What's the simplest angle that was +EV in the past thirty years or so? I assume all such leaks have been plugged by now with the amount of data that current books use, but I'm interested in plays that were surprisingly simple and that were +EV for a surprisingly long time. Wong teasers are about the simplest thing I can think of, but presumably there was something simpler that the books missed for a long time. For example: Taking the home team in CFB when a team travels three time zones west and kick-off is after 7:00 at night. Taking the over in MLB when the temperature and humidity are above a certain amount. Fading any NFL team that starts 4–0 because they're probably overrated. Stuff like that.

Anyone have any recollections of winning long term with these kinds of modeling-free bets?

Not mine - but a well-known story.

Haralabos Voulgaris made his money by exploiting how bookmakers estimated an NBA game's total score. Bookmakers would estimate the total for the game, and then roughly divide it in half.

But generally speaking in Basketball, more points are scored in the second half.

Bob would take the over in the second half.

Line Shopping / Steam Chasing
Wong Teasers
Buying NFL 3 for 10c (Before my time)
NFL Parlay Cards
MLB Slaughters (Only B00T remembers)
Correlated Parlays
Leveraged If Bets
Texas Rangers 2½ System

Was there actually anything to the Texas Rangers 2.5 system? What was the thesis there, anyway, and why did it stop being profitable? Since you could write out 10,000 conceivable systems like this, there will of course be a few that are statistically significant winners even though they are complete BS luck.

Here you go: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/4...system-463112/

The Overs on any B00t eating contest.

Odds-on horses to place worked for a long time, but faded out about 20 years ago. Around the same time as TVG and online betting started.

I mean negative show pools still abound.

Ive googled a bit about negative show pools. Feels like there is some potential edge...
How could you exploit it?

and what about mandatory payout on carryover.
Here too it feels like (together with negative show pools) are +EV spots...

When I was in high school and college (mid 80's through early 90's) betting the NFL was stupid easy. Could blindly take home dogs and profit. Playing surface was huge as the fields were widely inconsistent. Teams with natural grass home fields hosting teams with artificial turf home fields were huge winners. The reverse was also profitable just not as much.

Data was not overly accessible back then and if you had it the NFL was a cash machine. Kept me in some good spending money through school.