Illusion of Control

I have been on here for a couple years and really know nothing more then the next guy, but yet i've climbed my way to 22/30,000 or so on all sports. I'm a team expert for MLB which makes no sense which leads me to believe are there actually good handicappers out there or is it all just chance. What I mean by chance is like this for example. If I had 1000 monkeys and gave them all ten darts and told them to throw at a board that had the names and spreads of teams playing that day. How many monkeys would be winning? You guessed it roughly half the monkeys will have more winning picks then loses. If I took those winning monkeys and had them do it again the next day I would get about the same results give or take a few. After a week I would be left with a few monkeys with an impressive win record. Would you pay these monkeys for next weeks picks. Now givith that was 1000 monkeys. Wagerline has 50,000 people or so. They say good handicappers average around 60%. That is statistically significant because it's so close to chance which is 50%, and if chance is in your favor then it will obviously be higher then 50%. Games are not indeterminate, they are just indeterminable at the current time. Handicappers look for structure where there is none. They look for patterns in everything, but with so many variables I believe this is impossible. Which gives people the illusion of control. When they win it confirms there hypothesis about why a team one. O' the under hit because of Detroit's great D. No the under hit because by chance they didn't score that much. Maybe tomorrow maybe the next. When they lose they think there was some pattern they might have over looked or the other team just played so good. again no. What do you think? Is this point valid? I'd like to hear all sides. ||thumbs_up.gif' border=0>||thumbs_down.gif' border=0>

The same has been said for monkeys picking stocks. People play the stock market and most have the illusion of making money but once you subtract out inflation the real winners are the people on Wall Street and the corporate bigwigs. And that's why you need to hit over 55% to make money because you have to pay the casinos. Whether it's picking stocks or sports teams there are probably 10% of people who are pros and can make a real good living at it and probably 10% who are really bad at it. The rest fall somewhere in the middle and make or lose a little money but have fun doing it. In regards to your point the sample size is significant. If you hit 60% over the course of 10, 100 or even 1,000 picks it probably still somewhat random but once you're getting over 5,000 picks and your still hitting 60% you may be on to something. 22/33,000 doesn't really matter, it's all relative (especially if 25,000/33,000 are losing money. What matters is if you're up or down with the money. Everything in life is a gamble...even doing nothing! The key is to learn from mistakes and to hopefully recognize certain patterns.

Well said ibetiwinitall. Where have you been. Taking care of that baby I hope.||Peace_5.gif' border=0>

Yes I have! Thanks for the thought! He's 7 months now and hopefully will become a White Sox or D-backs fan. But baseball is back and so am I!