrating on providing quality handicapping picks for their clients. As far as clients complaining to a quality handicapper like Dr. bob about their losing picks is part of the industry as you may have experienced first hand. Some gamblers expectations of a handicappers service can be short sighted and emotions can take the best of guys on a losing day or week. I would think that gamblers that bitch at a service for every losing day are not the type of clients that a handicapping service wants anyway. I have personally experienced losing seasons with some of my services, which have cost me a couple of dollars during a down season. I probally did send a couple of e-mails bitching about my picks but over time I kept with them and they eventually turned things around the following season. I wonder how many clients will complain if Dr. Bob has a really good basketball season. My guess is that they will all forget about this football season. Last of all, why do gamblers buy handicappers picks in the first place. I would bet many guys have tried to handicap the games themselves and have found out first hand how hard it is to pick winners. Gamblers are just looking for that winning edge. I personally like to buy honest handicapping services picks because I am working all day and do not have the time to handicap any sport. I do not have the time to look at stats, injury reports, past match-ups ect. that a handicapping service provides. Dr. Bob did lose money for his clients this football season. Does that make Dr. Bob a bad handicapper? Only to the client who thought Dr. Bob was going to win every season in every sport. He will turn things around I have no doubt.

[Spanky]

Fixerwins,

In response to your post, I did not mean to attack you on a personal level but I thought that you were demeaning a honest handicapper in the industry filled with plenty of dis-honest people. One thing that I do find a little funny is your comment about your faith. Please do not take this the wrong way, but when I walked out of church last Sunday, I know I did not have the feeling that God was calling me to help gamblers with their picks. My guess is that God does not look at the gambling industry in a possitive light. How you live your life is betweeen you and God. I want to wish you guys the best of luck with this forum. Why can't this forum be something that you guys love to do but also provides you with a nice income? I would think with a couple of possitive changes this forum could be highly successful.

[FixerWins]

Spanky, no problem at all. If you knew us like the others who have followed us since the mid 90's, that is definitely not our agenda, and we are not on here for sour grapes either, we could have easily kept our service running, continue to made money, marketed it, and moved on every year. When Rick and I started the service, we gave ourselves a 5 year plan at which point we would reassess where we stand at that time. When we did go to reassess this past August, we both had 1 thing in common, we were just not happy doing what we were doing with running a service. It actually had nothing to do with the money. We were actually embarassed to tell people we were handicappers and ran a service. The first response people would say to us, oh yeah, like those guys on Saturday Mornings. The negative responses we would get where just so overwhelming.

Didn't mean to bring faith into it in that light. And no God didn't tell me to do this like he told Reggie White to go to Green Bay. I was just trying to give you some background on the type of people we are. I am not a preacher type when it comes to that, and everyone should live their own life in the way that pleases them. I only expect 2 things out of people in life, 1) to be happy in whatever your doing, 2) and to not affect other's peoples lives in a negative manner.

Why can't this forum be something that you guys love to do but also provides you with a nice income? We are not even close to being at that point yet. I rather take any profit made from here and reinvest it into making a better product. I have my life set up in other ways where I am not dependent on income from any one source, and this site is not even a source at this moment. That is why when people ask if you are pro sports bettor, I say no. I would call myself "semi-pro" I don't need to win at sports betting to survive, but I do need a supplemental income from that to get through the month.

I would think with a couple of possitive changes this forum could be highly successful. Let us know what positive changes we can make. This is not our forum, but the people's forum. We provide the topics and they take those topics in whatever direction they want, as long as we are focused on the same thing, beating the spread. We are always interested in the people's input to improve the product.

[FixerWins]

Last of all, why do gamblers buy handicappers picks in the first place. I would bet many guys have tried to handicap the games themselves and have found out first hand how hard it is to pick winners. Gamblers are just looking for that winning edge. I personally like to buy honest handicapping services picks because I am working all day and do not have the time to handicap any sport. I do not have the time to look at stats, injury reports, past match-ups ect. that a handicapping service provides.

Totally agree with you and that is why we decided to make a member forum for our people interested in still doing that. We have some dedicated clients who have been with us from the beginning and they are interested in taking our opinions and making plays with them. Heck I even purchase newsletter subscriptions from services I respect.

[Spanky]

Good posts. Anyway, some positive changes to me would be maybe working towards providing a little better line service. Not to reference another forum but the SBR line service would be one that I would use as a model. Secondly, I would recommend working towards providing better scoring updates. Again, SBR has a nice way of telling you whats going on in a game. Bettors who have money on a game like to know what's going on at all times and watching a little ticker go up and down gives me a headache. To get a little more traffic here I am not sure how you have this forum listed on yahoo or google but the only way I found you is because I went to your old web site. I do not think this site pops up for the casual gambler. I could be wrong but if I am not, you may want to talk to your web master about spreading more spiders to have your forum get more hits. In the long run if you start to get more traffic, I think you will find that more off shore books will want to advertise on this site. Additionally, I know that a few quality handicappers also advertise on some other sites. I know you aren't interested in making more money but it is something to think about.

[Spanky]

Another thought, to get more traffic I do know that some forums try to set up some kind of challenge to win a prize. SBR has Beat the *****, The Rx is always running some kind of contest sponsored by a sportsbook and Wagerline is filled with different ways to play a contest. My favorite is the Survivor game which I cannot seem to get past three. These contests or games give a reason for a person to visit your site daily. I am not sure if this is something you want to persue but this is what works for other sites. The key is more traffic more advertisers more money. Again, if you are not interested in more money you can send it to me.

[FixerWins]

Nice stuff!

Some things we are working on, some we intentionally don't want to do.

-Line service and scoreboard are in the works along with putting up searchable databases. Basically how we are building the site is to track everything that we use when doing our handicapping and we want to combine it all on this site.

-Google stuff is in the works. We have jumped over 50 spots since we started working on it a few weeks ago in some of the bigger keywords, and in other keywords we reside in the top 10 while others in the top 20 and 30.

-Contests. We tested contests a while ago, and all we got was traffic who wanted to play the contests, take the money and run. If we do contests again, it will be just for yearly members or something like that, and we like to put up the cash out of our own pocket for that. We really enjoyed running a few contests that way when we did test them out. There is nothing more annoying then winning a contest, and not being able to get that money because you either have to deposit that amount beforehand, afterhand, or roll it over 6x etc. just to receive it. You play with us, you get cash in your hand. On the other hand, if a company wants to step up and give something out as free promo, that is not a problem. Marc Lawrence Jr. sent over about 5 Playbook Yearbooks one year to give them out on our site. However, bottom line is that contests take up a lot of time to run, monitor, and work on and again that takes precious time away from handicapping.

-Other handicappers to advertise. We have taken that off the table for at least a year. Again, we tested it out, and just didn't like the tone the site was taking on, as we had to closely monitor the advertisements.

In summary, we don't want traffic, just to have traffic. I will leave that up to the big sites. I don't want a forum like Covers or the other big sites, where you have to sift through garbage after garbage after garbage posts, just to find something useful that you can use in your handicapping. It is an absolute waste of time. That's also why you see no General Discussion, Stock Market, Nudie Girls forum here. This is a hardcore handicapping site. We are trying to recreate the magic of the Ibettor and Vegas Insider posting forums from years gone back. Those were just strict handicapping sites who collected some of the sharpest minds around. I still get wood thinking about the collection of intelligence that was on those sites. Too bad the management of those sites were very poor. There are plenty of other sites out there to chat about life, or sports in general, or play pick em and win contests. Other sites do that well and I am very glad for them. But we are not interested in that. We have our free forum for everyone to share their information or just enjoy reading it, and we have our member forum, so our visitors who are interested can still see mine and Rick's work for a fairly low price. I totally understand that we may not be making as much money as the other sites and it will take us longer to build the site because of that, but we have plenty of time as I have the rest of my life to work on it. The #1 priority in this industry for me is to bet sports and win. I was always a sports bettor and always wanted to become a statistician, got my math degree because of that reason. A successful forum owner only came after as I realized how much more I can learn from others.

I have saved all of your suggestions to my hard drive along with the rest of the improvements for sites we have written and we always take everything into consideration at our meetings and never really rule anything out. In the end, everything comes down to, a) what type of tone does it give the site, and b) how efficiently can it be run without intruding on our handicapping time.

[FixerWins]

Also, what is SBR?

[Spanky]

Sbr..............

[FixerWins]

nice, looks mature and focused........ that type of maturity in the handicapping part of it is something we are looking to achieve...........that is easily one of the better ones I have seen in a while.

Our only difference is we wouldn't want as much fat on the site and are working towards having more quality info.

We will get there. It will take a while, but we will be there.

[Spanky]

I wanted to reference the site as a model for line movements and the scoring updates as the games are being played. As far as the other stuff that is not that important to me. They do seem to have a number of sharps that visit that site, my guess is because they offer the line movements that I do not see on ther forums. You cannot have the ideal forum on the first day you open for business, but it is nice to set goals for improvement in certain areas that will benefit this forum in the long run.