Rarely do I say Vegas knows more than I do but they must know something w/ Kings vs.Wizards. WRITEUP

I like the Pacers and it's down to -1 in some spots. It's a 2.5 star of 5 play. there are good arguments in this thread for the other side which results in the downgrade.

Not only does poor Scal have to write this stuff for you but now you want him to read it for you too?

Knicks is the play tonight..... wish I would have taken this game yesterday at +3 now it's +1.... Only reason I wanted +3 was beucause i'm hitting the ML and i wanted MORRRREEEEEEE. 

They win SU tonight. They have hit a solid groove where they are more reminiscent of the team from last year than the trash we have seen for most of this year. Guys are starting to jell. 

Defense has been getting progressively better. We can talk abotu the knicks have been playing against weakish opponenets. That's correct..... BUT..... they have completely CRUSHED THEM without any looking back. No backdoor BS covers except for an unusually slowish starts against the sixers but once they got the lead late late in th 2nd quarter it was no looking back there neither. 

Now the pacers..... who blow balls lately in primetime wednesday spots as a matter of fact (i've been paying attention.). These guys have not been impressive at at all now their glaring usual weakness has come alive as usual. They have problems scoring the ball and getting high percentage shots. They have played some incredibly weak teams as well and they have looked unbelievably horrible against them. 

Public on the pacers heavily tonight.... 

Didn't cap it to the extent you did because Knicks Pacers game but you can pretty much count on Pekovic being out. He is paper mâché thin and sits whenever he gets the chance. I don't have confirmation but he is doubtful right now and with all the games I've ever bet on the wolves, he's never surprised me coming back from a injury if doubtful or questionable...never.

Everything you said was true and would have been true in the last game too except for Dirk playing well. He hasn't been shooting the ball that well outside of the explosion in the jazz game.

Last 4 without the jazz

Pacers 21%

Warriors 36%

Celts 35%

Thunder 50%

Marion has been a nice spark plug and Devin Harris has given a bit here and there.

I would love Pek to be playing but he isn't and rebounding will be a problem but the revenge angle is an intriguing one if you need some extra impetus to back them.

Because Pek is out and, I'll be teasing the wolves up

Again, I haven't capped this game to any extent in comparison to the Pacer games but I hope I offered a little to help.

The only reason they crush them is because that is the only way they can win.

They can't hold leads and therefore must come out quick and stay uptempo. They know this. They blew a 17 point lead in ATL and 13 point lead in Orlando and an 12 point lead Sacto and on and on and on.

And they can't come back in games either.

So it's either blow them out or lose...and lose is all they need to do tonight with a line now at one.

That's a tall order against a team that has lost 17 of 67.

And the Pacers on a bad day are the Knicks on a great day...

Ah, it's alright. There's a lot of pages of kings wiz stuff here I guess.

Sometimes when the table is set for you, you just have to sit down and eat. The Knicks set the table tonight and even had a celebrity cook in Phil and I decided to be contrarian when everything pointed to a Knicks win, regardless of the ridiculous line movement. 

Knicks backers - well done . Had I gotten 4.5 I would have been with you but not at 1.5/1. I usually cap these games the night before line moves and that affected the play as I watched it fall off a cliff.

It is offered for one reason. Make more and more bets.

The more volume, the more vig and they scrape more and more from the public. 

There may be one or two instances to in-game bet a year but that should be all. It is on the fly capping full of emotion as you noted above.

It's unfortunate because I was gonna come back on and post at the half and concede the game to the Knicks based on how you saw it panning out. They were shooting 37% and were up by 12. That is just pure out hustling another team. I should have and you wouldn't have hedged the third quarter.

Bro.... you had a very great middling opportunity at half time with the pacers at -4. Could have cashed both ways and not if have to sweat it out. 

Even without adjustments from the coach alone.... by human nature they will try to catch the knicks and up their FG%. I know it sounds great in hindsight but i took pacers -4 with the knicks being up by 12 points you can't ask for a better opportunity. 

Scal i disagree about live betting. Live betting works awesome if you cap you're own games and understand the flow of the game. You just can't take every single live line they throw at you.  

Disagree. Even if you don't go after a lot of live lines.

I understand game flow as you do and in game betting feeds the addictive side of gambling. 

It is quite alluring and I have to constantly battle with laying off of it when my phone is near me and I have a Espn/TNT game on. 

That allure is the essence of tapping into brain circuitry that controls wants/needs/desires. The developers of these vices know exactly how the brain works.

The other downside to it is that the lines are set by algorithm. There is very little arbitrage when betting with 3 minutes left in the second quarter down 8. The line, more often than not, is amazingly sharp at the final score.

Opening lines are set by bookmakers and can be exploited as people exploited this Knick line in this very thread. Some of these opening lines are quite terrible in the NBA. It's pretty amazing to see a line move 3 to 4 points without an injury. That's a very large move you don't see much in the NFL where the lines are much sharper. An in-game Knick line has little to offer and as BB noted can be costly when you already have winners in hand and doubt and/or greed sets in.

Best bet - opening lines and if you must, halftime lines which are of course, in game lines with a 15 minute break for you to digest the first half instead of hitting up a spread while watching a commercial about four hour Viagra erections with 8:40 left in the first.

I have very mixed feelings about live betting, Scal. In general, I agree with you. Whenever I've lost money live betting it was because of greed and/or chasing. And this impulse is something one must fight against whenever one is live betting. In other words, one must ask, "am I making this bet because it is a great opportunity or because I want to win even more and/or recover what lost, etc?" Live betting requires extreme discipline (even more than normal betting) if one is to be profitable. I think the algorithm part is dead on. The lines get more accurate/sharp as the game goes on, however, and this is a big however, the algorithm's fail to account for the human dimension of the sport. And here is where bettors with an awareness of human psychology, motivation, and unique game situations have an advantage over the lines that some computer spits out. For instance, regarding the Clips/Nuggets game the other night. In the middle of the 2nd quarter, as the game slowed down and guys were missing tons of shots (shooting % for both teams was around 34) the line for the total dropped to 202 (the line was originally set at 217). Seeing this, I quickly put 200 on the over. The rationale being that there was plenty of time left for those shooting percentages to rise, and that 202 compared to 217 was a bargain, considering how much time was left in the game. But opportunities like this are rare and one needs to be prepared (or cap a game beforehand) in order to take advantage. 

There are countless other ways one can take advantage of these algorithms but it takes a lot of self-control and balls. In tennis, for instance, there are times when a player is clearly injured or has lost control of the match (for whatever reason) and the algorithms have no way of accounting for that. They spit out a line before their human overseers can catch it and correct it. But again, this requires much patience and discipline. But perhaps the greatest challenge in live betting is the urge to hedge out of a bet that one was very confident in before the 4th quarter of a tight game. All I can say in this regard is that you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. I've probably lost more in hedging than I saved but the impulse to hedge is great with live betting, for the very reasons you mentioned. But, to me, the worst part of live betting is how much of your time it eats up, not to mention all the ulcers!