Attn Justin and other SBR $harps, I need your opinion.

[Cheme82]

Not knowing how to back test and where to get lines on past props is the least of your problems.
In fact it is not a problem at all. You can get nothing out of it anyway. It is useless.

"A 2.53 isn't good enough for you?" - this what seems to be a problem.
Looks like you dont really understand how laughable this question is.

Think about it.
We need only 175 people to expect one of them to have 2.53 zscore just by good old luck alone.
I dont know how many users are at this forum, but i'm sure enough to have a bunch 2.53 zscores who got there just by being lucky. Nothing else.

If you divide number of people in a world who play this game by 175 you will see that a few armies can be assembled from excited guys who are sure they are on to something when in fact they are nothing but a bunch of lucky dudes.

I agree with you that the score (although good) can't be taken by itself and expect to have he same results going forward. Now that I read what I posted it looks as if I'm all offended that the 2.53 is not "good enough" for you guys. That's wasn't what I meant, I know it's not enough.

So if back testing, line closing, and Z-score is not enough to determine future success. What would you do? I am far fom "sure" that I'm on to something.

[hutennis]

Back testing is useless.
Line closing and z scores are basically your results.
Randomness can deliver all kinds of results easily.

In order to know where you are you must quantify your edge.
You need hard mathematical prove on where your edge is coming from.
If you don't know or can't explain - you don't have it and your results are random.

[Justin7]

Back testing is useless.
Line closing and z scores are basically your results.
Randomness can deliver all kinds of results easily.

In order to know where you are you must quantify your edge.
You need hard mathematical prove on where your edge is coming from.
If you don't know or can't explain - you don't have it and your results are random.

This kind of post makes me sad. It is wrong on so many levels, and you state it knowing that anyway. Your goal is not to help, but to screw up aspiring bettors.

Back testing is a useful component. Line closing is basically your result? Huh?

Quantify your edge. You can make educated guesses based on your model (for major markets), but those are only guesses. There is no way to have a hard mathematical "prove" of where your edge originates in major markets. You can only observe differences between your projections, and the markets' projections... Which leads back to back-testing and closing line analysis.

[hutennis]

Back testing (looking back) gives you a perfect picture of what happened in the past with no predictive value what so ever. Human brain loves nothing more than look back in search of meaningless patterns, assign "meanings"to them and confuse itself in a process.
Technical analysis in financial markets is an extremely sophisticated form of back testing.
And what? It works great for selling financial products to suckers but as far as gaining edge on a market - useless! Why would it be any different in any other speculative field?

Thousands of studies has been done on this and conclusion is always the same - randomness rules.
Nobody disputes this form of EMH. This part is as good as done.
I don't know why you keep on arguing this point. If you can prove it wrong you can be a good candidate for a Nobel Prize.

Positive Line closing is your result. What else?
There is nothing in the Universe stopping you from getting this positive result for a loooong time simply by getting lucky.

Observing differences between your projections, and the markets' projections leads you nowhere, b/c it is nothing more but a form of predicting future based on a widely available information and that, as we know, does not work, unless your methods of collecting and analyzing information are superior.

What you are doing is encouraging aspiring bettors to do the same old routine as every one else does for ages.
Doing the same thing and expecting different results is a pure definition of insanity (Albert Einstein).

What aspiring bettors should do is either to come up with a radically new approach, (and then quantifying edge will not be such an impossible dream) or realize that their best bet is to stop wasting time and energy on chasing Holy grail and settle for fun that recreational SB with entertainment money certainly is.
But don't worry. Chances of that happening are slim to none, a none already left the building. My posts will make no difference at all. If anything they will help your traffic.

[jgilmartin]

You are apparently still refusing to put 2 and 2 together as to why steam chasing works. That is all the proof you will ever need that people exist who can set a better line than the oddsmakers.

[hutennis]

That's the only prove I need that slow books do exist.
It also proves that if you beat them to a number, they will not like it.

Plus, the question is not whether people who can set a better line than Midas are there. The question is what are your chances to be one of them.

[Justin7]

In back-testing, you have about a 50/50 chance of winning each event. In line closing analysis, it is closer to 25/50/25 (in favor/neutral/unfavorable). You could still get lucky, but having a 50% favorable, 10% unfavorable rating over 200 games is virtually impossible by luck. But then, I am doing closing line analysis versus thousands (or in some cases, hundreds of thousands of matches).

If your model consistently predicts the direction of line movement, you are going to win.

[hutennis]

OK, but it says absolutely nothing about actual chance to come up with something that is able to consistently predict line movement. My estimate is that this chance, although exists, is absolutely tiny, and this correlates perfectly with %% of players who are actual long term winners in this game which is also absolutely tiny.

It is also true that if you can do astrophysical calculations in your head you can make a lot of money,
if you can create ipad you can make a lot of money, if you can sell snow to Eskimo you can make a lot of money, if you can run 100m faster than 10sec you can make a lot of money and yet we don't really see millions around the world trying themselves out in hopes of fast fortunes.
Apparently, there is still enough common sense around for people to realize that although money is there alright, task itself is way over their heads and the fact that someone out there can do it and they can't does not seam to matter to anyone.
But when it comes to BTCL, playing poker or trading stocks every one seems to think that he is not only as good as the next guy but better and therefore a big pile of gold just one winning pattern away. All is needed is past data, excel and a few statistical tricks.

[mathdotcom]

J7 this guy is Wrecktangle right? We don't know anything about anything ever because it could be random?

[hutennis]

J7 this guy is Wrecktangle right? We don't know anything about anything ever because it could be random?

No, no, no...

How about this

We know almost everything about past.
We know as much about present as available information and our ability to analyse it allows us.
The future is unknown and unpredictable b/c random nature of things makes it so.

[mathdotcom]

No, no, no...

How about this

We know almost everything about past.
We know as much about present as available information and our ability to analyse it allows us.
The future is unknown and unpredictable b/c random nature of things makes it so.

So why do you ever buy groceries for the next day if it's totally random whether they'll be there when you wake up the next morning?

You are the biggest retard to ever post on a forum anywhere. Think about what an insult that is.

[hutennis]

So why do you ever buy groceries for the next day if it's totally random whether they'll be there when you wake up the next morning?

You are the biggest retard to ever post on a forum anywhere. Think about what an insult that is.

If this laughable nonsense is the best you can come up with, then my arguments are pretty strong in deed. LOLOLOL

[mathdotcom]

Alas the future is unknown and unpredictable

[hutennis]

A straw man is a type of argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.

Click on it and educate yourself a little. Never hurts.

[hutennis]

And since you did this

You are the biggest retard to ever post on a forum anywhere. Think about what an insult that is.

educating yourself on this has to be in order.

An ad hominem (Latin for "to the man" or "to the person"), short for argumentum ad hominem, is an attempt to negate the truth of a claim by pointing out a negative characteristic or belief of the person supporting it. Ad hominem reasoning is normally described as a logical fallacy, more precisely an informal fallacy and an irrelevance.

Just click and read. Don't be shy.

[mathdotcom]

You always claim straw man but I am accurately representing your claim.

The future is unknown and unpredictable.

So, here is a future event:

Food in fridge tomorrow morning, yes or no?

If it's totally unpredictable, then buying groceries should not increase the probability of food being in your fridge tomorrow, so why would you do it?

Please enlighten.

[hutennis]

Since you apparently too lazy to to click on link to read the material through, I'll do it for you.

The straw man fallacy occurs in the following pattern of argument:

1. Person A has position X.
2. Person B disregards certain key points of X and instead presents the superficially similar position Y. The position Y is a distorted version of X and can be set up in several ways, including:
   1. Presenting a misrepresentation of the opponent's position.
   2. Quoting an opponent's words out of context — i.e. choosing quotations that misrepresent the opponent's actual intentions (see fallacy of quoting out of context).^[2]
   3. Presenting someone who defends a position poorly as the defender, then refuting that person's arguments — thus giving the appearance that every upholder of that position (and thus the position itself) has been defeated.^[1]
   4. Inventing a fictitious persona with actions or beliefs which are then criticized, implying that the person represents a group of whom the speaker is critical.
   5. Oversimplifying an opponent's argument, then attacking this oversimplified version.
3. Person B attacks position Y, concluding that X is false/incorrect/flawed.

This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious, because attacking a distorted version of a position fails to constitute an attack on the actual position.

#5 is just about what you are doing.

Enough enlightenment?

[big0mar]

No, no, no...

How about this

We know almost everything about past.
We know as much about present as available information and our ability to analyse it allows us.
The future is unknown and unpredictable b/c random nature of things makes it so.

"Randomness" can be quantified

[hutennis]

"Randomness" can be quantified

Looks like you are confusing presents of regularities in the occurrences of events whose outcomes are not certain
and ability to predict those outcomes.

[mathdotcom]

Wrecktangle,

Do you bet on sports?

[HUY]

Alas the future is unknown and unpredictable

You are indeed attacking a strawman. He didn't say it's unpredictable, he merely said that the portion of people who can predict it accurately enough to make money from sportsbetting is tiny. And it is.

[thom321]

hutennis,

I am genuinely curious and puzzled at the moment so I am not asking this to attack you but I would like to know if you feel like sharing. What exactly is your purpose of posting here?

I can think of a couple of reasons. 1. You are one of the very small number of bettors that have figured out a way to profitably handicap sports and you are making the randomness argument to deter others from trying to do the same and possibly removing your current edge. 2. You don't bet on sports at all because you know that it is not possible to establish a sustainable edge and you are trying to inform others (who might think they have an edge but are just being "fooled by randomness") about this to prevent them from losing their hard earned cash.

If it is not one of the two scenarios above, do you bet at all? If so, based on what?

Regarding your stock market EMH (weak form) argument, while I agree that it is true over the long term (multiple year time horizon), due to humans not being perfectly rational all of the time (despite what economic models assume), over some short term period (long enough to be exploitable) it can be inefficient, at least for specific stocks. The internet bubble in 1999-2000 is a perfect example of a situation that was profitably exploitable for those who were willing to stomach the volatility, which in truth most people were not. It did not however require inside knowledge that wasn't available to the masses.

Stocks always revert to some level of long term fair value, which might/might not be more straight forward to establish than the fair odds on a given game. However, the uncertainty lies in when this reversion to fair value will happen and how.

[mathdotcom]

You are indeed attacking a strawman. He didn't say it's unpredictable, he merely said that the portion of people who can predict it accurately enough to make money from sportsbetting is tiny. And it is.

Look at post #45

His last statement about the future is completely untrue. I have not read his previous long winded posts in the thread.

[mathdotcom]

All is needed is past data, excel and a few statistical tricks.

this is exactly right, too bad the context of what you said implies you completely disagree

there are millionaires on this forum who do exactly this, although they can surely do better than excel

and when it comes to betting props, as the original poster is, you may not even need all of the above

[big0mar]

Mathy call me

[hutennis]

Look at post #45

His last statement about the future is completely untrue. I have not read his previous long winded posts in the thread.

It's like kindergarten or something...

Usually, statements like "His last statement about the future is completely untrue..." is followed by
"... and here are my arguments why, and here are evidence that support my argument..." etc.

Otherwise how do you expect your statement to be taking seriously?

My posts are usualy longer than yours b/c I try to do just that.

[chunk]

hutennis,

I am genuinely curious and puzzled at the moment so I am not asking this to attack you but I would like to know if you feel like sharing. What exactly is your purpose of posting here?

I can think of a couple of reasons. 1. You are one of the very small number of bettors that have figured out a way to profitably handicap sports and you are making the randomness argument to deter others from trying to do the same and possibly removing your current edge. 2. You don't bet on sports at all because you know that it is not possible to establish a sustainable edge and you are trying to inform others (who might think they have an edge but are just being "fooled by randomness") about this to prevent them from losing their hard earned cash.

If it is not one of the two scenarios above, do you bet at all? If so, based on what?

Regarding your stock market EMH (weak form) argument, while I agree that it is true over the long term (multiple year time horizon), due to humans not being perfectly rational all of the time (despite what economic models assume), over some short term period (long enough to be exploitable) it can be inefficient, at least for specific stocks. The internet bubble in 1999-2000 is a perfect example of a situation that was profitably exploitable for those who were willing to stomach the volatility, which in truth most people were not. It did not however require inside knowledge that wasn't available to the masses.

Stocks always revert to some level of long term fair value, which might/might not be more straight forward to establish than the fair odds on a given game. However, the uncertainty lies in when this reversion to fair value will happen and how.

This seems to be a logical argument/question to hutennis. I too, would like to see a response. BTW, I could be wrong, but didn't you use to take the position that nobody can win long term at sports betting? If so, you seemed to have softened your position somewhat.

[hutennis]

hutennis,

I am genuinely curious and puzzled at the moment so I am not asking this to attack you but I would like to know if you feel like sharing. What exactly is your purpose of posting here?

I can think of a couple of reasons. 1. You are one of the very small number of bettors that have figured out a way to profitably handicap sports and you are making the randomness argument to deter others from trying to do the same and possibly removing your current edge. 2. You don't bet on sports at all because you know that it is not possible to establish a sustainable edge and you are trying to inform others (who might think they have an edge but are just being "fooled by randomness") about this to prevent them from losing their hard earned cash.

If it is not one of the two scenarios above, do you bet at all? If so, based on what?

None of the above. I simply speak my mind on a public internet forum. I don'y need to have any agenda for that. I do bet and trade sports. The way I do it fully reflects my believes.

Regarding your stock market EMH (weak form) argument, while I agree that it is true over the long term (multiple year time horizon), due to humans not being perfectly rational all of the time (despite what economic models assume), over some short term period (long enough to be exploitable) it can be inefficient, at least for specific stocks.

If you would be the only one to know that humans are not rational then yes, you can gain an edge, but since it is as much of a public domain as any other fundamental or technical issue and there is huge number of educated buyers and sellers who arbitrage public psychology 24/7, I don't see were sufficient inefficiency can come from.

The internet bubble in 1999-2000 is a perfect example of a situation that was profitably exploitable for those who were willing to stomach the volatility, which in truth most people were not. It did not however require inside knowledge that wasn't available to the masses.

What about those who went broke trying to stomach volatility?
Don't forget, we are talking shorting here - strategy with unlimited downside.
You need an impeccable timing, aka crystal ball, to be able to start shorting close enough to the top, fall to a coma to avoid being destroyed by whipsaw action and and wake up close enough to the bottom to cover and make a killing. Another words, you need to be very, very lucky.
It is extremely hard to take advantage of bubble being inside bubble.
Of course, hindsight bias makes it not a big deal at all.

Stocks always revert to some level of long term fair value, which might/might not be more straight forward to establish than the fair odds on a given game. However, the uncertainty lies in when this reversion to fair value will happen and how.

And this uncertainty what makes the whole process unpredictable for the purpose of making money.

[thom321]

hutennis,

From my practical experience, even among institutions, the number of "educated buyers" are considerably fewer than what is needed to make the stock market efficient on all time horizons for all stocks. However, obviously these institutional investors will do their very best to make it appear that they know what they are doing since why else would anyone give them any money to "invest". Granted that is only based on my experience over the last decade so that can change.

I love the fact that somehow shorting has been labeled as riskier than buying stocks since it allows me to keep my unproven, statistically insignificant, luck driven "edge". If you own a stock, it can go to 0 and you lose 100%. If you are short it, from a practical standpoint you can't lose any more than 100% since you get a margin call from your broker long before that happens. With proper money management principles, shorting stocks has the same risk/reward as buying stocks. If anything, stocks tend to drop faster than they appreciate, which is partially why, on average, the implied volatility on put options is greater than on call options.

I can't prove it but I have a feeling that more money was lost by "investors" who bought Internet stocks and watched them plummet, than the money lost by people shorting as the bubble continued higher. As far as timing, what you need is a time horizon long enough to allow for a reversion to fair value, not impeccable timing AND you also need to use proper money management with defined risk parameters.

Anyway, I don't want to derail this thread into a discussion on the stock market although investing/trading stocks have a lot in common with betting on sports. I am pretty sure we will continue to have different views and that is fine. I am not going to continue to try to convince anyone that the stock market is inefficient since it would be detrimental for me to do so.

[mathdotcom]

As usual, a simple thread by a poster asking for an idea of how statistically significant his winnings are, and hutennis turns it into "you never know anything for sure", then it strays off into another endless and pointless EMH discussion.

waiting for hutennis to supply some practical sports betting advice. Probably some eurotrash square buying and selling $1 units on betfair and thinks he's a market savant.

[big0mar]

[thom321]

I apologize to Cheme82 for participating in sending the thread off topic. There will be no more EMH references by me in this thread.

[Cheme82]

No worries bro, always nice to see smart people disagreeing so passionately on something. Good change from players talk in which you see average people disagreeing on stuff. At the end of the day, we are all the same.

[hutennis]

As usual, a simple thread by a poster asking for an idea of how statistically significant his winnings are, and hutennis turns it into "you never know anything for sure", then it strays off into another endless and pointless EMH discussion..

Urge to justify erroneous believes (in this case, it is looking for statistical significance of some sort) is very common, very foolish and can be very destructive. All I do is I try to point out foolishness and pointless of it, taking side of well established scientific theories in my arguments.
What's wrong with that? Is that better to look for a black cat in a dark room when cat is not there to begin with or to have, or begin to have, an understanding of what is that you deal with, so you can be rational in your decision making?

OK, maybe I'm wrong. And theories I follow are wrong too. But it takes a lot more to prove it (remember, you have to prove that current understanding of how things work is wrong to be taken seriously) than simply to point out an existence of few individuals per thousand who are "bucking the trend" so to speak. BTW, it's perfectly fine. Some of them are lucky, some of them are that good. It's all within limits.
So, on a scale from 1 to 1000, where are you? That's the question. My point is that it is almost never where you think you are, looking at your z score.

waiting for hutennis to supply some practical sports betting advice. Probably some eurotrash square buying and selling $1 units on betfair and thinks he's a market savant.

OK. I'm not sure it will work or will even be understood, but I'll give you the best practical sports betting advise I can.
You take care of juice and losses. Profit will take care of itself.
That's what I do with my $1 units every day.
No models, no research, no regression analysis.
Works great!

[MonkeyF0cker]

OK. I'm not sure it will work or will even be understood, but I'll give you the best practical sports betting advise I can.
You take care of juice and losses. Profit will take care of itself.
That's what I do with my $1 units every day.
No models, no research, no regression analysis.
Works great!

So the point of you constantly being in the Think Tank is what? To attempt to refute things that you have no idea about?