[NajdorfDefense]

Okay, I bet alot of CBB, very profitably for the past 3-4 years. I've posted hundreds of picks here, particularly in 2003 and 2004, and done very well taking a lot of dogs particularly during March Madness and conference play.
I follow a lot of conferences, but you can't follow all of them closely, and some favorites have to be good bets, so...
A few friends and I were discussing various simple betting systems recently - for other conferences - and we started using the following system as an adjunct to our regular betting:

1) We bet home teams favored by less than 5 pts
2) No big 'rivalry' matchups, however.
3) We exclude matchups with both teams in the top 25.

Essentially, we feel that 'home court advantage' is under-rated by the general public.
However, in top 25 matchups where there is a lot of focus and also for rivalry games, i.e. Duke-UNC, LV-UK, Cinci-Xavier, people also focus on the value of home court advantage, so we toss those out also.

So far, it has been wildly [unsustainably] successful. 21-5-1.
Here were last week's picks:
Game #1: Providence (3 point favorite) against Northeastern. - Providence was down 3 points at half-time but then scored the first 21 points in the 2nd half and ended up winning by 22.
Game #2: Northern Illinois (2 point favorite) against Kansas St. - No. Illinois won by 5 in OT.
Game #3: Arkansas Little-Rock (4.5 point favorite) against Appalachian St. - Arkansas LR won by 15.
Game #4: UTEP (4.5 point favorite) against Pacific. UTEP ended up winning by 6.
Game #5: San Diego (4 point favorite) against Loyola Chicago. - San Diego won 33!

We went 5-0 with help in OT [which favors the home squad also.]

Here's our possible next 3 picks tonite:
CENTRAL FLORIDA 1 Sam Houston
AUSTIN PEAY 3½ Evansville
[if drops below 5]
EASTERN KENTUCKY 5 Tenn. Martin


Reactions and thoughts appreciated. No, I don't expect to end up 210-50-10, but I'd take 200-165.

Naj [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]