A DIFFERENT VIEW ON SERVICES
After writing a column entitled, "The Pitfalls of Services", I received one very interesting response. Most of the responses were somewhat predictable. They read along the lines of the column being accurate and promoting the idea that services are something to generally stay away from. There was, however, one email that took a completely different tone.
The person who sent this particular email is a person that I respect who has posted on this site. They took me to task not for my portrayal of services, which they noted was accurate, but for my portrayal of service customers as ?lazy?. I think my exact quote was that subscribing to a service, even one operated by honest individuals with a history of winning, ?breeds laziness in a business that requires anything but laziness for success.?
According to the person who emailed me, that portrayal is often inaccurate. What about people who are independently wealthy and enjoy gambling on sports? Most wealthy folks have little or no time to handicap. If a person is comfortably earning six figures at their job, it would be hard to portray throwing down a dime or so on a few games after work as unhealthy. And if they choose to spend their free time watching sports that they bet on, why not make money rather than lose money? A couple hundred dollars is a relative pittance for purchasing a weekend of picks when you have enough discretionary income to wager $1,000 per game.
I can say from personal experience that people like that are out there. Back when I worked for a major consulting firm, part of my job was to travel to home loan centers for a major mortgage company to help mortgage brokers, loan coordinators and loan consultants become familiar with their new laptops. In passing conversation I met quite a few folks who made excellent money selling loans and enjoyed gambling in their spare time. When I showed them Mad Jack Sports and my page here, they all showed great interest at the prospect of gleaning picks from a few of the sharper handicappers on this site. Many of them were $500 or more per game players who admitted that they lost money gambling on sports in general. These are the type of people that the email was referring to.
If we accept that there are a good number of people like this out there, then there are two things to consider. First, is it realistic that a service would be able to market itself more towards that type of clientele and less towards gamblers who can?t afford losses and see services as something of a method of absolution to wipe their losses clean? Second, is it worthwhile for those types of wealthy individuals to subscribe to services?
To the first question is essentially impossible to answer. Where do you draw the line? Is the guy who squeezes every cent of his discretionary income into gambling in with the group of degenerates who can?t control themselves or in with those that just like to gamble and can afford to do it? An argument can be made either way. And even if you manage to separate the haves from the have nots, there is no decisive way to tell what percentage are signing up for legitimate services.
You could say that folks who can afford it and don?t have the time are the folks who will stay with a service even through a terrible losing streak. They are smart enough to know that losing streaks happen to even the best gamblers. But that line is blurred because many wealthy folks are impatient and they, too, will leave a service at the first sign of failure.
Even if one decides to accept the idea that gamblers with lots of money and little time are the target audience that can realistically be marketed to, there is the questions of whether it is ultimately good or bad for those folks to subscribe.
Does anyone here know of a person who?s been betting for over 30 years? I do. I would guess that a few posters on Mad Jack?s fit into that catagory. Does anyone know of a person that has subscribed to the same service for 30 years? 10 years? 2 years? I honestly dont. Even if you want to look at it from the other end, how many honest services have even been around for five or ten years? Seems to me that most of the services I have seen stand the test of time have been the greaseball scammers. I am sure there are exceptions, but they are extremely rare.
Knowing this fact it is fair to ask; what does a gambler do when the relationship with the service ends? Go to another service, I guess. You can sure as heck bet that the handicapper who has relied on services to provide him winners isn?t just going to quit gambling just because their relationship with their service ends. So either the gambler must find another service to subscribe to or gamble naked, which is almost sure to lead to them losing plenty of cash.
That is the reason for my, ?laziness?, comment. Laziness in this case is meant to be getting used to playing a service?s picks without doing any real work on games yourself. Even if a gambler wins money for a long period of time subscribing to a service, they still become accustomed to not having to do the amount of work that separates gamblers from handicappers. The very real question then becomes, what do those subscribers do when their relationship with the service ends?
Jumping from service to service is the best case scenario for service subscribers and really, the only long term justification of promoting services as a worthwhile venture to the subscriber. Subscribers have to be wealthy, they have to bet large enough and with a big enough bankroll to ensure profitability over and above the cost of the service and they have to be willing to abstain from playing their own picks when their relationship with the service inevitably ends.
If you fit in to that catagory, services might be for you. Services provide action basically every day from the same handicapper. No matter how much one lauds the idea of playing free picks from strong handicappers on Mad Jacks, they can?t boast what services offer. People who provide free picks are allowed to post or not post whenever they want. With a service you know that if you log on to the computer at a certain time each day, you have your action waiting for you and you can go home after work and watch your money soar or swoon to your heart?s content.
As a person who loves to ask rhetorical questions, I must ask; was it unfair to characterize subscribers with the, ?laziness?, comment listed above? I still wholeheartedly believe that subscribing to services breeds laziness from a gambling perspective. You can slice it any way you?d like, but if a person is gambling large sums of money without doing any significant research themselves, that person is a lazy gambler. The reason for their laziness in gambling may be that their job, family, etc. take up too much of their time, but I still believe that the word, ?lazy?, does accurately describe their gambling technique.
The problem with what I wrote is that I didn?t fairly portray the potential service subscribers who have no desire to be hard working handicappers but still are wealthy enough to afford to gamble on sports via a service. For those folks there are definite short term benefits to subscribing to a service. I still have my doubts about a service?s ability to market exclusively to those types and the long term effects on wealthy gamblers after the relationship with the service ends, but I feel that anyone who reads my writing deserves to read a fair portrayal of the story. For failing to acknowledge the short term benefits of services to that niche market of wealthy folks without the time to research their own plays, I apologize. Hopefully the previous column combined with this one gives a fair portrayal of services.
After writing a column entitled, "The Pitfalls of Services", I received one very interesting response. Most of the responses were somewhat predictable. They read along the lines of the column being accurate and promoting the idea that services are something to generally stay away from. There was, however, one email that took a completely different tone.
The person who sent this particular email is a person that I respect who has posted on this site. They took me to task not for my portrayal of services, which they noted was accurate, but for my portrayal of service customers as ?lazy?. I think my exact quote was that subscribing to a service, even one operated by honest individuals with a history of winning, ?breeds laziness in a business that requires anything but laziness for success.?
According to the person who emailed me, that portrayal is often inaccurate. What about people who are independently wealthy and enjoy gambling on sports? Most wealthy folks have little or no time to handicap. If a person is comfortably earning six figures at their job, it would be hard to portray throwing down a dime or so on a few games after work as unhealthy. And if they choose to spend their free time watching sports that they bet on, why not make money rather than lose money? A couple hundred dollars is a relative pittance for purchasing a weekend of picks when you have enough discretionary income to wager $1,000 per game.
I can say from personal experience that people like that are out there. Back when I worked for a major consulting firm, part of my job was to travel to home loan centers for a major mortgage company to help mortgage brokers, loan coordinators and loan consultants become familiar with their new laptops. In passing conversation I met quite a few folks who made excellent money selling loans and enjoyed gambling in their spare time. When I showed them Mad Jack Sports and my page here, they all showed great interest at the prospect of gleaning picks from a few of the sharper handicappers on this site. Many of them were $500 or more per game players who admitted that they lost money gambling on sports in general. These are the type of people that the email was referring to.
If we accept that there are a good number of people like this out there, then there are two things to consider. First, is it realistic that a service would be able to market itself more towards that type of clientele and less towards gamblers who can?t afford losses and see services as something of a method of absolution to wipe their losses clean? Second, is it worthwhile for those types of wealthy individuals to subscribe to services?
To the first question is essentially impossible to answer. Where do you draw the line? Is the guy who squeezes every cent of his discretionary income into gambling in with the group of degenerates who can?t control themselves or in with those that just like to gamble and can afford to do it? An argument can be made either way. And even if you manage to separate the haves from the have nots, there is no decisive way to tell what percentage are signing up for legitimate services.
You could say that folks who can afford it and don?t have the time are the folks who will stay with a service even through a terrible losing streak. They are smart enough to know that losing streaks happen to even the best gamblers. But that line is blurred because many wealthy folks are impatient and they, too, will leave a service at the first sign of failure.
Even if one decides to accept the idea that gamblers with lots of money and little time are the target audience that can realistically be marketed to, there is the questions of whether it is ultimately good or bad for those folks to subscribe.
Does anyone here know of a person who?s been betting for over 30 years? I do. I would guess that a few posters on Mad Jack?s fit into that catagory. Does anyone know of a person that has subscribed to the same service for 30 years? 10 years? 2 years? I honestly dont. Even if you want to look at it from the other end, how many honest services have even been around for five or ten years? Seems to me that most of the services I have seen stand the test of time have been the greaseball scammers. I am sure there are exceptions, but they are extremely rare.
Knowing this fact it is fair to ask; what does a gambler do when the relationship with the service ends? Go to another service, I guess. You can sure as heck bet that the handicapper who has relied on services to provide him winners isn?t just going to quit gambling just because their relationship with their service ends. So either the gambler must find another service to subscribe to or gamble naked, which is almost sure to lead to them losing plenty of cash.
That is the reason for my, ?laziness?, comment. Laziness in this case is meant to be getting used to playing a service?s picks without doing any real work on games yourself. Even if a gambler wins money for a long period of time subscribing to a service, they still become accustomed to not having to do the amount of work that separates gamblers from handicappers. The very real question then becomes, what do those subscribers do when their relationship with the service ends?
Jumping from service to service is the best case scenario for service subscribers and really, the only long term justification of promoting services as a worthwhile venture to the subscriber. Subscribers have to be wealthy, they have to bet large enough and with a big enough bankroll to ensure profitability over and above the cost of the service and they have to be willing to abstain from playing their own picks when their relationship with the service inevitably ends.
If you fit in to that catagory, services might be for you. Services provide action basically every day from the same handicapper. No matter how much one lauds the idea of playing free picks from strong handicappers on Mad Jacks, they can?t boast what services offer. People who provide free picks are allowed to post or not post whenever they want. With a service you know that if you log on to the computer at a certain time each day, you have your action waiting for you and you can go home after work and watch your money soar or swoon to your heart?s content.
As a person who loves to ask rhetorical questions, I must ask; was it unfair to characterize subscribers with the, ?laziness?, comment listed above? I still wholeheartedly believe that subscribing to services breeds laziness from a gambling perspective. You can slice it any way you?d like, but if a person is gambling large sums of money without doing any significant research themselves, that person is a lazy gambler. The reason for their laziness in gambling may be that their job, family, etc. take up too much of their time, but I still believe that the word, ?lazy?, does accurately describe their gambling technique.
The problem with what I wrote is that I didn?t fairly portray the potential service subscribers who have no desire to be hard working handicappers but still are wealthy enough to afford to gamble on sports via a service. For those folks there are definite short term benefits to subscribing to a service. I still have my doubts about a service?s ability to market exclusively to those types and the long term effects on wealthy gamblers after the relationship with the service ends, but I feel that anyone who reads my writing deserves to read a fair portrayal of the story. For failing to acknowledge the short term benefits of services to that niche market of wealthy folks without the time to research their own plays, I apologize. Hopefully the previous column combined with this one gives a fair portrayal of services.
