The prohibition against Sports Gambling was lifted by the Supreme Court not long ago and a number of states have already started to allow such betting with many more planning to do so. I thought I’d take this opportunity to talk about a Confidence Game that Sports Gambling experts rely upon to relieve you of your money.

If you listen to Sports Talk Radio or watch it on television you will eventually come across a number of shows in which a gambler claims to be willing to sell you the guaranteed winner of certain games each week. He or she generally offers a free sample to prove how accurate are her or his predictions. It’s a relatively simple little trick but before I explain let me give you an example of how attractive it sounds.

Let’s say I make an absolute guarantee of victory and you fill out the required form. I send you my winner of the week. Imagine it turns out to be right. You’d be not much impressed I imagine. Anyone can get a game right. It’s essentially a 50% chance. Either the team I predicts covers the spread or they don’t. However, you’re intrigued. Let’s try again you might say to yourself. This could be easy money.

You try it a second time and I’m right again! Ok, this is getting serious. I might actually know what I’m doing. You’re a cautious person though and you want to test it a few more times. You’re so cautious you test it six times and each time I’m correct. Now you are willing to shell out a few hundred bucks to get a guaranteed winner, right? I mean, yes, you have to pay for the winner but you can gamble much more money and win it all back. Easy money!

What’s the trick? As I said, it’s not too difficult. Basically, each week I send out groups of predictions rather than single predictions. That is to say I don’t send a free sample of the same game to everyone who inquires. Instead I send out one of ten games randomly to each person. Each time I do so I risk being wrong 50% of the time. That means one out of every sixty-four, or two percent, of the people I send my predictions to will get the correct winner six weeks in a row.

I send these out to tens of thousands if not millions of people. Two percent of the people, if they required six straight corrects, will subscribe to my service. Let’s be conservative and imagine I send out these samples to 10,000 people a week. That means two-hundred people will send me their hundreds of dollars in return for my prediction, per week. Eventually they might become disenchanted but many will require less “proof” and many will remain loyal. This is a lucrative business opportunity, much better than actually betting on sporting events.

That’s the entirety of the trick. You can thank me by purchasing one, or more, of my novels. They’re only $2.99 and you might enjoy reading them. Even if you think it sucks, you’ll be out less money than if you listened to Sports Gambling Experts.

Tom Liberman