THE FORUM LEGENDS TEAM

Covers Username: EastsideBangers

Sports: NFL

Age: 58

Location: Delran, New Jersey

Background: EastsideBangers spent his youth surrounded by the lure of sports and was intrigued at the reaction his father displayed whenever Jimmy The Greek would show up on the NFL Today to make selections on each weeks games. Through years of trial and error, trying to find a system that would prove successful, EastsideBangers would experience both the highs and lows that comes with this journey. With over 35 years experience looking for different angles and strategies to exploit, he has settled on what he has found to work well for him. A combination of minimizing risk by selecting fewer games to really focus on teams that are in favorable situations as well finding lines that can be exploited. There is an ebb and flow to each and every team during the course of said season, EastsideBangers likes to take advantage of these opportunities.

Since joining the Covers community, Eastside has had much success in the NFL forum, consistently posting winning season after winning season. Eastside is excited to be joining a collection of Covers finest who have a proven track record of success and who are willing to share what they have learned with the Covers community.

Covers Username: packersbackers

Sports: NBA

Age: 46

Location: Toronto, Canada

Background: On a random winter Saturday afternoon in 1985, Packersbackers placed his first two dollar NHL parlay at a local 7-11 and has been betting sports ever since. Despite the Winnipeg Jets losing the last leg of that 3 game parlay, that thrill of action hooked him. Now with 30+ years of sports wagering experience under his belt, long gone are those hockey parlays, but he's now honed in on beating the NBA market and he's here to help you do the same.

Growing up in Winnipeg, he maintained a top 5 junior ranking in Canada throughout his years as a tennis player, was a two handicap golfer by the age of 17, and even played with former NBA big man Todd McCullough on his high school basketball team as a 3 point sharp shooter. In the summer of 1993, bucking the trend of his peers and going against the grain of his parent's wishes, he put his medical studies at the University of Manitoba on hold, as Packersbackers packed up his tennis bags immediately after graduating high school and flew to Spain to become a professional tennis player with the hunger to do whatever it took and pursue his dream make the ATP tour. After several years of weekly grinding on the red clay of European challenger events, he returned to Canada to pursue medical studies and other business opportunities. Using his experience of being a pro athlete has given him a long standing edge when capping sports as he has always believed the psychology of an athlete is something most people have very little knowledge of first hand.

Ever since setting down his roots in Toronto in 2004, he has been highly engaged in the world of tennis betting, while also focusing on NBA and college hoops. As his fandom for the Raptors grew, so did his NBA handicapping skills. With the steady improvement of the Raptors in the early 2010's, Packersbackers stopped following the college game from a betting perspective in order to sharpen his capping skills at the NBA game. During the 2018-19 season, his covers popularity and prominence hit an all time high when he was the first to publicly back the Raptors to win the title in his highly profitable NBA season long thread. He was one of the first to break the news of the Kawhi Leonard trade, and immediately made significant wagers backing the Raptors to win it all. Over the past 3 NBA seasons since, Packersbackers has consistently had one of the most profitable and positive karma season long threads in our NBA forum sections, constantly providing his basketball knowledge, insight, betting advice, countless more winning wagers than losing ones, and has successfully cashed in on multiple futures tickets for division winners, conference champions, and also predicted the Milwaukee Bucks to win the title this past season while most of the betting public were overlooking the Bucks betting odds and value as the Brooklyn Nets were getting most if not all of the media coverage and backing.

Packersbackers considers the 2021-2022 NBA season as a transition year for the league. He feels it has become more and more obvious the league is heading in a different direction, the games are being played at an insanely fast pace, and as such, this all directly impacts how games are to be wagered. He plans to stay a few steps ahead of the NBA oddsmakers with his carefully crafted style of picking his betting spots wisely and looking for quality spots rather than being a volume bettor. In addition, the past few seasons he has developed a keen sense for player props and following the lines and trends, always looking for a softer line where the oddsmakers might have not put out the best number. He constantly dives deep into the player prop market looking for the more obscure betting opportunities where the hidden gems are usually hiding in plain sight. The global popularity of basketball has never been greater than it is now, and with that will surely come more sharp odds on a daily basis for any given NBA slate of games. Packersbackers is up for the challenge to make himself a global NBA capper and to help all his clients win their bets!

Covers Username: A collective effort from all the Forum Legends

Sport: MLB

Background: In 2022, the Forum Legends Team will be managing MLB picks amongst themselves and they will be sourcing the picks from their friends in our MLB Covers Forum. For a MLB pick to be released they all have to agree and the pick itself would have been already highly veted to make the selection list in the first place. As is with all leagues and their picks, they expect to dominate the market and add to their overwhelming success to date.

Covers Username: AJMay

Sport: NHL

Age: 31

Location: Somerset, NJ

Background: AJMay has been successful in the past playing purely motivational and scheduling angles on underdogs, but soon realized he was leaving a lot on the table until he discovered the world of advanced statistics. Advanced stats will tell you when a team has been playing well despite losing a few games in a row, or a team has been playing poorly despite winning a few games in a row. This method will also let you know when a bad or mediocre team has started to figure it out and are now playing solid hockey. Similarly, good teams that will consistently attract most bets may not be playing well enough to justify the line.

These are great opportunities for betting against the public favorites and taking the value. There are also advanced stats for goalies which will allow you to approximate a goalie’s expected performance. When these statistical angles align with motivational and scheduling angles, a 10-unit play is warranted. When AJMay bets on big favorites, he’ll play them in regulation or parlay them to bring down the juice. Around -140 (1.71 decimal odds) is usually the upper limit for what he’ll pay. There is an extreme amount of variance in the NHL and you don't want to be on the wrong side of it with a -250 moneyline bet. You can roughly think of the way he handicaps games as: Total edge = Statistical edge + Motivational edge + Line value.

AJMay is excited for the opportunity to provide the Covers Experts community with what he’s learned over the years in his picks, write-ups and more importantly, make us all some money.

Covers Username: TRAIN69

Sport: NCAAF

Age: 43

Location: St. Louis, MO

Background: TRAIN69 has been gambling on all sports since age 16, starting with the Super Bowl and NCAA tourney action. He has bet on just about everything at one point or another.....from all American sporting events to NCAA tourney brackets, horse races, tennis & soccer. College football is the game he loves the most and thus the game he knows the most. His style has evolved over the years, from betting the board and tons of parlays to being much more selective in picking spots. That doesn't mean he doesn't enjoy a good parlay, as his favorite bet is still the underdog ML parlay (UDMLP) - one his follower in the Covers Forum always look out for. He has seen many people get too serious and let gambling drain them emotionally and financially, which is why he refuses to only straight bet. Yes, money management is the key to gambling longevity, but he doesn't let that be his sole guide. He likes the challenge of winning a parlay, and after all....if you don't think you can hit 3/3,4/4 or 6/6, how confident can you be in each pick individually?

TRAIN69 does look at matchups and other capping angles (weather, location, lookahead/letdown spot, etc), but he's found that the Vegas linemakers are very good at what they do and rarely make a "mistake". He took nearly a year off between 2013/14 as life was pulling his attention elsewhere and his college football bets suffered due to lack of time to watch games and keep up. That definitely helped his approach, as now he likes to look at a game 360 degrees and focus less on one aspect (again, most things are already baked into a line). If you've ever read one of his weekly threads, you know that keeping it fun is serious business for TRAIN69.

Covers Username: Cappologist

Sport: NCAAB

Age: 35

Location: Long Island, NY

Background: Cappologist has posted his picks in the Covers College Basketball forum for 6 years, but he’s been handicapping college basketball exclusively for over 11 years. He considers NCAABto be by far the most exploitable sport due to so many teams and unique matchups.

This collegiate basketball specialist has been steadily successful to the tune of +100 games won vs lost ATS across all his picks posted in the forum, yet he realizes nothing is guaranteed in the world of sports betting and prepares year around with that in mind. During the season, he takes notes on each slate of games daily and in the offseason, he performs a full season review and adjusts his strategies accordingly. With regards to his personal betting unit system, he highly values every bet he makes, so for that reason he is primarily a flat better who uses a standard 1 unit bet for all picks. Adapting to the $100 betting unit and 1-to-10 unit betting system utilized on Covers Experts, his personal 1-unit bet is equivalent to a 7 unit bet under the Forum Legends brand. When he feels strongly about a pick, he personally doubles down with 2 units – this is the equivalent to a 10-unit bet under the Forum Legends brand. These ‘double down’ plays are typically under 10% of his total volume of picks, but they have been extremely successful in the past going 54-28-1 ATS, 66%.

Cappologist separates himself from other NCAAB handicappers due to his willingness to work hard and stay up-to-date with an always evolving sports betting market and sport/league on a full-time basis. Rest assured he’ll be in the trenches grinding every day to deliver the very best results for clients – in the end it’s all about winning and that’s what he does best.