I was just listing reasonably reputable sites that offer live tennis betting. Bookmaker will have every ATP and WTA match live. Current WTA match has 3k max moneyline and 2k spread and total.

Let's say an NBA game has a a spread of 2. What would you expect the line for "no lead > 17.5" to be?

1) My first thought and the "easiest" approach is to database it. If you already have all the data it's a "simple" problem. But this is not something that's typically tracked so you'd have to write a custom query out of play by play data. Great if you have everything already setup in a database.

2) Another approach is to simulate it using a lattice structure. Break each possession into a node with each possible scoring outcome weighted by the team's probability for each outcome per possession. Run a few million simulations through it. Sanity check, does the average outcome of the game equal the spread of 2? Tweak the inputs so that the model matches the market. Add possessions or tweak the scoring probabilities of each node. Boom we've built a game simulator that gives a market based estimate. Sounds like a fun project to be honest.

PointsBet wins the award for most pathetic domestic book. Cut my limits to $5 after about 12 hours and even that had a delay. Wasn't even like they were crushed that badly. Only was up ~$9k when they did it.

Betfred did a nice job reneging on their free play offer and canceling bets that were placed. Is it worth going to the gaming commission over $750?

Using the easy approach described above, I came up with -297 (1.3365 as a decimal) as the fair line for "no lead > 17.5" when the home team is favored by 2 points. Would love to try TomG's simulation approach eventually too.

Contact SBR to do it on your behalf.

They do that with the US-based books these days?

SBR banned me for no apparent reason a few years ago. The only reason I can think of is that I filed a complaint about Bovada cancelling preseason hockey bets after the game was over that were roughly -110 when widely available price was ~-125.

That seems like a strange reason for them to ban you.

If betting on the book from the US is legal, they’ll have no issue helping.

If your bets not legal from your govts view, ofc they can’t help.

Curious. Are you from out of state? They were very quick to limit me and I was down $3-5k at the time.

Maybe risk management looks at the opening risk free bet to profile and closely watches anyone who does it sensibly.

Huh? The vast majority of SBR's existence has been based around being able to help with disputes between offshore books and US players.

Ok, then why would they ban you for it? It doesnt' make sense.

Nope. I'm local to Colorado. The latter is possible. Anyone else tried just betting a -110ish bet on the free bets on Betfred? It's not even that great of a promo as the promo is a free play refund if your first bet loses, i.e. $500 free play if your $500 or more initial bet loses. So if you get insta-profiled by picking some +500 soccer bet that's close to fair market value on its own, that's just not worth it.

Because they're a piece of **** company who relies on referral income and advertising from books masquerading as a neutral arbiter? They were always semi-shady, but after Ganchrow and Justin7 left, they became awful.

Meh, I've personally had them rule in my favour and get money returned to me from a C+ rated book. Only deal with A+ books now, really just Pinny 90% of the time.

I read an article about the CO gaming commission law. The book has to give them all the information for a dispute so it should be easy for you and definitely worth $750.

What were you betting on to get banned so quickly?

That's either team > 17.5 right? I was guessing in the -350 to -400 range so maybe not as rare as I thought, but I'm seeing lines like -158 and -175. (Of course when I tried it for NY/DET last night, NY started the game on 21-3 run.)

That's an interesting stat to bet on, though in betting NBA this year I've seen the swings for alot of NBA games. The terrible Houston Rockets had like a 20 point lead vs Brooklyn a few days ago, only to still lose by 12.

Yes. I don't have that prop offered on any of the books I regularly bet with so not sure what the full menu of options looks like but if I was the trader pricing that prop I would have thought to just find the margin x at which games with that spread have a lead > x 50% of the time, and offer it at -110 both sides or something similar. Or does your book offer multiple margin options at different odds for the same game?

It just always has 17.5 as the standard number for each game and adjusts the odds based on the spread.

On these sites where you need to wager a certain amount to get your total matching dollars (I'm on Moneybookers), is the best strategy just to wager both sides of a spread, lose the vig, but meet your wagering totals to get all your matching funds and are then free to withdraw money? Or will they block those kind of bets? Or will the math still be against you?

(I guess this standard - you deposit money, receive more "free play" money as you wager more, and you also have a total amount wagered minimum to be able withdraw your money. Only talking a few hundred here - I just want to hit the wager minimum and withdraw asap.)

The vig will kill you.

Yeah vig way too high to make that worthwhile

If you're looking for safety you could just bet a heavy favorite moneyline

You can profitably bet both sides if you make first bet when line is first posted and hope in the incoming days it moves on your direction to where you can hedge to guarantee profit - I think this is your better option and if have doesn't present itself then you're still on the side you wanted from the beginning anyway

Vig is monstrous though, ideally you want to open many accounts with different books and line shop, that alone can increase your win rate significantly

yeah, I thought of the bold, but they say the minimum of amount wagered and amount won counts - so $500 at -500 only ups the wagered tally by $100. (This seems pretty shady - still risking $500. Is this normal?)

Do you mean like a "middle" strategy?

Yeah, it's normal. You used to be able to exploit books in the early days, but they caught on.

and yeah, to bet a -500 favorite is pretty much lighting money on fire, you need to win 83% of the time just to break even, there are times when it's worth betting for sure but it's investing a lot for a small payout and a high risk of ruin

middling is what you were contemplating of betting both sides, but instead of blindly eating vig, there's enough room in the middle between both sides where you could feasibly win both bets if the result is in the sweet spot

this is most commonly done via multiple books where one book has a team at -7 and another at -9, you bet team a -7 and team b +9, if team a wins by 7 or 9, you push one and win other, if by 8 then you win both, of course most of the time they don't win by 7-9 points and you lose on vig but at times it can very low risk for a chance at a high payout

since you're doing one book, the idea would be to bet half on a spread right when the line opens, this is a bet you are fine with no matter what as the market may not move in your chosen direction and you're stuck without a middle opportunity

good middle spots are most common in player props where books are more likely to come up with their own numbers instead of tailing another so you could get Lebron o/u 26.5 points on one and o/u 23.5 points on another - of course you're likely eating massive vig on props though

a good rule of thumb is that if you tail bets the sharps share here occasionally, the line is quite certain to move in that direction, but then again that's already quite possibly a high ev play to begin with so may be best to just ride out the variance

gl