You're looking at it the wrong way. There is great information INSIDE the petty arguing and namecalling.

These people that you think are annoying and trolling have inadvertently given you a gift, yet you keep sticking your head in the horse's mouth and complaining. My advice to you would be to sack up and admit that you know nothing.

First off, I know nothing.

Secondly, the only person that I think has been a total troll was ND, as he added absolutely nothing.

Third, as I said, I think B00T was very helpful at first but then turned into a troll(he claims its because I said I was warm and inviting to Thremp and he disagreed with that...I still have no clue why that would cause someone to turn into a troll)

Fourth, even though I despise Thremp's posting style, I have often said that hes welcome in this thread because he knows a lot.

Fifth and most importantly, as I said this is pretty much what I thought the thread would be and I"m ok with that, as I just want to learn and if I have to go through the name calling to learn then I'll do it.

There have been some who have given great info without being insulting, and I think I've made it very clear that I appriciate their help(this includes you if i havn't said so, kyleb).

So you're saying that line shopping is important, but it's not THAT important.

OK, got it.

You do realize that it was possible for both me to be very wrong to think that lineshopping didn't matter and for M2TR's experiment to have give too much credit to line shopping, right?

I went from never line shopping to always line shopping. Thats pretty much the most that I can possibly do here. You claim that I downplayed it, but how can I possibly have downplayed it when I went from doing the exact opposite(not line shopping) to following him exactly this season? It would seem to me like I totally bought into what he was saying.

I never downplayed how wrong I was; I only "downplayed" it when MT2R's experiement showed above expected results and I made a one sentence note of that in the midst of a multiparagraph post that explained how I agreed with him in every other sentence.

You seem to want me to ignore any possible variance of his experiment and only admit my own faults. I think that, while that may help me a little bit, a true sharp would both admit his previous failures but also take a good look at the experiment and critisize where necessary.

In case I havn't made it clear, I agree with his point and I thank him for proving it in a cool and funny(I absolutely did not take offense to it as B00T seemed to think I did...if someone goes about it in a funny way, I'll easily be the expense of a joke...its just the "your an idiot" posts that get to me because they're not funny nor do they serve a point) way.

lol i generally don't like the tone of your posts, but this is awesome!

assani, please stop being defensive and explaining yourself over, and over.

you're going to piss these guys off and then they won't continue to give us this good advice.

line shopping is to sports betting, as adjusting the cards you play in hold 'em... super easy to do, resulting in significant improvement to your results

SPFH Chapter 5: Regular Season

"A better way of quantifying home field advantage for predicting odds is to use a
percentage instead of points."


Like many, I have always thought of HFA as worth 3 points in the NFL. I guess this is saying that my way is an inferior way of looking at it?



"Two evenly matched teams figure to have a
50% chance of winning a game at a neutral site, so use the historical winning
percentage of 58.69% to figure home field advantage to be worth 8.69%."

Interesting.




"Some handicappers will argue that some teams figure to have a better home field
advantage than others. This is a valid point, but the reality is that every team is at a
disadvantage due to travel and playing in unfamiliar surroundings. You might find
making larger or smaller adjustments to be worthwhile, but keeping it simple is
typically the best policy to follow."

I have argued that in the past. A few examples:

-Loud domes or dome-like stadiums can provide more crowd noise and make it tougher on the visiting offense. Seattle, for example, has a bigger than average HFA imo.

-Traveling across the country would seem to give the road team an even bigger disadvantage.

-Teams at the end of a long road trip would seemingly be at a bigger disadvantage

-Teams with unique playing surfaces would have an advantage due to being more used to them. One example off the top of my head is that I remember some hockey rinks used to be smaller than others in the NHL(not sure if this is still true today).


I believe this to be true due to common sense/conventional wisdom. However, since I critisized the book last chapter for not giving enough evidence, I would be interested in seeiing more evidence here. In particular, does anyone have any stats about the 2nd or 3rd ones I listed?




Looking at the margin of victory charts, not a lot is surprising. Obviously 3, 7, 10, and 6 are the most important(in that order). I did note that away teams are even more likely than home teams to win by 3.



"The first step to calculating money line odds for a regular season game is to calculate
both teams’s margins of victory for each of their last four games"

Is this standard? Of course I pay attention to previous weeks and that info is in my head when I'm making my lines, but I usually don't add up each team's exact point differential over the past 4 weeks. Should I be doing this? And is there anything significant to the number 4 that should make us more willing to use that over 3 or 5?



"5.1.3.2 Neutralize Margins of Victory"

Wow this entire section was pretty heavy on the math. Gonna bookmark and come back later, as to be honest I'm just not feeling like thinking too hard right now, and I'd rather put in the work when I'm in a better state of mind as it'll be more productive time spent.



"Once you have neutralized the teams’s margins of victory, you will need to calculate
the median margin of victory that provides a representation of the central tendency
for the teams’s margins of victory.
First, sort the teams’s neutralized margins of victory from lowest to highest. Next,
calculate the mean of the middle two numbers of these sorted lists. This will provide
you with both teams’s median margin of victory."

Ok, so basically we're performing kinda a combo of mean and median here.




"Calculate Neutral Field Winning Percentage"

I think I understand this, but most likely I think I should find a few sample games and go through all these steps to make sure I'm getting it right.



"To do this, add 8.69% to the winning percentage
of the home team, or subtract 8.69% from the winning percentage of the away
team."

Ok.



"The final step to creating your own money line odds is to convert the winning
percentages into a standard odds format"

Fair enough. I still don't see the signficance of taking exactly the last 4 games, and I think not taking strength of schedule into account would greatly overvalue some teams.

For example, even though I love Baltimore this year, this formula has to overrate any team that has played just Clev and Cincy so far this year, no?




Ah good an example. Glad they included that.

Still a ton of math it seems, and its going over my head a bit right now, but as I said I'll check back later and maybe it'll make more sense then.




"Once you have the money line odds for a game, you simply have to find the margin
of victory that, when combined with the expected winning percentage, provides a
joint probability as close to 0.50, or 50%, as possible. This is because the point
spread is a neutralizer that creates as close to a 50/50 proposition for both sides as
possible."

Ok, think I got this part.





Yeah, I can tell now that this chapter is a lot tougher than the previous 4, so rather than force myself to read through it all now, I'm going to quit and come back with a fresh mind some other time...

Sorry, I know I can be stubborn when I feel that I'm right. I'll just let it go...

Except you're 100% wrong about the experiment showing "above expected" results.

If M2TR had spent the "normal" amount of time lineshopping instead of the very brief 5-10 minutes he spent (and thus was able to snipe the odd very stale line or two), he likely would have doubled his number of games affected.

I understand your by your action you're saying that you've gotten the message and you understand that lineshopping is more important than even handicapping. But you keep saying that and trying to hedge in some way.

I'll say it one more time, and then I'm done trying to help you with this specific point (will gladly help you and others on other points, but this lesson has been taught and shouldn't need to be revisted anymore), because I can't say it any more plainly: stop trying to second guess the results or downplay it in any way. It's not "important but slightly less important than MT2R made it out to be" as you are trying to say. If anything, again, it's more important.

So, understand the very valuable lesson a lot of people have gone out of their way to try to teach you here -- lineshopping is really _that_ important.

-P

I just checked out SIA and quickly read the SB R review. They have a D+ rating... I definitely don't feel comfortable putting money there

Are you guys saying SIA is just good for line shopping, or do you put money there?

SIA is fine. It's the only D-level book I'd recommend.

They are fine. I have money there. For now.

SIA is the old school Pacific Poker of sportsbooks.

I've been wondering about SIA, too... I checked out SBR, and I wasn't really able to gauge how risky it is to play there.

Has anyone had any bad experiences there aside from being booted?

Never had a problem with any of my accounts there.

You know, this would probably be an amazingly good thread to read with Assani on ignore. There is an insane amount of hugely profitable free advice getting tossed around. Thremp, B00t, Performify, et al, please keep posting. I want to keep reading.

PS - Assani, several of the posts in this thread that I expect to make me the most money in the long run are the SAME posts where people are calling you a troll and making fun of me. You need to stop assuming that because someone is attacking you, they have nothing useful to say. Generally, they're attacking you because you said something incorrect, and if you look carefully and unemotionally at their attack, you can figure out what the flaw they're pointing out is, and learn something. Often it will be something really really useful.

Their CS is pretty awful. But I have had way less issues with them than many A/B rated books by SBR.

SBR rankings are somewhat arbitrary and their "Complaint" service is somewhat lolz.

thinly veiled brag.

Ok I am up to 9 sportsbooks, however getting money into all of them will take some time. While I won't be able to get money into Pinnacle, I guess that can be a 10th book to line shop... That should be enough books, right?

Now is there an easier way to compare lines then fliping through 10 screens one game at a time?

I guess I could use Excel and write everything down, but I just wanted to make sure there wasn't an easier way... like a web-site that you could link your accounts too or something...

Yeah, 10 books is plenty - more than enough to get started. I use SIA, BetJam, 5dimes, BetOnline, Sportsbook, Sportbet, and DSI right now (as well as Pinny/Matchbook). There are other small books I have or have had money at not worth discussing.

As for comparing lines, you can use Dynamic Lines at Pinnacle to update consistently, but the other ones you just have to reload/refresh. You can try ReloadEvery, a plugin for Mozilla Firefox that automatically reloads the page every X minutes, but that can screw with your betting. People who do high volume often use a line shopping service, like LineTracker (~$300/month?). Arbitrage services are pretty worthless, though - I've demoed one or two and didn't like either of them (anything cheap won't be effective).

Using XML to parse and automatically download the data from Pinnacle is something a lot of posters do as well to get closing lines. This is something I really need to figure out, and by that I mean pay someone to do.

You get good at it, eventually. I still suck at it, FWIW, but fortunately, so do a lot of sportsbooks.

I have accounts at:
-BD (funded)
-BJ (funded)
-5D (funded)
-BookMaker (funded)
-Greek (should be able to fund w/ netspend in about one week)
-MB (it appears that I can interbook transfer from 5D or BJ)
-BetOnline (not sure how I can fund)
-Legendz (it appears that I can interbook transfer from BJ, 5D or MB)
-SIA (not sure how I can fund)
-Pinnacle (will be 10th... just for reference)

Has anyone used netspend? Is like a credit card... will this work from the US? If so, do you think I can use it at some of these other sports books like BOL or SIA?

Has anyone used interbook transfer (BJ --> MB etc) Does this raise red flags (meaning possible sharp) or is it pretty simple to do, don't worry? I suspect that since I am only starting w/ approx $100 in each acct it won't raise too much attention.

Also, it looks like most books offer poker, so I figured one way I can increase my BR quickly is to play poker there... I have only done this at BD so far... but it worked

I use Person-to-Person transfers for the most part, and I assume that is what everyone else does as well.

Interbook transfers are a huge pain in the ass from my experience, but if necessary, they will work.

BTW, BetOnline is a perfect example of a "Recommended Book" that will steal your money way quicker than a book like SIA.

so on Tuesday I took 1 u on Buffalo -9 (-110).

Last night I found it at -8 (110) and took 1 more u.

Does this mean that I ***'d up on Tuesday or is it just that if the original line was good, the improved line was better and you should be buying more?

I am still learning how to bet size in SB and I suspect that I probably should have bet more at -8...

as a side note, I hate how MB shows its lines... and timing out while I am going through the lines at the different books and having to relogin is a pain...

well I am a nobody in SBF... will anyone do p2p for me... do you just post somewhere and people help you (obv for some fee... what is customarbtw? 10%)

or do I need to build up some friendships in SB before I can do p2p? or maybe this is just the cheaper way?