There are two topics I wanted to talk about today, so I figured I would combine them in to one post.  The first topic I will discuss is my NFL system.  I'm not sure if I will have enough time to break down every division and write about them all.  I would like to do a season prediction post, but I don't think I can manage a summary of all 32 teams.  That being said, I do have a plan for the first few weeks of the season.

 During the days leading up to the first games of the week, I plan on reviewing past system results for that week.  For example, leading up to week one I will review how the system worked in week one of the 2006, 2005, and 2004 seasons.  Leading up to week 2 I will review how the system worked in week two of the previous three seasons.  I will continue doing this until about week four, when I assume the system will return to it's normal behavior.

 Already I have completed a few weeks and found some interesting information.  For example, in week two of last season, had you followed the system rules (go against 8-0 and 7-0-1 picks, bet the underdogs in close games such as 4-3-1 picks, etc) you would have gone 5-11.  However, this is due to the contrarian picks going 0-6.  The teams in week two that were 8-0, 7-1, and 7-0-1 ended up covering against the spread in all 6 games.  These were the strongest picks last season when you bet against them.  My guess is that they will still be strong contrarian picks, but maybe not at the start of the season.  I plan on reviewing week 2 of other seasons to determine this.  The record when you bet ON the 8-0, 7-1, and 7-0-1 picks?  11-5.  That's the kind of result we're going for.

As far as week one goes, I'm still not sure how to handle this.  I may just do it the old fashioned way and cap out the games, using last season's system results for help, but not as the rule.  I'll have more on week one as we approach the season.

 On to my second topic, which is Accuscore strategies.  It occurred to me that there are a lot of new PRO members for the upcoming football season.  I have already received a few questions inquiring about Accuscore's 2006 results.  I figured this would be a good place to provide some insight from someone who joined Accuscore in late September of last season.

 The first thing I can tell you is that if you are just taking the Accuscore pick, and not doing anything else, you won't maximize the potential of the Accuscore system.  The key to Accuscore is researching their strengths and weaknesses, betting on the strengths, and sometimes betting against their weaker predictions.  To find out this information, go to the Daily Line Report, which can be found in the Handicapping section.   The 2006 football report has a good review of how Accuscore works.

As far as my personal experience goes, I noticed a few trends for Accuscore around mid-October, which led to many winning weeks.  At first I was betting NCAA sides and totals, until I realized that the totals kept losing, and the sides kept winning.  I reviewed my picks, and found that I would have been profiting if I cut out the totals all together.  After doing this, I started posting winning weeks.

The next thing I did was keep only the strong sides.  If Accuscore had a high unit total for the two teams involved in a game, I took that game.  If Accuscore was around 50%, or had negative units for the teams involved, then I avoided the game, or bet against it if the predictions had a bad unit history.  Finally, I only took the "strong" picks, which were the ones that Accuscore had listed as a 55% or greater chance of winning.

 A simple step by step summary of this method:

1.  Take all sides that Accuscore has a 55% or greater prediction of.

2.  Find the unit total for these sides.  If the two teams have a good track record with Accuscore, take the pick.  I usually took picks that had a combined unit total around 1000 or more.

3.  Mix in your own opinions on the games.  I went with the theory of betting against the public, finding the public betting percentages at Sportsbookspy.com.  If the public was betting on one team at a 60% rate or more, I would bet the opposite way.

So the ending criteria I used was to take sides that Accuscore had as a 55% or greater prediction.  Then, eliminate all games with a bad unit history.  Finally, eliminate all picks that more than 40% of the public was betting on.  This ended up with 10-20 plays a weekend, which meant I would risk about 2.5% of my bankroll on each pick.  The method turned out to work very well for me.  This is only one example of how to use Accuscore for college football.

 Some other trends I noticed:

-Accuscore does much better on the smaller conferences (WAC, SunBelt, Conf USA, MAC.)  My theory on this is that these are the games that receive less time from Vegas, since the majority of people are going to be betting on the games on TV, or the games featuring teams from big conferences, and not paying attention to Miami of Ohio vs Buffalo.

-As I said, I noticed Accuscore did much better on sides than totals in the NCAA.  They ended up winning 59% of the time on  sides, and just 53% of the time on totals.  Figuring out these trends early in the season will help you to get the most out of Accuscore.

-As for the NFL, I noticed that Accuscore did very well with the totals, but not so well on the sides.  I mainly used my system for NFL picks, but I would consistently use Accuscore for totals.

 The main point here is that you should do some research with the data that Accuscore provides.  It takes a little bit of time and work, but so does anything else that makes you money.  If you could just pick winners by doing little to no work at all, then we'd all quit our jobs and move to Vegas.  Above all, the key thing to remember is consistent money management.  As I said in that article, you can have a system that wins 70% of the time, but without money management it won't do you any good.

Check back here tomorrow, as I might dig in to some fantasy football talk, especially with a few of my drafts coming up in the following week.