[mogwai316]

Order Sharp Sports Betting by Wong, and get King Yao's book as well if you are pretty serious about this. While waiting for them to arrive, read the FAQ. Then read it again; read all the linked posts and visit the linked sites. Read all of The Well posts in this forum. Read all of the new posts here, you'll start to figure out how to separate the fluff/useless posts from the valuable information. Figure out who are the guys that really know what they're doing, and go back and search for their old posts. (Hint: just because someone's an ass doesn't mean that you can't learn from them.)

If you have questions, do as much research as you can first, and then make an intelligent post. You'll usually get some helpful responses if you show that you've spent some time on it and not just made a half-assed post.

A lot of stuff won't make sense yet but you'll be planting seeds in your mind. This is very different than learning poker because there are so many different methods and the information is not so easily available. The Wong book will help clear up a lot of things, and will kinda take you to the next level, but it is not the answer to everything. At the same time, keep reading everything you can about sports and watching lots of sports. You don't need to be an expert in a sport to make money off of it, but it certainly helps and it's part of what makes this fun. There is definitely too much out there to try and do it all, though. If you try to handicap and bet every sport, it's like trying to play 2 tables of LHE, 2 tables of NL, 2 tables of Razz, 2 tables of Stud, and 2 tables of Crazy Pineapple, all at once at different limits.

Sorry for the rambling post, and I'm definitely not qualified to really give advice on this, but this is the approach I've taken and some of the things I've learned so far.

Also, I would strongly recommend against taking any "coaching" offers that you receive. The people that are qualified to coach you would almost certainly not have any interest in doing so. (Don't take this personal, it's just the way it is.) Any offers you get would be from "touts" or people that are out to screw you.