I'll let the hell freeze over joke slide...

Being an advantage player for 30+ years gives one a different perspective on gaining an edge. In general there are no shortcuts, and I've found that original thought beats piggy-backing on other people's ideas substantially.

I look at it as somebody walking around a casino asking a 21 card counter when to put his money down in the circle. The counter has put in a lot of practice time in getting the count(s) down and working on a cover to gain a small, but material edge. What's the point in giving it away to somebody who has no interest with putting in the time and effort?

Here's my take and a lot of it is rehashing:

If you can find a book that hangs better than a 20c line you're in great shape. I'm working on this and I intend to get money into matchbook ASAP. At the Wynn, usually you can bet one side at -110 and the other at -110. Imagine both lines at -104 (eg. Pinny) and you've cut the house edge considerably. You need a lower % correct to be +EV and the same winning percentage will win more money at a cheaper line because you can risk the same amount to win more. Magnify that across a thousand bets.

Money management and the Kelly Criterion are critical! As you win more money, you should be betting more -- not by a huge margin, but incrementally. This will increase your win rate substantially. When I post one unit plays, they are really 2% of my roll.

Getting good at betting is very similar to getting good at poker. After you get the basics down and that's where you'll encounter huge improvement it becomes a lot of fine tuning. Equate that extra value bet to finding a cheaper line. Shop for that -115 instead of -120. Sbrlines kicks ass! I'm not convinced you're winning based solely on handicapping, but consider it just a weapon in your arsenal. Other weapons that you can add are line shopping, arbing, props/exotics, middles, +EV teasers, predicting line movements, bonuses (7:1 3 team parlays!), etc. Just like poker, all these little edges add up.

I don't think shipit would even describe himself as nice. I think arrogant, condescending, but correct would be an analysis that he agrees with.


Regardless, this thread is way off course. Its fairly apparent Assani didn't read or understand the majority of the links in the FAQ or the previous criticisms. He is continuing a litany of people who want someone to hand them something, when in reality it has been presented before them numerous times. Though he'll continue to represent himself as if he is not doing this (as per his standard MO). I'm pretty sure they'll be a variant of this thread 2-3 times.

The sports betting equivalent of teaching some one in 20 minutes to be a very simple TAG is to teach some one about Wongs.

Just going to pop in here and defend myself, since you were talking about a game I picked.

Before we have a civilized discussion on whether or not I am an idiot for thinking that Oregon covers -7 in that spot 80% of the time, and for thinking that he line was about 20 points off, try to find a DVD of that game.

Honestly, I think 80% might be on the low side. That was the Stanford team that went 1-11 and had lost 10 games by double digits, and the only one they didn't lose by DD was to SJSU, who beat them by 1.

Injuries were a factor later on in the season, granted, but I had that line at Oregon -27 or something and I don't think I've ever had another line be that far off.

#1 - report posts that break the rules. Don't respond in kind, and don't lower yourself to the level of a troll.

#2 - please don't hijack this thread. There's actually some positive buried in among all the (now cleaned-up) crap.

-P

Assani,

To answer one of your first questions (even thought it's been answered a couple times, but it wasn't clear you'd actually been able to pick up on the answer) in a poker metaphor that a lot of people here will hopefully understand -- being a > 60% handicapper is analogous to only playing AA, KK, QQ and AK preflop.

Yes, in doing so you'll win a high percentage of your hands (assume you're playing in a game where people aren't going to adjust to your play). But you have to realize you're passing up massive amounts of +EV wagers by only waiting for these prime hands. In poker, we realize that it's better for even the tightest of players to play a larger range than just these hands. It's the same in sports betting.

The critical part of the FAQ entry on win percentage is this sentence: "if you start approaching the higher end of [60% win rate] you are probably passing up some +EV wagers."

If you wanted you could sit back and cherry-pick sports betting spots and go 60% you could. But you would make a lot more money betting games where you were less confident but still had an edge. Assuming you're a serious sports bettor and not just a casual amateur, as an extreme example, picking six NFL sides in a season at 60% is inferior to picking 85 games (five a week for the regular season) at 54%.

-P

Total noob here, deposited 200 on bet us this weekend not looking to be wayne allan root or anything but I am interested in taking the right approach at least so that i'm not just flushing money away.

What advice would some of the more experienced sports bettors give to someone just getting started? I realize now that line shopping is very important so it looks like i'll be visiting some other sportsbooks. So yea if one of the winners could maybe share how they got started that would be much appreciated.

-rich

Performity,

Thanks for cleaning up the thread. I usually report this stuff, but neglected to this time just trying to get the poster to clean up his own mess.

BTW, 6 picks @ 60% is superior to 40 picks @ 54% laying -105. It would take about 60 games for 54% to equal out. But I get your point.

My thoughts on the rest of your questions, in an attempt to encourage more people to ask more questions:

if you're remotely serious about sports betting, buy and read both SSB and Yao's Weighing the Odds.


Teaching people to beat low-stakes with a TAG approach is like teaching people to bet errant lines (and/or arbitrage) in sports betting. it doesn't require any thought, just basic ability to follow the rules.

You can teach anyone to grind out small profits in Sports Betting with lineshopping and arbitrage. Back before the UIGEA you could do it easily. With the reduced access to Pinnacle it's a lot harder now, but still could be done.

Teaching someone to become a mathematical handicapper, i.e. using meaningful sample sizes to find winning subsets, that's also possible but requires a certain level of understanding of statistics and mathematical principles as well as the skills necessary to do the deep data mining / etc.

Teaching someone to be a successful handicapper instead of a shopper or analyst, that's a whole different story. I definitely don't believe anyone can become a successful handicapper.

Sure it seems more sexy. in the same way that it seems more sexy in poker to become really good about making a good bluff.

It's not foolish to think that handicapping is "more sexy" -- but it is foolish to think that you can become a successful sports bettor by handicapping only and ignoring the rest.

Actively looking means actually spending serious time in to doing so, as opposed to a casual glance. For the serious sports bettor that is spending time every day looking for +EG bets based solely on shopping.

For the casual sports bettor, it's not about checking every hour, IMO it's more about the mindset. If you're betting 5-6 NFL games every week, are you lineshopping to get the absolute best price available (weighing for risk)? Are you aware of the line movements, and are you not betting on the wrong side of a move in progress (i.e. betting the against side that has steamed up mid-week when all indications are it's going to continue to move)

Thanks, i knew i should have done the math instead of just posting off the top of my head.
To make the example more clean, I've edited my post.

Read both books recommended in the FAQ. Read the FAQ, including every linked post, in detail. When you're done digesting, read it again. There is no more magical or detailed answer here than that. The FAQ and those books contain most of the available +EV information that you can find as a novice sports bettor.

-P

man... some classic reasoning in those posts that I put up
I loved the square logic I put up--bend don't break defense, being in tight games at the end, etc
had me rolling for days

1. I will go read the thread now.

2. I agree with you regarding line shopping

3. I still think you guys take this "I've worked hard to learn this, I'm not giving it away for free" line of thought way too seriously. Rsigley wrote earlier in this thread: "if you really want to handicap a sport, find out what work other people have done. you're not going to reinvent the wheel yourself, but you can take work others have done and expand on it." I think that would apply to 99.99% of the people here, meaning that everyone was taught by someone else's work. If I just came in here and said "I don't want to read or learn anything. Can you sharps just give me your picks each week?" then I'd expect to get laughed at. However, I'm clearly willing to read and study, and since you all only learned from other people why is there such a hesitation to pass it on?

No clue what you're saying here. Is the * supposed to represent being a fan of a team and you're saying that making money is more important to you than rooting on your team? If so, then we simply differ, as the Redskins will never not be the most important thing in football to me(unless I'm betting a huge amount of my bankroll for some strange reason).

good point. I remember seeing a chart in one of the links in the FAQ about the % of time each NFL game lands on each number(I think in the Wong Teaser thread). I'll make sure to look over that more closely next time through.

1. Oh I very much agree with the point about line shopping. If you've noticed this year I have line shopped around Vegas on each of my bets.

2. While I agree with MT2R's point, I think his "system" ran a bit hot last year. I didn't line shop at all, and I think that something ridiculous like 4 or 5 out of my 35 total bets either lost or tied when I could've won if I had gotten an extra 0.5 or 1 point at another casino....yes line shopping matters, but it usually doesn't matter THAT much imo. Regardless, I totally agree with the overall point, and I wouldn't think of not shopping for lines(at least around here in Vegas, I still don't have online accounts) now that I'm taking it more seriously.

3. Brag: "basically, I had no faith in that person's abilities

in retrospect, I think that poster might know enough about the sport to be a successful handicapper at it but it's still too early to tell


I would've made much more so far had I line shopped following that poster's picks instead of fading them."

Looking at your bets, it would seem to me that in some games you used the philosophy of "I think the under for this game represents good value. Therefore, the under for each quarter probably also represents good value so I'm going to bet the under for each quarter. This will help minimize variance."

Is that a fair analysis of SOME of your bets?

With some bets though like Car/Min, you bet the over in the 1st quarter and 1st half but laid off the 2nd half...I'm curious as to what happened here. Did you plan on betting the over for the entire game but were disappointed to find that the lines for the 2nd half were a bit different and so you laid off it?

I'm guessing you're pretty much telling me that I need to get an online sportsbook account and remain actively betting during the games then?


With regards to to trusting smaller books, I'm still a bit nervous about that. Does everyone else here agree with what he said? As I said, I have just recently set up an account through a poker playing friend with a site that give -105 odds on all bets, and he vouched for the site so I feel comfortable there.

if you read the OP in that thread carefully you'll see that there is only TWO bets that turned from a pushes into wins. in both cases he moved off the 3 - which he should snap off about ~10% of the time. over a 35 bet sample(not taking into account the edges of the other bets bought) it's slightly toward the hot side, but not much.

I'm amazed that people are still trying to give you $, it speaks to how nice the trolls around here really are. Way nicer than I ever will be. Carry on, I tried to say something non-trollish in this thread but failed, it tilts me too much.

Cool, good info man.

One big reason why I'm hesitant to use online sportsbooks is the issue of taxes. As a poker player, I do the following: I pay taxes on 100% of my online winnings because the government can trace that money no matter how you withdraw it(at least to the best of my knowledge). However, I don't report my live income because that money just sits in my deposit boxes at various casinos or gets immediately spent. It never touches a bank, and is not traceable.

Similarly, I would plan on doing the same thing with sports betting. I even stagger my bets placed and cashouts at casinos in order to never get my name taken down or my player's card swiped.

Since the best players on win 55-60% of the time, and since you're already paying juice, I just don't see how it could possibly be profitable to handicap online sportsbooks. I'm guessing that you all just don't pay taxes????



As for finding more illegal books....should I just ask around? I do know quite a few people from poker, so I'm pretty sure I could find a bunch of them if I tried.

nah car/min bet was, total dropped to 37 with a lean on the under night before from 37.5

last couple hours the over started getting pounded back up to 37.5. quarter/half odds were still stuck like the total was at 37

usually i wouldn't bet the 1Q and 1H bc they're correlated, but i added the half bet later on because it had much more value than the 1Q bet

i didn't bet the 2H because i was playing video games with my wife and didn't know when the game hit halftime

I would love to be able to do this and I agree with your post, but with short term variance being so prevelant and so many people on the internet being so confident about their picks and many of the sharps with the "I'm not giving you slackers free info" type of attitude, I think its easier said than done.

blindly betting the unders of halves/qtrs of an under total you like is not sharp either. i don't want to speak for rsigley, but minimizing the variance is only a part of the equation. the other reason you're doing it is because often times these lines have a bigger edge than the full game lines(despite the lack of reduced juice possiblities on halfs and quarters bets)

this happens because:
1. linemakers don't spend as much time focusing on creating those lines(esp. for 2nd half, non first quarter)
2. linemakers may incorrectly convert a fullgame total to a half/quarter(ie. 2nd half scoring in basketball is typically expected to be a notch higher given OT, fouling to stop the clock, etc.)
3. people don't bet as much volume on them making the market for that line less efficient

i don't want to go into what he does without him doing it himself, but the point is that there are good formulas/rules of thumb for how to convert a full game total into any of its smaller fractions. when you find one of the smaller fractions a better bet than a total you already like, you've found a better bet.

Nothing to say here, but thanks for both of your posts...very helpful.