Sometimes, in life, we are presented with something that, on the face of it, just Makes SenseTM. It can be something simple, like ‘beards grow faster and thicker if you shave them regularly’ or ‘don’t give children sugar because it makes them hyper’. These make sense when we hear them, even though they have been proven false. With actual research. Yes, someone researched both these things – Google it! In fact, the simpler it sounds, the more likely we are to believe it. This is not, however, always a good thing.
Oscar’s Grind is dead simple. So dead simple that it can be deadly. In case you aren’t getting the hint here, let’s be clear: Oscar’s Grind is not commonly accepted as a strategy that works well. However, because we believe information is power, we still encourage you to learn what it’s about and why it could be the worst idea you’ve had.
The principle behind Oscar’s Grind is pretty straightforward. Each time you win, you increase your bet by one ‘unit’ for the next wager. If you lose, you maintain your betting amount. In other words, if your ‘unit’ is R50, that will be the amount you wager on the first bet. If you lose, you keep betting R50 until you win. At that point, you increase the bet to R100. Next win, up again to R150, and so on.
This strategy isn’t designed for long-term betting. It’s designed to help you make any single session profitable – or rather, to pursue a set profit. A ‘session’, in this case, ends when you have achieved that profit. If you start out, for instance, aiming to double your money, and you achieve this goal with your very first bet; then, that session is over. Well done!
In reality, however, this is rarely the case. A session can carry on for anything from a few to several games, and it can take long periods before that profit is made.
You are not Jeff Bezos (unless you are, in which case, hi and welcome). You do not have infinite resources to pursue this strategy.
The problem with Oscar’s Grind is that it lives in a bubble; it is a purely money-based strategy that doesn’t take any of the myriad factors involved in sports themselves, sports bookmaking, or sports betting into account. This strategy follows one simple guide: bet more when you win; bet the same when you lose.
Oscar’s Grind was designed to work on the types of bets where the long-term outcomes are generally evenly distributed. Once again, the classic coin toss will serve us well: over time, if you flip a coin often enough, the heads/tails split will even out. In theory, that means that, if you stick to Oscar’s Grind and increase your bet every time you win, you will come out ahead.
If you pay close attention, however, you will notice the caveat ‘over time’. The number of times you would need to flip a coin to guarantee an even split is enormous – we have proof. Researchers at Berkeley University spent one hour a day, for an entire semester, flipping a coin a total of 40,000 times, half starting heads up and the other half heads down, and even then the results weren’t quite even.
Now, imagine you were placing bets on each of these coin flips with the expectation that it will eventually yield a profit because it’s bound to work out even. You might get insanely lucky and land the first few wins and make your profit right away. Or, you might end up losing over and over and over and over and over for literally thousands of turns.
Oscar’s Grind, as a standalone strategy, only works out if you start off with enough money to keep playing until you make your predetermined profit, no matter how many losses you suffer. Hey, Jeff! It’s you! We’re talking about you!
As we mentioned, this method was designed to be applied to games where the outcome over time is expected to even out. Sports betting, as we are all too painfully aware, however, does not work that way. There are always going to be stronger or weaker teams, better or worse players, home-ground advantages… you get the idea. Nobody with any sense expects a tournament, for instance, to produce evenly spread results for all teams – quite the opposite in fact!
This simple fact throws the entire principle of Oscar’s Grind out of the window. Something that can only work properly when the scales are balanced cannot work when that balance doesn’t exist. If you hit a losing streak, you could very rapidly run out of bankroll pursuing that elusive profit.
If you’re looking for strategies to incorporate into your own sports betting strategy, we recommend passing this one by or, at most, using it as a tactic in conjunction with other methods. If your overall strategy is very good and you have a record of making good bets that win more often than not, this strategy might help you hit bigger wins occasionally, but it can also work to your detriment by encouraging you to place much larger bets than you would ordinarily do.
If you want real, solid strategies and insight into sports betting, check out our sports betting strategy guides, or get better acquainted with the basics in our Sports Betting 101 series.
