Live betting = Craziness??

[Mr. 33]

Do any you here do alot of live betting? I just spent the last 3+ hours in full stress mode firing live bet after live bet during the ALCS game. I have been a little hesitant doing live betting, thinking it was mostly "sucker" type lines until I started watching it a little more closely. There are some ridiculously profitable lines at some points. For example, I took the under before the game started at 8.5u, +116. After the top of the 1st, the live line was 8.5o, +126. How is that not crazy?? $1000 on the initial under could be scalped for $204. Since live betting is like crack, I waited to act after the A's batted, hoping to get a better line, but they scored. Also, since live betting is like crack, bets and teams can get mixed up. I took the Tigers at +162 after the 1st, and did the ultimate scalp in the middle of the second with the Tigers -105 (yes, I meant to take the A's at -109). Luckily, I didn't panic right away and waited and left it alone. I know someone mentioned that scalping live is -EV, but when games are in the early stages or even just tied, it has to be a decent play. Thoughts on the whole live betting? I think I placed 15 bets tonight, and ended up + $quite a bit and +heartburn. Talk about waiting on every pitch!

[brendanb438]

Live betting like this is fun, until it starts to go horribly wrong. Just be careful because you will end up on the wrong side of those live lines sometimes and have to decide between losing half of what you invested or losing it all. And when you decide to cut your loses all of a sudden the miracle happens and you would have won those bets, but you got out. Heartburn is the least of it, when it goes horribly wrong you will want to slam your head into the wall.

-Brendan

[Howling]

You will get grinded down big time if you keep trading back and forth during the same game. You need to look for a spot you think is +EV (Obviously) and whack it.

During game 1 of the Oak/Det series I took the 'under 8.5' Tiger game when it dropped to 28 ($28 to win $72) after the tigers jumped out to a 5-0 lead in the fourth. I didn't think Oakland would put up anything the way it was going, and 28 looked like great value.


Like any bet you must have a solid reason to justify the price.

[Thremp]

Word. Good advice.

Some people momentum trade. I've done this before when I felt it was justified (bottom of a batting order coming up etc). Sometimes you can just find square live lines and just bet them straight like you would any errant line.

Football is very counterintuitive you'll find. Prices typically peak on a goal line drive and then will drop when a team smashes it in for 6. very strange. Considering the possibility of a stop or TO. but these are the type of things you'll notice as you see these lines cruise along.

[Howling]

Football is where Im tempted to blind bet against the team that scored first. I read (a long while back, years ago) about some data they (writers of the article) had about major sports, NFL, NHL, MLB, in which they showed the winning % of the teams that scored first.

Football was far and away the least affected by a first score (55% of the teams that scored first won).

NBA wasn't included for obvious reasons.

This data reflected just the winner of the game, not vs. spread.

I'm tempted to venture a guess that if you take the cheap price blindly, you might be close to +EV.

Just a thought.

[rawl316]

For the NBA, I like to look at games where teams go on an early run and bet on the other team. All teams usually make a run, and when they do, I'll sell out for profit.

[rush66]

Honestly, what I do is sit and watch. For baseball, every half inning while Im watching the game. Most of the honestly, I wait towards the end of the game. Usually like the bottom of the 7th and take the under. At that point if the score is 11 you get over under 12.5. So you get two runs. If you wait till the 8th you get 11.5. So you get one run. If you want to take the over take it then. You can usually get around +-120 at this point. For football, I dont really have a good method yet. I like to wait till the end of the game usually and take the large lines for like a half unit. Usually the over/under. I try not to go over 1/2 unit so Im not losing a ton. Plus by waiting till the end you are not going back and forth and stressing out the whole game. Just my thoughts.

[Doosh]

Live betting is craziness, and I love it. I absolutely love scalping unders like you mentioned, in the World Cup this was free free money. The key, I think, to live betting is making the play for a profitable scalp, as opposed to a profitable bet. Especially early in the game. Though I do a lot of betting right at the end as well, as sometimes you can get some interesting prices. For example, last night, bottom of the ninth, Tigers up three, two outs, bases juiced and Big Hurt at the plate, you could buy Detroit for -900 (wsex). Last Monday night with Denver up 4.5 ATS, 2 minutes left, and a Ravens team that hadn't scored a touchdown all night, you could take the Broncos at -400. I'm sure wsex knows what it's doing (the Broncos bet scared me more than the Tigers bet), but those are a couple interesting ones right at the end of the game from the past week. Oh, and don't forget about golf. You can often get a "good" golfer with a couple stroke lead halfway through their final round for a decent price. (Though Tiger gets inflated.)

[Thremp]

I like doing this when a team I feel is much better gets scored against first for like a fluke run or something. Or a pitcher gives up a leadoff jack and then strikes the next two out.

[rush66]

Hahahah, the leadoff jack last night screwed my U12.5.