[biggie12]

whats the over under on how many times KVB shakes his head reading posts on sbr on a daily basis. 25? id take the over

[peacebyinches]

I still have some doubts that books are really factoring in "sharp" money when they set the lines. First, is it necessary? The vig gives them a long term profit that is essentially guaranteed, how much would they really mess with that? There would have to be a significant benefit for the added risk, which is my second point --- how useful and usable are an individual's bet patterns going to ultimately be for tweaking your line. Imagine that you had this data set, how would you use it? I mean literally, think about how you would implement a "sharp money" component into your model. Doing so comes with 2 things off the top of my head that make this problematic, even with the best machine learning algorithms available: 1. it assumes that there are indeed long term winners that have placed a sizeable amount of wagers and are continuing to do so. (if they do detect someone who is a long term winner that they feel will continue to win long term, why allow them to continue making wagers in the first place??) and 2. this is almost certainly going to have to be a non parametric that will overfit the data and result in very low, if any use for future predictions.

I’m still interested in probing the potential applications of ‘sharp’ based models if anyone has any thoughts on this, despite being very skeptical about the practicality of implementing this (from both the books and handicappers perspectives). Until I hear at least a hypothetical (but still reasonable) scenario of where this works Im going to strongly doubt that this is used by sports books, but I am open to any insights you guys have on the matter,

[danshan11]

the issue is I think most sharp plays adjust the line as fast as they come in, so they eat up any value in that play as fast as they play it.

[danshan11]

so if you determine however the hell you would this is a sharp line move

line was -120 and they bet the shit out it and now its -145, there is no value left in it, if there was the sharps would keep betting it until the value is gone.

[tsty]

You guys still suck at lvl 1

Ev is trivial

Extremely trivial

I could give one of my own models to this forum and most people wouldnt even make a profit let alone half the money i do

[danshan11]

I am at less than level 1, no argument here!

[danshan11]

EV is trivial, what do you mean by that?

[tsty]

EV is trivial, what do you mean by that?

It is as I said

finding +EV bets is trivial

[Alfa1234]

It is as I said

finding +EV bets is trivial

Care to elaborate?

[danshan11]

Tsty poor guy has a word count, he is like that Eddie Murphy movie everytime he uses 1 word in the forum a leaf falls off his tree!

[tsty]

Care to elaborate?

I don't know how else to make myself clearer lol

Finding +EV bets is the easiest part of betting and is just a basic requirement

Everything after that is generally what sets you apart

Especially if you in markets like turkish basketball or african basket weaving

Edge is extremely easy to find. Now how to maximize that edge is the difficult part.

[tsty]

Care to elaborate?

An example would be in the bet you placed recently in basketball on the 8.5 line

Your model said it was even money at 8.5 so you went and placed a bet however you had no plans beyond that

You didn't have a system in place to react to any changes the market would give you

There are situations where you should automatically bet the other side double your original bet when it moves a certain amount every time. If you play around with kelly you can realise these things really quickly.

Placing a bet 12 hours before a match compared to 6 hours before a match can have a big impact on your whole day.

This is a quote from another forum responding to someone which breaks it down very well if you can get past his autistic writing.

Professional money managers like to cite four sources of edge or potential for outperformance:

1) Information, through faster, better or more data
2) Analysis, the ability to outthink other investors
3) Behavior, or superior patience, independence and self-control
4) Structure, a business systematically organized to maximize all those edges

1) In reality, doesn't happen unless you're the fastest quant with the fastest software and best hardware [often not available to most big investors yet] and got the GOAT co-location. Or you're cheating. In the 'old days' like 10-15 yrs ago in places like Korea you could get the trade prints ahead of the market with a direct exchange feed if bothered to learn how to read it. 2) If we're talking about widely traded stocks, probably ~1% of professional investors do systematically better analysis. You've seen 1 argument btw two 150 IQ people about their DCF models you've seen them all. 3) This is what actually works for most investors who provide systematic alpha for their clients. Contrarian attitude, patience to hold onto a position for 2 years or more [a lifetime in money mgmt], self-control to stop adding to losing positions and not taking profits quickly, discipline not to panic sell at the bottom - probably the most important.4) is just optimizing for 3) above.5) is a crucial skill. Anything that magnifies your funnel for idea generation is vitally important. I can't overstress this enough.As long as it doesn't lead you into playing away games. Playing away games is as dumb as selling at the bottom. I knew clients that lost their entire fortunes on Russian GKOs because they 'knew' Russia would never default on Ruble debt, unlike USD debt. Wrong. They bought all the way down and got margined out at $0.07 on the dollar. Hundreds of millions of dollars woooosh.#3-5) is why guys like me can beat the market and make a good living as long as you not actually bad at #2. #1 is actually a hindrance to any normal investor. You can't copy Buffett because he buys whole companies but all you really need is the quarterly reports and an eye on any M+A activity. If you're building a complex model and you're not evaluating, say, KMX credit tranche defaults then you're doing it wrong. You could have just read, say, Google's qtly report in summer 2010 or 2012 and noticed they were trading at 22x while growing at 32%, highly profitable, and $50 Billion in cash on their balance sheet. That got you a 5-bagger in less than 8 years, no genius required just simple blocking and tackling.

Looking for advice from sportsbettors is always the wrong move. If you want to really get good you need to learn from statisticians and investors then apply what you learn to sportsbetting. Fairly sure another member on this forum just the other week suggested this same thing but was ignored.

[Alfa1234]

This is true, however you are not taking into account the size of the market. When I bet on African basket weaving and I place a 200€ bet, I move that line a great deal (say from 2.1 to 1.9). 1 extra bet on that side, which could just be a steam chaser, would move the other side into supposedly +EV territory, but considering the fact I only bet on high ROI I would be giving away some of my initial edge by betting the other side at a lower +EV here.

Finding EV is not trivial, but you are right that it's only a part of it. Money management, staking plan and knowing when to hedge is the rest.

[danshan11]

This is true, however you are not taking into account the size of the market. When I bet on African basket weaving and I place a 200€ bet, I move that line a great deal (say from 2.1 to 1.9). 1 extra bet on that side, which could just be a steam chaser, would move the other side into supposedly +EV territory, but considering the fact I only bet on high ROI I would be giving away some of my initial edge by betting the other side at a lower +EV here.

Finding EV is not trivial, but you are right that it's only a part of it. Money management, staking plan and knowing when to hedge is the rest.

I assumed most savvy gamblers knew how to hedge and BTW I rarely do if I get good value on a line, I ride that line out. I think it would be wise to consider hedging and also laying off losses. In reality if you live bet or jump back in a market you can be eating up your +EV to guarantee a small profit. Insurance is for the poor or uncertain, my insurance is the +EV over a long period of time.

and damn Tsty was that so hard to say, it took you 87 posts to say that LOL, talking like you are yoda

[tsty]

i've done what I can

if you don't understand you don't understand

[danshan11]

you are so condescending for no reason dude, calm down, relax, enjoy winning!

[peacebyinches]

Looking for advice from sportsbettors is always the wrong move. If you want to really get good you need to learn from statisticians and investors then apply what you learn to sportsbetting. Fairly sure another member on this forum just the other week suggested this same thing but was ignored.

I am starting to come to the conclusion that a great deal (if not the majority) of valuable insight is going to be found by listening to economists, traders and statisticians rather than handicappers, but there is still a lot of useful information here as well.

Speaking of stock investments and revisiting my question about using sharps in your own model (or alternatively the books using sharps to take a position), both of which I find hard to believe is actually happening for the many practical issues I raised above, what are your guys opinions on how efficient the 'sports betting market' is? What I'm getting at here is... similar to the efficient market hypothesis for stock investment, where the expert stock traders (the stock market version of 'sharps') are shown to hardly ever outperform the growth of the market CONSISTENTLY and over a LONG period of time, are sports betting markets, especially the most popular leagues (NFL, NBA, MLB etc) to efficient to beat? Or the opposite...? since according to the entire 'sharps vs. squares' premise this should create very inefficient markets because of all the squares throwing their money into the pool randomly. How efficient are these markets in practice and are the inefficiencies (that of course have to exist somewhere and to some extent) valuable and apparent enough to overcome the evil vigorish?

[HeeeHAWWWW]

What I'm getting at here is... similar to the efficient market hypothesis for stock investment, where the expert stock traders (the stock market version of 'sharps') are shown to hardly ever outperform the growth of the market CONSISTENTLY and over a LONG period of time, are sports betting markets, especially the most popular leagues (NFL, NBA, MLB etc) to efficient to beat?

The more volume in a market, generally the sharper it is. Just look at the limits at the pro-facing books.

[danshan11]

the major markets are very efficient