[MasterP10]

I do this for a living and rarely watch any games.

[JayLA]

I do this for a living and rarely watch any games.

shit, more power to you. share some of that wealth Mastah'P..make EM say UUUGGGHHHH

[BeantownBlue]

I am a BigTen fan, and I try to watch all BigTen games and follow all the teams.
This takes quite some time, but I like doing it and it's certainly fun for me.

From my experience, I can tell you that I make more money from BigTen bets than from any other bets.
IMO, when you follow certain teams closely, there are times when you get very confident about certain bets,
and these are usually your money makers. It works for me both for fun and for $$.

[pologq]

NFL, all about perception.

what about the games where the majorty play a team, such as new england last week against the jets in new england, the line actually goes up from 10.5 to 11.5 by game time and the pats barely win at home...did i fall for a big dog in a rivalry game? i am still learning so wondering what exactly you mean.

[HardCore]

honestly man it all comes down to how much you know the team screw everything about anything that doesnt involve knowing the team you have to know what your betting on to make money in the long run random luck only lasts for so long

[Smutbucket]

I completely disagree with a lot of "points" made in here especially by k13.....first off the bigger the market, the softer the lines, the more ignorant public betting on their homer team, the more books will use that to their advantage to gain more profit, fukk being sharp, its all about money,

you can significant edge when seeing a team yourself, ive expierenced it a lot in my handicapping if you follow certain teams or always watch certain matchups and actually remeber and take notes of all the different advantages/disadvantages, then its understanding how certain matchups unfold how they do unfold, ie why you got a loss, why you got a win,....many times the games/numbers dont tell the story a game has....

not to mention his ridiculous "post-analysis" of games/line movements last weekend, and how whatever assumption he is making is what happens every week, I have no idea....he probably still thinks he can get accurate %'s and numbers from bookies about how much the public is actually betting on which side this is the biggest advantage the books have on us, no freaking way they numbers they give out are accurate but you hear every day on these forums, public all over ______. haha, dumbass, you wish you knew where the money was, how about focus on the game, those little futile meaningless numbers are in place to confuse you/distract you and have no outcome on games

to say its all fixed is absurd, and the mindset of a loser

[MasterP10]

shit, more power to you. share some of that wealth Mastah'P..make EM say UUUGGGHHHH

lol,

I can tell you some of the plays I have for next weekend.

Nfl:
Sea-3
Dal+6
Pit +3.5

College:
Buf-3
Kty +8.5
Akron 21.5

[Lakers714]

I agree with K13 in that most of the winners, in the long run, can be found by reading the line movements and public % bet on teams. Also paying attention to RLM, late money, late movement can give u an edge in winning in the long run. It's all about leaving emotion out of it and having money management. Easier said then done, but Vegas isn't stupid and they RARELY miss on lines. If ESPN analysts were good enough, they would work for line makers and not the network. I love seeing people post, "Vegas totally missed on this one." Yeah right. Vegas always wins in the long run, it's up to us to decipher who they "want" us to bet on and go the opposite way.

[k13]

I completely disagree with a lot of "points" made in here especially by k13.....first off the bigger the market, the softer the lines, the more ignorant public betting on their homer team, the more books will use that to their advantage to gain more profit, fukk being sharp, its all about money,

you can significant edge when seeing a team yourself, ive expierenced it a lot in my handicapping if you follow certain teams or always watch certain matchups and actually remeber and take notes of all the different advantages/disadvantages, then its understanding how certain matchups unfold how they do unfold, ie why you got a loss, why you got a win,....many times the games/numbers dont tell the story a game has....

not to mention his ridiculous "post-analysis" of games/line movements last weekend, and how whatever assumption he is making is what happens every week, I have no idea....he probably still thinks he can get accurate %'s and numbers from bookies about how much the public is actually betting on which side this is the biggest advantage the books have on us, no freaking way they numbers they give out are accurate but you hear every day on these forums, public all over ______. haha, dumbass, you wish you knew where the money was, how about focus on the game, those little futile meaningless numbers are in place to confuse you/distract you and have no outcome on games

to say its all fixed is absurd, and the mindset of a loser

You don't need books to give you any %'s, after a while you should already have these in your head before each week.
Perception is not about money wagered. You can go to streak4cash, yahoo pick'em, BTP contest here. Yes it is BS but consistent. The public will always be the same.

You may say that there's 1 bet for a $1000000 on Team A and a 100 bets for $1 on Team B and only books know that information, well, that's actually irrelevant to the topic.

No one said anything about it being fixed.

But would books being cutting people off for chasing steam if it not mattered?

Analyze games all you want, I did that five years ago.

[Smutbucket]

your assuming that the money on these sides are relevant to beatthestreak/yahoo pick em/BTP contest? thats rediculous, I do agree that after a long time betting you notice trends in books overvaluing/undervaluing certain sides/teams to pretty much entice action, but its nothing you can see on streak4cash or any public % website for that matter, those numbers are all garbage and irrelevant to where the real money is.....

5 years ago really? I was doing same thing 5 years ago but lately I have been a lot more successful in my picks recently just because of better information/sources.....just like anything valuable in life, you need to grow at it, you need to learn from your mistakes, be able to evaluate them objectively, Im a lot more successful gambler today than I was a few years ago because I have a bunch of losses under my belt that I learned something from, and better resources nowdays of course gotta weed thru the bad info to find the good info

sorry, i misread your earlier quote thought you said "people dont want to believe its fixed"

[brainfreeze0]

I can't speak for football, but I watched a lot of NBA last year and ran almost 60% on just under 200 games. I had a better feel for how players matched up against other players/ teams matched up against other teams while also examining stats/ #'s.

[thfootball]

I would say watching college has has better benefits than nfl.

[MeatWad]

Noone ever mentions watching Nascar. This is truly the only bettable sport that hand delievers victories occassionally by watching all the pre race practices and interviews.

It is very time consuming to watch the prerace, I actually listen to them as I handicap or play poker. But the races are soo dependent on equipment and the drivers will occassionally tell you when their equipment is particularly bad or good.

It happened this week with Tony Stewart who said his car was trash and he expected to struggle all day. He was matched against Jeff Gordon, someone who loved his car, has ran flat tracks excellent all year, and historically does well at Martinsville. It was never even a sweat barring mechanical failure, Gordon and several other racers Stewart was placed against in betting matchups dominated him.

Nascar also is a smaller market sport, much easier to exploit the odds/market than the bigger more efficient market of NFL. The drawback to Nascar, and probably something that keeps the spreads less efficient, is the low betting limits. Those can be somewhat circumvented by multiple accounts and placing bets as the line moves.

[MeatWad]

I would say watching college has has better benefits than nfl.

I agree with this as well. Much more is known in the NFL, it is a more competitive precisely played league. Whereas the talent gap in college is very large, creating much more variance in the outcomes.

There are many more unknowns in college, especially early in the season as soo much of the rosters turn over and young players develop/improve, thus there are more exploitable gambling opportunites available by impartially watching the games.

[guy Fawkes]

In essence, the more information you can garner on any given line gives you a better picture for how you can model/predict the game will go. This year's college football teams like Hawaii, Louisiana Tech, Houston, A&M, Arkansas, etc really don't tell the whole story on a stats sheet or on film, but can form a more accurate picture with both.

One example that I can remember from this year is Louisiana Tech playing at University of Houston. If you look at the stat sheet it looks like La Tech barely snatched victory from a Houston school that was superior in nearly every category. In reality La Tech had the game in hand and went to a prevent style defense very early.

The one caveat I will make is that watching games can bias you against the stats or make one think that they already know how the game went so the stats are irrelevant. Another personal anecdote, Rutgers played at Tulane in week one this year. I remember watching and thinking how awful Tulane looked and how Rutgers seemed to dominate the Tulane offense. Going back and looking at the stats it shows a very different story, Tulane's running game was nullified, but played relatively well on passing downs and converted at a 50% rate on third down (I still can't even remember a single instance of this because I was biased against looking for those instances). The trick comes from being able to convince yourself that your previous perception is incorrect in the face of new evidence. For anyone that knows anything about human psychology, that ability is not something that will come easily or naturally to any capper.

I can see this is getting a little ranty and preachy. Essentially, I'd say take all information you can get, watch the games, watch the lines, read the stats, everything. After all, if you heard a coach say "Game film? Nah, I'm not a big fan of game film, I'd rather just see what their BCS ranking is and line up accordingly", which side would you bet on in that game?