Great post Thorpe
I have been saying this since sports insights first appeared on the net.
If anybody actually believes that any sportsbook {who are in the business of taking our money} will ever release any type of info that can help us bettors win their money, please quit gambling and seek some form of mental help.
How gullible does a person have to believe that the books want to share their info with us
The numbers put out by all these consensus sites are pure bogus trash, all designed to screw with the bettors heads.
Unless you know some top people in a sportsbook, your never gonna know what that book really needs and thats a fact.
Another thing that also provides me with a good laugh is when you surf all the gambling forums, all you hear is people saying the public is on this and the public is on that. Do all of these people not realize that all of us are the public. For some reason, people on gambling forums dont think they are actually the public and instead believe there is some other group of people called the public
This is another term just designed to screw with bettors minds.
Sometimes the team with the most bets on it win and sometimes the teams with the most bets lose. This public that and public this, is all just a load of crap.
You just need to cap the game and come up with the team you think will win, thats all you can do. Sometimes you will cap it right and sometimes you will cap it wrong.
Quote Originally Posted by thorpe:
A few thoughts on the percetnages...
1. Unless you are a book, you don't know what percentage is on which side. There is no reason to trust the percentages that get posted on various sites.
2. Are those percentages number of bets or amount bet?
3. How often are the percentages updated? Most betting occurs the day of the game. Most people bet favorites early and dogs late, so the percentages will almost always skew in favor of the favorite.
As far as drawing conclusions, no pick will win 100% of the time. You can make the best pick (on paper) and still lose a good percentage of the time. So, you need a good sample size, but as j-walk stated, every game is different - there may be weather, or a player's injury status gets clarified during warmups, or all the touts release the same side, etc.
And even if you do all the research and think you have it it figured out to bet a team when the line moves a certain way, there is nothing to say the book doesn't move a line that way just to mix things up. It is not like the movement of a line is a law of nature that has to occur the same way every time.