Not beating the closing line

[nash13]

I have read along some comments and articles here.
So much talk about the concept of closing lines.
Let's say I have made over 5000 selections and calculated them based on the closing lines.
And they have made profit.
So why is it important to compare them to the lines before anyway?
If the concept is winning vs the closing line, it should be a winner all along?

[Stackzilla]

Your betting soccer, totally different from what most are betting here. In soccer your not trying to beat the closing line your trying to time your bet for best price. Now that could be the closing line or it could be 2 hours before KO.

[zoloto]

What is different in soccer lines, compared to other sports ?

[Stackzilla]

In soccer you don't have many dime lines on spreads or o/u's, also in soccer you can bet 3-ways on the ML. You still have favorites and dogs but in certain matches both the fav and the dog line will be at +$ as well as draw.

Thu 12/22		201 Pescara (ITA-A)	+½ -143	+272	o2½ +136
2:45PM		202 Palermo (ITA-A)	-½ +128	+131	u2½ -151
		203 Draw		+216

[Stackzilla]

Beating the close is always going to be debated but a person who beats the line vs a person only playing the close with both playing the same matches getting the same win percentage, the person who beats the line will have more profit.

[nash13]

sure they will but the concept i read most about tells me that beating the closing line is essential to winning.
but closing line for me shows the latest market value.
so in soccer taking the game at +600 a day before kick off and then the closing line is +550, it will make a huge difference.
but statistically it should even them put long term.

[Stackzilla]

Are you still cherry picking your lines? Of course your model is going show it all evens out but your using the highest odds for all your picks.

Bayern Munich

RB Leipzig

Average

-267

+405

+738

Highest

-182

+480

+860

See the difference imagine that slight difference over 5000+ bets. I told you using highest odds isn't going to get you a correct +/-

[Stackzilla]

Now if I was timing my bet for price and say I have an account on Coral yesterday morning I could've got Bayern @-200. Technically I beat the close, only 1 book offered -182 at close

[Buffalo Nickle]

The betting markets are considered largely to be efficient so the moves made are considered correct on average. If your bets are beating the closing line it means the line is moving in your favor and you are getting good numbers. If the lines do not move in your favor, it means you are most likely getting lucky in your bets.

If you win over 5000 bets, you will almost certainly beat the closing line. If not, you may be smarter than the market or an extremely lucky guy.

[Stackzilla]

I don't believe that is true in soccer markets. I've probably lost more matches where after I placed the bet the line went my way. I stopped line watching soccer a while ago it's pointless. I just try to get my bet in when after doing my research I think I've got an edge on the line. Ex line is -105 when I think it should be -115..or if I think the wrong team is favored I'll wait to post and try and get best price.

[Buffalo Nickle]

I don't believe that is true in soccer markets. I've probably lost more matches where after I placed the bet the line went my way. I stopped line watching soccer a while ago it's pointless. I just try to get my bet in when after doing my research I think I've got an edge on the line. Ex line is -105 when I think it should be -115..or if I think the wrong team is favored I'll wait to post and try and get best price.

That's very unlikely. Soccer is bet heavily around the world. You don't really know what your results are because you have not quantified them. You are just making an off the top the head guess at what the results have been and memory on those things is not good especially if you have placed bets in the hundreds.

It is possible you are better than the market and doing better than market moves but unlikely. And if it has happened, it is not likely to continue.

Start tracking today on moves that go against you and you will probably be .500 or worse over a few hundred such bets.

If you bet Latin American soccer or very small leagues where the matches are often fixed and not major European soccer that might be the case. The small soccer leagues numbers are not very efficient and are more easily beaten.

[evo34]

Double-edged sword. If you are beating the closing line, it does not mean you are any smarter than the market -- just faster. But it does suggest you are doing things "correctly" in that big money is doing a lot of similar things.

The problem is that unless the pool of squares is growing fast enough to absorb the action, the situation is not stable. More people pile in doing roughly the same thing (people become sharper, sharps become better capitalized), books adjust, and you'll find yourself beating the closing the line but not winning. I've seen this play out many times in smaller markets. It's happening in larger markets as well -- just not as visibly.

So, yeah, beating the close in a positive indicator in small samples. But if you have a huge sample, you'd rather the market not follow you, since that would imply you are doing something that is (for now) unique.

[Stackzilla]

Here's matches from yesterday and today that won that went against movement. Inter 3-0 Lazio, PSG 5-0 Lorient, Hertha Berlin 2-0 Darmstadt, Benefica 2-0 Rio Ave, Braga 2-1 Moreirense, Nantes 1-0 Montpelier, Ingolstadt 1-2 Freiberg, Torino 1-0 Genoa I actually played this last one http://www.oddsportal.com/soccer/ita...enoa-AcAsslz1/ I do track all my plays, I write everything out onto notebook paper makes it easier for me to retain the memory. That's 8 in a day and there's a lot more, I'm not saying going against the market is a good way to make a profit, but if you watch the market long enough you can get a better understanding of when a game peaks at price, and if you trust your research the line movement becomes something you don't have to worry much about. Of course if there's a huge jump in price going against you after you've placed the bet there's obviously something wrong.

[gojetsgomoxies]

i'm no expert but i think the concept is that the closing line is near totally efficient. i.e. it's the 50% win rate number. so if you get worse odds than the closing line your win rate will be under 50%. and of course the opposite, better number than the closing line then you win > 50% and you implicitly predicted the line movement.

now maybe the closing line for the sides you picks is a 54% winner. therefore the closing market is not efficient. you pick the right teams but you aren't that great at judging possible line movements. so you pick the right teams but don't get great prices so your win rate is 52.5% instead of 54%.

for high volume events i tend to think the first paragraph is very correct.... for lesser events - sun belt football for example - i don't necessarily think closing line is effiicent predictor although it certainly isn't off but huge amounts.

[byronbb]

The closing line is important but if there is a fair price at +100 the books can shade one side and deal +105/-125 if they think they can make money on it.

[tsty]

stop worrying about useless shit

when you are a winner

you just know

as long as you know why the market moves it's enough

[nash13]

thanks all for the insight.

[Alfa1234]

stop worrying about useless shit

when you are a winner

you just know

as long as you know why the market moves it's enough

Over the long term, math is against you here. You literally cannot be a long term winner if you are not beating the closing line consistently.

[tsty]

Over the long term, math is against you here. You literally cannot be a long term winner if you are not beating the closing line consistently.

No that's not true

There are more than a few sports markets out there

[Alfa1234]

I agree it's not true for small obscure markets, but in any decent sized market you have to beat the closing line long term to win money.

[u21c3f6]

The fallacy of the need to beat the closing is due to the incorrect belief that the closing lines are 50/50. If you can win beating the closing line, great, however it is not necessary to beat the closing line to be a long-term winner.

[Alfa1234]

The fallacy of thinking you don't need to beat the closing line to be a long term winner, is thinking you can beat an efficient market where the odds of the closing line have been formed by both sharp and punt bets. The closing line represents, on average, the exact probability of that event happening minus the juice of the bookie. You cannot win long term, if you do not beat these closing odds as the juice will always get you. That is a mathematical fact.The line being 50/50 at closure has nothing to do with it.

[Waterstpub87]

The fallacy of the need to beat the closing is due to the incorrect belief that the closing lines are 50/50. If you can win beating the closing line, great, however it is not necessary to beat the closing line to be a long-term winner.

I would encourage everyone to do the following test:

Take a major market, MLB, NBA or NFL
Isolate all games where the close is different from the open by more than the vig
Measure your results if you got the open

You will be astounded by the return you would get if you beat the close all the time. Since this is profitable, you can assume that if you were to beat the close consistently, you will profit.

If you are arguing that you can win long term in small markets without beating the close, german handball and such, yea it might be possible. If you are saying the you can profit on NBA or MLB, I doubt it. You would need a huge sample size to validate this, years and years worth of games. It would be more difficult to do that, than to beat the closing line. You are suggesting that you, as individual without inside information, is better able to assess the probability than the entirety of the market. All you need to be is faster to beat the closing line.

[u21c3f6]

To clarify what I wrote earlier, while the overall results for the close may be 50/50, each individual close is most certainly not 50/50.

My focus is to wager on those events where I calculate that the line is not 50/50. For the games that I select, my focus is to get the opener or better. From my personal selections this NBA season I beat the closer 53%, equaled the closer 13% and got worse than the close 34% of the time with very similar results for previous seasons. To me, that is not a record that screams beating the closer and most of my beating the closer don't always cover the vig (I average -105 on my ATS wagers).

The beating the closer wagers have a slightly higher success rate than the wagers I make that equal or are worse than the close but the equal or worse wagers are also profitable with no need to beat the closer. Obviously profitability on the equal or worse wagers would have been higher had I beat the close but only slightly so.

Joe.

[Waterstpub87]

To clarify what I wrote earlier, while the overall results for the close may be 50/50, each individual close is most certainly not 50/50.

My focus is to wager on those events where I calculate that the line is not 50/50. For the games that I select, my focus is to get the opener or better. From my personal selections this NBA season I beat the closer 53%, equaled the closer 13% and got worse than the close 34% of the time with very similar results for previous seasons. To me, that is not a record that screams beating the closer and most of my beating the closer don't always cover the vig (I average -105 on my ATS wagers).

The beating the closer wagers have a slightly higher success rate than the wagers I make that equal or are worse than the close but the equal or worse wagers are also profitable with no need to beat the closer. Obviously profitability on the equal or worse wagers would have been higher had I beat the close but only slightly so.

Joe.

Individual wager are unimportant, individual closers maybe 45% or 55%, it does not matter if:

1. They average out to 50/50
2. You are unable to know ahead of time if they are not 50/50

Magnitude is more important then frequency. If you beat NBA spreads by an average of 1.5 pts, but only beat them 40% of the time, you are winning more than beating them by an average of a half point, but beating them 65% of the time.

[u21c3f6]

Your focus is not my focus. Let me explain.

All closers are approx 50/50. If each individual closer was also 50/50, then the only way to win would be to beat the closer enough times to cover the vig and profit. I don't see it that way.

I agree that all closers approximate 50/50 but each individual game's closing is not 50/50. My hypothesis is that there is a group of closers that are 65/35, 60/40, 55/45, 50/50, 45/55,40/60, 35/65 etc so that the overall closer is approx 50/50. The trick is to find that subset of games that are not 50/50 and wager on the appropriate side so that your winning % will be greater than 50/50. I average 2.5 wagers per NBA day and have done so for many years.

You are basically telling me that I can't be doing what I am doing which is not the case.

Joe.

[Waterstpub87]

Your focus is not my focus. Let me explain.

All closers are approx 50/50. If each individual closer was also 50/50, then the only way to win would be to beat the closer enough times to cover the vig and profit. I don't see it that way.

I agree that all closers approximate 50/50 but each individual game's closing is not 50/50. My hypothesis is that there is a group of closers that are 65/35, 60/40, 55/45, 50/50, 45/55,40/60, 35/65 etc so that the overall closer is approx 50/50. The trick is to find that subset of games that are not 50/50 and wager on the appropriate side so that your winning % will be greater than 50/50. I average 2.5 wagers per NBA day and have done so for many years.

You are basically telling me that I can't be doing what I am doing which is not the case.

Joe.

Ok, so there are multiple explanations for that:

1. You know more than the market as a whole
2. You got lucky over those years, would need the number of years and win % to calculate chance of that
3. You have not kept accurate records, and are not actually winning

I do not mean to insult you at all. I don't know your process for selecting bets, so I cannot make any assumptions. No offense intended.

[u21c3f6]

Waterstpub87, No offense taken at all and thank you for the intelligent conversation. These kind of threads have turned into pissing contests in the past.

To answer your explanations:

1. I do not know more than the market as a whole. In fact I couldn't tell you who plays for what team!
2. I did not get lucky all these years and my performance is well outside 3 std dev
3. I keep meticulous records and I know to the penny how much money I have made. I use a modified (by me) half-Kelly for wagering.

I am not about to describe my methodology for making selections but I will give you this one example from yesterday.

Yesterday there was a thread titled: Suns ML tonight is too easy. I love these threads especially when I am on the other side because it lets me know that I am on the right side. I play ATS and I got a worse number than the closer but I won the wager. There of course was no guarantee that I would win, just that my calculations told me that this was a line that would be out of whack and the wagering continued to make the line more out of whack. In this instance, the closer IMO became more out of whack than the opener.

Joe.

[gojetsgomoxies]

i just read the most comprehensive by far academic paper on sports betting i've ever seen. it seems to suggest the closing line is NOT the most efficient predictor of the game spread. seem to suggest that that point is back towards the opening line. not sure how far back and it's analyzing 10's of thousands of results.

google moskowitz and sports betting. i think that's correct.

[Alfa1234]

https://www.pinnacle.com/en/betting-articles/educational/why-pinnacle-doesnt-close-or-limit-accounts

A great article about this. It only covers soccer but the principle goes for every major market offered by Pinnacle Sports. Considering almost all other bookies will adjust their odds if the line moves at Pinnacle, you can assume this goes for the other bookies as well.

U21c3f6, you make 2 to 3 wagers a day on NBA. How many years have you been doing this? Anything under 10k bets is not a valid sample and wins can still be attributed to variance.

Another theory is, you may actually be beating the closing line on average by a few % without knowing it (do you keep track of all your bets and add the closing line to your stats all the time?). It's possible you're beating the line by 2 or 3% which would be very hard to notice if you don't keep track of every bet, but those few % added to a bit of variance can explain a nice ROI.

[u21c3f6]

Alfa1234, I think you and I will have to disagree that anything under 10,000 wagers is not a valid sample. Since only 15-33% of games are selected as wagers that means you would have to analyze 30,000 to over 60,000 games to be valid per your standard. First, some edges don't last that long. Second, that would be far too many seasons and things do change over time. I hope you don't wait for 10,000 wagers for validation before risking serious money.

I have used the very concept that I am describing in this thread successfully for over 40 years. While I do not have 10,000 NBA wagers I do have thousands of NBA wagers (with a success rate well above 3 std dev) and across all my wagering over the years way over 10,000 wagers using the very same concept profitably in various other sports. I wagered very part-time until 2011 when I retired (10 years early due in part to gambling winnings) and have been wagering almost daily since I retired. I realize what I wrote may generate some questions but this is all I feel comfortable writing about this at this time.

As to your theory, I have not beat the closing line enough of of the time or by enough margin to generate profits by that method and I keep meticulous records. Which is also the reason for my confidence in my results. My profits come from the fact that the sub-set of games that I wager on win at a rate significantly higher than 50/50 and that is what produces the profits.

As a side note Kelly is a wonderful thing. I read a lot naysayers on these and other boards that try to discredit Kelly but frankly it is mathematical genius. First, to use Kelly you must have an edge and unfortunately that means that most people cannot use Kelly. It also seems to me that a lot of the naysayers haven't ever used Kelly and/or don't understand its application. If you have an edge that can be quantified correctly (a lot can be written about this alone but I don't have the time right now) I suggest that you seriously give Kelly a chance. My recommendation would be to use half-Kelly for added safety and less wild swings of bankroll. Going back to validation, for me it really does't matter, I have already replaced my entire bankroll with profits this NBA season so even if I lose my entire bankroll at this point, I will not have lost a nickel. I do this year after year. I debated whether I should write the following but here goes: My half-Kelly wagers are as follows:

# of wagers to make

1 9% of bankroll
2 8.2% of bankroll on each wager or 16.4% of bankroll at risk
3 7.5% of bankroll on each wager or 22.5% of bankroll at risk
4 6.8% of bankroll on each wager or 27.2% of bankroll at risk
5 6.2% of bankroll on each wager or 31.0% of bankroll at risk
6 5.6% of bankroll on each wager or 33.6% of bankroll at risk (The most wagers I have had in one day)

I'll stop here as I am sure that many of you will find this either unbelievable or too risky or?

Joe.

[HeeeHAWWWW]

I'll stop here as I am sure that many of you will find this either unbelievable or too risky or?

Just as a minor side-note, when you have multiple bets running at once, the Kelly optimal stake is reduced a bit.

[u21c3f6]

HeeeHAWWWW, I am not sure what you mean. The wagers are reduced for multiple wagers. For example, if I have 1 wager, I wager 9% of bankroll but if I have 2 wagers, I wager only 8.2% (instead of 9%) of bankroll on each wager.

Joe.

[Alfa1234]

Alfa1234, I think you and I will have to disagree that anything under 10,000 wagers is not a valid sample. Since only 15-33% of games are selected as wagers that means you would have to analyze 30,000 to over 60,000 games to be valid per your standard. First, some edges don't last that long. Second, that would be far too many seasons and things do change over time. I hope you don't wait for 10,000 wagers for validation before risking serious money.

I have used the very concept that I am describing in this thread successfully for over 40 years. While I do not have 10,000 NBA wagers I do have thousands of NBA wagers (with a success rate well above 3 std dev) and across all my wagering over the years way over 10,000 wagers using the very same concept profitably in various other sports. I wagered very part-time until 2011 when I retired (10 years early due in part to gambling winnings) and have been wagering almost daily since I retired. I realize what I wrote may generate some questions but this is all I feel comfortable writing about this at this time.

As to your theory, I have not beat the closing line enough of of the time or by enough margin to generate profits by that method and I keep meticulous records. Which is also the reason for my confidence in my results. My profits come from the fact that the sub-set of games that I wager on win at a rate significantly higher than 50/50 and that is what produces the profits.

As a side note Kelly is a wonderful thing. I read a lot naysayers on these and other boards that try to discredit Kelly but frankly it is mathematical genius. First, to use Kelly you must have an edge and unfortunately that means that most people cannot use Kelly. It also seems to me that a lot of the naysayers haven't ever used Kelly and/or don't understand its application. If you have an edge that can be quantified correctly (a lot can be written about this alone but I don't have the time right now) I suggest that you seriously give Kelly a chance. My recommendation would be to use half-Kelly for added safety and less wild swings of bankroll. Going back to validation, for me it really does't matter, I have already replaced my entire bankroll with profits this NBA season so even if I lose my entire bankroll at this point, I will not have lost a nickel. I do this year after year. I debated whether I should write the following but here goes: My half-Kelly wagers are as follows:

# of wagers to make

1 9% of bankroll
2 8.2% of bankroll on each wager or 16.4% of bankroll at risk
3 7.5% of bankroll on each wager or 22.5% of bankroll at risk
4 6.8% of bankroll on each wager or 27.2% of bankroll at risk
5 6.2% of bankroll on each wager or 31.0% of bankroll at risk
6 5.6% of bankroll on each wager or 33.6% of bankroll at risk (The most wagers I have had in one day)

I'll stop here as I am sure that many of you will find this either unbelievable or too risky or?

Joe.

Interesting, this means you actually do have a skill that allows you to beat an efficient market consistently over time. I seriously think you are beating the closing odds on average but think you are simply unaware of this. Do you keep records of the closing odd of your bets or not?

I am simply not aware of any method to consistently make money than by betting on something that pays more than the actual probability of that thing happening.

If you bet "heads" all the time at a cointoss but get a 101% payout of your stake for being right, but only lose 100% of your stake you'll make money if you just bet enough times to take variance out of the equation. You need about 10k bets for this to completely even out although I'm not saying a sample with less bets than that can just be dismissed out of hand. I'm also convinced all major markets have a closing odd which reflects the true probability of that event happening, as the odds are formed by sharp bettors placing bets untill the odds reflect the true probability of that event. That means it's mathematically impossible to make money without beating the closing odd consistently as those odds have juice built in so they actually pay less than the probability of the event happening. If you place a bet that you think will win, but the efficient market has deemed your bet to have a 50% chance of winning...you'll need a payout of at least +101 (or 2.01 in decimal odds) to make money. The market has been formed and the closing odds reflect the probability so you need to beat them to make money.

This assumes ofcourse the market is right on average, and the Pinnacle analysis from my post above (400k sample size) prooves that it is.

I do use Kelly myself and am full time involved with this.

[HeeeHAWWWW]

HeeeHAWWWW, I am not sure what you mean. The wagers are reduced for multiple wagers. For example, if I have 1 wager, I wager 9% of bankroll but if I have 2 wagers, I wager only 8.2% (instead of 9%) of bankroll on each wager.

Ahh gotcha. Mis-read what you were meaning.

Not much sleep this past week - it really does make you stupid.