handicapping handicappers?

[JayTrotter]

This is a fun and profitable question for you number crunchers out there.

Let's say I have ten handicappers, good ones, so they hit at about 60%
It's championship game in Indy night, 6 of these ten like the Wildcats, what would be the probability that the wildcats are the winning(covering) side and what is the expected value of my bet?

To make it really clear, if 6 out of ten cappers in a group that hit 60% agree on the game what would be the probability that the game covers?

Thank you in advance..

Jay Trotter

[LT Profits]

The problem with the question is that NO capper goes 60% ATS long term.

[sharpcat]

50%

[BigdaddyQH]

The problem with the question is that NO capper goes 60% ATS long term.

That was exactly what I was thinking. Find me 10 cappers in here who have 60% over 5 years.

[LT Profits]

That was exactly what I was thinking. Find me 10 cappers in here who have 60% over 5 years.

Forget "in here", the best handicappers in the WORLD than play any kind of substantial volume are around 55% ATS.

[Peregrine Stoop]

Forget "in here", the best handicappers in the WORLD than play any kind of substantial volume are around 55% ATS.

+1

Think of this like a financial market with a few superstar mutual fund managers beating the S&P, but most being below. Of those that beat, quite a few are just survivorship bias.

[roasthawg]

50%

Sounds about right.

[Boner_18]

The problem with the question is that NO capper goes 60% ATS long term.

I think it might have been a hypo....

[Sawyer]

Forget "in here", the best handicappers in the WORLD than play any kind of substantial volume are around 55% ATS.

LT, what's the number for substantial volume in your opinion? 500 or 1000?

[JayTrotter]

Maybe that was too hypothetical...

let's say we took the top ten handicappers on here, who are hitting at 55%, is there a significant expectation that using a consensus would be any more effective than just following one of them?

[LT Profits]

LT, what's the number for substantial volume in your opinion? 500 or 1000?

Try thousands. There are guys that make 1000 bets in a month, and they are happy at just 54%.

I am speaking purely ATS here. It is obviously more complicated with MLs.

[jscar3]

presently handicapped

[Johnny 55]

There are not 10 cappers worth following IMO. Of the paid guys, RAS, Teddy Covers, maybe one or two others are plus EV, but also you would have to play large enough to cover the cost of the picks, with RAS, since the lines moves instaneously you have to pay or lose some value. I agree with LT, if you bet volume due to your abiliity to ferret out plus EV opps. then 53-54% would be great. IMO, the break even point is no longer 52.38%, with Matchbook, free plays, promos and such you can get than number down to 51% quite easily.

[u21c3f6]

Maybe that was too hypothetical...

let's say we took the top ten handicappers on here, who are hitting at 55%, is there a significant expectation that using a consensus would be any more effective than just following one of them?

Not enough information to answer the question.

The easy answer is to pick one. Assuming they are 55% ATS @ -110, they all show a profit. Using a consensus is a trickier matter.

Let's take just two handicappers for the moment. One handicapper may specialize in finding home teams where the spread is too small in their (hopefully validated) "opinion" and another may specialize in finding away teams where the spread is too large in their (hopefully validated) "opinion". These two handicappers won't have a consensus and in fact there will probably be games where they are on opposite sides. The real interesting thing to track in such a scenario is to see what the results are when they are on opposite sides of the same game. They obviously can't both hit 55% of those games. My assumption would be that their opposite data cancels each other out and these games will revert back to 50-50 but you don't know that until you track it to confirm. If you can confirm that these games revert back to 50-50, then you can increase the profitability of both handicappers by eliminating these games from each handicapper's selections.

Joe.

[Wrecktangle]

There is no easy answer for consensus picking. If they are all modelers and don't change their models, you might have some basis. But if everyone is picking "by hand" things go awry.

I also contend that you will have a hard time finding 10 handicappers who can achieve 55% for 5 years in one sport; one, two or three maybe, but not 10. You would have to be a world class tailer to achieve this.

[BigdaddyQH]

I think that 55% over a 5 year period is doable. I am over that number, but in ONLY one sport. Football. That is because when it comes to gaming, I spend all of my time working on college and pro football, mostly college. Specialist can do this. To be honest, I know of quite a few people or groups that average over 55% over 5 years in college football ONLY. I know of no multi-sport handicappers, be they "touts" or not, that average over 55%, but I do not pay attention to the other sports from a "make a living by showing a profit" point of view. I, as well as the people who I wager with, believe that expertese in one sport is a much more profitable way to go. 95% of the gamblers out there do not believe this, or practice this. There is a huge number of gamblers out there who just "have to have some action" on any game they watch, in any sport. This is how the books make their money. They depend on those gamblers who are "hooked" and can only get a thrill if they have money on a game. Any game.

[Jaug]

That was exactly what I was thinking. Find me 10 cappers in here who have 60% over 5 years.

I think they would be on a luxury liner somewhere in the carribean ie. not on this forum.

[Thremp]

Depends on the size of the market. You can probably find that in some esoteric prop market reliably or what not. People tend to ignore market size when discussing these things. Win rates for CBB total overnights vs NFL sides on gameday are ridiculously different. Doing the first at 55% is trivial and would place you inferior to numerous others. Doing the latter at breakeven is orders of magnitude more difficult.

[Wrecktangle]

I think that 55% over a 5 year period is doable. I am over that number, but in ONLY one sport. Football. That is because when it comes to gaming, I spend all of my time working on college and pro football, mostly college. Specialist can do this. To be honest, I know of quite a few people or groups that average over 55% over 5 years in college football ONLY. I know of no multi-sport handicappers, be they "touts" or not, that average over 55%, but I do not pay attention to the other sports from a "make a living by showing a profit" point of view. I, as well as the people who I wager with, believe that expertese in one sport is a much more profitable way to go. 95% of the gamblers out there do not believe this, or practice this. There is a huge number of gamblers out there who just "have to have some action" on any game they watch, in any sport. This is how the books make their money. They depend on those gamblers who are "hooked" and can only get a thrill if they have money on a game. Any game.

So BD, which luxury liner are you making your home on?

[skrtelfan]

His syndicate bets $1 million a year in football! Of course, $1 million a year at -110 odds is only ~$50k of profit, not much to spread around through the "syndicate."

[dwaechte]

In his pure hypothetical, it would be easy to calculate the expected win% assuming zero correlation among their plays/among their causal factors. Unfortunately, the cappers plays would almost certainly be correlated and the problem becomes messy and unsolvable with just publicly available info.

[JayTrotter]

dwaechte

I just wanted to know if there was any advantage to using consensus picks, as opposed to using just one guy, provided that all of the people in the group are about the same..

example, 10 people are hitting 50%, 6 out of ten of them agree on a game. What is the percentage of the expected outcome?? 50%? 40%? and none of them are correlated...

[Justin7]

If all are hitting 50%, it doesn't matter if they agree or disagree

If you had 2 cappers that hit 54% over 1000 plays, a consensus might bump the win rate to 55 or even 56% on that play.

[sharpcat]

There is 2 sides to the game side A and side B, with nothing more to base your conclusion off of rather than following a group of cappers who hit 60% your chance of winning that one game is 50%. Considering that a 60% handicapper is expected to win 60% of his plays long term and is therefore not necessarily expected to have a 60% edge on every single bet he makes, so no matter how many 60% cappers like one game if you are blindly betting this one wager you have a 50% chance of winning.

[Wrecktangle]

If all are hitting 50%, it doesn't matter if they agree or disagree

If you had 2 cappers that hit 54% over 1000 plays, a consensus might bump the win rate to 55 or even 56% on that play.

If so, you have to wonder why decent cappers don't band together and match picks. Maybe it's like herding cats?

[Raleigh77]

what about if your respected cappers differ.

[Justin7]

what about if your respected cappers differ.

If two equal cappers disagree, it's probably a 50/50 play.

[skrtelfan]

You have no way of knowing if the consensus is because the handicappers are using similar data.

[dwaechte]

There is 2 sides to the game side A and side B, with nothing more to base your conclusion off of rather than following a group of cappers who hit 60% your chance of winning that one game is 50%. Considering that a 60% handicapper is expected to win 60% of his plays long term and is therefore not necessarily expected to have a 60% edge on every single bet he makes, so no matter how many 60% cappers like one game if you are blindly betting this one wager you have a 50% chance of winning.

This is (basically) nonsense.

[sharpcat]

This is (basically) nonsense.

when blindly tailing a handicapper with no knowledge of how his conclusion was drawn, no matter how many 60% cappers like it, your probability of winning this bet is reverted back to a coin toss. Since you have no logic behind your belief that this particular bet has a 60% chance of winning other than the fact that this capper has previously hit 60% on his last 100 wagers. Just because any individual capper has a 60% win ratio does not mean that the handicapper has a 60% edge on every game they bet. What if there are 6 more 60% handicappers who like the other side if the game which you are unaware of?

[JayTrotter]

what did you use to come up with 50%?

I think you just said that all of these games are coin flips.. which I am ok with.

[dwaechte]

when blindly tailing a handicapper with no knowledge of how his conclusion was drawn, no matter how many 60% cappers like it, your probability of winning this bet is reverted back to a coin toss. Since you have no logic behind your belief that this particular bet has a 60% chance of winning other than the fact that this capper has previously hit 60% on his last 100 wagers. Just because any individual capper has a 60% win ratio does not mean that the handicapper has a 60% edge on every game they bet. What if there are 6 more 60% handicappers who like the other side if the game which you are unaware of?

If you're talking about a random guy who hit 60% over his last 100 plays then you're right. It seems to me as if we were assuming it was a true 60% handicapper... if that's the case, not ALL of his plays will have a 60% probability, but the odds will still probably still be stacked in your favour on any one of his plays.

[Wrecktangle]

I contend that you must have a solid data trail on everyone you are including in the consensus, i.e. their win % on that exact sport variant (NFL sides for a whole game for example) for this to have a any chance chance of working. Mixing sport variants mixes your posteriors, which could easily reduce you down to a 50% win probability (this is basically from the central limit theorem).

[Johnny 55]

I prefer betting Brandon Lang's plays, he was in a movie after all and comes off as extremely impressive in his well made videos, does anyone know more about sports betting than him, I doubt it.

[Wrecktangle]

I prefer betting Brandon Lang's plays, he was in a movie after all and comes off as extremely impressive in his well made videos, does anyone know more about sports betting than him, I doubt it.

Jonny, go check out Player's Talk. You're a good fit.