The unofficial online home for fans of the Old Dominion University Monarchs. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

Gilesfan, if you are an advantage gambler and its possible you are from reading this thread, you should see that arguing over bought points in college basketball is clearly a - EV play for you. Razor Ramon Monarch is arguing that his small sample size of buying points proves its worth it. At this point why even have the conversation?

The only question to ask yourself is do I gain an expected value when adding a half point to cover the extra 10 cents of vig I am charged. In all #s for CBB the answer is no. The 3 is breakeven to buy off of.

I am sure Razor has looked at historical data for college basketball to make his decisions but someone out there took a few seasons of data and played around with it.

http://forums.statfox.com/statfoxnews/ne...-Hoops.htm

On top of empirical evidence that shows it's a losing proposition, how about the common sense one. If it is something that is profitable why would the sportsbook allow you to do it so easily?

If Razor is up a ton of money this year its cause the games he selected are winning, most importantly. If enough games are winning instead of losing on the bought points to overcome the extra juice, its short term variance and wont last forever.

There are a few instances in CBB, CFB and NFL where buying points makes sense. I'll list those here.

CBB
Buying off the 3 is breakeven so it won't hurt you either way. Everything else is a waste.

NFL

- Buying on/off the 3 is worth about 23 cents, so if you can pay 20, go for it.
- Buying on/off the 7 is worth about 12-13 cents, so if you can pay 10, go for it.
- The 10 is worth close to 10 cents, so it's roughly neutral in terms of EV if you want to buy the hook.
- Also, in totals, the 37 is worth right around 10 cents, so you may actually want to buy on/off the 37, but that's the only total I'm aware of.

CFB

- I'm less familiar with the exact values here, but it's worth slightly more than 10 cents to buy on/off the 3 or 7, so if you can pay 10 for either number, go for it.

NOTE: Make sure you're making the correct comparisons when deciding whether to buy points or not. If you have a reduced vig out (-105 or less) and you can get something like an NFL team +7 -105, you'd need to be able to find +7 -117 or so to make the half-point buy worthwhile. Even though you may be paying 10 cents more at a full vig shop, +7.5 -120 is inferior to +7 -105 b/c you're actually paying 15 cents. This may sound like common sense, but it's not always apparent to some beginning/recreational gamblers.



Thats about all the - EV time I'm willing to give to this. I'm sure everyone else ready to let it die too. For some reason I had to slam my head against the brick wall a few times too. Carry on. RIP Blaine. We will miss your thong in Richmond on Fridays.

I'm sure the odu fan who killed himself because of his gaming debts would have posted something very similar to what you just did as well.

Think about that.

I'll take my own system of picking and choosing games I like and taking the safer play all day long.

Thanks for all the help though, you must be a high roller in Vegas since you have the system beat right? Right?

(02-05-2013 10:49 AM)MonarchManiac Wrote:  wanna take this argument to PM's? or the OT board?

Doesn't really have anything to do with ODU vs GMU. Or ODU sports in general.

Agree. Is it bad taste to talk about gambling on this site?

You cant make a real bet in Vegas unless its Cantor Gaming books on gameday after the offshore market is firmed up (pinnacle/bookmaker/cris), so no, not living in Vegas.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/apr...harrahs-s/
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/jan...k-violati/

That type of backing off sharps I show in that link happens pretty much everywhere in Vegas. Sportsbooks are for the tourists to enjoy themselves.

If your systems are working for you Razor and you believe that is the best indicator of future success, then best of luck to you. No one is going to root against someone taking money off their bookmaker.

TheShrink was a degenerate gambler who advertised poorly rated sportsbooks for a % to make money off gamblers who didn't know any better from his betting message boards/portals. I don't like to talk badly on someone who cant defend themselves, but what I say is well known.

That being said even if he would have posted what I did about how buying points in CBB gives you a negative expected value result, he would have been right. Doesn't mean he can pick winners, which is a tough gig enough on its own.

The natives are geting spooked by the gambling talk so I assume this will be my last post on the subject.

ODU is 5-14 ATS, there has been no better team to bet against this year.

http://www.sportsbookgurus.com/sports/nc...dings.html

It's not a safer play, you are risking more money to win less. That is the point.

(02-05-2013 10:03 PM)Gilesfan Wrote:  It's not a safer play, you are risking more money to win less. That is the point.

You will never win this argument and if you try there will be 99 pages of the same statements repeated 99 times in different words calling you 99 different types of names.. Good luck pal

(02-05-2013 10:03 PM)Gilesfan Wrote:  It's not a safer play, you are risking more money to win less. That is the point.

In the long run it probably isn't but I don't bet all the time, I bet smartly and when I think I have an advantage because I am paying attention.

I've been hitting odu hard all season long because the book makers are still giving us far too much respect based on past results.

Just to make sure I win my bets, I don't bet on every spread and every game, just the ones I am sure about and even then, I buy the points to make sure it's a safer bet.

As documented on this board, I haven't lost a single solitary bet on odu this year. Even when we "covered" against vcu and one other team (forget who exactly), by buying the points, I still won my bet.

That's safe gambling (as safe as you can get anyways) and it's how I win money. I'm up a pretty substantial amount and I'm going to take my money out now that Blaine is fired. Quitting when you are ahead is also a very important part of gambling.

Corrigan is an unknown commodity and as such, I won't be betting against us again this season, I knew what I was getting with Blaine and I knew he didn't have the players to play his style. Hence, I decided to bet and I also made my bets public in case anyone wanted to make some money themselves.

This will me by last post on the subject this entire season and probably for the foreseeable future.