The Well:

A stranger is being shown around a village that he has just become part of. He is shown a well and his guide says "On any day except Wednesday, you can shout any question down that well, and you'll be told the answer" .

The stranger shouts down several questions, and all are answered. The stranger is impressed, and after thinking a minute he shouts down: "Why not on Wednesday?" and the voice from in the well shouts back "Because on Wednesday, it’s your day in the well".


Crockpot has volunteered to take the next turn. If you are interested in taking a turn in the well, or if you want to nominate someone, feel free to post in this thread or to send me a PM.

If you're new and completely unfamiliar -- any question goes, as long as it doesn't break the ToS. Of course, crockpot can always elect not to answer, but you're free to ask whatever as long as you're not breaking the rules or tone of the forum.

You can get a good sense by reading some of the previous instances, listed at the end.

-P

====

• Previous turns in The Well in Sports Betting:
• Performify - 02/02/07
• B00T - 02/07/07
• Thremp - 02/14/07
• NajdorfDefense - 02/21/07
• King Yao - 05/23/07
• YouTalkFunny - 05/30/07
• Shipitkthx - 10/30/08

In your view, is Baseball Prospectus (book or website) the best widely available resource for betting purposes and otherwise?

Please describe your conversion from square to sharp.

Any "a-ha" moments?

Easiest sport to beat, in your opinion?

El Bulli 2010?

Niiiice.

Not if I have to try to make the reservation.

i've never heard this place referred to by name before, but sure, why not.

how did your 2008 mlb regular season go?

the bp website has some very useful stuff, but it's certainly not going to make you a winning bettor by itself, unless you notice that a team (like the 2008 rays or 2007 white sox) has a projection that's 17 wins off from the betting line.

on the other hand, some of their stats (especially WARP) are badly flawed, and a lot of the articles are just fluff. 90% of the content on there is of zero or negative value to a gambler.

if you have a website subscription, the book won't really offer anything extra for gambling purposes; if anything, it's confusing because the team and player profiles are often at odds with the projections, since they're done by different people. it makes a good bedside or bathroom read, though.

how did you get started in sports betting?

why do you primarily bet baseball? is it your favorite sport?

what is your location referring to/what does it mean?

before i began betting sports, i played poker for several years and crunched baseball stats for fun, so i didn't start out as a square in the traditional sense.

my timeframe basically went like this:

april 2005 (one month before graduating college): deposit $1000 at pinnacle, ask bugstud what "+110/-118" means, conclude i'm ready to bet for profit. i bet 1k on the red sox at 3-1 to win the division because it's a good bet, and the $100 bonus on illinois to beat UNC because i went to college at illinois. okay, that one was probably as square as it gets.

june 2005: bored with poker and not getting any job offers with my math degree, i deposit some more money into pinny and begin betting $200 a pop on 5-inning lines based solely on the pitching matchups. i attempted to identify which pitchers were under- or overrated based on their current ERA and peripherals. my system was to wait for two such pitchers to face each other, then:

underrated vs. overrated: bet the underrated pitcher
underrated vs. underrated: bet the under
overrated vs. overrated: bet the over

i doubt this was very +EV if at all. either way, i wasn't getting rich overnight, so i stopped after a few weeks.

september 2005: i begin betting sports for arbitrage and bonus purposes, which was surprisingly profitable in the neteller era. while i'm shopping for odds, i notice that the indians are hugely underpriced to win the AL wild card, as they were very unlikely to accidentally win the division in the process--as opposed to the yankees and red sox.

watching the indians blow that in the last week made for a fun time in aruba at the UB tourney.

march 2006: world baseball classic. this was the turning point for me. every intelligent statistical analysis said there was big value in the dogs, so i bet a bunch of futures (cashing japan 30-1 to win, plus mexico +1200 to win pool B and korea +550 to win pool A) and most of the games (fading the US = free money).

by the final game, i was set to profit 25k from the classic if cuba won, 40k if japan won. (before the tournament began, my bankroll was in the 80k range.) i decided that the moneyline for the final was ludicrous--apparently no one in the states had heard of matsuzaka at this point--and didn't hedge, although i did take some cuba +750 in live betting once japan jumped to an early lead.

that extra 15k has probably led to hundreds of thousands in eventual profits for me. it boosted my confidence, kept me off tilt, and gave me more money to bet on...

late march 2006: the detroit tigers.

detroit probably never had better than a 15% chance to win the AL central that year. hell, they didn't actually win it. still, the 30-1 division odds offered at pinny--and some other bets, like this infamous one--were a big step for me.

i sunk all of my bankroll into futures bets and hedges at various points during the 2006 season. the tigers were the big winner, but i also took the twins, padres, and dodgers, who all made the playoffs.

by the end of 2006, i had a nice bankroll built up, and i started betting individual games in 2007. even though i'm still learning all the time, i think i was firmly in the sharp column by this point.

the first time i compared my own estimates of futures odds to the lines the bookies were offering, and saw how far off they can be? that's about all i can think of.

i spent a lot of time designing my model for individual games, so there was really nothing "a-ha" about it.

do futures markets count as a "sport"?

three days ago, the widely available line for minnesota to win the nfc north was -250; by the time the bears game kicked off thursday, it was -450. as far as i can tell, i was the only one betting this for any significant sum.

i think baseball is the easiest actual sport to beat for any statistical handicapper, but it depends on the person.

it's my favorite sport, but that's not relevant. well, maybe it is, because i'm a math geek who got into baseball largely because of the volume of stats it offers.

i think it's the only sport i can profitably handicap. how am i supposed to watch film of a basketball game and see something the bookie doesn't? the beauty of baseball is that it's not really a team game, so it's very easy to quantify a player's impact, and the whole generally equals the sum of its parts.

wow, that hasn't been changed in forever. it refers to a strip of The Dugout, back when it was still funny. my picture was also a chris sabo picture back then; it's been awhile.

i'll go update this now.

from a %ROI standpoint, worse than last year, but from a $ standpoint, much better. betting bigger and not taking two months off made a big difference.

i think i might have lost money overall if the rays had gone 65-97 instead of 97-65. i owe those guys a beer.

can you make it a little less obvious that i'm not your first choice for this?

Do you still play poker? If so what games?

how many hours/week do you work at handicapping during baseball season?

If the tigers had won the WS what % likely do you think you would have been paid?

i played some 5/10 6-max the other day to roll over some money that was transferred to my stars account. it was probably the most tilting hour of my life since...the last time my team blew some 5-run lead in the ninth inning? checking scores on some -100k day? man, i don't know how anyone does this for a living anymore.

i immediately hired one of my roommates to complete the rollover for me.

i'd say i do an average of ten hours a week of actual work, but it depends. when i'm vacationing in europe, obviously i'm going to spend a lot less time handicapping than when i'm bored at home.

a lot of this time is spent making sure i'm up to date on injuries and the like. i have most of my stats set to update automatically these days.

i have absolutely no idea. i hedged for 20% of the payout for this bet and was happy the cardinals won, if that means anything.

how many hours a week do you spend on any gambling related activity?

unless you count random prop bets i make dicking around with friends, i don't do any non-sports gambling on a regular basis. i do miss the days when poker and online blackjack sites were just giving away money--and when there was a payment processor to move money into sites like that. thanks, UIGEA.

my brother works for the government. is that ironic? i never use that word correctly.

crockpot for the system im developing i assume that every pitcher has league average results on all their groundballs and flyballs (and then adjusting for defense/park). i dont even record HR's for pitchers just flyballs allowed
do u think thats a mistake

this has to be a typo right?

what do you do in the winter?

Any future career plans or just sportsbetting?

yes. HR/flyball rates tend to regress to the mean, but they still show significant year-to-year consistency. i wouldn't bet on brett myers posting a 10% HR/fly anytime soon.

i was going to cite gavin floyd as another example, but his THT player card is displaying his hitting stats. wtf?

anyway, i would regress the pitcher's actual HR/fly towards the league mean rather than assuming all are the same. if i pitch in a major league game, way more than 11% of the flyballs are going to be homers.

do u think results on groundballs is all park/defense/noise then?

ty <3

i've only had two of those days that i can remember. not a typo though.

i take a lot of vacations, but i do that during the summer too. i spend way too much time loafing: i probably played 50+ hours of fallout 3 last month. i read, work out, watch tv, etc. the same stuff normal people do, just more of it since i have more hours to fill.

there are some jobs i wouldn't mind having, but they're jobs that foster intense competition among grunts who are willing to work long hours for no pay just hoping to advance in the ranks. that's not me.

technically, my dream is still to be the GM of a major league baseball team or a writer for some sports publication. i have friends who are actually trying to get those jobs. they're eating ramen, yet are still in debt. who can live like that?

i don't intend to bet sports forever--the stress would kill me--but who's going to offer me a job that i truly enjoy? remember that i've been "unemployed" for four years.

i'm not convinced one way or the other on this. i know some writers have argued that chien-ming wang is better at inducing balls to be chopped into the dirt around home plate, which is usually going to make for an easier-to-field ball than a hard grounder. if this is actually a skill, great.

i do think that most of it is noise, which makes it even harder to identify the parts that are skill-related.

How do you do all of your statisical analysis; mainly do you use databases or just a lot of excel spreadsheets? How many variables end up going into your algorithm?