Hi and welcome to Bob Akmens Sports - America's #1-documented  top sports handicapper. We're here to help you make consistent profits when you play all your favorite sports: football, baseball, basketball and hockey.  And even the best betting-sport of all time, soccer!  We also offer coverage of NASCAR, boxing, tennis, golf & horse racing.

Back when I began, there were just a few dozen sports-handicapping services doing business. Today, there are thousands. When you look for a sports service, there are three important things to consider:

1) INTEGRITY: you want to do business with a service that makes its record public - someone that is constantly monitored by an impartial, reputable sports monitor.

2) A GOOD DOCUMENTED SHORT-TERM RECORD:  ideally, you'd like to find a service that's #1 in every sport going on.  That's very rare, but I did that in October 2007 when I had just won the regular-season baseball contest at the two most important sports monitors - and I was the defending NHL handicapping-champ in both the regular & post-season NHL contests with The Sports Monitor - and I also had the highest win-percentage at 71.1% in college & NFL football combined at The Sports Monitor.  I've been doing this since 1978 and had never seen a service be #1 in all the sports going on at the same time as I was.

But if you think that's good, consider this:  Until the 2009 baseball season ends in October, I will be able to claim that I am the defending national handicapping-champ in baseball, AND the NFL, AND hockey, AND the NBA Playoffs.  That's 4 different sports I'm the current champ by being #1 in either The Sports Monitor or The Sports Eye or the Las Vegas Sports Monitor.

And, I absolutely, positively guarantee you no one else has EVER done that - EVER.

3) A GOOD DOCUMENTED LONG-TERM RECORD: consistency is what counts in this business - not just being a hot "flash-in-the-pan" who fries you just after you join their service's "15-minutes-of-fame-hot-streak," which they may never, ever duplicate again.

Let's talk about those three important points in more detail.

INTEGRITY:  Why would you want to do business with a service that isn't monitored? Ask yourself this: what do they have to hide? My experience has shown me that the two leading monitors of sports services are www.thesportseye.com and www.thesportsmonitor.com.  The Sports Eye has been monitoring me since 2004. The Sports Monitor, since 1988.

And a new entrant in the field is the Las Vegas Sports Monitor at www.lasvegassportsmonitor.com. Run by Patrick & Annette Everson, they're a very progressive outfit which tries to do all they can to promote the services they monitor. Bob Akmens Sports began being tracked by LVSM in 2008 - and promptly won their first-ever completed contest in Post-Season Baseball!

Each season, a service can claim to be #1 if they lead in any category of one of these leading sports monitor's handicapping contests.  For instance, in football, one service might have the best win-percentage while another might have won the most profit. Each can legitimately claim a #1-finish.

A GOOD DOCUMENTED SHORT-TERM RECORD: While I'm very proud of having been #1 in baseball, #1 in hockey, and #1 in football, all at the same time recently, you can't realistically expect any service to do that. If any of you are Texas Hold 'Em poker fans, just look at their yearly World Championship tournaments to see how hard it's become to repeat as champs.

When the 1987 World Series of Poker was won by the very-recognizable Johnny Chan, he faced only 151 other entrants. Recently, the 2007 version was won by Jerry Yang who had to face 6,357 other players!  You can see why even the best pro poker- player has a very small chance of winning against so many other entries. And the odds of repeating as champs the next year are now slightly above zero.

It's the same in the sports-service business.  Don't try to look for the guy who's #1 in everything - because you probably won't find him - regardless of my having "been there and done that" recently.

Look for a service that's making money for their clients because it's just plain impossible to win every handicapping contest against hundreds, if not thousands, of other services.

A GOOD DOCUMENTED LONG-TERM RECORD:  I'll argue that it's much more important that a service have a consistent long-term track-record than be just a "hot" performer one month and a has-been the next.  Over the decades I've done this, I can't tell you how many services have been hot for a while - and then didn't just go ice-cold, but plain disappeared off the face of the earth. 

Because there's a great truth in this sports-service industry: services that are monitored and consistently lose go out of business - quickly - they don't last for decades.  Of course, you can refuse to be monitored by anyone and then you can lie your way to business year-after-year assuming you find fresh suckers who'll buy into your story of endless 80% winning-seasons.

I'm proud of my accomplishments in this industry since I started in 1978.  I won the very first contest ever for sports-services: the baseball one in 1980.  I remember starting that season with a record of 44-11. Back then, that very first sports-monitor, the American Association of Documented Sports Services (the AADSS) used to post the contest results daily at the now-gone Stardust in Las Vegas.  Boy, did we get lots of calls every day!  

I also won the very first contest they ever had for hockey back in 1994, when I took a $10,000 bankroll and rolled it past $140,000.  I was the first service to ever go beyond 100 grand in an AADSS contest, and the $140K figure I reached was the highest at the time in the 14 years of their existence.

I told this to a new caller the other day and his response was blunt: "I don't care what you did in 1994."  Well, you should. Here's why: because when you run across the "hot" service that "can't lose," I guarantee you will eventually lose - and just maybe you'll never consistently win long-term - which in this business, surely is longer than that hot month some service may have. So, it's important that someone has a consistent track-record.

Recently, we were informed by The Sports Eye that we won our 6th-straight hockey handicapping contest in a row.  And a bit late - on July 18th, we found out we had 7 more #1 contest-category finishes at The Sports Monitor after the NHL Playoff contest - including an utterly spectacular +122.13% return-on-risk - and a combined 85.7% win-percentage on Top-Plays for the full regular- and post-season together! You heard right. #1 in 6 straight regular & post-season hockey contests at either The Sports Monitor or The Sports Eye. To compete against anywhere from dozens to hundreds of other services...to even lead for a single week against all that competition...then to win a 1/2-year-long contest...and then win 6 of those contests in a row...how much more consistent can you possibly be?

Now, is that a better criterion for joining a service than the guy who has a hot month and everyone is chasing his performance by living and dying (bankroll-wise) with each of his daily plays? Infinitely better.  No one on earth has ever done what we just did. No one. I'm positive. Except Bob Akmens Sports. You can live to be 100 and never see that again.

And we just finished #1 in the NBA Playoffs at The Sports Eye in both categories they track: best win-percentage and most bankroll won.  And in 3 categories at The Sports Monitor contest. You just can't do much better than that.

We also won the very first contest the Las Vegas Sports Monitor (LVSM) had - the 2008 Baseball Post-Season Championship - and then topped even that by winning the 2008 NFL Football Post-Season Championship at LVSM.

The bottom line is this: I'm most proud of the fact that I have finished on top in more categories of more documented sports handicapping contests than any service I know of: 202, and counting.  You can find full details of this by clicking on the "documented #1 titles" tab on any of our site's pages.

That's why my slogan is "making millions for smart clients since 1978."

I'll tell you something else which shocks many clients - and I'm positive would shock the pants off of most sports-service operators:  many of my clients have been with me 5, 10, even 25 or more years.

Sometimes, I'll get a call from someone new and while I'm telling them about the service, one of the other phone lines will ring and it will happen to be one of these many very long-term clients.  And I'll put both phones on speaker-phone and ask my long-term buddy a simple question out loud so both callers can hear it: "how long have we been together?"  And when that client says something like, "15-20 years," it just dazzles the new-caller. 

I had to laugh when a new guy recently came back with "what, did you guys grow up together?"  Well, yes, as a matter of fact we have!  People stay with me for one reason only: not because I'm a nice guy, but because I win more than I lose.

That's a simple equation: if you win more than you lose, folks will keep coming back for more.

The more I think about it, I've probably made tens of millions for the many thousands of clients I've had in the past three decades. It may even be hundreds of millions. Three decades times thousands of clients equals a ton of profits.

I know one particular client has made literally millions.  I can remember the day I first spoke to him. It was in October of 1979 - and the Orioles had just taken a 3 games to 1 lead over the Pirates in the Series. And he needed a winner in game 5 - or as he put it, a "lock" winner. He actually used an old-time expression you don't hear much these days: he said he had "bet his lungs" on the first four games and lost three of them - not his lungs, since he still had both left, but games.

I recall just what I told him: there are no "locks" in your betting- life.

I learned the "no-locks-in-life" lesson during the '78-'79 college hoop season. You see, I grew up in the Bronx, lived there through my college days, and spent a bunch of time on Arthur Avenue where they sold the best cannolis around. And let's just say that I knew some guys there who were involved in not-so-legal activities.  1978 was my first year in this business and while I didn't know him personally, I knew people who dealt with Henry Hill.  If the name sounds vaguely familiar to you, think of the Ray Liotta-character in a movie you just might have heard of: "Goodfellas." That's Henry Hill.

One of my all-time favorite movies, by the way. DeNiro & Pesci in that flick were a lot like the guys I knew back then.

Now, in early December of that year, I heard some rumors - from good sources - about some monkey-business that was going to happen in a Boston College hoop game.  Of course, there was no way to confirm this stuff at the time, but I was told that the upcoming BC-Providence game was a "lock" - because Henry Hill had, shall we say, a "working" relationship with some BC players who might just miss a few easy hoops.

So, the day of the game arrives, and BC is a -7 point favorite.  I didn't tell a soul that I had this info - stupid, I'm not, as Yoda might say.  But I had a bunch of guys working the phones for me giving out plays that night - and, as you might guess, I had released Providence + the 7 points as a big play.

And, it's now very well-known that some of the BC players did, in fact, shave points - for several games as I recall.  I even remember that one of the kid's names was Sweeney.   So, here we had a true "lock." I mean, how much more of a lock can you possibly have than a fixed-game where the favorite won't cover because players will deliberately miss shots?  So what happened in that "lock" game?  BC won by 13 - and Henry Hill and his bunch were not happy campers - nor was I.  And that taught me once and for all time that there are absolutely, positively no locks - in betting, at least.

Back to my client's first-day of service in 1979.  After disappointing him by telling him I had no lock in game 5 of the Series, I did surprise him a bit by telling him I liked the dog in that game  - a surprise because the Pirates started Jim Rooker - who had won all of 4 games during the regular season. In those much more-formful days of baseball, I figured the Pirates would salvage at least one game at home - in spite of Rooker. But Rooker pitched brilliantly, Blyleven came on for 4 innings of relief - and the Bucos were at least still alive.

The new client calls for the next game, very happy, and says to me, "we're going with Palmer tonight, right?" He figured Palmer back in Baltimore had to be a lock. Well, I liked the Candy Man - John Candelaria - and the Bucs momentum - and Pops Stargell and the amazing Series he was having. So, I gave out the Pirates as a dog again - and they won game 6 to knot the Series at 3 games apiece.

Now the final, deciding game is upon us and my new friend calls again and says, "you've gotta be going with Scotty McGregor at home in the clincher, right? "  And again, I threw him for a loop when I gave out the Pirates - with Jim Bibby. But Bibby actually had a more productive year than McGregor did - and again, never underestimate "mo" - and "mo" was something the Pirates definitely had mo' of. To the tune of Sly and the Family Stone's "We Are Family," the small, but very vocal, Pittsburgh-contingent at Baltimore's Memorial Stadium rocked-and-rolled to the '79 World Championship.

I do seem to have grown-up together with that client - since he's been with me all 29 years since then, and I know he bets enough to have won millions on my plays.  I remember him telling me many years ago that he had bought a beach house - with cash - from his profits.

I hope I can win a fraction of that for you.

And with that nice thought, I do hope you'll come on board for the ride as we win yet more handicapping contests in all sports and give me the distinct pleasure of telling some new clients about you a decade-or-so down the road.

Thanks for visiting - and I hope you'll come back often!

Bob