Fade the Public Fiesta

That is my assumption. 

I was going to do that, but the numbers that I look at disappear after tip-off.  Not sure if they live historically somewhere after that. 

You're absolutely right.  Don't know what I was thinking. 

It looked like a line begging for Butler action, which it got, and the line moved the other way.  While that may be a lot of things (including - at the risk of starting a three-day-long stupidity fest in my thread, an RLM game), it was surely not a "public dog."    Sorry about that.

Don't forget, you're 11-9 with SEVEN outright dog winners.

So, for most people, WL's most popular plays went 0-5 last night, (with another outright dog winner in BC).   Now, while I won't suggest it's as simple as fading the most popular WL plays every day to prosperity, I will suggest that if you can find a reliable barometer of public sentiment (and WL seems as good a place as any), that's a nice tool to have. Vegas, Costa Rica, Mauritius doesn't care, because they know 95% of you won't have the discipline to follow any roadmap to success that doesn't hit at least 100% of the time anyway. As a general rule, if you see that 77 percent of (some reasonable appoximation) the public is on Portland State -5.5 at Idaho State, it's probably a great time to get in touch with your Inner Bengal, and your Inner Bengal's Money Line too.

I've been tracking every game that has a 60% betting public for the past 3 months.  I've collected all kinds of data to be able to sort through including opening and closing line (for line movement), major conference vs small schools, winning against spread and winning straight up and home/away.  I've got over 600 games on here now.

I've found a few trends that perform really well but if you purely go against the public you will be straddling 50% for sure.  The first is to bet ON the favorite when the public is saying the underdog will win.  It's very rare to see this and they are hitting at 65% clip.

The second one is to take an away underdog when the spread is under 5 points.  They are winning straight up at 48% of the time for a profitable overally play.  You'll get about 10% return on your betting unit.  So if you bet $100 every play and there are 5 games a day that qualify you'll be making $50 per day.

No surprise there.  Public dogs are death. 

If I may ask, where are you getting your opening numbers? 

I suspect, without knowing, that if you played every non-power-conference home dog of 6 or less, both with the spread and on the ML, you'd be doing quite well. I further suspect, with further not knowing, that if you eliminated public dogs and perhaps only played teams getting, say, 42% of the action or less, you'd be doing quite better. I've had too much going on this year to do anything in a very systemic way, but I am going to do something like this starting next January 1. 

Indeed; St. Louis as well.  Perhaps it's just a particularly religious group of gamblers out there today. 

SLU is an interesting dog to be garning a lot of support, because they're pretty terrible, and have been particularly terrible away from home.  They almost beat (should have beaten) the Rams the first time.  Don't know if that's good news or bad news for the rematch.

Looks like Northwestern and VPI are popular public dogs this evening.  That would make Minnesota and Miami the plays, respectively, if you want to keep riding against these plays. 

 [please note, in advance, that there will be days, perhaps even two or three , when public dogs will win .  I swear.  Really. ]

Quote Originally Posted by Upside:

 Please accept me as a friend .. 

Nothing would give me greater joy, assuming I can figure out how to do it. 

RLM Game of Day = DePaul

Line Begging for Money (but won't get mine) = Northeastern (which I happen to agree with, but it's just too shady)

Public Just Can't Get Enough of the Other Side POD = Colorado

ODU - covered by 11

MTSU - covered by 30

*Pepperdine - covered by 2.5

Arizona - covered by 7

*Pepperdine was obviously the play, given that Santa Clara was the public dog. I just typed the wrong team in when I went to list the plays.

So, public dogs went a spiffy 0-4, failing to cover by a mere 50 points in the process.

There appear to be none shaping up for today.  If you're an action junkie, Dartmouth might technically qualify as a play, though it's a little early to tell.

Quote Originally Posted by Rip100:

true, but you have to look deeper, watch the spread and moneyline moves close to game time at the sharp books, especially bookmaker, many times you are looking to fade or pass on those moves

I do those things, though I'm beginning to wonder if I'd be better off just putting this on auto-pilot.  When you see the public all over a dog, and the line keeps creeping up, you might as well starting spending the money you haven't won yet.   Because it's coming.