[RabidGoat]

Hello everyone!

I'm an avid computer nerd who loves to bet. One thing that I've always wanted to do a better job of was tracking my bets and being able to query my old plays so I can find spots I lose money and vice versa. While I'm fully aware sbforums provides a fantastic spreadsheet that does essentially everything you need. The one thing it doesn't do is teasers/parlays so I'm builiding into my database a way to handle those types of wagers. Plus this is just one of those things that I,as a nerd, enjoy the challenge of doing.

Currently I'm building the tables that I'll use in the database. What I'm hoping this fine community of wise bettors can assist me with is giving me information that I should track for each bet that I put into the dbase. It's a lot easier to get it right on the first go around when setting up the dbase than it is to try and put in new fields once a dbase has data in it.

Currently these are the fields I've created and plan to populate when I input a wager into the dbase.

betRecNum -Auto Increment for indexing purposes,
eventDate
sport
awayTeam
homeTeam
betType
betDesc
spread/total
odds
riskAmount
betResult
resultAmount

Questions comments are all welcome thank you for your time!

[jgilmartin]

Definitely the Pinnacle closing line as well. I would also have a field for the other side of the Pinnacle closer so you can write the script to calculate the no-vig line.

[RabidGoat]

Definitely the Pinnacle closing line as well. I would also have a field for the other side of the Pinnacle closer so you can write the script to calculate the no-vig line.

First off, thank you for your input. I'm fairly novice in regards to my betting experience, about 2 1/2 years, I've looked into calculating the no-vig line and I'm just not quite sure how you do it and what are the advantages. I'm not saying that this wouldn't be a valuable piece of information to track I'm merely saying I don't know enough about it.

Could you please enlighten me or perhaps give me a website that explains it?


I'd also like to note that programming and networking are my areas of expertise. I've got no actuarial science background nor do I have my own "system" or "algorithm" in which I bet on. I've always been a strong believer that you can learn a lot through analysis of historical data. So forgive me if I sound dense at times.

[strixee]

I've looked into calculating the no-vig line and I'm just not quite sure how you do it and what are the advantages. I'm not saying that this wouldn't be a valuable piece of information to track I'm merely saying I don't know enough about it.

If you use decimals, it'll look like this:

$vig=0;
foreach($outcome as $o) $vig+=1/$o;
foreach($outcome as $k=>$o) $outcome[$k]*=$vig;

So for example 1.85-2.08 will give 1.889-2.124

[xyz]

I'd also like to note that programming and networking are my areas of expertise. I've got no actuarial science background nor do I have my own "system" or "algorithm" in which I bet on. I've always been a strong believer that you can learn a lot through analysis of historical data. So forgive me if I sound dense at times.

While I agree that you may find an edge by analyzing historical data, I don't think analyzing your own bet history is the best way to find an edge. For one, the sample size is relatively small. Given your expertise, you should build databases around a sport of your choice, then analyze that to see if you can find an edge.

[RabidGoat]

XYZ - Yes I agree that trying to find an edge for bets on future games based solely on my own sampling of wagers would be particularly in efficient. I guess I should clarify a few things, currently the database itself will contain multiple tables, 1 for each sport that I wager on this is because I don't think you can create a standard set of fields for the info so each table will have some unique fields in regards to the sport. Also, I will not be using this database to determine picks. This database will be used to track my picks and the amount of money risked/won/lost on each pick. This will be an easy way to track P/L.

So, in short this dbase isn't going to be used to find an edge in regards to future bets made, rather it will track and identify certain trends in which a particular picking method does well or poorly.

Thank you all for your input thus far and I hope this helps!


EDIT: Just had a thought for a good example of what this database would also be able to do so keep this in mind when thinking of valuable info to track

Example: I follow 3 sources for MLB picks. I go through a streak of making lots of cash or inevitably a losing streak. I could then identify what source wasn't performing well and which one still was then I can adjust my wager amounts on future plays accordingly.

[jgilmartin]

Assuming the market is perfectly efficient (which it isn't, but the high limit, major sports are pretty efficient), the actual probability IS the implied probability of no-vig closing line.

Suppose an MLB ML closes at Team A -103 / Team B -103. The no-vig line is, unsurprisingly, Team A +100 / Team B +100, giving each side an implied probability of 50%. If you got Team A at +101 (implied probability 49.75%), your bet is +EV. If you got Team A at -101 (implied probability 50.25%), your bet is -EV, even though the price you got was better than the price you could've gotten at close. This is because the implied probability of your bet is still higher than the actual probability of winning (i.e. you overpaid).

This all assumes a perfectly efficient market (which again, is not what you are dealing with). Although in reality the Pinny no-vig closer is not literally the actual probability, it IS close (in major markets at least). Therefore, tracking your bets against it is still useful, and if you do, you will quickly notice that long-term winning methodologies beat the closing line (on average) more often than not.