TheBetGuy

At the end of the day, this system is based on the idea that the algorithm is "more right" than Vegas. Doesn't mean "always right", that's a huge difference. It just means that I don't necessairily assume the Vegas moves are inherently "better" and if they move against me, that means the algo was wrong. The thing is, the only factor that goes into my lines are the pure stats. Of course thats a big chunk of Vegas lines, but they also have significant other factors that go into their lines, some of them have nothing to do with the actual games (such as needing to rebalance their books). All that non-statistical "noise" is what causes the inefficiencies that makes capping in the first place. If Vegas lines were perfectly efficient at all times, handicapping would be impossible because at theoretically perfecly efficient lines, the odds of any event would always be 50/50, and with the vig, it would be as impossible to make money long term on bets as it would be on slot machines.

@BBGunzz

 Excellent question.

Yes, I do. Because although the reason we bet early is to capture closing line value, that's just a bonus. The system isn't based ON capturing closing line value, it's fundamentally that I believe my algorithm is "more right" than the Vegas line, because even though it is sharp money is a big factor in line moves throughout the day, there are also other important factors that have nothing to do with capping, such as the need for bookies to be equally balanced on both sides. And even though sharp money is much more influential in line movement, there's far more public money overall in any wager, and that inevitably makes the public line inherently inefficient.

These bets can bets can be broken down into three main types:

1) a line that was in the dead zone at the open moves into the live zone (i.e. 3+ pts away from my line). This  type is the most common,usually happening at least once every day. This bet is considered part of the system, and as such, it's automatic (i.e. I don't make any judgement call, if it hits that 3+ pts, it's a bet. If not, it isn't).

2) A line that was bet at the open moves toward us, and we have the ability to lock in at least a push by betting the other side, with the chance for a double win. i.e. a line opens at 200 and we take the over 200 b/c the algo says 210, and it then moves to 205, where you could take the under and have a chance to win on both if it hits between 201-205.  This is the next most common, although it's still pretty rare. Maybe 1-2 a week. This one is always a judgement call, mostly based on how big of a window there is.  Usually as a rule of thumb, the line needs to be at least in the dead zone. For instance, in the above example, I wouldn't actually make the bet, because the high range (205) is still below my line of 210. Plus I'd want a bigger window to win, otherwise you're just turning a likely winning bet into a likely push. If it rose to, say, 209-210 then I'd probably take that, as it's in my dead zone and there's a much bigger 9-10 pt window.

3) A line that was bet at the open moves away from us. Same as #2, it's never automatic, and rarely do I do it. Plus I'd also want to see a large movement in order to justify it. If a line moves against us by a couple points, I won't double down on that. But if it moves against us by 7-8 pts, I'll think much harder about it. The thing is, you don't want to throw good money after bad, and even though broadly speaking the market can be inefficient, you do need to respect the market when it's telling you something (as it would be if it made an 8 pt move lol). First I'd look again at injuries, forums, social media etc etc to see if there's an obvious reason for the move (injuries usually, or late game scratches). If there's nothing obvious, I'll go over the numbers again. If I see nothing there, I'll just do a sort of "gut feel" look at the teams playing and if I still don;t see why the move, I'll usually bet again.

Even though the bulk of my bets are the ones I post hereat the open, I'll usually have added a few over the course of the day that I don't post here as part of my own overall betting strategy. I don't post them because there's no way those to be accurately tracked since nobody would actually know when I made those bets and if I wanted I could just say I got them at lines which pad my stats and make my record look better.

By posting my lines before Vegas does, and always betting the opening line (which is public for anyone to see) I make it impossible for me to manipulate the results, thus giving credibiliity to my overall record.

A quick programming note:

As we get towards the end of this 10 day experiment, it might be worthwhile thinking if you see value in the information you've been getting in these threads. I encourage anyone who hasn't to click my name and read through all the threads I've made (there should only be 10, one for each day). Not just the picks, but also some of the concepts/insights that I've posted. Ask yourself if that kind of information is useful to your analysis and is consistent with your own philosophies on betting.  After day 10 on here, there won't be any more free picks, as this should be considered the free trial period. To get the lines after that, you'll need to subscribe to my Patreon account, you can find more information about it in the Website Promotions section of the forums (or just search me on Patreon as 'as TheBetGuy'). Not only will you get the algorithm lines every night before the Vegas lines come out, there will be a wealth of information about proper bet management, how to set up your own system based off the algorithms lines, and there will be an open discussion format, where I'll make regular posts sharing my own knowledge, tips, advice, gleaned from many years of success and failures as a capper, definitely valuable information I wish someone had told me when I was starting out. I'll also be happy to answer any questions any subscribers have, either about my system, or help them develop their own. Of course I'll never divulge the nuts and bolts of my own algorithm, but I'll give much more insight into how it works, as well as advice on how to build your own, both from a statistical standpoint (how to cut through the noise and properly interpret data) as well as a technical standpoint (how to build out your algorithm and automate it on an excel spreadsheet, including automatically importing the public stats as soon as the game is over, and instantly recalculating the probabilities for any given matchup. All you'll need to do is select which teams you want probabilities for in the dropdown menu you'll build on the sheet).

I'm still trying to figure out the subscription service thing, mostly in terms of pricing, but I'm going to start low at first to build a following, and then reassess the pricing. But since I'm only going to accept a limited number of followers (theoretically, if the subscriber base got too big, any edge that was gleaned by the algorithm would be wiped out by all the followers betting them, making the service not as useful) once that is reached, the price can, and almost certainly will, go up. But for now, the pricing is set at peanuts compared to the value of the information, and any users that come over from here will get that price locked in for 3 months.

In any case, no need to decide now, still got a few more days to go to make up your mind. If the end of 10 days doesn't get us to 100 bets overall, I'll go another day or two until we get there, as that's the point where we can be reasonably certain that whatever the results are are legitimate and not due to luck. The odds of achieving a 55%+ win rate in a 50% probability event (the theoretical probability of a correct line) over 100 bets is roughly around 2-5%. So if at the end of 100 bets here, if we have a 55%+ win rate, there's about a 2-5% chance that I'm full of shit and just got those results by luck. Which means there's a 95-98% chance that I've actually developed a system that can consistently make money in the markets, and you'd be getting access to that system for almost nothing by subscribing. As a capper, I'd be all over those odds in a hearbeat.

A nice rebound night last night at 3-1 brings our overall total so far to 37-29 and brings us just above the 56% win rate, above our long term target of 55% win, so we're right on pace. Generally a 55% win rate is used as the dividing line between the 'sharps' and the 'squares' in the eyes of the books. Any player that consistently (i.e. at least 100+ bets, preferably 250+) wins at a 55%+ rate is generally considered "sharp" by the bookies. This can get you banned by some of the softer ones, but there's always sharp books (typically Pinnacle) that are happy to accept bets from sharps. It's part of their business model, in essence they "sell" the sharps softer lines at low limits , and in exchange they get the informational advantage the sharps give them by betting them, so by the time they open the lines with max limits to the public, they're confident they're more "right" than any of the other books, which is why Pinnacle's lines are always used as benchmarks. Pinnacle must has their own algorithm that decides when to classify a better as "sharp", and when they do you'll be able to bet on games before they put them out to the public, which is why I'm able to make my bets at the opening overnight lines,  even when Pinnacle usually won't offer their full slate of games until 9-10 AM to the public. That usually gives me several points of value on any given day as the lines more often than not move towards ours by the close.

I'm getting off topic though, my broad point is, with a consistent 55% win rate over the long term, the only thing limiting the amount of money you can make is how much you can afford to stake on each game (consistent with the basic principles of risk management, of course, and only risking between 2-5% of your total bankroll on any given game)

To recap:

Overall: 37-29 (16-17 spreads, 21-13 O/U)

Day 1: 8-5 (4-3 spreads, 4-2 O/U)

Day 2: 3-1 (1-1 spreads, 2-0 O/U)

Day 3: 9-5 (4-3 spreads, 5-2 O/U)

Day 4: 5-5 (3-1 spreads, 2-4 O/U)

Day 5: 2-5 (0-4 spreads, 2-2 O/U)

Day 6: 7-7 (3-4 spreads, 4-3 O/U)

Day 7: 3-1 (1-1 spreads, 2-2 O/U)

Day 8: TBP

For confirmation of the results so far, click on my name to see my post history and click on the thread for each day. Make note of the timestamps to confirm that all picks were made well before each game and make sure the tally on each day's thread matches the recap above. I can assure you they do, I'm just doing it this way so you don't need to take my word for it.

Here are the lines for tomorrow, Nov 17 (Day 9). As always once the opening lines come out later tonight, I'll post the picks based on those on this thread:

WAS @ MIA ------>  MIA -6/204

GSW @ CLE-------> GSW -9.5/215

LAC @ MEM -------> LAC -4.5/212.5

SAS @ MIN --------> SAS -2/216.5

PHI @ DEN -------->  DEN -5/203

TOR @ UTA -------> UTA -11.5/214

fwiw, my independently generated lines puts Washington as a 5 pt favorite on this. 

solid night last night on a slow day, going 3-1 overall.

Here are the picks for tonights games, as always, our picks are made at the open since our lines are ready to go the day before Vegas comes out with their opening lines which puts us in a position to bet as soon as they come out.

Spreads:

WAS +2.5

MIA -9.5

CLE +11

LAL +7.5

SAC +2

DAL +9

CHI +2.5*

* quick correction, on the lines posted yesterday, I had Chi +1, obviously was meant to be Chi -1, as I always list my lines by favorites. If our line was actually Chi +1, it would have been listed above as Por -1 and we wouldn't have made a bet at Chi +2.5, as that line would only be 1.5 pts off our line and so we would have no edge

OVER/UNDER

WAS-CHA: Under 222.5

NO-MIA: Over 208

BOS-ATL: Under 214.5

DAL-PHX: Under 220

CHI-POR: Under 222

@Dynasty4

 Dude, I really don't think you're understanding how much money is in professional sports. Tere's the obvious stuff you'd think of, such as ticket sales, tv deals for the US market, apparel, jerseys etc etc. They're about to ink a new TV deal in the next few months that will be worth around $8 billion/year (with a "b") alone. Do you have any idea how much money that is? That's enough to pay every NBA players salary and STILL have $4 billion left over. And that's just TV, then there's all the ticket sales, apparel, clothing, jerseys, overseas tv deals etc etc. So they're probably raking in at least $10 billion a year from all the public, legit side of the business. Which is why it's so absurd when you dismiss that and say "where's all the money coming from?" as if it's from betting. lol. You think even if the league rigged their games in order to bet on the games, they'd be able to even find anyone to take the kind of action they'd need to wager every night to make the risk to their enormous legitimate business worth it?

You do realize there isn't a magical Betting Monster that exists only to take any bets offered to it, never refuses to accept a bet, has unlimited capital, and will happily take billions in bets from leagues rigging their own games right? There's no bookie in the world capable of that. Pinnacle, on of the worlds largest bookies, is estimated to only handle a few billion in bets every year, a fraction of just the NBA's TV deal. It's just absurd to seriously think this is something that's going on, and exponentially more absurd to act like anybody who doesn't believe this absurd-on-its-face thing is the REAL dummy.

Classic Dunning-Kruger effect on that post.

This nonsense is the classic whiny rant of the bad gambler. Because of course it could never be that they're just not nearly as good at handicapping as they think they are. No, it's always some grand conspiracy about how it's all someone elses fault they lose on their bets.

It's a sign of a simple mind that can't grasp how enourmous of a conspiracy a concerted, league-wide program to regularly fix games would have to be, involving hundreds of people at different levels, without any of them talking, at huge risk to their billion dollar business for very little reward. You ever hear the saying "three can keep a secret if two are dead"? If this was actually going on, eventually some do-gooder or disgruntled conman would come out with it, you couldn't keep it a secret. Plus the players would notice and they certainly wouldn't just sit there and accept it. you'd have Tim Donaghy's happening all the time.

And why would they mess with their golden goose? The NBA is a multi billion dollar business, far bigger than they'd ever be able to make betting, and if word got it out, they could kiss that goodbye, they'd lose fans  left and right, nobody wants to watch a rigged game.

As well, bets aren't just made into the ether, they always require an actual, living counterparty to accept the bets. In order for this game-rigging conspiracy to be worth the trouble (and the risk to their legitimate, high profile multi billion dollar business) they'd have to be making tens of millions of dollars in bets every night. considering how closely the action on sports betting is watched, do you think the league could somehow make millions of dollars in bets without anyone noticing it's them doing it? And do you not think that would dramatically affect the market in a way that would be blindingly obvious to all of us? Do you think the refs would risk their sweet job (with salaries as high as $500,000/year) for it, knowing that the last guy who did that (Tim Donaghy) lost everything and served 11 months in federal prison for it? Do you think bookies would take action from them, knowingly taking the wrong end of a rigged bet to the tune of millions of dollars everyday? 

You'll never become actually good at this unless you ditch that amateur hour mentality.

@dabigmouth

 Man, you gotta hook me up with your bookie, mine won't let me do that ??

@BBGunzz

 I do. In general, I'm a big believer in taking out as much personal opinion or "gut feel" out of betting as possible. There's lots of times the algorithm spits out a line that looks wonky and I think can't be right. When that happens, I'll always dig more into the numbers a bit more, and once in a while there actually is a small mistake in the algorithm, usually just a formula entered incorreclt in one of the cells (it's on an Excel spreadsheet). But the vast majority of the time, the numbers are the numbers and if you trust your system you just grit your teeth and make the play. Oftentimes it ends up winning (and it's those bets that end up making you trust your system and not your gut). I'll always trust the numbers over my gut anytime there's a clear betting signall, which I define as 3 pts. So I'll always play anything 3+ points off, and never play anything 2 pts or less. I do give myself a tiny window for my gut, and that's in the case of anything that lands on 2.5 exactly. It's rare enough that it isn't going to have an effect on my bankroll one way or the other, and more often than not, I don't end up playing the 2.5's either. In this case, I just really like how GS looks when I actually watch the games, and it's hard for me to see them as a 4.5 pt underdog to any team this year.

In addition, I also have a second algorithm that I use to act as a second opinion on certain games. It's essentially the same thing, only it's weighted slightly different, the main algorithm looks back 20 games to try to capture the "true" performance of the team and smooth out any outliers, and the backup looks back 10 games to try to capture any short term trends/hot streaks. I never use the 2nd one as a bet signal, and I would never overrule the main one with it. But I'll see what it says when the main algo is on the cusp, and in this case the backup algo gives me GSW as a 5.5 pt favorite. Now, overall, I trust the main line of BKN as a slight favorite. But in a situation when the line is -3.5, the main algo says is should be -1, the backup says +5.5, and my gut says the same thing, that's usually the kind of setup I'll take a flyer on.

Since I like to add a little bit of betting insight to every day's thread, I think a good one is regarding the current difference in the success rate between the spreads and the O/U. This is good advice for any system, yours, mine, or anyone elses. I know it's tempting to look at the splits and say "well, if the spreads are not even hitting at 50% but the O/U hitting at 59%, clearly the right move is to just play the O/U". This is never really a good strategy (assuming both numbers come from the same place, as mine do). As I've discussed in previous threads, a large portion of the result of any sporting event (around 40% is the general assumption) is pure randomness, and anytime you see major splits in your results despite all the numbers coming from the same analysis, that randomness is almost always the cause. In the case of my picks, both the spreads and the O/U come from the exact same place. When I punch in the two teams that are playing into the algorithm, it just spits out a total for each team, and then I do the quick mental calculations to come up with the lines. So, for example, in the Ind-Cha game, when I put in those teams, it tells me it expects the score to be 110-105 for Indy (technically, it's 110.3-104.7 but I round to the nearest whole). From there I'll just calculate the spread and total. The point is, since both those numbers come from the exact same source, it couldn't be the case the the O/U numbers are good but the spreads are bad. The algorithm is the algorithm and it's either a  good predictor of scores or it isn't. You could, of course, try to ride the "hot side", but since randomness always evens out over the long term, you're much more likely to just end up chasing wins that turn into losses, while at the same time missing out on the wins of the other side.

There's a huge caveat to all of that however, and it's if the lopsided results happens over a large sample size, around 100-200 plays. In that case, it's likely that you missed something when you were finetuning your system and one (or more) of the stats you use to determine your outcomes is improperly weighted (or you've left out something). But in that case, the thing to do is to go back and fix the bug, not just bet the side that's been winning, because whatever the flaw is in your analysis, it's almost certainly impacting the winning side too, and the reason it's been winning is more likely due to that randomness than anything else. Eventually, that too will revert to it's expected performance and then you likely won't have winning bets on either side. In the case of my own system, although it may appear the O/U is more accurate than the spreads, that's simply due to the small sample size. Over the course of this season, both spreads and O/U are within a point of each other over around 220 bets, with spreads winning at a 55.6% clip and the O/U at 56.4%. And even that difference is almost certainly due to randomness, it could just as easily be the reverse.

Treaded water on last nights games with a 7-7 split, and the O/U picking up the slack once again with a solid showing. 

Overall: 34-28 (15-16 spreads, 19-13 O/U)

Day 1: 8-5 (4-3 spreads, 4-2 O/U)

Day 2: 3-1 (1-1 spreads, 2-0 O/U)

Day 3: 9-5 (4-3 spreads, 5-2 O/U)

Day 4: 5-5 (3-1 spreads, 2-4 O/U)

Day 5: 2-5 (0-4 spreads, 2-2 O/U)

Day 6: 7-7 (3-4 spreads, 4-3 O/U)

For confirmation of the results so far, click on my name to see my post history and click on the thread for each day. Make note of the timestamps to confirm that all picks were made well before each game and make sure the tally on each day's thread matches the recap above. I can assure you they do, I'm just doing it this way so you don't need to take my word for it.

Here are the lines for tomorrow, as always once the opening lines come out later tonight, I'll post the picks based on that here on this thread:

IND @ DET -------> IND -8.5/214

WSH @ CHA ------> WSH -5.5/213

BOS @ ATL -------> ATL -2/205.5

ORL @ NYK -------> NYK -12.5/207

CLE @ BKN -------> BKN -5.5/208

LAL @ MIL -------> MIL -2/219.5

NO @ MIA --------> MIA -13.5/214

HOU @ OKC------> OKC -4/210.5

SAC @ MIN-------> SAC -5.5/222

DAL @ PHX -------> PHX -5.5/208

CHI @ POR -------> CHI +1/213

Only three games tonight, but still got bet signals on 4 out of the possible 6 bets tonight. As the SAS/LAC lines opened up pretty much right where the algo sits on both the spread and O/U, there's no play in that game. As always, since our lines are set before the Vegas ones come out, we always bet the opening lines and the picks I post here are based on those. Almost no movement at all on any of the games, so still lots of value left on the table.

Spreads:

GSW +3.5

PHI +8.5

O/U:

GSW @ BKN: Under 220.5

Phi @ Uta: Under 217

Side note, as this system doesn't bet moneylines, I won't include them in the official tally, but I love GSW to win outright tonight, and at +3.5 odds I'll definitely be putting some of my play-around money on GSW on the moneyline tonight, just for fun.

@PGAromes82

 I think there's a place for that (factoring in one's personal opinion in their capping), perhaps to make a judgement call when the numbers are right on the edge of the 'bet/don't bet' spectrum, and assuming that you're genuinely knowledgable about the game. On the overall though, I think the numbers always have to lead, and once you start overruling your statistical analysis with your gut I think you're going to get into trouble. The problem is humans are notoriously bad at assessing our own expertise and we tend to overestimate our ability to make future predictions about these things.  I'm sure there are cappers out there who are successful doing just that, of course, and if that strategy works for someone, obviously they should keep doing it. Overall though, I think most bettors rely far too heavily on their gut and not nearly enough on the numbers.

@middleman820

 So I'm gonna pick on you a little bit here, not to be a dick, but just because this is a perfect example of the type of bad "gut feel" analysis I mention above, which accounts for why most bettors lose money. It also presents a good opportunity to show how proper analysis should be done.

Even at first glance, this seems like a poor factor to include in your analysis. What's the mechanism of a player performing better on their birthday? It isn't obvious to me. Is it that they try a little harder on their birthday? Their opponents go a little easier on them? Both of those seem like a stretch. In addition, it could also be a negative. How do you know the player wasn't out all night partying with strippers BECAUSE it's his birthday, and he's hungover af for the game today? I certainly don't know, the point is, none of us do, which makes this sort of thing more or less impossible to analyze.

The other part of the analysis, how Towns and Edwards both had 40 points is a little closer to the mark, but still not really useful. First of all, they haven't played Phoenix all season, the game you're referring to was last season. So the team he's going to play tonight isn't the team he played then, he's playing the 2021 Suns team today, and he put up those numbers against the 2020 Suns team. Second, both Edwards and Towns average PPG are in the low 20's, which means them scoring 40 points were extreme outliers towards their typical production. Of course outliers can and do happen, but no real analysis can ever be based on the potential of a player (or team) to hit their outliers, you always have to assume some sort of mean reversion. Of course it's possible for Towns to have a 40 pt game, it's also just as likely that he has an outlier game on the other end, more like he did last game against the Clippers where he scored 8 pts. The only plausible assumption that can be made for any player or team is that, in general, their performance on any given game will look most like their typical performance

As an example of how proper analysis would be done, let's go back to that birthday stat. Let's assume that there actually is some validity to the idea that a player plays better on their birthday. It's not enough to then just bet every team who has a birthday that day, you need to know how much of a boost that gives him in order to place a good bet. So you'd start by analyzing as much data as you can about how players performed on their birthday vs their average performance to get a baseline number. Let's say you do that and, lo and behold, the average player scores 5.2% more points over their average performance on their birthday. That's a useful stat. So you then go back to the Phx-Min game and you take Towns average PPG, and increase it by 5.2%. Of course, that only accounts for about 1 pt overall, so probably not a factor.

I've simplified it a lot in this example, but that's fundamentally how handicapping works. You start with a hypothesis about a stat/factor, you then sift through the historical data to confirm that the hypothesis does in fact correlate to scoring points, then try to quantify how much exactly it improves/decreases a teams ability to score, and then apply those factors to the teams average scoring production. This gives you an overall "expected score" for that team, and then you need to try to predict what happens when a team with that expected production plays a team with teh defensive skill of whoever their opponent is for a given game. Because offensive production is only half the battle, the opponent matters too. An average offense playing against an average defense would be expected to score around their average. But if they played a below average defense, we would expect them to score more than they typically do. And quantifying how much above/below their average they should score based on their opponent is basically the crux of handicapping.

@Ilost

 I don't. The algorithm is 100% stats-based, the idea being to take out all the opinions and "gut feels" out of it, which are always subject to our own biases and is what makes the average better lose money.

But of course, even though the algorithm doesn't technically factor in injuries, doesn't mean we shouldn't, as they obviously can be probability-changing events, here's how I do it.

First, when I say it "technically" doesn't factor in injuries, what I mean is, it kind of does and kind of doesn't. Officially, it doesn't, as it's 100% stats based. But I also use a weighting that puts roughly 70% of the weight on the previous 10 games, so once an injured player has been out for around 7-8 games, the algorithm starts to reflect the loss of the injured players production, as majority of the algorithms calculations will be done using stats the team has put up without them. On the other hand, if a player got injured in last night's game, and they've been a big part of the teams overall production up until today, then obviously the numbers the algorithm will use still assumes that the injured player is in the lineup and the probabilities won't be reliable for that team for at least 4-5 games.

For example, if Steph Curry were hurt in last nights game, than I would just not bet any GSW games for at least 4-5 games until his absence starts to get reflected in the algo. But if he's already been out for 10 games, than I know that the algo is using numbers the Warriors put up without him and I'll use it as normal.

And in the example you gave of if a player gets hurt, say, today after the bets are made, I don't bother with it. That would be, by definition, a random event (at least random to us since we have no way of knowing who might get placed on the IR list on any given day) and since it's random, it's both impossible to try to account for, and pointless, as if/when it occurs it's just as likely to help us as hurt us.

In any case, it happens so rarely that it's still far better to simply bet the lines at the open. For every one game where that hurts you b/c a star player gets hurt and the lines moved (which is overall a relatively rare event) you'll probably have dozens of games where the early bets have helped you just from the regular movement of the lines throughout the day.

Take a look at the O/U bets we made today at the open compared to where the lines are now.

Sac/Det - 1.5 pts of value movements

Ind/Phi - 4 pts of value

Hou/Mem - 3 pts

NOP/WAS - 7.5 (!)

Now, to be clear, this much value is an unusual amount, and of course, sometimes the games go against us, but in general, I usually expect to see 3-4 pts in value by betting the opening line with my own numbers than I would by waiting until the close to see for injuries. If a star player gets injured between now and the games, first of all I have a 50/50 chance that it helps me (If it's Harden, for example, that can only help my  OKC + 9.5) but even if it doesn't, and it completely kills one of my spreads, it was still far better to bet the games at the open and get to capture the moves in all the other games.

 Regarding the totals, I do get decimal numbers, I just round up/down, same as spreads, but with spreads I do use half numbers, just because a half point can represent up to 50% of the total when you're talking spreads, but not really a factor either way when talking about totals. In the case of Bos/Cle, the actual line is Bos -1.67 and the total is 205.84

@BBGunzz

 Results are updated on the next days thread, where I keep the running tallys. The results for today's games (Day 6) can be found on the thread for tomorrow's games (Day 7) which was just posted, thanks for following :)

Having a down day gives us a good opening to talk in general about one of the more fundamental concepts of sports betting, something that's revelent to any betting system, the relationship between probabilities and sample sizes. Any probability-based event - whether it's a sports event or a coin flip - always has an inherent amount of complete randomness built into the result. Randomness is, by definition, random and simply cannot be accounted for. That's why the sharpest sharps in the world only win at a 60% clip, and why "locks" are a myth that don't actually exist. There's no such thing as a "sure thing" in any probability based event, especially a complicated one with many moving parts such as a sporting event.

Think of a coin flip. You'd rightly consider someone a fool if they said they had "a lock" on any given coin toss (assuming the coin was fair of course), because we all instinctively know that even though the probabilities of any coin flip is 50%, the result of any one toss is completely random. And a coin flip is pretty much the simplest of all probability wagers, so if it's clearly impossible to have "a lock" on a coin flip, think of how much more inconcievable it is to come up with a "lock" on something as complex as the probability of a basketball score, which in reality is actually the sum total of thousands of mini-probability events.

This is why no system can ever be evaluated by the result of one, or even ten, games. Because it's impossible to tell if the results are from the inherent randomness that exists in all probability events, or by actual skillful handicapping. The only way to evaluate a system is over time, with a big enough sample size. Opinions differ on how big a sample is needed before we start digging into the true accuracy of a system, but for sure, a minimum of at least 100 bets is needed before we even begin to assess that. That's why I chose 10 days to run this project over, as it should get us to roughly 100 bets and make for a more accurate assessment of it's accuracy than had I just given out a few games of data.

To easily visualize this, let's go back to the coin flip analogy. We all understand that the probabilities of any given coin flip are 50/50. And we all understand that if our sample size is only 10 flips, it wouldn't be unusual at all to see 7 heads or 7 tails. And we can all imagine someone who played a system of only calling heads MIGHT think they've got a winner on their hands. After all, they're winning at a 70% rate, who can argue with that? But we also all instinctively know that a 70% win rate over, say, 100 coin flips is mathematically impossible. As the sample size gets bigger, the results of an event will always skew towards the probabilities. This Law of Large Numbers is as fundamental to our universe as gravity is, you simply cannot beat it, you can only account for it.

If we increase that sample size to 100 flips, that 70% win rate is simply impossible. At best you might get something like 52/48 (with the most likely outcome to be right at the probabilities of 50/50). Increase it to 1000 and at best you might get 50.5/49.5%. If you had a million flips, maybe your best hope is 50.00000001%/49.9999999999%.

The exact same mathematical laws are at play with sports betting. Obviously, we can't make a million bets before we're satisfied that our system is a winner, there will always be some uncertainty with any system. But for sure, at a minimum, we need 100 plays before we can truly begin to assess accuracy, and probably 200-300 before we can really nail down our true win probabilities.

Welp, the inevitable down day came in yesterday, as the spreads took a beating at 0-4 and the O/U couldn't pick up the slack with a 2-2 split. The difference between going 4-0 on the O/U and the 2-2 result was a total of 4 pts combined (Bucks/Hawks over by 1, Blazers/Nugs over by 3) which definitely is a kick in the balls, but hey, that's sports betting. Sometimes those razor thin margins hurt you, sometimes they help, no point in bitching about it, and a loss by 1 pt is just as valid as a win by 1. At the end of the day, if you continuously make bets with value on your side, the long term record will always be profitable. 

A correction was inevitable in any case. Even the best systems in the world only win at a 60% rate, which meant that our 65% win rate over five days was overperforming at an unsustainable pace. Yesterdays correction brings us down to around a 56% win rate, which is just about the bottom of the expected range of any winning system (between 55-60%) so look for a rebound tonight

To recap:

Overall: 27-22 (12-12 spreads, 15-10 O/U)

Day 1: 8-5 (4-3 spreads, 4-2 O/U)

Day 2: 3-1 (1-1 spreads, 2-0 O/U)

Day 3: 9-5 (4-3 spreads, 5-2 O/U)

Day 4: 5-5 (3-1 spreads, 2-4 O/U)

Day 5: 2-5 (0-4 spreads, 2-2 O/U)

Day 6: TBP

For confirmation of the results so far, click on my name to see my post history and click on the thread for each day. Make note of the timestamps to confirm that all picks were made well before each game and make sure the tally on each day's thread matches the recap above. I can assure you they do, I'm just doing it this way so you don't need to take my word for it.

Here are the lines for tomorrow, as always once the opening lines come out later tonight, I'll post the picks based on that here on this thread:

GS @ BKN------> BKN -1/217

PHI @ UTA------> UTA -3.5/212

SAS @ LAC------> LAC -5/219

Duplicate post, please delete