what is a safe way to start sports betting?

[siccjay]

[ QUOTE ]
i already know that i dont know enough to be +ev, if i did that dollar thing i'd end up losing, if i won it would be variance, im more curious what more than just watching games i can do to learn

[/ QUOTE ]

Just fade the public and you can be a winnar!

[Bubble Bully]

Is fading the same as being a contrarian in financial trading?

[furyshade]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
i already know that i dont know enough to be +ev, if i did that dollar thing i'd end up losing, if i won it would be variance, im more curious what more than just watching games i can do to learn

[/ QUOTE ]

Just fade the public and you can be a winnar!

[/ QUOTE ]

i think what i just dont get is what is considered fading the public, if i see two contrary public opinions, one has to be right, how do i tell which public to not follow?

[dankhank]

bet small for the first year while you learn a thing or two. if you are confident that you are a winner after a year, up your bet size. it is a lot harder to learn how to do this properly now, than it was a couple years ago. people are much less willing to share their secrets. there are a handful of key ideas that make all the difference between winner and loser. the faq here is pretty good. the archives of various forums have tons of info in them, but it is not easy to piece together. most of it is simple common sense so if someone thinks about sports and sports betting all day, they can probably figure enough out on their own.

[Thremp]

This thread is full of bad advice. I disagree with dank strongly. I can teach someone to be a longterm winner at sports in under 4 words. "Get better prices" Get non-WA prices and you'll win longterm its super easy. I'm a re-re and I manage to make a living. Imagine what could happen if you knew your head from your ass.

[thelyingthief]

[ QUOTE ]
This thread is full of bad advice. I disagree with dank strongly. I can teach someone to be a longterm winner at sports in under 4 words. "Get better prices" Get non-WA prices and you'll win longterm its super easy. I'm a re-re and I manage to make a living. Imagine what could happen if you knew your head from your ass.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know, thremp, about "get better prices". I realize that all the literature emphasizes this as a sine qua non, but examined with a critical eye, the proposition does not hold without qualification. The warning "getting better prices" rests upon the following assumption, largely, if not completely unwarranted: that the information a bettor possesses about a game is either exhaustive, or, on the central factors most likely to impact a game, substantial. This is pretty doubtful for an independent bettor, who cannot hope to gain the oft times critical information he needs when evaluating a bet, especially in the middle part of an nfl season, or in the initial conference games at the NCAA Div 1 level, given the secrecy with which injuries are guarded, or the suddeness with which team chemistry can change. All too often a bettor finds the line at which he has taken a position early in the week completely wrong in the waning minutes before kickoff, due to some unexpected disclosure, say, of a locker room faceoff between the QB and one of his receivers. Or, vice versa, that waiting for a late line fails him because it moves away from his expectable betting margins.

Now, i have read several books which malign a bettor's ability to detect inaccuracies in the posted odds; and in questioning this, the authors of those books are tacitly denying the efficacy of "finding better odds". However, i do not agree with this, as my experience has been from the outset that i possess a strong intuition about a line, largely due to the way i focus on certain conferences in cfb, basically. But i have also found that most people think they possess this talent, and they are almost always wrong. On the other hand, and to be frank, i have found over the years that the line i get is largely immaterial to my profits: if i bet at the end of the week my profit remains at the same level as when i bet on the opening line; and not because the theoretical ideal, "betting the best price" is wrong per se, but because, again, there are too many factors and too many pertinent influences beyond my ken, or information gathering capacities, and these may be exposed any time before or after my bet. Thankfully, there is a built in safety net in my perception of a line's viability, since i am nearly always responding to an egregiously out of whack OL. The difficulty of betting sports successfully rests upon this lack of complete information and the fact that it is a negative sum game (the vig, the takeout)--it is not like the securities markets where one has an assured interest on one's investment: the investor has only to defray his risk against randomness and he is a winner. On the other hand, speaking in favor of sports betting is the immense number of bettors who have no inkling of what factors are most significant and pertinent to a game: the sucker-to-wiseguy ratio is much larger in sports betting (SB) than in, say, the stock market game. SB is very much like poker, in that poker has certain fixed odds, but because one has no precise knowlege of the other players' cards and therefore can be seduced by the bluff, how one and when one is to commit to a position changes significantly as one gathers more information. Unfortunately, this is of little use in SB, especially to the middle level bettor, who really cannot consistently nullify his bets by sacrificing the vig. I can reasonably expect a 3% growth in bankroll per week; however, sacrificing the vig on 10 bets will do more than wipe out that expectation.

Again, i am not arguing the accuracy of the warning "find better prices", but its viability. I, for one, believe that a talent for betting a game seperates the winners from the losers, and that this capacity cannot be taught--although, paradoxically, it can be learned, to some degree, perhaps even to the level of significant profits. By this i mean, a person can only reach this point of successful investment by involving himself directly in the process. One bettor will learn that he overbets his positions, while a second will find he underexposes his position--and each will do so making the exact same-size bet from an identical bankroll. I know that sounds absurd, but it is so. The bean counters will deny it, but that denial is made from the position that conforms to their own psychological predisposition most comfortably. Moreover, a person may bet football and excell, while performing miserably at other sports. He may bet college better than pro sports; may perform better with more knowlege or better with less; need visual confirmation for theoretical knowlege; or perform worse with it--and may even find in one sport he needs more information, and in another less.

OP asks if it is possible to succeed as a sports bettor: i can answer in the absolute affirmative. I have supported myself doing so, and i know others who likewise do. But i would advise the OP to tread with enormous care; i would advise against seeking advice, for instance, for most of it is erroneous, idiosyncratic, and hardly categorical. Losing breeds cowardliness; and men rush into "objective knowlege" as a surcease from the pain of losing; they want formulae for success where none exist; they want to be comfortable above all else, and this is impossible in any kind of speculation, for, by its nature it is insecure, insolvent, and trepidatious.

You may ask, what do i do to succeed, but unless you have a strong certainty about yourself the answers you receive are entirely moot. Are you an addictive personality? Can you adhere to a position in the face of uncertainty? Can you take the bitterness and discomfort of losing and still respond accurately to a new and unique set of circumstances? Do you need the affirmation of others to persist in a course elected on, or can you go it alone? Above all, you must be able to answer questions of character before you ask questions about method.



tlt

[checkmate36]

cliffnotes:

1. Read FAQ
2. Buy alcohol (more is better)
3. Use thelyingthief's picks
4. profit

[dankhank]

[ QUOTE ]
Imagine what could happen if you knew your head from your ass.

[/ QUOTE ]

i very clearly stated it comes down to a few key concepts, one of which you listed. anyone could learn to beat sports in a couple days if they were taught by the right person. and i agree, i'd like to see what would happen if you got your head out of your ass too.

[Thremp]

tlt,

I read like half of that. Its essentially garbage dressed up in a lot of 25c words. E for effort. BTW I didn't mention anything about handicapping any sports.

Whatev I don't even care. Make picks, check them against moon charts, read a book, obv nothing about learning how to arb/middle/line shop since those are the most basic skills every sports bettor needs.

[thelyingthief]

im not going to argue, thremp: obviously, if you arb, yes, then lines are everything. and "every sports bettor" is not so, i rarely arb, and my associates rarely do so, either.

then again, OP was not asking about arb, was he?

thanks for the insults by the way, very pleasant. so, eat [censored], okay?

tlt.