Originally <a href='/showthread.php?p=21686637'>posted</a> on 04/20/2014:

For starters, it isn't about 'knowing outcomes' whatsoever, its about defining a reasonable range of probable outcomes and betting anything that falls outside of that range.

A good handicapper is going to be wrong about many, many fights, and by wrong, I don't mean, loses a bet, I mean, caps the fight wrong, sometimes completely wrong. But, if you're good at doing it, it will all come out positive in the long run. Edge x Volume = Profit.

Every event in the world has some true probability of it occurring, either 0, 1, or somewhere in between. Even if no one knows what that number is, it still exists.

MMA is perhaps the easiest sport to prove that it is beatable. Most MMA lines move so much between open and close that the lines cross each other, for example the Cerrone/Barboza fight opened with Barboza at even money and closes with Cerrone +160, so, by mathematical necessity that line HAD to be off the true line at one or more points in its lifecycle.