If you’ve bet on sports for any length of time, you know that losing streaks are part of the big picture. No matter who you are or how good a handicapper you are, there will always be losing streaks. It also makes no difference how you handicap. Punters who rely on statistics, trends, or systems are not exempt from the inevitable depression, which makes following some of baseball’s search systems a dangerous task.
A chase system is a lot like the old Martingale betting strategy of simply doubling down after a loss, with the expectation of recouping any previous loss and showing a profit when you win. If you were guaranteed a winning bet in three hands, the chase system would work just fine, but there are no sure things in sports betting.
Just as streaks are a part of baseball betting, they are also a part of baseball and it is not uncommon to see teams win or lose six, seven or even eight games in a row.
When someone is promoting a baseball chase system, they will be attracted by an impressive record, but the records given are not the actual win-loss record of the games wagered, but the chase sequence record.
As an example, if a chase system says to bet on the New York Mets, the Mets could lose their next six games. If they win the seventh game, a bettor following the sequence would show a record of 1-6 in the seven games he bets on. But the system would be credited with a 1-0 record on the premise that the sequence was successful.
If that’s not bad enough, almost every chase system will have you play the favorite at the money line or take the running line if the team is an underdog. Either way, you’re going to be risking a lot more money than you expect to win. If you take a +120 loser down the line, you can expect to risk close to -175 to get the 1.5 runs.
Using -160 for a money line favorite or strike line underdog, suppose a bettor wants to show a chase win of $100. The first bet will obviously be $160 to win $100. If the bettor wins the first bet, a new sequence will start. It is when the bettor loses the first bet that things start to get a bit complicated. With the loss, the bettor has now lost $160 and needs to win $260 on their next bet to recover the lost money and still show the desired profit of $100.
To win $260 with a bet of -160, you will need to bet $416. If the second bet wins, the bettor can close out the sequence with a $100 win, but if they lose the second game, the bettor now has a loss of $576 and will need to win $676 to show a win for the sequence. That leads to a third bet of $1,082 and if the third bet loses, the bettor loses $1,658 and will have to bet $2,813 to show a sequential win of $100 on the fourth bet. If it is a fifth wager, the amount required to wager would be $4471, which could very well exceed a punter’s betting limit or, most likely, a punter’s bankroll. A win on game five would be good for a sequential win of $100, but a loss would result in a sequential loss of $7,284.
Losing five bets in a row is not that unusual. It happens. But when it happens with a chase system, it can quickly become terribly expensive and will wipe out all the better funded sports bettors.
Consider these numbers before investing in a handicapper who claims to have a 44-1 record or who went 22-0 last season. Losses happen, it’s a reality of the game.