On Jun 22, 10:36 pm, Kurgan Gringioni <
[email protected]> wrote:
> On Jun 22, 8:18 pm, Fred Fredburger
>
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > You are assuming a well informed, dispassionate betting public.
>
> > That is not a good assumption. People bet for many reasons, some of them
> > ignorant and emotional. Name recognition plays into these odds at least
> > as much the likelihood of winning.
>
> Dumbass -
>
> I agree.
>
> Anecdote: a friend of mine actually makes money at gambling, most of
> it on college football. He'll make value bets vs. the teams that have
> the most passionate, most numerous fans (pre-2007 Notre Dame for
> instance), waiting till they go against a quality unknown opponent
> with a small fanbase and Notre Dame will get something like 5
> touchdowns in the spread. The reason he's able to beat the bookies'
> take over time is self-evident.
>
> He's not taking money from the bookies though. The bookies just want
> an equal amount of money on both sides of any spread. He's taking it
> from the overly rabid fans of the big school.
>
> thanks,
>
> K. Gringioni.
You guys are dumbasses, and are just making my point. If the odds are
off, someone with knowledge of that fact will come along and exploit
it, and the odds will have to be adjusted. Given sufficient time and
bettors, the odds should become a good model of 'reality,' even if
they aren't that in the first place. But, they probably will be that
in the first place, because the bookies who set the original odds have
good information and are in the business of making good odds. If they
couldn't do that, they'd be out of business before very long, since
they're competing with other bookies who are attempting to do the
exact same thing. Ergo, the odds offered by bookies will tend to be a
good model of the actual probabilities.
Of course, I'm a bigger dumbass than either of you for taking the time
to correct the original poster's message to make a finer point about
his personal assessment of the odds on offer, when we all probably
knew what he meant in the first place.
-rj