Today’s Wagers Made Using the Recognition Heuristic or something that attempts to apply this most basic of heuristics. What dooms this experiment is that I am not ignorant enough. When you stop laughing at me I will explain what I mean. The Recognition Heuristic says that while complete knowledge is better than zero knowledge when making a decision; neither is as beneficial as partial knowledge.

I applied the Recognition Heuristic to this week’s wagers at the Money Line level. To use this heuristic for with Spreads you first must answer the question ‘Who will win?’ before you can answer the question ‘Will the team I have decided will win cover the spread?’. With Spreads, the ultimate decision is not about the winner of the game. So this week I made it about the winner of the game.

Now, there isn’t a lot of value in betting Money Lines in football. Granted, there are the instances of huge dogs to winning,, but there is a reason the money line is so big, it is massively unlikely. Conversely, wagering on a huge favorite may ‘guarantee’ you a win, but you must risk so much for so littl in return. However, when parlayed you can create some bang for your buck. Answer this question. Do you think you could pick 50% of the winning NFL teams each week? I honestly don’t know the answer to that question. I do remember playing office pools where only winners were picked, and I remember routinely winning 10-14 games. Perhaps my memory favors me too much, so I am not relying on memory, instead I will begin to chart. Charting is awareness my friends, and awareness is the key to it all.

My NFL wagers this week are:
- 7-Team Parlay risking .5% of my Original Investment (OI) to win 10.17% of my OI. All money lines.

- 14-Team Parlay risking .5% of my Original Investment (OI) to win 452.72% of my OI. All point spreads.

- 14-Team Parlay risking .5% of my Original Investment (OI) to win 295.75% of my OI. All money lines.

I am of the firmest belief that Just Paying Attention (JPA) is sufficient to achieve mediocrity. When JPA is accompanied by Hard Work (HW), Success (S) then becomes more probable. Pr(S) = JPA x HW⁴

Pr(S)
0 – 20: Don’t forget anything is possible.
20.01 – 45.00: You never know.
45.01 – 55.00: There is a chance.
55.01 – 65.00: One that got away
65.01 – 80.00: Count on it
80.01 – 89.99: if it doesn’t happen, reevaluate
90.00 +: no reason it shouldn’t happen, if it doesn’t more than 77% of the time, then stop everything!

How do you interpret the above? How do you define JPA, HW and S? Is HW to the fourth power adequate? over-hyped?
What situation or situation type is this being applied to?

I would love to know your ideas and thoughts. Please post your responses as a Comment to this post so that others can learn from your perspective. If you are shy and don’t want your response public, then please Click Here and email your comments to me.

thedean@deanbrowski.com