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".


We're re-opening the concept of The Well in Sports Betting and shipit has volunteered to take the first 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, shipit 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

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• 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

Fake Ds or Natural Bs?

Tell us your sports betting backstory.

What other investments do you partake in?

What advice do you have for people who want to get into sports betting correctly, but don't have the bankroll to do it at a profitable level?

What's the most fun prop bet you've made at a live sporting event?

What's the one thing you do right in sports betting that everyone else just epic fails at?

What's your biggest weakness in sports betting?

What's thremp's biggest weakness in sports betting?

Tell us about an underrated poster on this board and why we should listen to him more.

What's the WORST bet you've ever made since you became a sharp?

Link us to the POTLifetime in this forum.

Who would make the best mod if Performify steps down?

How much money would it take for you to go to jail for the next year of your life?(Assume a minimum security prison, but there is still a non-zero % chance that you get butt raped.)

What is the best meal to blow WINNARZ on?

How bad do you run?

Natural Bs

Played poker full time for several years. Friend of a friend was into sportsbetting for a long time. Sparked my interest and I started working on sports near the end of 2007.

Just poker atm.

There are enough +ev opportunities that require very little work for small bankrolls. In fact its probably a lot easier to build a smaller bankroll without putting in as much work b/c you can make significant jumps in terms on bankroll growth while still remaining under the radar of small books (you won't get banned very fast).

Don't remember any off top of my head.

Humility. As hard as that is to believe. Most of my success has come from the fact that I didn't look at sportsbetting and immediately think "hey I can cap NFL games better than people doing it for decades." This seems to be the epic fail of 99.999999999999999% of sportsbettors.

My time management is pretty poor.

Azn.

Can't really think of anyone who I would classify as "underrated," I think the real sharps here all know who the others are...its really not hard to tell.

I came up with brilliant idea to overbet huge on an NBA line last season, it was scalpable at the time I really thought it was gonna move even further. Obv it didn't and I had to sweat out 10% of bankroll on what ended up being a coinflip at close. (It won)

Meh, no idea.

Lol not sure I know anyone with the self-control Perf has regarding the ban stick.

$5 Million, significantly lower if there is zero chance of buttrape, significantly higher if there is >50% chance of buttrape.

Surf and turf at a place that actually knows how to cook Lobster.

Extremely life bad.

What constitutes a "small" bankroll as you use the term above?

How did you program your line scraper?

Was referring to <10k, but anything <50k qualifies really.

for reference i was referring to anything where your unit size is still in the small 3 figures.

how many books do you have money at right now?

how many books have banned you?

I think about 10 right now and I'm planning to load another 2 or 3 this weekend. I've gotten banned, had limits cut to useless amounts, or been put on 30 second+ delay by at least one book every week since football started.

Why would you be put on a 30 sec delay unless you are moving for a betting syndicate?? If you are which one??

what % of your bets are 1st/2nd halfs/quarters as opposed to full games??

what % of your bets are college/NFl?

They put me on delay for steam chasing. Pretty standard procedure by a lot of books. I mostly bet derivative markets, although not as many halves/quarters as I would like. I'm currently working on increasing the amount of quarters. For the last couple months i'd say 90%. However NHL and NBA are my best markets and with them starting the % of football will drop a lot.

I've heard this term a couple times but I dont really understand what it means.

Do you ever take any steps to hide that you are sharp or just pound the lines while you can.

In sports, a derivative market would be anything where the line is based off of the full game line like 1H, 1Q, team totals, etc.

Derivative market = a bet that is related to another bet. A few widely known examples: The 1Q line is derived from the full game line. MLB Runlines are derived from the full game moneyline and total. I'm not gonna go into any more detail than that. In general these lines are correct, however they typically move slower than full game lines as the limits are smaller, the extra couple minutes these take to adjust is where the profit comes from. The downside of derivatives is they require a lot of work to get the calculations right and if your calculations are even slightly off you can lose a lot of money very quickly.

Depends on whether or not I think the edge will last. If I don't think it will, I'll load up as much money as I can and get down as much as possible. If i think it will, I'll often bet slight -ev lines as cover.

do you think it's worth it for anyone to begin sportsbetting from the US in the current environment?

Are they not too far behind other people already?

How much would you charge to give out the name of the book where you bet these?

I think this largely depends on how much liquidity you have. If you can operate while having large amounts of cash wrapped up in pending withdrawals I don't see the problem. If waiting several weeks to get money is an issue, then don't bother.

$50k. (And they put an end to that anyhow, while I'm still stuck 30k to them too, ****ers)

is your primary income source SB or poker these days? or a somewhat even mix?

thanks for doing this. i mostly lurk this forum, trying to learn as much as possible as I don't feel like I have much to add, myself. you're one of the few people whose posts i seek out/listen to in here, so appreciate it...

I've been on a break from poker for all of 2008. I'm probably gonna mix it back somewhat in 2009.