NFL 09' strategic wagering...

Been munching popcorn for the most part with the two SN threads.  I agree with some of the skepticism about the MM aspect, especially things like 38 unit ml favorite plays (is "recovery" the same thing as "bailout'?).  I agree that there seems to be a tendency to make certain aspects of this opaque, although I cannot fathom the reason for this so far.  I agree that some of the response to criticism is funny, especially when, for example, SN responded with a 250 word backlash when he could simply have said "A" or "B".  I also agree, at least for baseball, that his plays would have been overall profitable, not at the equivalent of 70%, but he did well.

Regarding posts #506:

1.  The units look fine for his plays.  I think he should more clearly post something like "risking 6.5 to win 5", but he does seem consistent in counting his units, at least in the football thread.  But it would be nice to make it a bit more clear for all the "idiots" in the world who have a bit of trouble reading his "release sheets".

Also, if he did it more clearly, it would take waaaaaaay less of his time typing "risking 6.5 units to win 5 units" versus "6.5 units" than responding to questions about how to read his plays correctly.

2.  right on Bro, I too would like to know where he gets his odds on 13 point 4 teamers.

3.  Absolutely, claiming 8-2 is a joke of epic proportions.  It is so absurd, it must have been a joke, because he cannot for one second think that anyone would buy that.

That can't be right. They were again both "risked". It is simple mah. He was +4.8 on the teasers and claimed +2.3 units on the day so had to have lost 2.5 units on the Atlanta and Washington wagers. With you stating that Atlanta was to "win" and Washington was "to risk" that means he would have won 2 more units on these game, thus he would have claimed +6.8 units on the day.

Both unit amounts were "risked". He lost 7.5 on Washington and won 5 on Atlanta (7.5/1.9 =5). Now if you want to question what he would have done if they both would have won, or if Washington would have won and Atlanta lost, go ahead. I completely understand your point of view on that accusation. But again I think you were wrong.

I will say that it is weird that those parlay odds come out to -111 and the stanard seems to be -140 or as low as -130. The parlay odds worked out to be -111 because two of the wagers in the 1st parlay had games with +110 odds and three games in the second parlay with +110 odds. Now I do think this is extremely suspicious. Not too often will you find five different games at the same book with spreads that have +110 odds. Actually probably never.

And your dead on on the teasers too. He was 7-1 total on the teaser games, which is about 87%, when you can expect to win 84% of the games with +13 points in your favor. I mean it doesn't really matter though in the end, because his winning percentage really doesn't mean anything other than those who follow and are easily persuaded or captivated.

There is absolutely no need to place a winning total in this thread by him, because it is comparing apples and oranges. He is combining games he wins with 13 points in his favor with moneyline games and the occasional straight up point spread play. These are three totally different types of wagers that have no business being lumped into 1 lump sum total.

If you go back to yesterday and look at the plays individiually he played 10 games total. 8 of those had an expected win % of 84%, the Atlanta game had an EW% of 65%, and the Washington game had an EW% of 71.4%. That all equates to a weighted average of 80.04%. So that 8-2 average looks amazing to someone who considers themsleves a gambler but with only average understanding of the industry. With more info, that 8-2 and 80% win rate yesterday is exactly what anyone could have picked.

Later playas - Math and Stats are the foundation.

I haven't looked back to verify this, but I think that of all the teaser pics by SN, all of those games would have won Against the Spread if bet straight up except for 2 games.

I know it's too late to go back and try to turn leopard spots (teaser picks) into tiger stripes (straight up picks), so save your lecture.  I just make the observation, as I am thinking about playing the games posted as teaser pics as straight up in addition to playing them as the teaser picks.

I won't verify either, but I highly doubt that. I mean he lost two teasers so I mean he had to at least lose 2 games with the 13 points. I doubt he won every game he won in his teasers if they were played straight against the spread.

Hey guys.............
Could of been worst
On my own accord - I blew my load on Phi ML  -1000 losing 40 units alone
Didn't trust the spread but now in hindsight I deserve it for following them off the cliff
Stupid play - no excuses - went against my principles on that one
Ugh............
         

Oh well we win some and we lose some - that's why we play the game. I'll get it back over time. Its a marathon not a sprint
Win like a man............
Lose like a man..............

I stand corrected.  If all the teaser plays were played straight up against the spread to date there would be 15 wins and 13 losses.

Week 1
Sunday, September 13th, 2009
 
Baltimore Ravens v KC  Final Score 38  24   Win
Minnesota Vikings V Cleveland  Final Score 38 20  Win
NewOrleans Saints v Detroit Final Score 45  27  Win
NewEngland Patriots v Buffalo  Final Score 25  24  Loss

Week Two
Sunday,September 20th, 2009
 
Minnesota Vikings v Detroit  Final Score  27  13  Win
New Orleans Saints v Philadelphia  Final Score 48  22  Win
Baltimore Ravens v San Diego Final Score 31  26  Win
Miami Dolphins v Indiana  Final Score  27  23  Loss  (push at SI)

Sunday, September 27th, 2009
 
Week III
4team 13pt
 
Ravens v Cleveland Final Score 34  3  Win
Bills v New Orleans Final Score  27  7  Loss
Dolphins v San Diego  Final Score  23   13  Loss
Cardinals v Indiana Final Score  31  10  Loss

Sunday, October 3rd, 2009
Week 4

Ravens v New England Final Score 27  21  Loss
Bengals v Cleveland Final Score 23  20  Loss
Saints v NY Jets  Final Score  24  10  Win
COWBOYS v Denver Final Score 17 10  Loss

Sunday. October 11th.  2009
Week 5 
 
Vikings v St Louis  Final Score 38 10 Win
Eagles v Tampa Bay Final Score 33 14  Win
Steelers v Detroit Final Score  28 20  Loss
Giants v Oakland Final Score 44 7  Win

Sunday, October 18th, 2009
Week 6
 
Steelers v Cleveland Final Score 27  14  Loss
Packers v Detroit  Final Score 26 0  Winn
Vikings v Baltimore  Final Score 33 31 Loss
Saints v NY Giants Final Score 48 27 Win
 
 
Eagles v Oakland Final Score 13 9  Loss
Jets v Buffalo Final Score 16  13 Loss
Patriots V Tenn  Final Score  59  0  Win
Falcons v Chicago Final Score 21 14 Win

This crapola is insane and truly unnecessary!

 

you are a smart and cool guy, wish you the best

what does finger oon the scale mean?  tampered with or something.... false results?

Back in the old days, a butcher would cut a piece of meat and then weigh it to determine how much he charged you.  If he could  push down on the scale when you weren't looking closely, he could charge you for 7 pounds of meat, when you were only getting 5.

These days, it just means tampering.  One way or another, people will take what are supposed to be unbiased objective results and subtly change them to something that benefits them more than the truth does. 

 

 

Tallguy I sent you a friend request earlier because I was hoping to help shed some light on SN's baseball thread, but it appears as if you have already come to your conclusions.  If you have any interest in hearing another opinion from someone who followed his posts from the very beginning just let me know and I can either post on that thread or via message.

Also, I am very interested to hear your thoughts on teaser strategies.  I don't know if you plan on posting it on this thread or somewhere else, but I look forward to reading it.

TallyGuy, I'd like to get your insight on the teaser strategy as well. I'd love to hear what your take is on it.

I mean my take is that you still need to be able to handicap the game correctly and be on the right side of the spreads as if you were betting them straight up aganist the spread, because of the juice that accompanies the + points. If you can't then the juice will catch up with you in the end. It was said was documented that SN picks individually were only 15-13 without the +13 points from the teasers.

15-13 is obviously is too small sample size to judge on, but what it does show is that a 10 year old kid could flip a coin to pick 4 games he likes each week in school, flip the coin again to decide which of the teams he likes in those games, come home post them on a thread here but in a 13 point teaser parlay format. Say that he does reserach, and everyone would be on his nuts.

***TEASER BET STRATEGY ANALYSIS***

 

Teasers are notorious among expert bettors for being sucker bets.  Why are they sucker bets?  Are they sucker bets just because they offer long odds at success?  The odds are considerably worse than straight wagers.  That makes them sucker bets, but in my opinion, it isn't the only reason they are sucker bets.  How would you feel about a blackjack game that was rigged to deal you a 20 everytime that the dealer hit 21?  You'd react by saying "oooh sooo close" over and over again.  That in essense is the way that teasers are set up.  Bookies do it that way on purpose.  Hell, they are even honest enough to tell you it in the name.  What exactly do you think "teaser" means?  You will win a teaser 48.9% of the time.  You will end up in a tie and have your money refunded (check the rules on Pinnacle's site---winning 3 games and tying 1 ends up in a refund...not a smaller win) 2.2% of the time.  You'll straight up lose 48.9% of the time.  But look closer at that 48.9%.  38.3% of the time you win three games and only lose one.  That means that 78.3% (38.3/48.9) of the time when you lose, you came within one game of winning.  Those losses are almost always narrow losses. Lets face it, Oakland is not going to blow out Philadelphia very often.  When they win (and a really bad team will beat a really good one roughly 15% of the time), it probably won't be my much.  So you are left  saying things like "darn it if only the Eagles had converted one of their many red zone opportunities" over and over again.  A teaser is designed not only so that you lose, but so that you lose in the most frustrating way possible.  Since you either win or come really close to winning 89.4% of the time, you start to thinking that you are better at it than you actually are.  That makes you come back for more.  It takes a long time for you to realize that close losses or not, you are still only winning half the time.    This is exactly how the book wants it and trust me, they did it by design.

If you have a database of the lines and final scores for the past 10 years, you can check my numbers yourself.  In fact, I encourage you to do that.  If you don't have a database, you really should get one.  Its relatively easy.  Covers has pages for past results for every team and game.  You can program Excel through VBA to open the pages and loop through and parse out the data to put them into Access.  If you don't have any VBA experience, I highly recommend going down to the local community college and taking a class.  It will be far more useful to you than anything you'll read in this silly thread.

Anyway, if you look at the past 10 years the likelihood of a team covering the line + 13 points is 83.63%.  The likelihood of it being a push on line +13 points is 0.93%.  I looked at a graph of probabilities across all the lines and it basically stays stable in the 80-85% range regardless of whether you are teasing a big favorite or a big dog.  Key numbers play somewhat of a role, but less than you might expect.  Over/Under hurdles also play a small role.  The likelihood of a 10 pt dog losing by 24 is higher if people expect 50 total points in a game than if they expect 35 total points.  This is only logical, but it also only takes you so far.  Its sort of like the basic strategy in blackjack.  It will lessen losses, not eliminate them.  If you want to play teasers, be sure to do them on low O/U games, but understand that you are doing it for entertainment purposes only and you're unlikely to make money off of them long term.

For the most part, you can work off of an assumption that any one of your teams has an 83.63% chance of covering.  If you plug 83.63% probability into a binomial distribution (Excel has a function that greatly simplifies this), you get a 48.9% chance of all 4 hitting.  The push percentage is a slightly more complicated equation --- if anybody is interested, I'm more than willing to share.  With the refunded pushes calculated in, a 4 team teaser turns almost exactly into a 50/50 proposition.  I don't know about you but I really don't like accepting -140 odds on 50/50 propositions.

I know what you are saying right now.  83.63% is the NFL average.  With my super duper handicapping skills and sports_network's expert help, the teams we pick will do so much better than average.  A couple of points: The biggest one is don't overestimate your own handicapping skills.  The lines are set by people with PhDs in applied math and a lot of time analyzing football, yet for some reason every guy at the neighborhood bar thinks they can do better.  I'm not saying that the lines are always right.  You can profit by taking advantage of bad lines, but you need to tamper your projections with a little bit of humility.  Even if you can consistently find lines that are off, are teasers really the best way to take advantage of them?  In a traditional wager, you find one bad line to tilt a 50/50 slightly in your favor at -110 odds.  In a teaser, you need to find 4 bad lines to tilt a 50/50 slightly in your favor at -140 odds.  I really don't see how this makes sense.

In post #132, sports_network said:

Understanding, 80% of all 'teasers' lose the 20% that win are by 10% of advanced/professional handicappers, who have a winning ratio consistent to aprx 90%; the 'book' tolerates and has knowledge of the same stats....

I hope you all realize that posting completely fabricated "stats" like these is one of the reasons why people like sports_network annoy me so much.  I'm not sure if he's operating some sort of long con or if he actually believes his own bullshit.  To put it in short terms, I'm not sure if he is Nick Leeson or a Beardstown Lady (google both for two very interesting and very different financial fraud stories).  Whatever, I hope you all realize by now that 80% of teasers don't lose and that advanced handicappers don't win aprx 90% of them.  Sit down at a blackjack table and watch several hands.  You won't see the players lose 80% of them and you won't see the dealer win 90% of them.  As a matter of fact, you probably wouldn't even be able to tell who had the advantage if you didn't already know.  Over time, the dealer will only win 51% of the hands, but that is enough for the casino to pay for that big pirate ship they have parked on their front lawn.   Real handicappers approach sports betting in basically the same way.  The edge that sharp bettors have over the naive public isn't that much on any one play.  But sharp bettors make thousands of bets a year and small edges grow exponentially.

entire piece is informative but highlighted portion is synopsis of any/all of my vitriol. all the mumbo jumbo and parcelled talk is a ruse. I believe sn did win in baseball but not what he stated on lines he didnt get. its a simple case of lying when the truth would suit you better. i see it everyday in my professional life. if sn werent a con or a narcisist he would post his plays attatched to real life odds and winning percentages. he wouldnt need the defense of adoring fans w/ too little time, inclination, or intellect to blindly defend his practices when they empiracally see they havent gotten identical result from the same information.

look, a real sharp could care less about winning %s its bottom line and return. this guy is a con or just insecure, but dont be lemmings. call a spade a spade.

gl to all, including sn.

It occurs to me that teaser bets are not the only bets (sports bets or otherwise) where the house has the edge.  It's hard to think of a bet where the house does not have an advantage.

That being said, I have some questions.  Why do you surmise  sn is somehow a con and that all his "blind followers"  are his victims?  What does sn have to gain if I make a bet at a book?  How does sn gain financially if I place a bet based on his advice?  If sn has nothing to gain if I place a bet at the Hilton sportsbook, what is his angle?

I think I know the answers to the last three questions i proffered.  $0, $0, and nothing.

In my opinion, sn is just a guy trying to establish a record of winning.  Why is he doing this?  I dunno.  I don't know sn except for the posts I read on this thread, and I didn't ask him.  Maybe he wants to become a tout and advertise his winning record using his posts at covers for street cred.  I can only guess.  One thing I am pretty sure about is that he isn't making a thing off my wagers.

And if sn is a con because of his posts, one can only conclude that this website, and others like it, are supercons as the whole point is to get people interested in betting and to convince themselves that somehow they have an edge over the book when it's really the book that has the edge.

How can people be so naive as to believe they can get the edge over the book?  Because a few people can and do make money betting.  That is powerful motivation.  The lure of easy money has a very strong appeal.

I am under no illusions.    When I place a bet, I know who has the advantage. 

<i>Maybe he wants to become a tout and advertise his winning record using his posts at covers for street cred.</i>

I think you answered your own question.

<i>How can people be so naive as to believe they can get the edge over the book? </i>

This is a tad off-topic but...

I have no idea why so many people are still using traditional books.  If you go to Matchbook or Betfair, you aren't betting against a book.  You're betting against another person and the juice is drastically reduced.   

If you and I both want to make $100 on a coin flip, we go to a traditional book and I bet $110 on heads and you bet $110 on tails.  One of us wins and gets $100.  The book keeps $10.   If we go to mb, I offer $100 at +100 odds on heads.  You accept.  You pay a 1% commission.  I get a 0.2% rebate.  Combined, matchbook keeps only 80c.  Collectively we have reduced our juice by 92%.  

Its actually more dramatic if it isn't an even money bet.   You are betting that the roll of a single die will be 4.  I'm betting it won't be.  You offer $100 to win $500.  I accept and risk $500 to win $100.  Combined we still only pay on the lesser of the "at risk" or "to win" amounts.  In this case, I pay $1.  You get a 20c rebate.  Out of a combined $600 at risk, the total amount of juice is only 80c or 0.13%.

With much less juice, you have a much lower hurdle to have a +EV bet.  I notice that 15 out of the last 20 coin flips have been tails.  I know that even though the odds remain at 50/50, some people will accept worse odds.  I place an offer of +105 on heads.  Somebody accepts at -105 on tails. 

There is a lot of extra math involved this way.  When do you accept someone else's offer?  When do you  hold out to get your own offer accepted? How greedy do you want to be when placing an offer? etc. etc.

But frankly if you aren't good at math, you shouldn't be here.  The bottom line is that if the combined juice is low enough, your opponent doesn't have to be making a huge mistake for you to have a profitable move.  If the combined juice is 0.13% and the guy on the other side of the bet miscalculated the probability by 2.5%, you have an expected value of 2.37%.  If the combined juice is 4.5% and he miscalculated the probability by 2.5%, you still have a losing move.  Of course, you still have to correctly calculate the probability yourself.  If he is better at math than you are, he is going to exploit your miscalculations.

Sorry if I sound like an infomercial for Matchbook.  The bottom line is sharps make money by exploiting small miscalculations by others.  They don't make it by winning 90% of their bets when other people win only 20%.

 

 

 

I didn't really answer my own question, since it was obvious I was just speculating.  I don't know what sN's motivation for posting his picks is.

As far as the discussion on Matchbook goes--that is one of the most informative things I have ever read on covers.  Now that you mention it, I had heard about is several years ago, but I never followed up on it.  I think I will.  Thanks.

What you don't say in your reply to my post says the most.  The criticism regarding the teaser bets seemed to zero in on the teaser as though it was a stand-alone worst bet, when in fact, as far as odds, go, one could do a lot worse; e.g, roulette, keno, slots, and there are others.  But you just faded that part of my post in your reply.  The fact is, sN is winning his teaser picks at a rate that is outpacing the house edge.  I think he will continue at a profitable clip with respect to his teasers for the duration of the '09 NFL season.

You're right.  One could do a whole lot worse.  There are definitely worse sucker bets out there.  In the lottery, when you take taxes into account, the house hold is up to 75%. 

With teasers, you have a 50/50 shot at making $100 or losing $140.  That works out to a house hold of 14.2%.  You can definitely do a lot worse.  You can also do a lot better.  The idea that there are worse sucker bets out there doesn't make something a good idea.

As for SN's record on teaser picks:

He is 5-2.  I have to give him credit for the fact that so far he is outpacing the house edge.  Still I would advocate extreme caution here.  7 is a pathetically small sample size.  There was a stretch this year where the Washington Nationals won 8 games in a row.  If those were the only 8 games you watched, you might be able to convince yourself that the 2009 Nats were the best team that ever played the game of baseball.   The numbers show that an an average teaser player would win 3.5 teasers out of 7 played.  SN won 5.  You could take those extra 1.5 wins as a sign of SN's genius or you could take them as random variation well within the margin of error.  Thats up to you.  I think one of the biggest mistakes you can make in sports investing is an overextrapolation from a small sample size.  I wouldn't read to much into the extra 1.5 wins.  But thats just me.