[BeatingBaseball]

Here's my take, 5's -

In the real world, I’d say individual wager limits are rigidly imposed already - by the realities of your bankroll. But in a forum setting – much like in a contest – the wagers posted are just funny money to many guys. So just as you can’t have a serious contest without some kind of formal structure, I agree with you that the forum would also benefit by some standardized structure with limits.

I don’t think it would necessarily require you start with a specified bankroll and post exact wager amounts. It would be fine to use Units and let each player define the value of a Unit for himself - but you do need some range flexibility per wager. Personally, I think the 1 to 5 Unit range would be reasonable. It’s one that would provide significant flexibility yet prohibit anyone from getting totally off the reservation. As you say, some would argue for a 1 to 10 and I could live with that too – but anything beyond that gets a little ridiculous.

But just as important, I think, would be to present our records in a standardized format providing all the information necessary to make meaningful comparisons. Obviously, Net Units is most relevant. The number of units up or down is the acid test. When you look at a poker pro, for example, nobody cares how many pots a guy has won or what percentage of pots a guy has won. The only success that matters is reflected in his chip stack.

When it comes to evaluating a capper’s W-L record and win percentage, I’m looking for 2 things. First is the number of plays over which the guy has produced his bottom line Unit total. Secondly, to interpret the W-L percentage performance, I want some context – i.e., the average prices at which those wagers were made. For a capper with a contrarian philosophy such as your own, he can be extremely effective and profitable going 81-81 over 162 games. A guy betting the Yankees on the ML every day, however, would last year have gone 95-67, a great looking W-L record and percentage, but he still would have been an ineffective and losing capper. And a guy who specializes in taking huge prices betting dogs on the reverse run line can be a winning capper hitting a percentage in the 30’s.

To facilitate the comparison between cappers with different approaches, I would introduce something like AP/U (the average price at which each unit was wagered) and/or AIWE (the average implied win expectation for each unit wagered). With those metrics, I can more clearly see who is outperforming market expectation and who is not. It might look something like this:

The Contrarian - 81-81 .500 +27.54 U (AP/U +1.34, AIWE .415)

YankeeFan - 95-67 .586 - 4.16 U (AP/U -1.48, AIWE .597)

For you, a .500 performance was terrific since you were taking an average of +1.34 on every unit wagered and way outperformed the market expectation (break even percentage) of .415 which that average price commands. But YankeeFan, although his .586 performance looks great in isolation, he was laying on average a chalky -1.48 on each unit wagered and actually underperformed its implied win expectation of .597. He actually lost money.

If we could see records in that format, it would be a lot easier to separate chicken from feathers around here.

[Pair of 5s Sir]

This is the smartest guy in these threads.