Does anybody know how to check the public bet percentages on things such as boxing, UFC, golf etc?

I can't find it on vegas insider

any leans on hatton-paq?

Hey Wang, question for you:


Suppose Houston is playing the Lakers.

The line opens at -9.0 for the Lakers. The Lakers obviously get pounded by the public at something like 80%.
Line moves to -8.5, which follows contrarian bet.

Line then moves to -8.0, which is even better for contrarian bet.

But then the line moves to -8.5.

Does this move scare you or should it not affect you? I mean the line is still under the opening line, but at the same time, it isn't moving the way you want to move it. Like is something up, where the Lakers all of a sudden are a solid bet?

Alright, so I've been following Wang's contrarian approach and fading the public sides. I do not follow lines movements however. I have been betting on anti-public sides for the past 30 days, and I am 94-120 or 43.9%. I am down -12x. The number is relatively small because I bet mostly on baseball and hockey which have moneylines, and the public is virtually ALWAYS on the favorite. I may have placed a bet on a favorite 5 times in 214 games. It's ridiculous. So, you know for certain that the books know which team the public is going to bet on, and if you believe that they skew the line to give them a larger edge than this theory of Wang's is for you.

I'm not saying it's not for me. I feel as though 214 games is too small a sample size. I will make my decision to continue or not after 1,000 games which will be around the end of baseball season.

However, I am starting to think that I should be "screening" the criteria of an "anti-public side". On any given day, I may have 6 to 18 games that fade the public. My question to Wang or BigDMcGee is how should I further screen down from here? I would prefer my betting style to bet fewer games for larger quantity of units rather than peppering the board for less units.

Should I make my criteria for a baseball bet be:

1) Fade the public

2) Must have the ERA vs FIP stats of pitcher working in coordination with my bet. (i.e. Harden's FIP is about 0.90 runs higher than his ERA, therefore it make even more sense to fade the Cubs w/ Harden pitching)

3) The line movements (I am unclear what to be looking for here -- please explain)

Thanks. Any insights would be appreciated.

Banner17

Getting back on the sports betting train. I say a thread in another forum called "lock of the century" so that perked my contrarian interest..

The pick was the Giants -300 verses Cin... I've never seen a baseball line 300 or over before( granted I don't look much) and I had to assume TL is pitching ( he is..)


So I did a little research on it, and on one of my sports betting sites I saw that the betting was on the giants like 91%-9.. and the line hasn't really been moving..


So....


I know what that means..


I swallowed my vomit, and pounded Cincinnati for 4 units.

Good luck

The line moved the wrong way. It was -300, then -320.

I have money on Pittsburgh tonight. STL was a big public favourite, and the line moved in a way to increase more betting on STL

on the site I check at, it boucned between 300 and 320, and is back on 300 when I made that post. regardless, with betting in the 90-10 range, you would think the line would have moved to 450...

I don't think the line would need to move to 450. A line generally at most moves about 40. Usually it only moves about 10-20 points at most. It's already at a lot of juice, so I wouldn't expect it to move too much.

But still, yeah 90/10 is a good split. I just think the line movement doesn't work the right way. If it bounced back to 300 though, that's a good bet. P.S. Pirates suck

NICE HIT DUDE!!!

Pittsburgh opened at -3. They got over 75% action, and it's now at -1.

Chicago +1

Gmen opened at -7. Over 75% of action and now laying 6.5. Bucs at home?

St Louis, same thing.

what does that translate to?

bucs at home covering?

I'm betting the Bucs heavy, and the Rams too. A little more on the Bucs (+6.5), as the line started at -7.

Also pounding the under the NO/BUF Game. 85% of the action on the over, and the O/U is moving lower to encourage more betting on the over.

Why is an undefeated major market Jets team being spotted a TD only getting 43% of the action?

edit: Answer: because the Saints are the most public team in the NFL. Ugh.

Also am I correct that the books are backing the Chiefs?

some crazy things...

The dolphins went from being a 2.5 dog to a 2.5 favorite, even though like 80 percent of the betting was on the bills. that's nuts.


the yankees were -370 before game 1 started. I wish I would have known this before the game, so I could have dropped 10 unites on the twins..that's the most absurd line I've ever seen... I don't care how good one team is, and I don't care if the other team just played an extra inning 1 game playoff the night before, there never should be a 370 favorite in a playoff game. This game should be like +210 or something.

You think so? I projected a high line there... honestly, fresh yanks... CC on the mound....

I parlayed yanks to win game one and to win the series at -275, $137.50 to win $50 i thought it was a great bet

Pretty easy to brag about a bet after the game has been played....

I've also given up on the NFL, the favourites always seem to cover this year. College football though on the other hand is going very well.

i don't think it was a great bet, no. of course the yankees are fresh, of course cc is on the mound, of course the twins just came off a 12 inning game. you know this, i know this and the entire betting public knows this. i'll tell you one thing about contrarian betting. You will never, ever, ever get value betting on the yankees. Or betting parleys, for that matter.

Lol I'm betting the Skins, Bucs, and Rams.

You are reffering to parlaying the Spread I assume... you still think that parlaying the moneyline has bad value?


Wake Forest Demon Deacons -500
Texas Tech Red Raiders -700
Arizona State Sun Devils -1400
BYU Cougars -750
This was my parlay today on them all to win straight up
45 to win 30

just saying that when the twins/Tigers game was going on, I thought the yanks would be -250+ to whoever they were playing

yes





yes I agree that's the line they should have been.. but they were instead -370... and there's were value comes from in contrarian betting.

**** man, the more I read this the angrier I get. THis thread is not about sucker sports bets, it's about going against the public. Betting on -1400 Favorites in parlay situations is not on topic. Get the fuck out of here with this nonsense.

the title is sports gambling 201....


How is parlaying -1400 NOT on topic?

Do me a favor.. read the OP, then get the fuck out of here.

Actually the title is:

"Sports Gambling 201: An Introduction to Contrarianism and Value"

interesting

you confuse me with your thought process on the baseball moneyline....

And i dont want to leave the thread, It has helped... and I still follow it.... I just enjoy betting, and I sont want tot start ANOTHER thread on sportsbets... when i could post here... Instead of being a dick, can you just HELP me, maybe give me advice?

This is not a thread to talk about your random degen sucker bets, this is thread on contrarian betting I wasn't fucking kidding, read the original fucking post. There is a purpose to this thread, and like everyone else in the thread, you should read the original fucking post so you understand that purpose. I'm not going to explain ground covered earlier in this thread, just for you, when you can read page one and understand it clearly.

you ignorant ass... first off... this thread is practically dead.... it gets hits like 3 times a month.... Thats not the point.... My "degen" bets have been hitting a lot better then the recent picks on this thread.... secoundly, I have read page one and understand it all.... thats awesome.... but now what? we open this thread up again every other month and talk about Contrarian picks that arent even hitting? and what is with the F-bombs? not necessary

Honestly, I hate tension. I really hate fighting with people..... SO, in the means of saving me.... I am curious to what site you check to look at the betting % of the population... Currently I am getting my numbers at covers.com... but they have limited numbers of betters, something like 2k on a average basis... suggestions?

Saw this now.... I have been using Wagerline.... but i cant find the stats on vegasinsider.

I imagine this one is up your alley, Mac:



Rcooj, I'm kind of not entirely trying to be an ass with this question: do you honestly believe that this is rational method and an adequate sample for measuring the expectation of a bet?

Love it.


Chad Millman

This guy was on one of the Bill Simmons podcasts; the link above is about the book he wrote about sports gambling. On the podcast he talked about a lot of the same ideas in this thread.


By the way, the book isn't a "how-to" book about sports gambling. He spent an entire NCAA basketball season in Vegas talking to bookmakers and "wise guys" and it's more of a story about that.

I hate to be a contrarian, but my usage of fuck was extremely necessary. Now, Fuck off.

What? Betting contrarian?

So when I talk about bets, that arent contrarian. That is off topic. But when you post stupid pictures, posts that belittle me, you are on topic?

I wasn't entirely sure why Mac was just facepalming you instead of engaging long-form debate. With this post, I understand.

I love this thread.

I read The Odds and it was a great read. The main guy in the book is Alan Boston who is a Full Tilt pro, and can be seen on youtube if you search for alien poker player. He's the crazy bald headed guy. You can play stud with him usually on Sunday nights at Full Tilt. He plays like 1-2 to 3-6 stud. Sometimes, I'll sit with him and chat. He's very nice to the players and will answer just about anyting you ask him. I can tell you one thing -- he hates his life as a gambler. He can still win at college hoops, but he says it's the worst thing that has ever happened to him. Makes sense. Here he is an Ivy League grad probably in his mid-40s and he has to gamble to chop out a 100,000 a year. Anyone who is/was ever successful at gambling over any decent period of time knows it's a ton of hard work and long hours of preparation to win. Using his Dartmouth degree somehow would have been a much wiser allocation of his time and sanity.

As for the contrarian approach, I feel as though it's like advising someone to play ultra tight in poker. You basically give them a way to lose their money more slowly. I followed the contrarian approach in the baseball season for about 3 months. I bet between 7 and 12 games a day. Over this period of time I lost about 7 units. I was playing 1 unit plays per baseball game. Lost 7 units in total. That is as close to doing nothing as one could get. The thing with contrarian and baseball is my record was atrocious if I was a normal sports bettor (I posted it earlier in the thread). I think I won only like 43% of my games, but since I was usually always backing the dogs, the bets I hit paid off nicely almost to the point where if I won a bet I could lose two. After the 3 months I eventually just quit. I missed a day, then two, then just stopped. I didn't really care to bet anymore.

Currently, I am betting sports again and doing well. My friends and I purchased a service for the football season called ATS Locks Club under ATS Sports Consultants. They bought it prior to the college football and NFL preseason. I got on late being the last week of NFL preseason. The Locks Club gives you both college and pro football plays. Thus far, I'm up 52.4 units. My friends are up more since they were there for all the preseason NFL. They are surprisingly good at preseason NFL. The package costs $2,500 or 4,500 -- I forget.

You were only betting only 1 unit on 7-12 games a day. I'm not a great at sports betting by any means but never increasing units for good plays is probably why you just broke even. Not to mention it doesn't sound like you were being very picky about the games you bet if you are making that many plays a day. The people I know who are successful sports betters bet very few games overall.

Yea, I was not picky at all. If it had more than 2/3rds public on one side, I took the anti-public side. I agree with you in that one needs to bet more units on their stronger plays. However, I guess it goes to show you that Wang may have been on to something. I believe I bet about 400 games (like I said I posted my record somewhere in this thread) and was only down 7 units. I'm not lying to you. I kept records on it.

I believe that Wang's theory may be on to something, but one needs to refine it. Screen down the number of games, and bet more units on your stronger plays. I'm just not smart enough to do it.