Betting On Systems
Systems can be deceiving. Any sample space can be constrained enough with meaningless criteria to create the illusion of a profitable betting system. For example, a coin can be flipped with heads being home teams and tails being road teams. Heads and tails each have a 50% probability of landing but if the amount of flips is limited to a small number, it is conceivable to create the illusion of predicting heads will come up 75% of the time.
That, in conjunction with the fact that sportsbooks adjust their odds according to the systems makes it difficult to follow systems indefinitely. The sportsbooks are slower to adjust the odds in some sports versus other sports depending on the number of games played and the amount of money they take in from bettors.
Betting systems based on statistical analysis have been around for awhile, however they have not always been well known. One group that was known for their accurate predictions was called The Computer Group. They formed in Las Vegas in 1980 and successfully wagered on college football and basketball games for years making millions. Billy Walters, who was recently profiled on 60 minutes, is the most famous member of the group.
Sports betting systems have not always been well trusted or liked by bettors. The stigma is that a sporting event has too many intangibles that a machine can't predict. However, things have begun to change recently as owners of teams have begun to take notice of the value in statistics. Front offices have hired noted statistical analysts such as Jeff Sagarin.
Books like Sabermetrics, by Bill James, and Basketball on Paper by Dean Oliver, have begun to bring detailed statistical analysis to the forefront of sports betting systems. Blogs are now being written more frequently about the topic and sports handicapping services have made claims of great success using sports betting systems from advanced statistical research.
Read more about this topic: Sports Betting Systems
Famous quotes containing the words betting and/or systems:
“What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, “I bet that my Redeemer liveth.””
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“People stress the violence. That’s the smallest part of it. Football is brutal only from a distance. In the middle of it there’s a calm, a tranquility. The players accept pain. There’s a sense of order even at the end of a running play with bodies stewn everywhere. When the systems interlock, there’s a satisfaction to the game that can’t be duplicated. There’s a harmony.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)