So what did come first: the Chicken or the Egg? (No, serious...I'm curious)

I'm really not very good at picking 'the best' pick.

I like them all.  Possibly Nuggz today...

You too buddy.  GL

That's the plan for right now...that is until I know for sure if S-jax is playing or not

ok but im just saying..... i am going to go all in and never gamble again...and i need your help....would you advise to take the nuggz with all my money

I JUST NEED YOU 2 GIVE ME A VERy VERY VERY VERY STRONG PLAY WITH IN THE NEXT MONTH... ILL ASK YOU EVERYDAY.... AND YOU JUST TEELLL MEE...AIGHT BRO??? I NEED YOU

potential play on the under in the indy/char game also.. waiting on the steve jack status....  i really like the under

Hey Brendan,

I'm not aware of any "off-the-shelf" handicapping software.  If there is, then I can pretty much guarantee you that it hits 50% long-term, or else EVERYONE would be using it!  I don't keep a database, even though that would be extremely useful long-term.  Instead I rely on various sources available on-line that keep track of relevant (and for the MOST part irrelevant) trends.  What I do utilize is a statistical 'Excel-based' model for every sport I handicap for.  For basketball I concentrate on MOV (margin of victory) and SOS (strength of schedule) to determine an approximate 'line' for each matchup.  After that I focus on 4 key components to winning in basketball:  EFG%, TOV%, ORB%, and FT/FGA.  I've set up my model to be able to detect variance in each of these between each matchup that I analyze.  If the variance is significant enough, my model adjusts the line accordingly.  If there is no significance, then it doesn't.  Once I run the model for each matchup, I have a pretty good feel for where the LINE should be from the statistical, MOV, and SOS standpoint.  To me this is CRITICAL.  Most people analyze NBA blindly, without having a 'good' feel for the line.  That's a mistake.  You have to know if the line is accurate or not.  MOST of the time the posted line and the line provided by my model is very very close.  Sometimes (rarely) it's OFF by significant amount (to me that's at least 3 points) and I make sure to be able to explain that variance.  In any case, once you have a feeling for each particlar LINE using some kind of a statistical model, then it is much easier to truly dig in and handicap each game. 

NBA is a sport where most of the time the posted line is very 'efficient', so we must utilize various motivational, scheduling, and trend-related factors to find an edge.  I like developing my own 'mini' trends for each particular year (Example:  Spurs on the road against top 10 home-defenses are like 3-7 SU; Celtics playing the 2nd game on the road of a b2b after winning the 1st game are 1-8 SU this year (someone else actually pointed this one out), etc) that are not really tracked by various sites.  Noticing 'angles' like this truly could provide an 'edge' in this game. 

Alright, I might be confusing you here, but here are the 2 factors that I think are very important.  #1:  Create a statistical model that can provide you with a good solid 'line' estimation #2: Handicap the heck out of each matchup after to determine if there is a particular 'angle', trend, motivationa edge, 'fatique' spot, etc. that favors one team over another.  Statistically, pretty much ALL posted lines are efficient.  It's our job to find that 'edge'.  If you don't have it, then don't play it!  And that, my friend, is actually the BIGGEST edge that we have over the books! 

Good luck! 

i took the nugz -5...its a terrible line as appose to earlier...but i figure its terrible for a reason..so iam betting half of what i normally bet in case this blows up on me =P....

set em up and knock em down ....BOL Bodio!!!!
                                              
                                                   
                                                    

First of all, you do understand that GOING ALL IN, is not long-term sports investment, it's actually GAMBLING and you really are greatly reducing your edge over the book.  Take whatever BR you have and play 2-3% on each play you select.  This way you will grow your BR nice and steady over the long-haul. 

No I wouldn't recommend going ALL in on the Nuggz, because at -5 a lot of the 'value' is gone,  But even at -3.5 I don't recommend doing it!  Each bet that I make has about 59% chance of hitting (that's my record this year) but it also has 41% chance of not coming through.  You do understand this right?

Awesome write-ups, Bodio, as usual.

As to the classical chicken 'n egg question, my capping of this chicken game is this:

Odds for the egg to come first...........1.91

Odds for the chicken to come first.....1.91

Therefore the odds of them emerging at the same time is even.

Now, for real, neither one of them came first, as BOTH of them manifested into physical reality ONLY after the blueprint DNA first emerged from the Information Field that had the complete template for the entire chicken, including its ability to lay eggs.

Now what is this "Information Field"?

Consider this amazing, true story. A scientist packed some common beach sand into a bottle in  a lab, added some common water, then he vac-ed out the air and subjected the contents of the bottle to 3 HOURS of intense 1,800 degrees of heat.

NOTHING can survive this kind of life-killing treatment, right?

After several days of cooling off and sitting, the bottle was carefully examined and a thin, grey film was spotted at the surface of the water. So the scientist opened the bottle and immediately examined this thin sludge at the top of the water.

What he found astonished him. Creatures had formed, complete in shape, form, though not animated. There were shapes of plant leaves, of animals, of DNA spirals and all sorts of other patterns. Dozens of patterns were observed.

So one must ask oneself -- WHERE did those patterns emerge from in that bottle when ALL life had been killed off?

It came from the hidden Information Field that surrounds us, pervades us and stretches out into infinity.

The Cosmos, commonly thought of as 'empty space' is not a void from which life emerges -- it is a living, alive and energetic Information Field that is the template for life as we know it, including the chicken and egg.

Furthermore, the Information Field also is the source of eggs that many NBA teams like to lay every now and then, some more frequently than others, so in this context, the eggs come first, then the chicken of the NBA players running away from angry fans who had bet on them.

Out of curiousity, what happend with you that you are looking to do this?  It's unwise, and I recommend against it.  Just don't want you to lose all of your $$ on 1 single play that has 50% - 59% chance of hitting....

My book is still at Den -5, maybe a pass for me

good luck buddy.  yeah, it sucks that it went up so high so quick...

did you go down to that green river on st pattys day

Andre is now out for the sixers game...I posted all of the info on the why is atl/phi game off the board thread. Would you still play sixers at -6.5 and why?

 

hahaha!  Truly AWESOME!!! 

If players are the CHICKENS that lay EGGS, then what does it make US, especially during the times when we feel like we got F*#&ED by these CHICKENS?  Could these CHICKENS really be EGG-laying-ROOSTERS, therefore making US the true CHICKENS who are constantly getting screwed?  Hmmm....if someone can answer this question, then I think we pretty much nailed the 'meaning of life' here!  :)

Alright, I'll do my best but just know I would rather recommend that you take the 7k, cash out and ENJOY it as your 'quitting gambling' present!

Ok, ask yourself this question:

How will I feel if I lost my entire 7K bankroll from going all-in in this ONE game?


It would be awesome to win an all-in bet; however, the flip side is the horror of the loss of one's ENTIRE bankroll from just one roll of the dice.

 
By rolling it all-in on one game, you have a very, very good chance -- 40% or more on a good pick -- of losing it all.


It is far better to carefully tail Bodio's picks, or the picks of someone whom you trust, and add on to your BR a bit. Like Bodio says -- be grateful for what you have.


Preservation of your BR is paramount in betting. Everything else is secondary. No BR = no bets at all.


I know from the hard lesson of losing my entire BR last year. It's hell to try to make a come-back.





And to ask anyone to make a "lock" pick for you is too much of a karmic burden to place upon another. The burden of responsibility of this BR is YOURS -- not someone else's.

I looked up the wikipedia on the chicken-egg problem:

"Darwin's theory of evolution states that species change over time via mutation and selection. Since DNA can be modified only before birth, a mutation must have taken place at conception or within an egg such that an animal similar to a chicken, but not a chicken, laid the first chicken egg.^[13][14] In this light, both the egg and the chicken evolved simultaneously from birds that were not chickens and did not lay chicken eggs but gradually became more and more like chickens over time.

However, a mutation in one individual is not normally considered a new species. A speciation event involves the separation of one population from its parent population, so that interbreeding ceases; this is the process whereby domesticated animals are genetically separated from their wild forebears. The whole separated group can then be recognized as a new species.

The modern chicken was believed to have descended from another closely related species of birds, the red junglefowl, but recently discovered genetic evidence suggests that the modern domestic chicken is a hybrid descendant of both the red junglefowl and the grey junglefowl.^[15] Assuming the evidence bears out, a hybrid is a compelling scenario that the chicken egg, based on the second definition, came before the chicken."

It's always made the most sense to me that the egg came before the chicken. Since all chickens hatch from eggs it would make sense to call the egg the original chicken came from a "chicken egg" despite having parents that weren't quite the essense of the chicken.

Andre is in.  False report I believe