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I am going to post a bit of contrarian information in this thread and argue that most of what I have read so far is pretty inaccurate. I don't think that you need a much of a mathematical background to do sports betting. Some is good but it is not actually overly important. Same as with poker. Being able to build models for outcomes of games and being able to win at sports betting are two completely different skills, in my opinion. And I am surprised by how difficult some have described beating the high liquidity NBA lines, which I have had no problem getting ahead of. Just be on softer European books and its as easy as pie.
Another misconception is that the bookmakers want to set the sharpest line. Oftentimes they don't. They are either just trying to set the lines so money is dispersed evenly, or sometimes they shade a line and take the other side of the action. Just line shop on the soft books and you will already be doing better than 98% of models. The problem is that the day-to-day ins and outs of sports betting often do not map on perfectly to models. If you really want to win big in sports you need a very high volume of small edges, not a small volume of large edges. People underestimate the impact that compounding plays in sports betting. Think about this. It is not uncommon that I find games with 3% edges. The match is often over in a few hours. This is what a US government bond pays in a year. The ability to make huge returns, due to compounding, is outrageous if you can find even the smallest of edges. It's all about volume. The big players on this site don't really want to tell you the secret sauce but this is what the sharps know. I might speak more on how to find these edges if posts like these are well received.
I am also considering starting my own thread for golf betting in this forum and tracking my own personal results in real time. I just think that good modeling has little to nothing to do with good sports betting- at least in my experience. The key to riches is rapid compounding of small edges. If you miss this, you miss the forest for the trees. I can tell there are some smart posters in this thread but I think there is also a lot of misinformation. If you want to get good at sports there are a million ways to skin a cat. You can be a specialist or a generalist. One reason I like golf that you get 3 days off during the week.
I have plenty more to say on this, but I will stop for now since this forum is particularly prickly. I see more misinformation on this forum in general and there is not a lot of incentive for sharps to clean it up. Just my 2c.
I started this thread and I think this is a fair post -- I am relatively new to sports betting but have a basic understanding of the importance of line shopping. But I still do think there can be value in building some sort of model, even a basic one....or at least I think there will be value for me.
Fundamentally, sports books are offering you a price on a particular event and you need a way to determine whether or not the price is accurate enough to warrant passing on the wager or far enough off from the true price to warrant a bet.
I am analytical by nature, so I need some kind of way to quantify what I think the true price should be. The idea of identifying these advantageous prices based off of feel alone, while it may work for others, does not work for me.
I am not looking to build some "super model" here and bet based solely off that. I do not have the time to get that deep into the weeds for this hobby that's piqued my interest.
But I would like to build some kind of basic model that can perhaps help identify potential inefficiencies across the markets, which would thereby helping me narrow down the events on which to focus my manual research and lineshopping. And it sounds as if you don't need to get too crazy with the math to build something basic and worthwhile, which is great news to hear!