Hey Like,

Thanks for sharing your experience in LV. I exclusively bet MMA and had a similar experience when it comes to trying to bet props in Vegas. There are much better options online with 5dimes being one of the best for MMA props.

The big advantage of Vegas is bypassing the limits that we all experience when betting with PPH or online. When betting MMA there is often still value in betting straight winners. The nice thing about Vegas is you can get down 20k without the price changing and without being limited if you win. It is also tax free if you spread action around to different books.

Forgive my ignorant questions. Just to clarify when you say "chase steam" do you mean you bet in accordance to line movement? So if a ML was -150 and moves to -200 then you bet it at -200?

Also what do you mean by "off market"? Are you talking about ladies Brazillian soccer matches and Russian water polo? If you are betting more obscure items then how do you properly cap those off the beaten path events?

I am also curious what your overall betting strategy and philosophy is. Are you just doing your own capping and hitting lines you think are off? How much are you playing straight bets? Do you mainly rely on your own plays or do you tail other people you know are sharp?

I am starting to take betting MMA much more seriously so just trying to take a more pro approach. TIA

How about detailing the start of the journey.

Did you have a friend who showed you the ropes? Was it through 2p2? We're you just degenning and through serendipity found out the system you were using worked?

Also, regarding the stale lines. Do you think the shift to efficiency (or opening vs closing lines) is more to changing circumstances or sharps improving them by taking a position?

Was also very surprised you never got into DFS given the strong correlation between player props and it. I deeply regret not getting into it back 2012 because the a lot of the people who made millions then can't even profit today and it eats me up inside I missed out on that era.

In your example, if a line was moving from -150 to -200 everywhere I would look to bet it at -150 at a slow moving book. Thats what chasing steam is.

When Im betting in an efficient market; IE any straight bet in the major 4 sports, Im not doing any capping at all. Im assuming that the market knows more than I ever could and that the market generally is right. If the market is right than anything off market (enough) is wrong and therefore a good bet. So im following sharp action in a roundabout way.

With props its completely different. In those markets I know that I can come up with better numbers than what the market does. So with props Im doing my own work and betting things that are off from my numbers. I dont really care as much how the prop market moves because anyone can push them around, but you do want to be still be beating the market long term in props.

And ive never 'tailed' anyone or bought picks or looked for anything like that. That isnt the way to go

I was never a degen at all. Im actually more risk averse than people would think. I got my start first through poker. Poker was my first love and that got me into the world of advantage gambling. I loved the strategy behind poker though, not that it was gambling. Like ive never bought a scratch or lotto ticket in my life. Gambling doesnt do anything for me but anything with strategy I love but there always has to be something on the line for me. Even 5 bucks on a golf hole will change everything about how I approach it.

ive told this on here already but I ran a really good poker game out of my apartment in college for years. Through that game I met a kid who would become my first long term partner with betting. He was a PPH bookie and it seemed right up my alley so I became a bookie. I used phones at first and that was fine. I eventually teamed up with my friend and put them all on his PPH site with his guys. We ran the book for a while together; he did most of the collections and I would monitor and move lines. At the same time I was working full time and had a few hours down time each day during work and Id read this forum. I learned all about efficient markets and it got me thinking about everything differently. I started thinking of the players pending bets as my bets. So if someone bet pats -7 -110, Id think of myself as having jets +7 +110. That slight change of thinking, for whatever reason, was the first light bulb for me. I thought I could get some of these good looking bets myself and make more money. So that got me started betting on my own.

I learned everything from this forum though. This is where everything started. Here I learned about other forums and books that helped a ton. I pored over old wells, I read everything that sharp posters had ever said. I wrote things down on my phone. It just consumed me when I was starting out. And being in the bookie pph world already, I had access to these unreal accounts starting out so I did really good at the beginning which obviously helped a lot

Top five individual posts?

Which books did you read That were helpful?

Thats a bit specific. Ill just say that there is more than enough free information just on this sub to make anyone with either above avg intelligence OR really good networking skills into a professional sports bettor.

I learned a lot from the people on here that youd expect. The old wells are goldmines. Whenever people did wells I asked a million questions. Sigs' posts alone could get anyone started. Thremp was good for market theory stuff. A guy named ben (imstillben?) didnt post much but everything he did was useful stuff. Granchow was prob the best poser of all time honestly and he posted all over the place. I prob read every post he made on here and SBR. A guy named mathwizard or something like that on SBR was sneaky great for betting math stuff. TomG has a lot you can learn from. When I first started posting here there was a bunch of super sharp posters here and theyd argue with each other and leave very useful tidbits that you could stitch together and really learn a lot. I think at least at this point Ive contributed some of my rice bowl too. Just look for threads that are super long fights basically.

Thanks. This is really helpful information. Chasing steam makes sense as your philosophy is that the big markets are efficient.

How long does it take people to get limited who chase steam online (not referring to PPH but the regular public bookmakers)? Is it still viable today without software-aided assistance?

It all depends on the book. Ive had accounts limited after less than a weeks worth of normal prop bets, and ive also had accounts that let me bet correlated parlays, chase steam and bet props that have lasted months, maybe even over a year. Its rare but sometimes you find an account where the agent is huge and is dealing with whales betting 20k a game. And you can just stay under the radar betting 200 dollar CP's and props forever.

And yes its still viable today but Id only suggest chasing steam as a tool in your tool box. Whenever im betting props or anything I always have the screens up and am looking for any big moves I can pounce on. But its always while im doing something else. I dont know how other people do it but I couldnt imagine just sitting there waiting for moves to happen.

Are those sites that give odds across various sites viable for steam or will you need to build your own steam dream machine?

If you used a public site, which one(s) did you use?

Ive always used SBR. Its pretty fast to update although im sure there are paid services that are better. I used to chase steam a lot more until I had a big down year on straights which turned me off to it a bit. I think I fell for a lot of dummy moves on top of just running bad. Plus pinny isnt as sharp as it used to be (at least according to the general consensus) so like I said, I think chasing steam is a good thing to do in the background while youre doing other things.

Looks like we're winding down. Just wanna end with if anyone has accounts that have hockey player props they dont use, hit me up. Picture me with a sign: Have model, will work for %

For US Sports, I'd use Bookmaker.
For Tennis, use Pinnacle.
For Soccer, I'd use ISN.

bookmaker has way higher juice than pinny on US sports though. Are the limits much bigger or something?

Yeah BM/CRIS is absolutely the primary market for US spots. I'd go SBO for soccer

Have you bet soccer before? I've always noticed there seems to be a huge gap between outcomes whereas they are all usually pretty narrow in US sports.

For example: https://www.sportsbookreview.com/bet...league/merged/

most are about 20 to 30 cents off, sometimes you see some pretty drastic changes, this is why I was asking about sbr because it seemed too good to be true and figured sbr was slow to update

furthermore, for the Atalanta vs Valencia game most place have the o/u at 2.5 but this says pinnacle has it at o/u 5?????

https://www.sportsbookreview.com/bet...ds/nhl-hockey/

meanwhile taking a look at other sports, they are usually just a cent or two off each other

thoughts?

How old are you now? Where are you located now?


So you still bet for a living now?


Did you ever relocate outside the US or ever thought about that?

A few years back a home game poker dealer friend I used to play video games with got me on two pph sites. I was basically just betting lines that were 30 cents off of 5dimes or pinny. The girl who did the payouts once slipped to me that I was the only person that she actually ever had to pay out for the guy. I made it through one NFL season and wasn't invited back.

One of the more interesting things I remember was their "live betting". The live betting would be available during commercials at whatever the line should be and then would be unavailable. But every time the bet became available again it would first show some crazy default line in the browser like -250 before adjusting to say -130 a second or two later. Thing is when you submitted bets it was done via URL parameters. I couldn't make up a line and get it to post but if I guessed what that default line was before it switched to the "right" line I could get a bet to post.

Those PPH sites fell into my lap and I never sorted out how to get more. My friend who found me the PPH sites even tho I told him exactly what I was doing thought I was some sort of sports betting genius and wanted to stake me for betting on pinny/5dimes. Le Sigh.

by outcomes do you mean closing lines? I havent noticed that and I dont see anything that looks off in your link. The over under thing is probably just a mistake by SBR. Anything that looks ridiculous like that you can check pinny directly. Soccer lines are weird though with draws and quarter goals

yup, classic PPH stuff. I love hearing the exploits other people find. Reminds me of another random PPH I had back in the day that for some reason seemed to be coming up with their own 2h NBA lines. They would be like 4 or 5 points off market. Always gotta scour everything in a new account.

The whole thing is just getting new accounts and getting paid. Everything other than that is cake

Im in my 30s, live in new england. I still bet very seriously but not full time as I have a real job/career now. But I still manage accounts for my partner sharps so any account I get gets tons of good action. If anyone has, say, a PPH account that has hockey player props??

The most legit thing you could do in your "well" is at some point try to get more pph accounts lol... I love it well played!

What effect would you taking over hockey props have on someone else's account? Let's say they can beat a few other markets but you betting 20-30 bets a day on prop have on that persons account?

What's makes you think you are best placed to take over someone's hockey props or other markets over some of the other posters on this forum?

Editing to add a question...

If I gave you a few of my accounts, what's to stop me engineering your model and killing your edge?

if you had that ability you wouldn't be betting sports for a living lol