Haraldabos Voulgaris 2+2 Thread

[bookie]

One time NBA handicapper who was interviewed last year by Henry Abbot of ESPN also posts occasionally as coltranedog at 2+2. The other day he put himself "in the well" and answered his fellow posters questions.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/19...is-bob-763371/

[username474]

Thanks for the link. I read threw 2+2 but not that thoroughly apparently. Haraldabos is diffenetly one of the best NBA handicappers ever. I have heard he played 800 games a season and hit damn near 60%. If I played 800 games a season I would be happy to 53%

[Wrecktangle]

Something doesn't smell right. If he is hitting 60% on 800 games/yr, why would he want a job working for the NBA? Firstly, the NBA will NOT hire him with this rep after the fiasco with the ref, and second he should be living next to Monkey and snorting coke off high-gain hooker's in the Bellagio Penthouses.

[username474]

Something doesn't smell right. If he is hitting 60% on 800 games/yr, why would he want a job working for the NBA? Firstly, the NBA will NOT hire him with this rep after the fiasco with the ref, and second he should be living next to Monkey and snorting coke off high-gain hooker's in the Bellagio Penthouses.

He has been gambling high for ten years, it can take its toll. He has already been offered jobs in some capacity, he is just waiting for the right spot.

[username474]

I think this the most revealing post throughout the entire thread.

Originally Posted by kurosh
Could you elaborate on what exactly you do or link to somewhere that describes it?

So you think basketball is still beatable for 8-9% ROI?

Do you think there is any game rigging going on?

What sport do you think would be the easiest to beat sportsbetting?


I think basketball is still beatable by me for 8-9% ROI per year. There is a big difference between beatable by someone who has probably spent upwards of 3m on research and development and 10 years experience vs "beatable".

I really don't know if there is any game rigging, probably not.

The easiest sports to beat would be the smaller sports like Arena Football and WNBA basketball. These are extremely beatable as are props unfortunately the market is quite fragile / small for these sports.

[Zou_fan]

Interesting thread. Thanks for the link

[Congruency]

Something doesn't smell right. If he is hitting 60% on 800 games/yr, why would he want a job working for the NBA? Firstly, the NBA will NOT hire him with this rep after the fiasco with the ref, and second he should be living next to Monkey and snorting coke off high-gain hooker's in the Bellagio Penthouses.

are you serious? money isnt everything

gambling for a living can get tiring after a while

he said in an interview that his life was waking up at 6 am, watching tapes of games, then the night's games...if you did that for 10 years youd go crazy lol

[Peeig]

are you serious? money isnt everything

gambling for a living can get tiring after a while

he said in an interview that his life was waking up at 6 am, watching tapes of games, then the night's games...if you did that for 10 years youd go crazy lol

I am assuming an nba job would require a similar amount of work for less mobniez.......

[trixtrix]

is he saying 8-9% annualized roi? then that's same as saving the funds into a CD.

more likely he's saying he has 8-9% roi on EVERY nba bet he makes going forward, in which case wrecktangle's question stands, in less than 2 seasons he should a multi-billionaire (run some monte carlos). why has been working 10+ years on this?

[Wrecktangle]

Trix, it has to be 8-9% per game on avg. which means some games go off at 65% or higher. Two seasons on that many games and you are in mid 7 figures over multiple books. But on the other hand you've got to be driving the line crazy. I just do not believe it.

[username474]

He is definitely multi, he multi from poker tourney's as well. Geting down as much as you would like on NBA 1st half totals and full game totals is an art within itself.

[goldengreek]

Anyway to get this guys plays ?

lol

Is it true that he dosent wager anymore ?

Good to see a fellow Greek doing well

[Flying Dutchman]

Anyway to get this guys plays ?

lol

Is it true that he dosent wager anymore ?

Good to see a fellow Greek doing well

You don't need his picks, anyone doing better than me in the NBA Playoff contest should be able to hold his own.

[goldengreek]

You don't need his picks, anyone doing better than me in the NBA Playoff contest should be able to hold his own.

[bookie]

,,, But on the other hand you've got to be driving the line crazy. I just do not believe it.

I believe he said that one of the reasons he quit was that some bookmakers and students of the line were figuring out what he was doing. He also said that he hit his limits early on and while he had a theoretical % of BR in mind, in fact he was just betting as much as he could.

[juni]

he sounds solid

[Wrecktangle]

OK, so he's a genius. If he made so much money, buy not just buy a team or a part of a team. Like that bone-head who owns the Celtics and Harrahs. BTW, Harrahs can't post Boston lines due to a deal with the NBA Commish.

[Data]

is he saying 8-9% annualized roi? then that's same as saving the funds into a CD.

more likely he's saying he has 8-9% roi on EVERY nba bet he makes going forward, in which case wrecktangle's question stands, in less than 2 seasons he should a multi-billionaire (run some monte carlos). why has been working 10+ years on this?

I agree with your and Wrecktangle's sentiment. I did read the thread and what I gathered is that Bob is very ignorant gambling wise which made me think that the reason he stopped betting is him losing despite all the money he spent developing his models. He just does not sound like a guy who could hack it in sportsbetting.

However, this is not the point I came here to make. This is rather a rare occurrence of a fallacy that exists in many fields and I feel I can help some of the younger smart guns as I feel I have been there. This post is somewhat of a cross over to the Politics forum I used to post to. Here is a little reference. When I was young, I was a hard core Marxist (and I am a numbers guy as well). I was studying a lot of books on economics and at first I was fascinated how good and beautiful the Marxist theory was. That was until I realized that the theory is inapplicable to the reality and therefore must fail (what it did) and as such it is just false and must be abandoned.

Here is the point. When I was young I used to think more within a theoretical frame as my life experience was not that big and I lived in the world of ideas. Once I get older I realized how some of those ideas were plain wrong. Likely, if I was in my early twenties, I would be making a similar argument as you did. While you numbers are wrong your sentiment is "right", there are billions to make in sportsbetting. The only problem with sportsbetting is that the market is not deep enough to oblige. Similar to liberal beliefs, you are going to run out of other people's money.

I am sorry about a long and not a very coherent rant. I am drunk and, if you have not noticed, english is not even my second language. I just want to help some of the younger guys who hang out here and have brains to get some perspective and hopefully grow up sooner than later.

[trixtrix]

yes, i'll revise my rant, billions is assuming you can bet full kelly w/ no limits, after thinking it over i would change my estimate to 7-8 figures to be more realistic

i would like recant one more pt also, i suppose it's not impossible to have 7-8% roi over a highly liquid market like nba BEFORE pinny came along and changed everything. hell if he's really been betting 10+ years i'm sure back in 2000-2003 it was like a candy store. so i won't dispute that pt, he does seem to be a reasonably honest poster.

however, i think he's vastly over-estimating his edge if he thinks he (still) can average 8% roi GOING FORWARD by watching 20 games a day.

[bookie]

OK, so he's a genius. If he made so much money, buy not just buy a team or a part of a team.

Nobody is pretending that these markets are any deeper than they are. Unless you're brilliant about the NFL or European Soccer we all know there are serious limitations on how much you can beat a game. This kid has put two to five million away over a long fulltime handicapping career more than half of which was pre-UIGEA and now wants to test his math and savvy in a different venue.

He mentioned having to get up at 6:00 AM to bet, and I wish I would have asked him where.

[TheLock]

Saw Voulgaris on High Stakes Poker a year or two ago.

I didn't know he was a capper. Good thing he can cap well. His poker was soft.


Thanks for posting that.

[Wrecktangle]

Also a few years ago, player +/- started to be widely published. That may have cut into his win%. But it just seems if you have a candy store and even if it is producing candy at half the rate, why would you quit? Getting tired of opening up shop each day just doesn't seem plausible. Also, I will contend that if you've done any betting in the NBA, you will not get a job if it is known, no matter how far down the totem you are, and this guy is very visible.

I just think his method either takes way too much time out of his day, or it really just quit working, or both.

[username474]

Also a few years ago, player +/- started to be widely published. That may have cut into his win%. But it just seems if you have a candy store and even if it is producing candy at half the rate, why would you quit? Getting tired of opening up shop each day just doesn't seem plausible. Also, I will contend that if you've done any betting in the NBA, you will not get a job if it is known, no matter how far down the totem you are, and this guy is very visible.

I just think his method either takes way too much time out of his day, or it really just quit working, or both.

http://blogmaverick.com/2004/11/27/my-new-hedge-fund/ , I think a lot teams would hire him as a consultant and would not exactly be hiring him as a part of the organisation. Cuban did catch a lot of backlash for this idea posted in his blog, but I think it is safe to say Cuban might enjoy a little backlash.

[Wrecktangle]

Two things, Cuban already has a pretty decent numeric guy, same one who is behind www.82games.com

Also Fezzik read Cuban's Blog and ran FezzDAQ to document his picks and money management for a period of time several years ago (documented at another forum). He did quite well and answered critics for a short time.

So yeah there is a NBA market for your numerical skills it seems if you are good enough.

[trixtrix]

i remember fezzdaq well, it was not specific for nba and def not specific for totals. the way it was calculated was fezz would include all tickets that has had movement w/ him, yet he almost always posted no tickets w/ line movements against him, nobody even a genius like fezz can predict line movement 100% accurately

[Wrecktangle]

trix, interesting. I was in and out at LVA during that time so didn't track the day to day. I keep wondering what Fez is trying to do. Sometimes I think he is simply an attention whore. No question he has serious skills as he wins contests like nobody I've seen.

[IrishTim]

trix, interesting. I was in and out at LVA during that time so didn't track the day to day. I keep wondering what Fez is trying to do. Sometimes I think he is simply an attention whore. No question he has serious skills as he wins contests like nobody I've seen.

He is definitely skilled in the contests and I'm sure he wins consistently out in Vegas. He also gets probably the best information of any individual gambler out there. I think that he chose to go full-on tout after winning the second Hilton contest because he's done pretty much all he can in the public handicapping arena; now he just wants everyone out there to know his name.

[skrtelfan]

He is definitely skilled in the contests and I'm sure he wins consistently out in Vegas. He also gets probably the best information of any individual gambler out there. I think that he chose to go full-on tout after winning the second Hilton contest because he's done pretty much all he can in the public handicapping arena; now he just wants everyone out there to know his name.

Actually he's been a tout since 2001, he started touting on Sharp Sports Betting then moved to LVA. He stopped offering a standard "picks service" a few years back and now just charges a fee to his message board where he promotes other touts he is friends with like Sportsmemo. The guy is pretty clearly an attention whore, though, while he's skilled at contests, that doesn't necessarily translate to the ability to pick winners that other people can folllow, and he's hit less than 50% over the past few years on his posted picks. He comped a guy a subscription to compile his record and when the guy reported it as 47%, Fezzik quickly took away the guy's comp and labeled him a "Fezzik-hater," and references to his record on his message board were promptly deleted.

[ForgetWallStreet]

that doesn't necessarily translate to the ability to pick winners that other people can folllow

This. Anyone with a brain can pick winners on Friday against Tuesday's lines.

[TakeIt]

Haraldabos Voulgaris makes his video debut here:

[Inkwell77]

However, this is not the point I came here to make. This is rather a rare occurrence of a fallacy that exists in many fields and I feel I can help some of the younger smart guns as I feel I have been there. This post is somewhat of a cross over to the Politics forum I used to post to. Here is a little reference. When I was young, I was a hard core Marxist (and I am a numbers guy as well). I was studying a lot of books on economics and at first I was fascinated how good and beautiful the Marxist theory was. That was until I realized that the theory is inapplicable to the reality and therefore must fail (what it did) and as such it is just false and must be abandoned.

Here is the point. When I was young I used to think more within a theoretical frame as my life experience was not that big and I lived in the world of ideas. Once I get older I realized how some of those ideas were plain wrong. Likely, if I was in my early twenties, I would be making a similar argument as you did. While you numbers are wrong your sentiment is "right", there are billions to make in sportsbetting. The only problem with sportsbetting is that the market is not deep enough to oblige. Similar to liberal beliefs, you are going to run out of other people's money.

I am sorry about a long and not a very coherent rant. I am drunk and, if you have not noticed, english is not even my second language. I just want to help some of the younger guys who hang out here and have brains to get some perspective and hopefully grow up sooner than later.

Thanks for this post