Intro:

BetKarma’s NFL sportfolios provide premium subscribers with a fully transparent, professionally managed, all-in-one betting solution, complete with built-in risk and bankroll management. Whether you’re a recreational bettor with limited time to conduct his own research on a weekly basis or an expert handicapper looking to diversify, complement, or supplement his core betting strategy, we are confident that you will find our product’s innovative structure, convenience, and baked-in intellectual capital a refreshing alternative in the stale, dusty industry of sports betting advice. 

Each week during the NFL season, our sportfolio strategists will release select, high-conviction positions and position-sizing recommendations, culminating in a cleverly constructed, balanced allocation, catered to your specific risk-appetite.  Performance will be openly tracked, accurately reported, and fully auditable  – no duplicity, misleading results, or unfair marketing. We are committed not only to providing superior performance v available market alternatives (VIP Sports, Pregame, WagerTalk, VSiN, ProMathletics, Right Angle Sports, etc.), but to also provide fair, honest, and forthright service to our subscribers.

This report will detail both our sportfolios' and our broader market competitors' performance and be released on a bi-weekly basis all-season. 

Performance Summary:

 

Sportfolio and Market Commentary: 

Heading into an unprecedented season with more unknown unknowns than ever before, we are pleased that our Core sportfolio comes out of Week 2 with a 6-4 record, compiling back-to-back 3-2 records, sitting up approximately 2% and near the top of the leaderboard vis-a-vis our broader market competitors. Our Aggressive sportfolio, which is a leveraged play on our Core sportfolio's positions plus additional satelite positions designed to complement and enhance overall performance through a wide variety of more creatively constructed bets, is sitting up more than double that of Core, currently returning in excess of 5% (we do not track the Aggressive sportfolio's performance v competitors since there are no identifiable parallel offerings).

Despite the positive performance, we are not content, and feel like we left some meaningful money on the table, after allocating to certain positions that, in retrospect, lacked tenable investment merit. In Week 1, we are excited that we jumped on the Packers, Raiders, and Cardinals before the market moved their power rankings exceptionally higher. But we are disappointed in our Colts selection, who fell unceremoniously to the Jaguars by a TD. It was one of our uglier trades in a while, and we realized that we simply didn't scrutinize the pick to the extent we typically do. Perhaps a bit of hubris. As for our Falcons pick, we are comfortable with the loss, and think we had a fair rationale to allocate the pick into our Core sportfolio. A lot of things went wrong for the Falcons (including bad 4th down luck) and we (and the league) were taken by surprise by the Seahawks' unabashed aggressiveness through the air - ostensibly giving in to the fans clamoring to 'let Russ cook'. Nonetheless, we came away with enough bits and pieces from both the Colts and Falcons losses that we felt a sense of confidence to actually re-allocate to both these teams in Week 2. 

While Colts did not make their way into Core, exposure to the Colts -3 v the Vikings was littered throughout our Aggressive sportfolio. In addition, we not only had Falcons +4 v Cowboys in Core, but we also had a levered play on the moneyline in Aggressive. Unfortunately, a wild (and extremely improbable) 20+ point comeback and onside kick recovery by the Cowboys blew up an otherwise prescient trade on the Falcons winning the game outright as almost +200 underdogs. Nonetheless, we got the cover in Core, and also cashed two additional underdogs that received limited love in the market, the Giants and Dolphins (both of whom could have won their games outright v the Bears and Bills, respectively). The Lions and Eagles were duds, both of whom only flirted for a bit with covering, before falling victim to losing by double-digits to the Packers and Rams, respectively. Cluster injuries on both teams, of which we were well aware, ultimately were the achilles heel for both squads, but especially the Lions, who blew a 14-3 lead in the 1Q. There was broad market consensus love for the Eagles as small favorites at home v a redhot Rams, which should have given us more pause than it did. We shall live and learn.