The Joy in Riding the Wave

I said multiple times yesterday to "trust the system" and to remove emotion from the gambling experience, so as not to negatively influence my otherwise-sound wagering habits.
Well that's all very true, and that's how I'm navigating this stretch of wall-to-wall basketball games. But an important thing that I failed to note is that this system doesn't remove emotion from the equation, at least not post-bet, meaning I'm still very susceptible to the exhilarating and depressing swings that come with success and failure. I can still watch and follow with a fan's rooting (and sporting) interest, and betting on so many games each day serves to make every day like a first-round-NCAA-Tournament day, where it seems that every basket has actual meaning.
As prophesied yesterday, I had an up-and-down day with the wagers. I started off hitting four of my first five bets, for a net gain of $19. Then I lost my biggest bet of the day, a $44 loss, followed by a small $5 win. I had two games left and was down $20 for the day. Bad news was my last two bets were only about 50/50 shots each. I figured a split there and I'd only be out $20 for the whole day, not too bad. Of the first of the late doubleheader goes very poorly, my teams falls behind and never ever makes it interesting. The final game wasn't starting until 11:45pm though and as much I really wanted to follow that one live, I decided to turn in.
When I woke up there was a little anxiety over that last game. It represented a $45 swing in my daily performance, and my team was only a 52% likely winner. Surely karma would be coming back to get me. Surely I had to know what happened. Surely I was extremely happy to find out they'd pulled out a four-point win. Way to go, Cal Poly Mustangs, for overcoming a six-point halftime deficit and putting me in a very good mood this fine Thursday.

(All this after a net losing day yesterday, too. Thanks mostly to that big $44 loss, but moreso really to my 1-2 record in swing games. One thing my system has is inherent risk for large losses. A large portion of my bets sees me taking favorites, sometimes big favorites. It's hard to win much money on these games without making large bets. In order to bet on an 80% likely winner, I'll usually need to put up something like $20 to win only $7. The system also likes to tell me to place larger wagers on teams I'm only about 55-60% likely will win. The good news here is that I still have an edge and I'd stand to win virtually the amount that I put up, but of course if the numbers hold true I'll lose these bets almost half the time. You just have to stomach it.
To use yesterday as an example, I made nine bets. Three of them were basically gimmies, with expected win% of 85% at minimum. I actually lost one of these, but still broke even on them because the loser was the lowest bet amount. Three of the bets were medium favorites, with win% expectations between 69-81%. I won all three of these for a $26 gain. The last three were a little under 60% likely to win individually. I lost two of these and very nearly all three. But my net result was -$45. You see how the losses hurt more than the wins help.
Remarkably, I've been slightly unlikely on these swing games since starting the system, with just a 6-8 record in games where the price I bought was within 10% of a 50/50 shot. My financial balance on these 14 50/50 shots is -$149. That's a lot. So while I've had overall good luck, my small amount of bad luck on these highest-value games has balanced out the luck factor quite a bit.)