Basketball:

NBA: 150-136 on sides, 216-200 on totals
College: 251-291 on sides, 496-420 on totals

That comes out to 1113-1047 on all basketball plays, or 51.33 percent. Those playing only sides would have gone 401-427, or 48.4 percent. Those playing only totals would have gone 712-620, or 53.5 percent.

Please note that I started studying football long before basketball. I went into 2008/09 not fully confident in the basketball numbers. I started out advising, "don't use these until they start showing some success." If a customer took that to heart, they would have simply never used the college point spread picks, and they would not have started using the college totals until they turned strong in December (the November college totals were only 61-69). If those results are dropped from the mix, then the final outcome is 801-687, for a 53.83 percent win rate, and a solid profit on the season.

Customers may have also had better NBA results if they held off on the early part of the season, but the NBA situation was less black and white than the college. There was no sudden "turn on" when the NBA became hot.

Summing all football and basketball results, the record was 1414-1279 = 52.51 percent. Dropping the college basketball results that most customers probably did not play, the combined tally was 1102-919 = 54.53 percent.

Vegas Play subscribers were winners for the year.

I learned a lot from the strenuous year of college sides. New analysis over the summer means I feel more confident going into 2009/10. I will probably still say "wait until we see success," for college basketball sides, but this year I expect to see more success.

Miscellaneous notes:

ATS win percentages needed to break even:

with 10 percent VIG: 52.38 %
with 7 percent VIG: 51.69 %
with 5 percent VIG: 51.22 %

Some online books offer 5 or 7 percent VIGs. Some do so on a regular basis, while others have specials where the reduced VIG is available a single night per week. I highly recommend going for these specials, as the difference in your profit will be drastic.

Prior to 2008/09, my records are scattered and incomplete. However, I can proudly say that most of my customers have been loyal - several are returning for their fourth seasons.

Yes, I probably recommended too many plays over-all. However, that was mainly due to college basketball. For the other three leagues, if you divide the number of picks by the number of weeks in the season, you find a reasonable number of plays per week. I intend to be a little more selective in the future.

Finally, results may vary from customer to customer, depending on the lines gotten. I try to keep my records according to the most common line, but on some games that is hard to determine.

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