You have Questions? Tim Donaghy has the Answers!

I guess I stumbled on this too late. I have a good one. 

Phil Birnbaum did a pretty interesting analysis of this whole issue.

https://sabermetricresearch.blogspot.com/2009/12/did-tim-donaghy-really-win-70-of-his.html

He basically argued that even with inside information on grudges, etc., it was more or less impossible for Donaghy to win 70% of his bets.  He went on to imply that no true accounting has ever proved that Donaghy was that successful and that its entirely possible that he was lucky/lying about how much of an impact there was.

I think there is a widespread belief that simply having a referee on your side (or knowing a ref's subconscious leanings) will magically give you an astronomical edge.  Birnbaum argued pretty well, that no ref could favor a team by more than a couple of foul calls without it being totally obvious.  A couple of foul calls isn't nearly enough to get you anywhere close to 70%.  I'm curious if Donaghy read Birnbaum's critique and if he had a response.

Crap here was my question.....

Who should i take tonight?

Wish I had seen this earlier.   Great stuff.

From my perspective, there are two ways to approach questions to Tim.  1) Human Interest or 2) Gambling/Handicapping.   I have a ton of questions for him that would fall into the first category, but since this forum is heavily slanted to the gamblers and "how can I use this information to make money" side, I would focus the questions to enlighten us as it pertains to betting on basketball.

Two questions I would pose:

1)  What type of games are most likely going to his attention?  Certain teams, situations, totals, sides, etc?  Meaningless games, etc?  If there is a trend here, what should gamblers/handicappers look for?

2) Can you "handicap" a referee?  Are there trends?

Thanks a lot--- ThePhantom

Read the Birnbaum article.  It goes into a lot of detail on the math.

The biggest question is how many extra calls can a corrupt ref make or not make within a game without it becoming blatantly obvious that he is acting well outside of normal variation.

The average ref calls 8 fouls per game per team.  So how many do they need to call in order to give a team that would normally be 50% ATS a 70% ATS probability.  The answer is that they need to call 12 extra fouls. 

Calling 250% of the normal amount is blatantly obvious.  It would set off all sorts of red flags at the league offices.  You cannot realistically believe that somebody's subconscious biases (their grandson is a big fan of a certain play) could be responsible for a 250% increase with all of the negative reprecussions that would bring.

I am willing to believe that biases etc.  do play a factor.  The question is "how much".  I'm willing to believe up to a foul or two extra per game.  But even if a gambler knew that a certain team was going to get one extra call in a night, how much would that change their expected value. 

The fact that Donaghy threw out a completely unrealistic number and had apparently never done any sort of research whatsoever on its implications leads me to believe that he never seriously entertained this question. 

Several other "facts" that Donaghy apparently relied on like Dick Bavetta's love of close games have been thoroughly debunked.

https://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/11341/did-dick-bavetta-prop-up-weaker-teams

All of this makes me question whether a lot of his numbers and facts are based in reality.