The Long Con of @RJinVegas: Bet Like A Pro (Part Three)

RJ Bell is the founder and CEO of Pregame.com, a sports betting website that includes forums, odds, contests, and picks (both of the free and for purchase varieties). It is one of the most successful sites of its kind, in no small part due to the popularity of Bell, who has accumulated over 80K Twitter followers and established himself as the mainstream media's go-to "expert" for stories involving gambling on sports.

An American success story if there every was one. That's only one side of it, though. In some corners of the internet (including this blog), there is a feeling that Bell has not found his success in a legitimate way. This is the fourth post in a series detailing the reasoning behind that particular feeling. If you'd like to start at the beginning, it's here.

After a brief but worthwhile interlude, let's get back to examining whether Bet Like A Pro (BLAP) contains "any element of a scam".

Step 3: Make it impossible for a neutral third-party to verify the long-term record of your program.

The Long Con of @RJinVegas: Bet Like A Pro (Part Two)

RJ Bell is the founder and CEO of Pregame.com, a sports betting website that includes forums, odds, contests, and picks (both of the free and for purchase varieties). It is one of the most successful sites of its kind, in no small part due to the popularity of Bell, who has accumulated over 80K Twitter followers and established himself as the mainstream media's go-to "expert" for stories involving gambling on sports.

An American success story if there every was one. That's only one side of it, though. In some corners of the internet (including this blog), there is a feeling that Bell has not found his success in a legitimate way. This is the third post in a series detailing the reasoning behind that particular feeling. If you'd like to start at the beginning, it's here.

The folks at Pregame love to talk about Steve Fezzik's "network" of "sharps". For example, from the same classic thread we delved into last time:

The Long Con of @RJinVegas: Bet Like A Pro (Part One)

RJ Bell is the founder and CEO of Pregame.com, a sports betting website that includes forums, odds, contests, and picks (both of the free and for purchase varieties). It is one of the most successful sites of its kind, in no small part due to the popularity of Bell, who has accumulated over 80K Twitter followers and established himself as the mainstream media's go-to "expert" for stories involving gambling on sports.

An American success story if there every was one. That's only one side of it, though. In some corners of the internet (including this blog), there is a feeling that Bell has not found his success in a legitimate way. This is the second post in a series detailing the reasoning behind that particular feeling. If you'd like to start at the beginning, it's here.

When we last left off, RJ Bell was essentially admitting that his touts are not long-term winners, and explaining that yes, he was defending his operation in exactly the same way any scam artist would, but Pregame doesn't have ANY element of a scam, so he is clearly no scam artist.

As good as Bell may be at deflecting and giving non-answers, it's probably not realistic to run a large pick-selling operation without ever being able to claim that any of your touts are long-term winners. Fortunately, about 18 months ago, Bell found a way around this issue. You be the judge regarding whether the following contains "any element of a scam".

The Long Con of @RJinVegas: Defining Value

RJ Bell is the founder and CEO of Pregame.com, a sports betting website that includes forums, odds, contests, and picks (both of the free and for purchase varieties). It is one of the most successful sites of its kind, in no small part due to the popularity of Bell, who has accumulated over 80K Twitter followers and established himself as the mainstream media's go-to "expert" for stories involving gambling on sports.

An American success story if there every was one. That's only one side of it, though. In some corners of the internet (including this blog), there is a feeling that Bell has not found his success in a legitimate way. This is the first post in a series detailing the reasoning behind that particular feeling.

When selling sports betting picks, most touts have a fairly standard approach: they claim that the picks will win. This ranges from stating that a game is lock, to advertising how hot they've been over their past 12 3* releases, to saying they'll win in the long-term. Regardless of how they get there, the idea is the same: they're selling winners.

Certainly, Pregame employs some aspects of this approach. But the weird thing is, its founder and CEO doesn't seem to have ever totally bought in.