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When making sports picks most sports bettors focus on recent performance and they are right in doing so. I mean how else will you be able to find out who’s playing well or poorly and also find out the mindset and chemistry of that particular team? This way you will make the best picks, you will pick the team with the best chances of winning. And if you do not win at least you will avoid picking the team with lousy changes of winning.

The trick is knowing how much emphasis to put on that team’s performance for the past 3, 5, or 10 games. That is why we will take a look at something called “The Due Factor”. This way we will know if a team’s performance is ripe for a change or not. This is due to happen after a long series of similar performances.

What happens if a team has lost 10 straight games? Is it due to win? At this point the baseball season has just began, but even though it is early in the season a number of notable winning and losing streaks have occurred. The Yankees have lost 7 straight games and Steinbrenner has reacted by issuing a terse threat disguised as a statement of hopeful support. The Giants on the other hand have had a 8 game winning streak.

At home, while playing against the Red Sox the Yankees turned things around. One question rises: did they win because they were due to win? Can their victory be credited to the fact that they had a 7 game losing streak? Let’s say that instead of a 7 game losing streak they had a 10 game, or maybe even 15 game losing streak. They are due to win sometime, they cannot keep on losing forever, right?

The Giants’ winning streak also came to an end. But what if they would have kept winning? Would that mean that their chances of winning their 10th or 11th game decrease? Their odds of winning must decrease with every consecutive win, right.

The answer is a no, definitely no.

When it comes to evaluating potential sports picks, the recent performances of that team are a useful tool. But the truth of the matter is that recent performances have little influence on future games. You cannot predict the outcome based solely on this factor. I cannot explain it any simpler than that.

“The Due Factor”, “The Law of Averages”, “Regression to The Mean” are all names referring to the same thing. The mathematicians also have a name for it, it is “The Gambler’s Fallacy”

I do not think that only the mathematicians have figured out that this is nothing but a load of nonsense. I am pretty sure that the sportsbooks and casinos are also in the loop. Why would the roulette tables display the previous 10 winning numbers? The odds are the same every spin, the outcome of the previous spin has no influence whatsoever. The casinos do this to emphasize the Gambler’s Fallacy. Let’s say that for the last 5 rolls the winning number was red. People will naturally bet that the next winning number will be black. they believe that red is due to come up. This is simply not true. There is no such thing as a due factor, the next spin will have the same 50-50 chance of being red or black.

What do you think happens when you toss a coin? There are 50-50 changes that the coin will land on heads or tails. According to the Law of Averages if you toss a coin 1000 times you will get a near equal split between heads and tails. If, while flipping this coin 1000 times, you hit a streak of 100 heads in a row, the odds of the next flip being tails is 50%, just like every other flip.

Let’s go back to baseball. It does not matter that a team lost the previous 20 games. Just because they lost so many games it does not mean that they are due to win a game. Each game is an independent event and has odds of its own completely unrelated to the games which occurred in the past. Why would you bet on such a team to win anyway? The fact that it lost the past 20 games is a clear indication that it is a lousy team and it lost because of that.

The best thing to do is to bet according with the streak. If a team is having a winning streak, chances are that it will keep on winning and you should bet accordingly. The same applies if the team is having a losing streak. You will make a lot of money buy doing this. But if you decide to bet against the streak, you stand to lose unlimited amounts of money. After all, the streak goes on and on, while the end of a streak can only happen once.