Paying For Picks

[Gkeuler]

this may or maynot have already been discussed but I "DAFS" to no avail so here we go

is this a +EV valid idea, to simply go to a handicapping team that offers picks that you gotta pay for, buy them and them simply make enough bets to cover the cost of the picks and make a small profit ?

just to get this ball rolling

[Thremp]

Don't.

[Performify]

short answer, most of the sites advertising for-pay picks significantly exaggerate their records and very very few (if any) are actually worth paying for.

[mmbt0ne]

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most of the sites advertising for-pay picks significantly exaggerate their records

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Or pick ML teams that are -1000 or higher so it looks like they have an awesome record.

[Gkeuler]

so what your saying is I need to find a reliable one! (lol)

alright anyway has this topic been discussed alot and is there anyone out there right now thats paying for picks and preferably has done so for a year or more ?

[Performify]

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so what your saying is I need to find a reliable one! (lol)

alright anyway has this topic been discussed alot and is there anyone out there right now thats paying for picks and preferably has done so for a year or more ?

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No what I'm saying is in my experience there isn't anyone selling picks on the internet that are worth paying for. I phrased it the way I did, as its theoretically possible that someone legit exists out there. But I seriously doubt it.

Philosophically, it doesn't make any sense. if you had the ability to make strong, reliable sports betting picks you're not going to sell them. You're going to build a syndicate and/or grow your bankroll significantly and exploit the edges yourself, not sell them to others.

[CarlSpackler]

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[ QUOTE ]
so what your saying is I need to find a reliable one! (lol)

alright anyway has this topic been discussed alot and is there anyone out there right now thats paying for picks and preferably has done so for a year or more ?

[/ QUOTE ]

No what I'm saying is in my experience there isn't anyone selling picks on the internet that are worth paying for. I phrased it the way I did, as its theoretically possible that someone legit exists out there. But I seriously doubt it.

Philosophically, it doesn't make any sense. if you had the ability to make strong, reliable sports betting picks you're not going to sell them. You're going to build a syndicate and/or grow your bankroll significantly and exploit the edges yourself, not sell them to others.

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I disagree with this. If you're a winning handicapper, why not place your bets, and then sell them to make more $$$$? Even if you're the best sports bettor in the world, there is still risk involved, as it's pretty common knowledge there's no such thing as a true lock (with the exception of my cfb play of the year which is now 2-0 dating back to my first poty in 2005 [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]). But the $$$ you make from selling your picks IS a lock.

Whenever this topic is brought up, people rarely mention that a winning sports bettor is very likely to have the same poor bankroll/money management and/or other leaks (i.e. pit games, poker, bad investments, etc.) as a winning poker player. Why not take the guaranteed $$$ which come from selling your picks? In the best case scenario, you put together a string of consecutive winning years, build your customer base, and grow your business.

Also, theoretically is there not a point where your bankroll grows so large that you as an individual cannot exploit all of your edges with the maximum wagers you would like?

[Performify]

[ QUOTE ]
I disagree with this. If you're a winning handicapper, why not place your bets, and then sell them to make more $$$$? Even if you're the best sports bettor in the world, there is still risk involved, as it's pretty common knowledge there's no such thing as a true lock (with the exception of my cfb play of the year which is now 2-0 dating back to my first poty in 2005 [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]). But the $$$ you make from selling your picks IS a lock.

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This is true, and this is the same advice I give about posting plays here on 2+2 and sharing information, and is one of the main reasons I post my set of public picks here. But I still don't buy the validity of purchased picks, just from the aspect of we're playing a negative sum game here and I can't see giving up information edges in releasing your picks when you can exploit them to near infinity.

The short of it is that the people making picks aren't any more certain about their results than any of the rest of us. You're just paying for expert advice, the same way you would with a stockbroker. Yeah, its possible that someone is honest and is a lifetime 55% or 60% capper and is selling picks to maximize the smoothness of their income. That's theoretically possible. I'll certainly admit that. But I just don't see it often in practice. Instead we see the industry littered with touts who advertise impossible winning percentages who are most interested in getting your money.

But that said, there is another factor not mentioned in all of this: line availability. when you're talking about betting small edges, as we are in sports betting, lineshopping and line availability makes all the difference in the world. Someone releasing a pick where you can't get the line they get, tracking their record against a different line, that's not going to do you much value. Reference Fezzik, where most of his followers can't get the lines he tracks at. He's legit in his picks, but there are a lot of people that follow Fezzik but are slower in grabbing the lines and shift from winners to losers just based on the line/vig moves. Its the reason I track my public picks against WA lines when I post the play, not necessarily against what I secured, if that's NLA.


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Also, theoretically is there not a point where your bankroll grows so large that you as an individual cannot exploit all of your edges with the maximum wagers you would like?

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To some extent, yes. If you had a multi-million dollar bankroll there would certainly be diminishing returns where your movement on a line would result in a line shift immediately. But I really don't think that this is the problem with touts, that they have so much money that they can't maximize the equity of their picks and such have to result to selling their picks.

This is also a big part of where syndicates come in - simply a group of people with disparate accounts who can make transactions for a single pick in the same immediate timeframe.

For example, purely hypothetical, say that both I, my wife, and my brother have accounts on Pinnacle, all of which I have control of - could be direct control i.e. I have their user/pass, or could be I just call them up and say "ok, bet #242 for $5000". When i release a MMA wagering card, I use all three accounts - either myself, or even at the further extreme of contacting each of them to place the bets for my little "syndicate". While its certainly possible that we can shift the line when we place, we're all likely to secure nearly the same line and we've circumvented the max wager amount. Not to mention sites like Pinny where the max bet is a one-time max and not a total max. If i wanted to wager $100k on an MMA fight I could do it with my own account, albeit after making a series of 20 bets at the 5k max (or whatever) giving Pinny an opportunity to adjust the line for each...

[Ken_AA]

Am I understanding this correctly on Fezzik's main page right now:

118-61
+50.80u
(66%)

That following his picks and getting his lines would lead you up 50 Units so far this year? Does this not include juice on the losses? This seems very high to me.

Also, if this is true ( and this is more trustworthy then any other tout's site) then you don't need to play, winning picks are free.

Ken

[beetman]

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Reference Fezzik, where most of his followers can't get the lines he tracks at. He's legit in his picks, but there are a lot of people that follow Fezzik but are slower in grabbing the lines and shift from winners to losers just based on the line/vig moves. Its the reason I track my public picks against WA lines when I post the play, not necessarily against what I secured, if that's NLA.

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Huh? Fezzik's picks *are* graded at widely available lines.

I've bet as many of his plays this year as I could, and I don't recall ever being unable to find the quoted line when I was online at the release time. It's true that if you're not online when the play is released, the line may have moved before you see the play (particularly with regards to totals), but that's not something Fezzik can control and could be true of any handicapper.

Last week's plays were:

112 NMEXST -11.5 1 weight
120 SJST -4 1 weight
143/144 Colts/TITANS UNDER 47.5 2 weight
160 Giants +3.5 2 weight.

I only have a line history for Pinnacle, but Pinnacle's lines at the time he posted his picks (931am PST on the 30th) were:

NM ST -11.5 -108
SJ ST -4 -105
NYG +3.5 -106
IND/TEN un47.5 -105

Neither college play had budged an hour later. NYG bounced around a bit but was still -109 over an hour later. The only one of these which moved significantly on Pinnacle was IND/TEN, which was -109 4 minutes later and -113 6 minutes later, and stayed at high juice for a while until they moved it to 47. But, it was still not that hard to find 47.5 elsewhere even after the release time. I was on the beach without a cell phone signal when those plays were released and 45 minutes later when I was able to check, I still had plenty of books with 47.5 -110, and Bodog had 48 -115 even on the sharp line.