I just dont believe that is possible! I know I know but I just dont believe it. I think if you go to betfair or fairlay and put a market up and price it 10 cents off pinnacle, people will buy it up
Yes, but your understanding of how that works is discombobulated. Lines move because they are wrong. Lines move a lot. It is first come, first served and the winner takes the spoils.
You think there is some sort of magical efficiency to the market. That lines just kind of naturally arrive at a perfect point. That is not how it works.
Lines are bet into place by large amounts of money. Winning bettors are constantly picking off inefficient lines and the lines are not nearly efficient as you imagine. +4 can be efficient on the average but not in the specific. That is not something you will ever understand and where handicapping comes into play. Some people just have a knack for taking multiple variables and putting them into place in their mind and being better on a game than everyone else.
So dan , had atl today and now I think chi has good value , my line is chi -3.99
Chicago at plus any points is probably a good bet, it could go either way and I always like teams at home! how in the world you had Atlanta, I have no idea, The Sun are tough, they just could not get a grip on the Dream today!
You think there is some sort of magical efficiency to the market. That lines just kind of naturally arrive at a perfect point. That is not how it works.
Lines are bet into place by large amounts of money. Winning bettors are constantly picking off inefficient lines and the lines are not nearly efficient as you imagine. +4 can be efficient on the average but not in the specific. That is not something you will ever understand and where handicapping comes into play. Some people just have a knack for taking multiple variables and putting them into place in their mind and being better on a game than everyone else.
its not magic, if you pick a few games a day that are your picks and you add up all those picks you get back to being average efficient in that picked group! I dont think you can hand pick out inefficiencies especially in sharp markets without your expected and real ROI being very similar in a large sample size! and this happens whether you hand pick or use the whole group!
Chicago at plus any points is probably a good bet, it could go either way and I always like teams at home! how in the world you had Atlanta, I have no idea, The Sun are tough, they just could not get a grip on the Dream today!
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I dont think you can hand pick out inefficiencies especially in sharp markets without your expected and real ROI being very similar in a large sample size! and this happens whether you hand pick or use the whole group!
Yes, I know. If this were true though, there would be no winning bettors. You have been informed by many people that CLV is not a perfect evaluator. It is a measurement. It provides an expected value. There is no modeler that thinks handicapping is a real thing because they can't do it.
there are very few long term winners.
99% lose long term
1% win long term of those 1% who win maybe 1 or 2% of those are actually skilled
True enough. But is a kick trying. And we are all looking to be that 1 in 100. If you read the gambling forums though, you cannot help but be optimistic!!!
I had atl because my model had con -4 ,thats my range where i go in for the kill...if chi moves to 1.5 or 2 id feel really, really good about my play . like ive told you many times, once it starts moving farther from my line , like you say chi + pts . i wouldnt touch it
True enough. But is a kick trying. And we are all looking to be that 1 in 100. If you read the gambling forums though, you cannot help but be optimistic!!!
I had atl because my model had con -4 ,thats my range where i go in for the kill...if chi moves to 1.5 or 2 id feel really, really good about my play . like ive told you many times, once it starts moving farther from my line , like you say chi + pts . i wouldnt touch it
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good luck, I had Chicago -1 its at -1 and I stay away!
i guess what I do is I model the game and I get Knickerbockers -6 lets say
now I pretty much know that I am not perfect usually for sides like that lets say I am off by an average of 10%
so if I model -6 that means it will close or the "fair line" will be -5.4 or -6.6 so anything in that range is a no bet for me
now lets say its currently at -4 I pretty much know its going to move so I bet it!
now official line is not a necessity but using this example you come up with
I like the Lakers in this game
now the line comes out Lakers -5, the ? is when do you stop liking the lakers -7 -8 -9 -10 -11, when?
Looking at this years numbers, half my money was won on nba pre-game spreads, and the other half was won on nba in-game betting. My personal approach for pre-game spreads is to consider any bet outcome of 3 points or less from the spread to be luck (good or bad). That is an arbitrary definition on my part based on the supposition that a desperation 3-pointer heaved at the last second, causing a win or loss, just sucks or is blessedly fortuitous.
Nba spreads didnt seem to vary much this last season in the hours leading up to a game unless important players dropped out. Steam and high-powered betting teams didnt seem to be pushing the line around more than a point or 2, if that. But Im not concerned with a point or 2. Im looking for games like Clippers vs Lakers on March 4, with the Clippers line at +4. The Clippers won that game by 5 or 6, I think, and that spread was way out of line. And if the Clippers line had moved a point or 2, the move would have been almost irrelevant to me.
With that in mind, if I like the Lakers at -5 it pretty much means that I like them at about -10, but I wouldnt actually bet the -10 unless I also liked them at -15...
do you think if a game is -5 and you think it should be -10 that might be a problem? if the entire betting consensus sees it as -5 would that not make you think that your thought of -10 is maybe off? I dont know if it is or not but that belief would scare me. if I get -5 and its -10 I am like I definitely did something wrong, I am missing something.
say I put up lines here before they come out and I was always off by big numbers like 5 or 10 pts on each game would you think I was modeling well?
I am not trying to be accusatory because I dont know your thought process is wrong, I am only asking what you think of that process
and if you dont bet volume how do you ever know if you are good? CLV??? Low volume even CLV could be luck. the variance monster will lie to you every time unless you have huge volume! 1000 games is nothing, you need 5 to 10k to even start to guess you have a consistent real edge. CLV lets us cheat a bit on that high count but not much clv is 50-50 too!
I think its a mistake to worry about how good you are. The only true rating system is already inherently built in to gambling: do you win more money than you lose. And referencing another post you made above, I do have to struggle with the fact that I might have won this last season, and come out ahead the previous two seasons, but that is in no way any proof that I will continue to win. I basically have to wait and keep monitoring, and hope that at some point I will have been succeeding for long enough to assume the success isnt just due to dumb luck.
now in play betting presents another serious problem for me. I use CLV as a good gauge lets call it. in play does not really give me that opportunity, so how would a person know in game if they have a good model or method without a gauge of some sort. say you have 1000000 results and are winning and what if something changes (which it always does) how do you know that change is against you without losing your arse without a gauge ?
I think its a mistake to worry about how good you are. The only true rating system is already inherently built in to gambling: do you win more money than you lose. And referencing another post you made above, I do have to struggle with the fact that I might have won this last season, and come out ahead the previous two seasons, but that is in no way any proof that I will continue to win. I basically have to wait and keep monitoring, and hope that at some point I will have been succeeding for long enough to assume the success isnt just due to dumb luck.
say you are skilled and your spoils come from skill, how do you know when your method or model lost its effectiveness before you are bankrupt?
I think its a mistake to worry about how good you are. The only true rating system is already inherently built in to gambling: do you win more money than you lose. And referencing another post you made above, I do have to struggle with the fact that I might have won this last season, and come out ahead the previous two seasons, but that is in no way any proof that I will continue to win. I basically have to wait and keep monitoring, and hope that at some point I will have been succeeding for long enough to assume the success isnt just due to dumb luck.
This is the fundamental problem of gambling. Winners win, losers lose. You've got to know when to hold them and know when to fold them.
do you think if a game is -5 and you think it should be -10 that might be a problem? if the entire betting consensus sees it as -5 would that not make you think that your thought of -10 is maybe off? I dont know if it is or not but that belief would scare me. if I get -5 and its -10 I am like I definitely did something wrong, I am missing something.
say I put up lines here before they come out and I was always off by big numbers like 5 or 10 pts on each game would you think I was modeling well?
I am not trying to be accusatory because I dont know your thought process is wrong, I am only asking what you think of that process
I used to get nervous about a wide discrepancy between my line estimate and the books line. And rightfully, I always assumed the book was probably right and I was probably wrong. But there just came a point a few years into this business, that I realized that if I could also see a reasonable excuse for why the book might be wrong, then it might just be that my own impression was correct. In the example of the Lakers vs Clippers game, the +4 seemed like a reasonable mistake for the books to make the Clippers at the time were grossly undervalued, and Lebron was grossly overvalued. There might have also been players active or inactive that I thought were key to the outcome, that handicappers/books would have basically ignored.
People are either good at gambling or they aren't. Winning gamblers get into gambling because they have confidence they can beat the line and they like the game. They always have a handle on whether they have an edge or not. That is the basis of gambling. People have a pretty good inclination for if an edge exists or not. If the edge become too small, they may chunk it all because it is not worth the effort but they will always likely have some ability to win at some level.
A person that is not a winning gambler may win due to a good model or a good run of luck. They may have the smarts to win for a time but they may not have the true analytical skill that a winning gambler has and fall by the wayside.
Some people are just going to win. Warren Buffett is going to win picking stocks. He is still there at the office every day because it is the game that attracts him.
I used to get nervous about a wide discrepancy between my line estimate and the books line. And rightfully, I always assumed the book was probably right and I was probably wrong. But there just came a point a few years into this business, that I realized that if I could also see a reasonable excuse for why the book might be wrong, then it might just be that my own impression was correct. In the example of the Lakers vs Clippers game, the +4 seemed like a reasonable mistake for the books to make the Clippers at the time were grossly undervalued, and Lebron was grossly overvalued. There might have also been players active or inactive that I thought were key to the outcome, that handicappers/books would have basically ignored.
its all a matter of how much weight you put into the WOC and the available line. I prefer to be in line with the line than way against it in my opinions. I model lines using excel and vodoo but before I even do that I just look at the games and say oh Detroit will be about -2 on that one, now when i model if the model is far off that I go and use power rankings kenpom, sags and see what they think, if I am still way off I wait for the line and if I am off, I probably throw my model in the trash and start over with a new one. I firmly believe that I cannot model better than the WOC or the closed line in a large sample
People are either good at gambling or they aren't. Winning gamblers get into gambling because they have confidence they can beat the line and they like the game. They always have a handle on whether they have an edge or not. That is the basis of gambling. People have a pretty good inclination for if an edge exists or not. If the edge become too small, they may chunk it all because it is not worth the effort but they will always likely have some ability to win at some level.
A person that is not a winning gambler may win due to a good model or a good run of luck. They may have the smarts to win for a time but they may not have the true analytical skill that a winning gambler has and fall by the wayside.
Some people are just going to win. Warren Buffett is going to win picking stocks. He is still there at the office every day because it is the game that attracts him.
99.5% of winners are just lucky! Survivorship bias
now in play betting presents another serious problem for me. I use CLV as a good gauge lets call it. in play does not really give me that opportunity, so how would a person know in game if they have a good model or method without a gauge of some sort. say you have 1000000 results and are winning and what if something changes (which it always does) how do you know that change is against you without losing your arse without a gauge ?
Heh! Maybe this is stupid, but one thing I almost always consider in my in-game bets, is the pre-game spread, and (if applicable) the 2nd half spread. Most of the time these spreads can scare me with accuracy. Players get hurt and ejected, fights break out, crazy things will happen in a given game that are thoroughly unpredictable. Then, after all that roller coaster up-and-down insanity that no one could possibly have seen coming, the game ends almost right on the dot where the books predicted. So to some extent, I might see the pregame spread as a kind of North Star, and my goal is to catch the game at one of the ups or downs of the roller coaster in between. And then, if I think that the factors that that caused the original line to be that way are still valid (nobody got hurt or ejected, the teams involved dont look like theyve given up or have gotten too over-confident, and any other possible game changers) I will bet in alignment with the pre-game spread. But the in-game spread at that point will be a lot easier to cover than the pregame spread was.
its all a matter of how much weight you put into the WOC and the available line. I prefer to be in line with the line than way against it in my opinions. I model lines using excel and vodoo but before I even do that I just look at the games and say oh Detroit will be about -2 on that one, now when i model if the model is far off that I go and use power rankings kenpom, sags and see what they think, if I am still way off I wait for the line and if I am off, I probably throw my model in the trash and start over with a new one. I firmly believe that I cannot model better than the WOC or the closed line in a large sample
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99.5% of winners are just lucky! Survivorship bias
Not really. You know you do not have an edge in NBA. Even if you win, you will be skeptical. You apparently think you have an edge in WNBA. If you lose that edge in WNBA are you not going to know it? You will have CLV and such to judge. But you will not really need it. The same part of your brain that told you that you could beat WNBA will tell you that you can no longer beat WNBA. You will not need to receive notice.
Rook , how do you know when you like a team or not ?
Hi jets96! I try to never like a team, and if I fail, I almost always lose money. And the same goes for hating a team.
If you mean how do I decide that a given team will beat the spread, it is gut. For Lakers vs Clippers on March 4, I look at the +4 and my gut says no way! Then, like mentioned above, I have ask myself who is crazy, me or the book? If I feel I can see legitimate reasons that the book created that spread, then I start to trend toward the third alternative, which is that the book is not crazy, just wrong.
Heh! Maybe this is stupid, but one thing I almost always consider in my in-game bets, is the pre-game spread, and (if applicable) the 2nd half spread. Most of the time these spreads can scare me with accuracy. Players get hurt and ejected, fights break out, crazy things will happen in a given game that are thoroughly unpredictable. Then, after all that roller coaster up-and-down insanity that no one could possibly have seen coming, the game ends almost right on the dot where the books predicted. So to some extent, I might see the pregame spread as a kind of North Star, and my goal is to catch the game at one of the ups or downs of the roller coaster in between. And then, if I think that the factors that that caused the original line to be that way are still valid (nobody got hurt or ejected, the teams involved dont look like theyve given up or have gotten too over-confident, and any other possible game changers) I will bet in alignment with the pre-game spread. But the in-game spread at that point will be a lot easier to cover than the pregame spread was.
maybe not perfect but I really like this
example
say total is 160 pre game so basically 80 and 80 per half
lets say the teams go nuts and score 100 in the 1st half
so now we got 100 scored 1st half and lots of people say oh they are shooting great no defense whatever and say over 180 is a steal, 2 things happen, 1 not much volume, 2 people can bet that up and over because they think the 1st half is indicative of what the 2nd half will do
pre game 160
scored 100 and should get 80 more so current live is like 180
and people bet that over so now its over 180 -125-135 or so
so now you get 180 at +115 or +120 and you now basically have a coin flip at +115 or +120 that is a winning position
this is a ton of assumptions and not a real scenario but just to express the idea
Comments
Yes, but your understanding of how that works is discombobulated. Lines move because they are wrong. Lines move a lot. It is first come, first served and the winner takes the spoils.
You think there is some sort of magical efficiency to the market. That lines just kind of naturally arrive at a perfect point. That is not how it works.
Lines are bet into place by large amounts of money. Winning bettors are constantly picking off inefficient lines and the lines are not nearly efficient as you imagine. +4 can be efficient on the average but not in the specific. That is not something you will ever understand and where handicapping comes into play. Some people just have a knack for taking multiple variables and putting them into place in their mind and being better on a game than everyone else.
Chicago at plus any points is probably a good bet, it could go either way and I always like teams at home! how in the world you had Atlanta, I have no idea, The Sun are tough, they just could not get a grip on the Dream today!
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its not magic, if you pick a few games a day that are your picks and you add up all those picks you get back to being average efficient in that picked group! I dont think you can hand pick out inefficiencies especially in sharp markets without your expected and real ROI being very similar in a large sample size! and this happens whether you hand pick or use the whole group!
Yes, I know. If this were true though, there would be no winning bettors. You have been informed by many people that CLV is not a perfect evaluator. It is a measurement. It provides an expected value. There is no modeler that thinks handicapping is a real thing because they can't do it.
99% lose long term
1% win long term of those 1% who win maybe 1 or 2% of those are actually skilled
True enough. But is a kick trying. And we are all looking to be that 1 in 100. If you read the gambling forums though, you cannot help but be optimistic!!!
\
optimism is how the books build mansions!
Well, you do not have to beat -110 to win at gambling. Almost anybody can win at gambling. Being a professional is something different.
Looking at this years numbers, half my money was won on nba pre-game spreads, and the other half was won on nba in-game betting. My personal approach for pre-game spreads is to consider any bet outcome of 3 points or less from the spread to be luck (good or bad). That is an arbitrary definition on my part based on the supposition that a desperation 3-pointer heaved at the last second, causing a win or loss, just sucks or is blessedly fortuitous.
Nba spreads didnt seem to vary much this last season in the hours leading up to a game unless important players dropped out. Steam and high-powered betting teams didnt seem to be pushing the line around more than a point or 2, if that. But Im not concerned with a point or 2. Im looking for games like Clippers vs Lakers on March 4, with the Clippers line at +4. The Clippers won that game by 5 or 6, I think, and that spread was way out of line. And if the Clippers line had moved a point or 2, the move would have been almost irrelevant to me.
With that in mind, if I like the Lakers at -5 it pretty much means that I like them at about -10, but I wouldnt actually bet the -10 unless I also liked them at -15...
say I put up lines here before they come out and I was always off by big numbers like 5 or 10 pts on each game would you think I was modeling well?
I am not trying to be accusatory because I dont know your thought process is wrong, I am only asking what you think of that process
I think its a mistake to worry about how good you are. The only true rating system is already inherently built in to gambling: do you win more money than you lose. And referencing another post you made above, I do have to struggle with the fact that I might have won this last season, and come out ahead the previous two seasons, but that is in no way any proof that I will continue to win. I basically have to wait and keep monitoring, and hope that at some point I will have been succeeding for long enough to assume the success isnt just due to dumb luck.
say you are skilled and your spoils come from skill, how do you know when your method or model lost its effectiveness before you are bankrupt?
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dan ill put my wnba lines out tomorrow for Friday ,lets see if we can find something good
This is the fundamental problem of gambling. Winners win, losers lose. You've got to know when to hold them and know when to fold them.
I used to get nervous about a wide discrepancy between my line estimate and the books line. And rightfully, I always assumed the book was probably right and I was probably wrong. But there just came a point a few years into this business, that I realized that if I could also see a reasonable excuse for why the book might be wrong, then it might just be that my own impression was correct. In the example of the Lakers vs Clippers game, the +4 seemed like a reasonable mistake for the books to make the Clippers at the time were grossly undervalued, and Lebron was grossly overvalued. There might have also been players active or inactive that I thought were key to the outcome, that handicappers/books would have basically ignored.
how do you know?
People are either good at gambling or they aren't. Winning gamblers get into gambling because they have confidence they can beat the line and they like the game. They always have a handle on whether they have an edge or not. That is the basis of gambling. People have a pretty good inclination for if an edge exists or not. If the edge become too small, they may chunk it all because it is not worth the effort but they will always likely have some ability to win at some level.
A person that is not a winning gambler may win due to a good model or a good run of luck. They may have the smarts to win for a time but they may not have the true analytical skill that a winning gambler has and fall by the wayside.
Some people are just going to win. Warren Buffett is going to win picking stocks. He is still there at the office every day because it is the game that attracts him.
its all a matter of how much weight you put into the WOC and the available line. I prefer to be in line with the line than way against it in my opinions. I model lines using excel and vodoo but before I even do that I just look at the games and say oh Detroit will be about -2 on that one, now when i model if the model is far off that I go and use power rankings kenpom, sags and see what they think, if I am still way off I wait for the line and if I am off, I probably throw my model in the trash and start over with a new one. I firmly believe that I cannot model better than the WOC or the closed line in a large sample
- - - Updated - - -
99.5% of winners are just lucky! Survivorship bias
Heh! Maybe this is stupid, but one thing I almost always consider in my in-game bets, is the pre-game spread, and (if applicable) the 2nd half spread. Most of the time these spreads can scare me with accuracy. Players get hurt and ejected, fights break out, crazy things will happen in a given game that are thoroughly unpredictable. Then, after all that roller coaster up-and-down insanity that no one could possibly have seen coming, the game ends almost right on the dot where the books predicted. So to some extent, I might see the pregame spread as a kind of North Star, and my goal is to catch the game at one of the ups or downs of the roller coaster in between. And then, if I think that the factors that that caused the original line to be that way are still valid (nobody got hurt or ejected, the teams involved dont look like theyve given up or have gotten too over-confident, and any other possible game changers) I will bet in alignment with the pre-game spread. But the in-game spread at that point will be a lot easier to cover than the pregame spread was.
Not really. You know you do not have an edge in NBA. Even if you win, you will be skeptical. You apparently think you have an edge in WNBA. If you lose that edge in WNBA are you not going to know it? You will have CLV and such to judge. But you will not really need it. The same part of your brain that told you that you could beat WNBA will tell you that you can no longer beat WNBA. You will not need to receive notice.
Hi jets96! I try to never like a team, and if I fail, I almost always lose money. And the same goes for hating a team.
If you mean how do I decide that a given team will beat the spread, it is gut. For Lakers vs Clippers on March 4, I look at the +4 and my gut says no way! Then, like mentioned above, I have ask myself who is crazy, me or the book? If I feel I can see legitimate reasons that the book created that spread, then I start to trend toward the third alternative, which is that the book is not crazy, just wrong.
maybe not perfect but I really like this
example
say total is 160 pre game so basically 80 and 80 per half
lets say the teams go nuts and score 100 in the 1st half
so now we got 100 scored 1st half and lots of people say oh they are shooting great no defense whatever and say over 180 is a steal, 2 things happen, 1 not much volume, 2 people can bet that up and over because they think the 1st half is indicative of what the 2nd half will do
pre game 160
scored 100 and should get 80 more so current live is like 180
and people bet that over so now its over 180 -125-135 or so
so now you get 180 at +115 or +120 and you now basically have a coin flip at +115 or +120 that is a winning position
this is a ton of assumptions and not a real scenario but just to express the idea
hope it made sense