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+---- Thread: *Lips Picks a Season in Review (/showthread.php?tid=45772)
*Lips Picks a Season in Review - Chicken Lips - 06-04-2023
Season 41 has come to a close and I am all squared up with my bookies. Hank Mardukas’ career may be football, but Chicken Lips is planning on making a living through the casino. Before we head into the next season (shoutout all my s42 guys and girls btw, the draft went hard), I wanted to do a recap of my sports betting addiction. I am recalling all these fun memories (hint hint 2x media please) of sitting on the edge of my seat, biting my nails, hoping for some small little dot to carry a football png across a 2d field at the hopes of winning digital dollars.
![[Image: ODn7XZQ.png]](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/360525334472556548/1114794592366252174/ODn7XZQ.png)
I meticulously tracked my wagers in a spreadsheet, carefully recording each bet by player, team, line, prediction and bet amount. Building the spreadsheet itself was a multi hour ordeal, excel isn’t my strong suit. But I did learn a lot of useful excel formulas through the process, so it was a fun challenge. ISFL is actually a career building continuing education course. With a robust excel sheet the plan was I could track any particular component and see how well I do on those types of bets. For my own sanity we are going to break it down into just offense and defensive lines. The goal at the end of this is to determine which lines I win the most so that I can focus my betting on those and hopefully not lose as much.
Before we get into the numbers I’d like to take a quick moment to thank everyone who makes the casino run, except @IceBear32 since he tried to pilfer my winnings twice. Also shout out to @Sebster, @CROney3 and @Ultimatedestroye for being great gambling buddies. It was great to have others to commiserate the big wins with and to cry with when the big losses came in. To anyone that followed my advice and won money, don’t forget to send the 3% commission to my bank account. For anyone that lost that is just a skill issue.
Starting from the Top
During Season 41 I provided predictions on 73 bets, during weeks 5 and 6 I didn’t come up with a prediction for every line (There were 80 total available this season). Of those 73 predictions I placed 44 total bets. For the record I am not going to include parlays as part of my number of bets, but I will include any money wagered on them and the profit from them (hint I did not win a single parlay). The 44 bets plus 10 parlay bets had me wager a grand total of $76 million for the season. At the end of the day I won $2,400,000 from the 44 bets I placed and lost $10,000,000 from the ten parlays. This gives me a total loss of $7,400,000 for the season on strictly bets.
The graph below tracks my weekly betting profits through the season. Important note, due to my error I was not able to place the anticipated bets on week 16, which sucked since I actually got all the predictions I had planned on betting on were correct.
![[Image: hBmo9hX.png]](https://i.imgur.com/hBmo9hX.png)
As you see I only had 4 winning weeks from my prop bets, but they were enough to offset the 7 losses. The biggest winner for me was DSFL Week 11, winning $4,4 million not including parlay. All in thanks to putting $5 million down on Eldroh Kove, Go NOLA btw, to get more than 97.5 rushing yards. If I remember correctly, he smashed that in the first quarter alone. I even called it the biggest lock of the season. Poor Cr0ney here though lit his money on fire and was rooting against the best performing RB in the league. My worst week came from the DSFL Week 8 where I lost a total of $5,100,000 including the parlay. This week totally wrecked everyone though, so it didn’t feel too bad.
In addition to my prop bets profit I tracked the media pay I received for my Gemini Awards nominated series “Lips Picks” that accompanied each set of weekly bets. Below is a chart tracking weekly profit when the media payout of the articles is included. Please note that I did not write an article for week 5, as the inspiration for them had not struck yet. Additionally, I did write an article for week 16 but bozo’d and did not actually place the bets.
![[Image: 0IgW9Xr.png]](https://i.imgur.com/0IgW9Xr.png)
Once the articles were factored in the total number of weekly losses was brought down to just 2 weeks, Week 5, where I wrote no article, and Week 8 DSFL. My highest paying article was during Week 10 where I received a payout of $3,193,950. The lowest paying article was for Week 11 DSFL where I barely was able to get my bets in on time. That article paid me $55,100. When you add the two tracks together and lump in the losses from the parlay bets, you get the below Cumulative Profit chart showing the steady growth of funds.
![[Image: BcQ05c9.png]](https://i.imgur.com/BcQ05c9.png)
All said and done, I lost $7.6 million from gambling and gained $25.6 million from writing the accompanying articles. Giving me a total profit of $18,003,280. Seems like the moral of the story is the house always wins. That is unless the house will pay you out endlessly for your media about the bets you are losing.
Enough about money though let’s take a look at the hard numbers for my predictions prowess. Over 73 total predictions I got 37 correct, giving me a slightly better than 50% batting average. When focusing specifically on the predictions I bet on I got 22 of 44 bets correct for a right on 50% average. Apparently, I am no better than a coinflip. The two charts below show my weekly performance for both predictions and actual bets.
![[Image: KAj9BYC.png]](https://i.imgur.com/KAj9BYC.png)
![[Image: ESC8Emv.png]](https://i.imgur.com/ESC8Emv.png)
From the trendlines there can be seen a definite improvement over time in my ability to pick the right lines. I honestly attribute most of that to the articles I have been writing. I have gotten a better understanding of stat tracking and how that translates to game match ups. Additionally for the bet side of things I started limiting the number of bets I put down to just the one I was most confident about. Generally sticking to 3 bets per week for the last 5 weeks. Hopefully I can continue that trend and get a real perfect week. I did not include the parlays in this analysis since to me those don’t feel as relevant and at least the way I treat them in my scheme is that if I win everything, I am going to win big. Kind of a get out of the hole free card.
Let’s take a closer look at the different categories of lines.
Defense
Total Predictions: 12
Total Correct: 4
Percentage: 33%
Offense
Total Predictions: 48
Total Correct: 28
Percentage: 58%
Special Teams
Total Predictions: 7
Total Correct: 4
Percentage: 57%
Miscellaneous
Total Predictions: 6
Total Correct: 0
Percentage: 0%
I always thought defensive lines were a crap shoot and my track record proves that. Looks like I have had better luck when it comes to offensive lines, and I’d say the jury is out on Special Teams since the sample size is too small.
Looking forward at S42 I haven’t decided if I will keep up with Lips Picks, at least in the same fashion. It was a fun process but by the end of the season it felt more like an obligation. Though maybe with this little bit of a break it’ll be a fresh start. I am hoping to spend some time practicing with the sim so maybe I will do all my predictions based on sim analysis or something. Again, shoutout to everyone who read and followed along the journey, it made it a lot more interesting to chat about the picks in discord and definitely amplified the hype during the games. Hopefully now that Hank has made his way into the ISFL he can get his own prop bet line.
I don’t want to make a whole extra thread to add a little reflection on my 1st season with the DSFL and the Minnesota Grey Ducks so I’ll add a few words here. Ever since draft day everyone over in the Ducks locker room has been an absolute pleasure to get to know. @TwoSocks and @Dindog are great GMs. The energy during gameday is wonderful with the play-by-play and everyone getting hype whenever there is a big play. Big shoutout to @LtHudz for scouting me and getting me onto the team, definitely been the most instrumental in my early ISFL career.
There were too many moments to list them all. But one of my favorites happened during the Week 13 MINN-NOR game. I was out at dinner with my wife but knew that this game was important if the Ducks were to have a shot at the Playoffs. All of a sudden I start getting a million pings in the LR and @DangWookie kept texting me. I finally snuck off to the bathroom to check the messages and saw that Hank had a 62 yard TD! The TD was a huge part of MINN's 31-28 victory which kept our playoff dreams afloat for another week. I even searched through the game footage and took a screenshot of the play. Even though in the end we didn't make it into the playoffs we had a strong season and I can't wait to see how the Ducks do in the seasons to come. But like I said there are too many memories to go through all of them, I just want to give one final shoutout to everyone at MINN, thanks for making my first season such a great one!
RE: Lips Picks a Season in Review - LtHudz - 06-04-2023
Who are you?
But in all seriousness I'm really glad we got you on the ducks and it's been a pleasure getting to know you!
RE: Lips Picks a Season in Review - DREAMSLOTH - 06-04-2023
The real question: is this better than @CROney3's performance?
RE: Lips Picks a Season in Review - Sebster - 06-04-2023
didnt read to see if u won or lost money but you the goat
RE: Lips Picks a Season in Review - wizard_literal - 06-05-2023
Looking forward to more Lips Picks!(I want my money back)
RE: Lips Picks a Season in Review - Chicken Lips - 06-05-2023
(06-05-2023, 08:08 AM)wizard_literal Wrote: Looking forward to more Lips Picks!(I want my money back)Skill issue