Originally posted on 11/03/2012:

Interesting question in the OP. There are a some things you can do, I only know a few and hopefully I'll learn more as my experience grows.

As someone already said, hype is something you should look for. Sometimes it's just hype and the lines are way off: Erick Silva was already brought up as an example. Mike Richman in the last Bellator is another: he had two quick KO wins in his last two fights. And then was rated at -370 against the friggin' Muay Thay World champion...

I set myself a some rules and I stick to it. I never bet on a fight where I don't know well enough one of the two contestant. Happens a lot with young prospects and smaller shows. You shouldn't trust what you read on the internet (included this forum), you should only trust yourself, and if you've never seen one of the two fighters, you can't really judge the fight. You might be passing some opportunities this way but you will also avoid a lot of disasters (Rich Clementi says hi!).

I never bet on fighters who have a glass chin or have proven unreliable in the past. Guys like Andrey Arlovski, Paul Daely, Mariusz Zaromskis and such... The risk is just too much and these fighters have failed a lot of opportunities in the past.

Last, I'm doing the following to evaluate how good my prediction are and to have a guideline on which fights I should bet on...
1) Write down your predictions and keep track of them.
2) Once you have a decent sample size, you can get a rate for how many fights you capped right.
3) Given that rate, you can calculate an estimate of how much the lines that you bet on must be in order to break even on the long run.

W% * To Win - L% * Stake = 0

To Win = (L% * Stake)/ W%

Suppose we use always the same unit size, we can assume Stake = 1

To Win = L% / W%

Suppose I cap right 70% of the fights.

To Win = 0,3 / 0,7 = 0,43

So I should only take fights were the line is 1,43 or more ( or -232.56 for you penetrating americans!).

This is, again, a ROUGH ESTIMATE. The sample size is probably shit and we made a lot of assumptions. Lastly, I do not want to break even, I want a profit. Therefore, I have to take better lines, let's say I have to aim for 1,65 or better. This is of course just a guideline and should not substitute your guts, but you might want to shy away from that 1,38 line you're not so sure about.