I’m headed to Las Vegas Thursday for the first round of the tournament and am giddy as a school kid. I’ve talked about the thrill of March Madness in Vegas and past betting success in a previous post.

Now that the JackandJacks.com blog is active, I thought I’d do an experiment and post our betting strategy ahead of the time and we’ll track the performance here. Instead of my analyzing matchups (which I will be doing) and posting my assessments here, I’m going to use real money to wager according to the strategies of a prominent sports bettor whom I respect…Wayne Root. Wayne is somewhat of a flashy guy and self-promoter so some may be turned off by that but his mindset is that of a true contrarian, a method I have used with great success for football for a number of years, but that’s a whole other article. Wayne has written a book called “The King Of Vegas’ Guide To Gambling” And in conformance to the positive expectation nature of this site, Wayne expounds upon the values of poker and sports-betting and avoiding the negative expectation games.

In his book, Wayne discusses some March Madness contrarian betting strategies that I will be following. These are:

Threes A Crowd - Bet AGAINST any team that is on a 3 game winning streak (vs. the spread) heading into the tournament and bet FOR any team that is on a 3 game losing streak (again vs. the spread).
Based on this:
Midwest:
Take ODU +1 (lost 3) vs Butler
Take Jackson St +27.5 vs Fla (won 3)
Take GT -1.5 vs UNLV (won 3)…must be bet online
East:
Take Ark +2 vs USC (won 3)
Take Vandy -3 vs GW (won 3)
West:
Take Duke -7 (lost 3) vs. VCU
Take Indiana -1.5 vs Gonzaga (lost 3)
South:
Take CConnSt +21.5 vs OSU (won 3)
Take Tenn -7 vs LB St (won 3)
Take Stanford +5.5 (push, loss, loss) vs. Louisville
Take Nevada -1 vs Creighton (won 3)…online only
Take Memphis -18 vs. N Texas (won 3)

Best Offense is a Good Defense - The crowd loves the flashy, high-profile scoring teams and stars so the value is on the other side. I’ll be looking for these opportunities as the tourney progresses.

Go Against Major Conference Champs and For The Unheralded - bet against the champs of Big East, ACC, SEC, Pac 10, Big 10, and Big 12 and bet on champs of WAC, Mountain West, and MAC. First round, I’ll wait and see.

David Vs Goliath - Determine who is the David in notable matchups and take the points. Bet on the teams heading into the tournament on a losing streak and vice versa. Bet on those coming in with a high profile loss and vice versa.

After USCs embarrassing loss to Oregon in the Pac-10 conference, Oregon faces a Miami of Ohio team that is only in the tournament because of a buzzer beater Saturday.
Take Miami +9 vs. Oregon

Marquette’s Tom Crean is taking on his mentor Tom Izzo. The teams are fairly evenly matched and Izzo is a masterful coach. Marquette more balanced team….I say Mich St is the Goliath here.
Take Marquette + 2 Vs Mich St

I’ve locked in a unit ($165) on each of the 14 games listed above (3/13/07 11PM PDT)