4for4 Betting Recap: Week 10
Welcome to the 4for4 football gambling recap! My name is Dan Rivera and I am in charge of tracking bets from Connor Allen, Ryan Noonan, Sam Hoppen, Greg Smith, Anthony Stalter and TJ Calkins. Each week, I track their bets and provide feedback after the Monday Night Football game ends. If you have not found it, I track them all here in this 4for4 Tracker. Make sure you switch to the right person and sport.
When you look at anyone in the 2021 NFL, you will see some yellow blocks. There are two points you need to know:
- You will see a weekly tracker; this just lets you look at anyone on any given week. This is what I like to call the micro tracker.
- The big yellow box has most of the plays broken down by position, prop type, totals, spreads, etc. The total units won or lost will differ from this deep dive version because certain plays didn’t fit into the deep dive. For example, Ryan Noonan bet the Patriots to make the playoffs. It doesn’t fit into any of the weekly bets during the NFL season.
Why do I do this? When tracking NFL bets, 99% of all bets anyone makes are working juice (meaning you have to lay more money down than you would win). This tracker is far superior compared to other trackers. Other trackers don’t have bets broken down by type, it is just simply a tracker. To me, that isn’t helpful. I want the data (picks) to tell a story so I can help whoever is making the picks win more. With the juice, you are better off avoiding losers than you are winning. My goal is to help anyone I track to avoid losers or have them attack successful areas. When you look at the deep dive table, be careful if one area looks good or bad. The sample size is key to that deep dive table and a small sample can get very skewed in one direction.
Ninety-nine percent of all plays tracked are to win 1 unit or 0.5 units. You will get maybe one, max two plays from any one bet to win more than 1 unit.
I am going to go a little different this week because all the people I tracked had largely the same type of results and I would rather look at them as a whole vs just Week 10.
Skewed Stats Alert: Connor, Ryan and Sam all hit a 37-1 bet in Week 8, skewing their props up for the year. All three of them risked 0.25 units to win 9.25 units. The prop was Elijah Mitchell to lead the league in rushing yards for Sunday games only.
Ryan Noonan
Week 10: 6-9-1, 37.50%, -2.21 units
YTD: 101-86-1 53.72%, 21.09 units
Connor Allen
Week 10: 7-6, 53.85%, 1.15 units
YTD: 83-68, 54.97%, 19.37 units
Dan’s Analysis: What makes a good week or a bad week? My guess is how much did you win or lose is how everyone measures this. The next question is how much did you win or lose in a given week? That is what I wanted to look at differently this week. Ryan and Connor have more bets so I grouped their recaps together, separate from everyone else. With more volume, comes more extreme outcomes because that is how gambling works. You get more variance the longer you bet and the more picks you make.
When you break down any person, regardless of whether you tail or don’t tail, they all are on the same normal distribution curve. I will admit gambling isn’t normally distributed but the chart holds up what I wanted to use for this analogy. On the right side, you get a positive week. On the left side, you get a negative week in terms of units. Ryan had a phenomenal Week 7, while Connor's outstanding week was Week 9. Ryan had his week from hell in Week 9, while Connor's bad week was Week 1. That would be our tail ends for each person and both to be on those ends each week is completely unsustainable unless you're either faking your results (it happens with a lot of people on Twitter) or you're just beyond terrible.
To the meat, or the average week, the right of the middle is the “profit is profit” category. This is the category most bettors want to be in each week to make the NFL season, or any sport, sustainable. You want to build up your bankroll and build it up so when the inevitable bad weeks or weeks from hell hit, you’re okay in the long run. For Connor and Ryan, the "profit is profit" category is about anywhere from 0-3 units in a given week. On the flip side, “losses are losses” works the same way. This is a losing week anywhere between a loss of 0.1 to three units.
The next category is a good/bad week, this is about 3-6 units in profit or 3-6 units in losses. Luckily, Ryan only has had one bad week while Connor has had two. The next category is the one I mentioned above in the weeks from hell or phenomenal weeks. Same idea except we are using six units in profit/losses.
Where do the cutoffs come from that I mentioned above? I made them up, it is subjective on what you are betting (props versus sides and totals or maybe a combination) and how many bets. Ryan and Connor bet way more versus everyone else I track so their cutoffs are much different.
To really make it in the gambling industry you need as many “profit is profit” categories as possible. This is what will carry you for the year and will ultimately be your hedge when the losses roll in.
Sam Hoppen
Week 10: 2-2, 50%, -0.30 units
YTD: 28-20, 58.33%, 15.56 units
Greg Smith
Week 10: 51-43, 54.26%, 1.45 units
YTD: 51-43, 54.26%, 5.47 units
Dan’s Analysis: As I stated earlier, Greg and Sam will have different cutoffs for what is deemed good or bad weeks, or any other categories, for them because of the volume they are playing on average on any given week. Greg works with way more spreads and totals compared to Ryan, Connor and Sam. Winning in NFL spreads and totals is by far the most difficult markets to beat long term. I know some very sharp people who have had losing years working in spreads and totals. Greg’s goal is to get to the “profit is profit” mark, and profiting a unit or two each week is a great job for him, or anyone working in those markets, assuming he is playing to win one unit.
For Sam, or any other low-volume bettor, his margins are much tighter. A phenomenal week might be winning two units and a good week might be anything over a unit. For Sam, he had a “losses are losses” type of week, losing 30 cents to the vig.
Anthony Stalter
Week 10: 1-2, 33.33%, -1.2 units
YTD: 18-12, 60%, 5.7 units
TJ Calkins
Week 10: 1-1, 50%, -0.1 units
YTD: 9-16, 36%, -8.6 units
Dan’s Analysis: Both Anthony and TJ suffer from small sample sizes. I just wanted them in the article as the entire 4for4 crew for NFL is being tracked by me. The record will speak for both because deep-diving them wouldn't yield much analysis.
