Winning Percentage vs Units Won

I want to give credit to Allen Moody for some of the content in this post.


If somebody were to ask you if you would rather be a 60-percent handicapper or a
55-percent handicapper, which would you choose? The obvious answer is that it's better to be a 60-percent handicapper, but that isn't necessarily true.

Since we only bet on money line underdogs, the only statistic that sports bettors should be concerned with is units won.

Units won is the amount of profit, or loss, that a sports investor has over time. We do not worry nearly as much about winning percentage.

With baseball season in full force, many sports bettors are seeing ads from different sports services claiming winning percentages of 65-percent for baseball, and that's entirely possibly, but what the services aren't saying is that the majority of their selections were favorites of -200 or more, turning that 65-percent handicapping into a losing proposition.

Making it more difficult for sports bettors is that some sports services will claim to have won 200 units in a particular sport, but don't mention that they release 10- or 20-unit plays, along with several 100-unit "locks" at the end of the year if things aren't going so well and they need something to base next year's advertising on.

Units won is really the only thing you should be concerned with, as that ultimately is going to translate into the bottom line. When you only bet money line underdogs, you can win only 50% of the time and make a lot of money.