Taking my talents to Cantor

Someone needs a friend in Vegas!

I have a similar situation.  Love the research - keep me posted.

yes...please keep us posted...as hard as it is to get money in and out of sportsbooks...LV is looking more better everyday

Hows Vegas treating you?..doing any NFL/NCAA ??

Well, the Vegas office is setup and ready to go. I leased a small apartment for 5 months and will use that as a base of operations. Everything is setup: electric, cable/internet, betting accts. I am actually going next week for a couple days just to get the key and make sure everything is on and running. I was able to get my uncle to be my partner (he is contributing sweat equity), in this venture and he will take care of the place full-time starting at the end of this month. My plays won’t start until about the 2^nd week in November. He will also help by providing a physical presence for the new company in the state at all times. I plan to come and go about 4-5 times over the course of my 13 week NBA betting season. I'm not moving there, I'm just using Nevada as a legal/safe place to operate and house my sports investing business. My uncle will do the plays when I'm out of town. I can do the background work really anywhere in the world. The total cost to fund the ENTIRE operation (including me travelling, getting everything setup, paying my uncle $300 a week, rent, cable, etc. etc. etc.) is under $15k! And this is the first time doing this! Going forward, in future seasons or for example MLB in the spring, the cost to fund this operation would be reduced significantly because of the initial costs with just determining suitable locations, exploratory travelling, etc.

700 plays, hitting 53%, and risking $2500 per play, is a profitable endeavor after all costs. Albeit not much. Point being that you don't need much of an edge to clear that $15k hurdle. In this case, the major determinate is bankroll size.

I don't really bet football anymore as I have yet to figure out a winning strategy. I continue to look at it and try to create predictive ratings, but right now I concentrate my investing efforts on the NBA and MLB. NCAA Basketball is also something I have been testing for a while now and I am going to give it a go this year off-shore for small money. College hoops is a sport that has the characteristics of one that can be beat. For one, there is a large disparity between teams. Couple that with 350 teams playing over 30 games. That’s about 12,000 combined sides and totals. The sheer number of available choices makes it almost guaranteed that some of those lines will be off. I create various proprietary power ratings and track other quantitative data for each team and update them after every game. It is a process, but it allows to me to single out 500-1,000 plays over the course of a season with a reasonable win pct. (53-55%).

All told for both college and pro, it is about 50 hours a week. It is definitely a commitment and never could be done in the old days without a computer and the internet. At least not daily!

Biding my time.

gl personally i would never be able to base an entire operation solely on the nba...as you mentioned theres bigger disparity in ncaa, more teams, more choice, and more lucrative opportunities.  

bol regardless

GL man. ive made good money wagering consistent 300-1200 runs  weekly but  rolling up a steak and taking a stab at it BOL and i hope one day if you ever write a book about yur success you put this entire posting in it.   

I'm excited to get started, but I admit I'm a little nervous. It doesn’t matter how much money you have, losing some is not fun. In this venture, my max. loss could be as high as $52k. I am spending $15k on the back-office and I have a max investment loss of $37k (25% of bank). But, to lose the max, the venture would have to go the full season and right at the end I would get down the 25% and call it quits. If I'm down 25% at any time prior, I'd close the operation down and save some of the overhead. But I’d still lose over 40k, so there wouldn’t be much savings. Those are the two worst case scenarios and there are many more favorable outcomes. And since I’m investing less than 2% of my bank on any given outcome, I feel pretty confident that I can withstand the ups and downs that I surely will encounter.

The only problem I see with this business, is that IF it does work and it is successful, the sky IS NOT the limit. At this level, you are making max-limit opening number bets. What book is going to let you bet more at that number when you are already proving to be good at it? Most would probably backed you off. Don’t forget, I’m only talking about the opening number, you may be able to get more down later, but that may not be where your edge is. For me, the following quote is applicable:

 

“When you bet the opening line, you are betting against the sportsbook, when you bet the closing line, you are betting against the “market”.

 

Setting the opening line necessarily has to include subjective/purposefully biased opinions on the part of the person putting that virgin line out. This creates a moment in time when you as a player and the book can have slightly diverging interests. This is ALWAYS going to be your best opportunity to take advantage of these differing goals. Especially since the player has the option of passing on a game. My goal is to find small differences in only about a quarter of the games. And then to be right only 53.5% of the time. My historical avg is slightly over 55%, but at 53.5% a strong profitability argument can be made.

Cantor says they're different. They say they'll let you make the posted limit bets and they won’t back you off. Regardless of how you do. I have heard/read many interviews with them claiming that they want ALL players. They say that they'll raise the limits of players from the posted ones just by asking. I’m hoping to be able to put them to that test in future seasons.

I would consider this biz a success (and worth doing again), if I can gross at least 25K. That's a fair return on capital for 3 months given the level of risk and potential for the max loss. This annualizes to about 100k a year if it could be done this way for 12 consecutive months (which is not likely).

As far as selections, I like my chances, I generate multiple power ratings that have proven to be heavily correlated to actual outcomes. It’s the day-to-day running of the operation that will be the potentially biggest challenge. Coordinating the daily routine/procedures, making sure plays are in as soon as lines come out, etc. All the things that will need to be done procedurally to make this work. If there is a future season, it will definitely be easier since the minute details will have already been figured out. I’ve tried to anticipate all the nuances of running something like this, but I’m sure there will be some glitches along the way. I am actually going to be spending the first week of plays drafting procedures and doing “live” run-throughs of what we need to do daily when I’m not there. I have given this alot of thought and testing and feel pretty good that we can execute this easily.

Ultimately, if I can make 50-75k per year investing in only NCAAb, NBA and MLB, I’d be happy. All told maybe 9 months of the year with time off in between. This is after expenses and assumes about a 200k bankroll. It’s definitely possible.

What makes it hard is the books’ resistance to basically just hand you money. Especially if you are not the type to leak away profits on other wagers. The smart books though are not turning away players, instead they are using that information. They are realizing that having winning players play with them is the same as buying information. That “bought” information can then be used to make even more money from those “less informed”.

That is what Cantor does.

Think of it this way: Cantor also has a securities trading division on Wall Street. Would they ever not do a trade with Goldman because Goldman is too smart? Of course not, what they would do is use that info and their past experience to determine what that means and how they can use that info profitably.  Cantor is just applying securities trading techniques to the sports investing market. The difference is that with the securities market, there is no opening number. The reason: One entity arbitrarily setting an opening number is inherently inefficient and can be beaten by smart people playing with different constraints. So how does Cantor combat that? By limiting how much they will pay for the info (i.e. betting limits).

Right now, that info is very valuable to them and they are willing to pay those who can provide it. We’ll see what mine is worth.

hitting 53% of 700 bets is 371-329
Winning bets: 371 x $2,722.72 (payout after juice on $2500 bet) = $843,181.81
Losing bets: 329 x $2500 = $822,500
Profit on bets: $843k-$822k= $20,681
Minus $15k overhead = $5,681
Over 13 weeks = $437/week
50 hours per week = $8.74/hr
Congrats man...living the dream making just over minimum wage

I just said 53% was profitable. My point was to show that it doesn't take much to overcome the costs of running a business like this. I didn't say that was my dream. Maybe you need a lesson in reading comprehension.

As I said previously, I would only consider it a successful business idea worth repeating if I can net at least 25k. That's a fair return on capital for 3 months given the level of risk and potential for max. loss. That's 8 grand a month (96k annualized).   

To win this amount, I need 53.6% for 700 plays at $2500 per play. My historical average is 55.4%. At that number I make over 85k after expenses (for 3 months!!)

Breakeven for me is 52.83% (after expenses). 

My goal is to show that diligience, bankroll and sound handicapping techniques can have an advantage. AND that those with an advantage can run it legally as a business to make large profits.

My dream is to make money. If it works, it works on my terms. I'll still eat if it fails. Not to brag, but it's only 50K I'm risking at most. Not much in the scheme of things. Plus, over half is accumulated winnings from the past couple years.

And, I'm helping the ecomony by starting a small business.

Unlike that other fraud, not to mention any manes cough cough NYSLIM

this sounds like it could work.
You have your priorities in the right place and you actually plan on putting in the work.
good luck brother, Destroy them

Opening day is here!

First plays in a week or two.

I just hope to get off to a good start. It sucks digging out of a hole early on.

I never told you guys what I love most about wagering on basketball. It's that I hate watching the game. I honestly could not name more than 10 players in the whole NBA!!

As a result, I don't go on tilt. I don't need to know how I lost a wager because of a missed layup. It doesn't matter. Just give me my plays and a decent win rate.

 

are you going to post all of your plays? I hope so, I want to see this strategy in action.

I might start posting them and see how it goes.

At this point in the season, I'm just letting my initial power numbers get more accurate and I'm building the database for this years teams and play.

I will only start making plays when the teams in a game have played a predetermined number of games. It looks like the first potential play would be November 11. From then, it will be only a few potential plays per day building until around November 21. At that point, all the teams have played the requisite number of games and every game can be potentially played.

Historically, I average about 7.8 plays per day for my season. Keep in mind, I will stop making plays once the season has been played 75% of the way. I expect 700-800 plays all told.

 

Good luck HH, I hope to follow and I am assuming some of these plays will be CBB as well as NBA. I hope you will post here or NBA forum or CBB forum?  I am presently here in LV and the weather happens to be very nice for late Oct.  better than the east that got slammed by Hurricane Sandy.

Good luck HH. I enjoyed reading this thread. About your uncle who might get confused or mixed up somehow... I'm guessing you already know this, but there are several screen sharing programs out there where you could monitor his computer screen remotely and help him through any hardships. I'm guessing everything will be cool until there is some small glitch and poor uncle will get confused and screw up royally, maybe mis-bet or just miss making bets due to Windows wanting to update or Java errors or any other stupid shit that computers do. It WILL happen at the worst possible time, when you aren't on site. The last thing you want to have to do is blindly walk him through how to fix the issue when there is $$ on the line.

Join.me is a screen sharing program and logmein.com is a free service that lets you remote access a windows machine. I use logmein to fix my parents computer all the time... from fixing mom's printer driver to removing a virus my dad infected the computer with after surfing porn sites... I have kept their system running in a pinch.

Good luck...

Thanks for the well wishes!!

Yeah. My uncle will be a challenge. I have definitely anticipated something going wrong. Like you said, it will inevitably happen at the worst time. I have tried a method similar to what you described (I used gotomypc), to be able to control the computer in this event. The problem with those methods is that the gaming app literally sets up a VPN between the pc/device and the gaming server. It effectively locks out the computer from doing anything else including being controlled externally. There may be a hack around that but, that is beyond my computer proficiency level.

Instead, I developed a work-around. I setup a dedicated webcam with video chat that has its own IP. I focused it directly on the pc screen. That way I can "see" exactly what he is doing as he does it, view the plays, see my balances, etc. and can actually walk him through any potential problems/questions that come up. I just tell him what and where to click.

Although he will have a week of hands-on training, I'm sure it will be like the first time once I'm not there.

Procedures and repitition will be one of the keys to success.

If this venture fails, I want it to be because of something I can't control. Like win pct or an act of god. Not something that I could/should have anticipated.

 

Bol 

Not a computer expert so I'm not forsure.... But could you not possibly set up a computer in Nevada. Then log on to that computer through the internet and place the bet. (Like how somebody from across the country can get on your computer to fix a virus). This has probably already been thought of but just curious... Good luck 

Wow. This is inspiring. 

HardballHarry,

 

A very interesting endeavor you’re taking. It will probably work if the important pieces of the puzzle fall into place.

 

1. The most important of all is finding a book that will continue to take actions from a winning player and not getting backed off. I used to play blackjack seriously, recreationally (not a full time pro) and was backed off at places like Mandalay Bay, Palace Stations, and Indian casinos where I live. So after running out of places to play blackjack, I got into sports betting. And after milking my first two bookies for some fine steaks and wine, I got backed off from those bookies, and I am about to lose my third and last bookie.

 

2. Assume -110 on each play, the juice becomes highly significant when you are pushing out plays at a high volume. For example, nowadays you can play with -105 juice with a local bookie. At a win rate of 56% on 1000 plays, $1000 each play, the total juice is only -$22,000. Compare that with -$44,000 at -110 juice. So assuming you can’t do anything about the juice when playing in Vegas, you will have to boost your winrate up by 100 basis points or 1% (your new winrate now has to be 57%) to help pay for the juice.

 

When I play blackjack or sportsbetting, I’m not afraid of losing. I’m only afraid of not being able to put in actions. Those damn casinos in Vegas all put on bullshyt advertising saying, “Anyone can be a winner here.” But the reality is, that statement only applies to losers: Only losers are allowed to go into casinos and drop their hard earned money and go home. If you show any signs of a being thinking/winning player, they will stop you from playing.

 

I am considering taking my actions to Vegas, as I can’t find a fourth trustworthy local. But the thought of carrying so much cash through the airport, around Vegas, walking back and forth shopping for lines doesn’t seem efficient. And I’ve already looked at William Hill, Cantor Gaming, and Stations Casinos Sports Connection Mobile, I don’t feel good giving out all my personal info and social security number to them. Add in the good probability that they will back you off after you win 10K-15K.

 

Would love to hear any comments regarding Vegas backing off winning players from sportsbetting or other good, legal ways to get your bets into Vegas from out of state.

 

Thank you for reading and sharing.

There are limits on wager actions in all casinos sports books I have been.  Why they will not take your action does not make any sense as you are giving them the opportunity to win your money or lose their money.  As for cash, I have markers that allow me to leave cash at home and sign the markers for all the cash I would need.  All you need to do is fill out forms giving the casino legal right s to draw funds from your banking institution as you draw from your marker line.   Had ten grand limit at Lady Luck but they only would allow me to make a marker at a table game for chips, but this was years ago.  Today the casinos I frequent allow me to get cash from my marker as long I produce an ID and my player's card.