Posted:
#151
Quote Originally Posted by FiatLux4:
Tough game Scal. I did appreciate your response as it gave me something to think about. I completely understand your perspective in regards to real world versus the vegas world.
Tough game Scal. I did appreciate your response as it gave me something to think about. I completely understand your perspective in regards to real world versus the vegas world.
At a very you age, my dad taught me that if you want answer to certain things, all you have to do is follow the money. Sometimes that becomes an overshadow to the game itself for me. Obviously there have been many lines throughout sports history that have begged for money and have come through to win. I honestly did feel that this line was off in its opening. Despite having played the Nets, it wasn't necessarily the correct play even though it won. It really was too big of a number for me.
The other thing I wanted to mention was to me, the signifier in this scenario of the line movement was to attract more Nets money, meaning there already was a significant amount on Cleveland. Combining my predisposition of the line being off in favor of getting Cavs backers plus the movement made this a relatively confident play for me.
Of course, I say all that with the fact that the imaginary gap made by vegas, as you said, doesn't translate to the court, that they are separate entities. I guess I can't help to follow the money even though quite often it doesn't pan out. I can honestly see now why you cap a few teams and leave it at that. The percentage of success of your methods in the long will prove a lot higher than almost every other imaginable process.
Looking forward to your future reads my man. 
I agree you should follow the money in life.
But I can assure you, if you are a follow-the-money-capper (you are not, I am just saying), you will be broke one day.
No one can catch and monitor all line movements so the ones we do see, we are likely already biased toward a side previously (or else we wouldn't be studying the line).
Say we like the Wolves over the Lakers and the line is 11.5. We watch the line throughout the day and see it go to 10. This means there is more Laker money coming in so we think this is Vegas asking for more action on the Lakers.
Therefore, we think Minny is now an even better side and we buy up more Minny.
The problem with this is we do not know why the line moved. Is it reverse line movement, is it sharp money coming in at a major book that then moved the line and that had a ripple effect throughout the betting community, or is it typical square line movement?
Ultimately, it doesn't matter, since you can become a better expert on 1 or 2 teams than Vegas can be on all of them. I can promise you that. Therefore, the betting side cedes to exist in favor of a real world outcome that won't be altered by millions of cash in sharp and square money. Vegas vaporizes when the buzzer sounds.
When you have a game capped properly, it's as if you turn the lights off in a dark room. The color ceases to exists.
Think of a line that is set for a game the same way you think of color.
Entire branches of philosophy are dedicated to color.
Color is simply a function of the mind. It does not truly exist. When you turn off lights in room, color ceases to exist.
The blue shirt in your closet no longer is blue without light and your eyesight.
Color is psychological and merely a blend of your mind's interpretation of light that hits its eye.
Nothing is actually colored. This is one of the reasons I used to talk about racism so much. Color doesn't exist. We create it.
A betting line exists in the same manner.
We make it up. It never existed. We brought it into existence and it continues to have an effect on the real world because we make it so.
It has nothing to do with the actual game.
(But your larger point of capping a game with cash flows, sharp or square, because you don't have a feel for it otherwise, is a quick shortcut to a pick since you are arguing that someone knows the winner (sharps and Vegas) or doesn't (squares) and that money should be followed and interpreted so you can make a pick. I understand that angle but remember, it is a shortcut).
If you truly want to cap a game, you cap the game first, get a sense of what the margin of victory will be, and then you look at the line.
The easiest way to do this is to have a line of -1 or a ML. Therefore, you are only capping a win and not a win + a margin of victory.
This is the theory of reductionism. This is taking a complex system and simplifying it.
I'm serious when I say you can you philosophical arguments to cap NBA games. I do all the time. But it is so inlaid into my capping, it is already second nature.
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