Tips for Tikay

[tikay]

I'd like to raise a couple of points

Bets were missed last night despite being up for 48 hours before the event (and then collated for easy use)

The excellent 49ers bet (we hope) was placed as soon as it was seen. Understandably

The non-placed bets needed support to be placed, but with the best will in the world (to pick one example)
a first goal scorer bet on Dean Hammond is unlikely to be supported. Who knows enough about or has seen Mr Hammond to say anything either way?

Same for a lot of the more specialist bets in some sports. How can they be supported enough to be backed if no one has the knowledge to row in behind?

Similarly the Watford bet was tipped in two places. Is that not enough? The Watford tip was put up by someone whose team they were playing, and I tend to think when someone is actively prepared to tip against their own team (who watches as a season ticket holder) that's quite a powerful signal


Just food for thought.

The Watford bet - yes, down to me that - I SHOULD have backed it. Not ducking resdponsibility, but my job next door is pretty heavy right now, & I have a lot of stuff on my plate irl. Hard to find the time to do all the things I'd like......

The Hammond FGS bet - these are tricky, in truth, & usually I just sort of go by gut feel, knowledge of the poster, da de da.

I would wager a good deal of money that if we backed every FGS bet ever placed here, we would have lost a ton of money.

Awkward.

It isn´t that long ago that we bet on every football bet someone fancied, their own team or otherwise and knocked in a huge amount of the roll. I think what we have at the moment is about right. Always back anything suggested by Red, Neil, Keith, Horneris, Dubai or Bobby but for everything else there should be a compelling reason or support from one of the aforementioned in order for us to back it. I think Fred has the balance about  right at the moment.

Oh and please don´t back the draw in the Milwall football, it´s as near as makes no difference impossible to have any edge there.

Wise words Kuku, thanks. You sum it up pretty well. 

I now accept your NFL bets "blind", because you have shown you know the game well, the understanding of value, AND you always suggest sensible stakes.

It is all very awkward sometimes, mainly because I'm an ex (?) Mug Punter, & I don't pretend to know anything about many of these bets, so who am I to decide? However, I AM getting a grip with the concept of value, & unless that is clearly shown, I don't usually place the bet.

Some lads here defy understyanding, too, but keep coming up with the goods, time after time. Sometimes you just gotta follow your instincts.

[tikay]

Morning Mr T. I would like to offer my support for TL900's basketball bet. There, are you happy Mr T. I know virtually nothing about basketball but in 2 posts TL900 has demonstrated a knowledge of a sport that has convinced me he knows what he is doing and a knowledge of the betting market. I meant to write a post supporting him yesterday but didn't really see that my support should have any weight.

Now maybe we can get back to the most important business of making money in our sleep.

P.S Keep the stakes low to start with but I think we may have the basketball equivalent of Singhee.

Noted & agreed.

You get the problem though - we have done our dough so many times on NBA, so I'm a little reticent & lacking in condidence. You are right though, Tom (TL900) seems to know his eggs from his onions.

[tikay]

What?

WHAT?

Posh Alex in the thread?

#lovethe punting

[the sicilian]

I'd like to raise a couple of points

Bets were missed last night despite being up for 48 hours before the event (and then collated for easy use)

The excellent 49ers bet (we hope) was placed as soon as it was seen. Understandably

The non-placed bets needed support to be placed, but with the best will in the world (to pick one example)
a first goal scorer bet on Dean Hammond is unlikely to be supported. Who knows enough about or has seen Mr Hammond to say anything either way?

Same for a lot of the more specialist bets in some sports. How can they be supported enough to be backed if no one has the knowledge to row in behind?

Similarly the Watford bet was tipped in two places. Is that not enough? The Watford tip was put up by someone whose team they were playing, and I tend to think when someone is actively prepared to tip against their own team (who watches as a season ticket holder) that's quite a powerful signal


Just food for thought.

The Watford bet - yes, down to me that - I SHOULD have backed it. Not ducking resdponsibility, but my job next door is pretty heavy right now, & I have a lot of stuff on my plate irl. Hard to find the time to do all the things I'd like......

The Hammond FGS bet - these are tricky, in truth, & usually I just sort of go by gut feel, knowledge of the poster, da de da.

I would wager a good deal of money that if we backed every FGS bet ever placed here, we would have lost a ton of money.

Awkward.

It isn´t that long ago that we bet on every football bet someone fancied, their own team or otherwise and knocked in a huge amount of the roll. I think what we have at the moment is about right. Always back anything suggested by Red, Neil, Keith, Horneris, Dubai or Bobby but for everything else there should be a compelling reason or support from one of the aforementioned in order for us to back it. I think Fred has the balance about  right at the moment.

Oh and please don´t back the draw in the Milwall football, it´s as near as makes no difference impossible to have any edge there.

Not sure i agree with this

[bobby1]

Neil

"I wouldn't bet 1/4 that the next 20 12x football bets win. I wouldn't bet 4/7 and be happy.

 This is not to say that people don't know enough about football - they are just playing a game that is WAY harder to win."

How far does this extend. All of English football? League 1 and 2 included?

Premiership and Championship, sure, but you believe lower league English football is totally efficiently priced?

Not sure I do.

I think this is a good point.

Back in the day when I was one of the team that priced up pre game footy for Hills my week would go something like this.
  
The coupon for the following Saturday gets compiled and made on Monday, so that's 60 odd matches in England and Scotland that have to be nailed and sent to print 5 days before they play and available in 1700 shops by Wednesday. It was then almost impossible to change those so when it became clear that prices on a game had changed a lot due to info you didn't have on the Monday it became a job of minimising the exposure because the price was old. Knockbacks, messages for max stakes on the shop info screens for managers etc.

Tuesday we did the main Euro leagues, Spain Germany France Portugal etc and these took much longer to do as there was more work involved and each man would have 2 or 3 of the main leagues to do. Then the Euro coupon got made on Wednesday, again to be in the shop for the weekend punters to pick up. It used to be that those two days would see 6-7 solely football compilers pricing up matches in what was a library atmosphere after the initial morning convo of did you back any winners this weekend or guess what/who I did on Saturday when I was pissed.

So that was 2 full days of potentially half a dozen opinions on each match which we then nailed into the send out and hoped there were no huge differences between all the big three firms as you didn't want to have to manage the dreaded arbitrage situations between Corals and Laddies in shops, coz it was just a dripping tap. It was serious stuff and we fell out every week on at least a dozen games  because we couldn't decide between 5/4 or 7/5 a match that some had strong opinions on.

On the Weds we did all the minor English non league stuff and all the minor Foriegn leagues, so I might do Bundesliga 2, Segunda liga France 2 Turkey etc.

One week we had 2 guys that had been granted access to the trading area as visitors, in those days it was a 'Golden Spurs' room with all the racing guys in one corner and the sports/footy guys in the other half and was off limits to everyone else in the building. So you either had to be at a certain level in company to get invited in there or you were being interviewed/on the spot tested for a job.

The first guy was some guy that came in with all the arrogance that middle management in big firms seem to have, he thought he was important but wanted to be more important ie he was a dick. He spent his 2 days telling people that football compiling was easy and that everyone followed football so it couldn't be that tough a job, tho he didn't have many answers to the questions like do you think Peter Weatherson will be a big miss for Queen of the South this weekend given he is their top scorer or Mioslav Klose went off injured last weekend so must be doubtful for this week etc etc

In short, he followed football but he didn't really follow football but he thought he knew enough to tell the professional football compilers that it was an easy job.We were glad to get rid of him.

The second guy that came in was a young guy that had impressed a lot when interviewing for a job that he didn't quite get, another vacancy had opened up and he was invited to spend a few days with us to get a feel for each other. He sat and gave his opinions on different games and generally fitted in well. On the Wednesday afternoon the 2 of us that did Conference games were sat beavering away, I was very much 2nd man on the Conference and the number 1 guy had got caught up in some other leagues . The young guy said that was the league he followed really closely and one he made a good few quid on each season.

So what you had was me, usually second man in and a guy that didn't actually work for the firm pricing up these games that would then go out online with very few other firms out or even an opinion from the main Conference compiler in there. It became clear after 3 matches that this guy knew much much more than I did about these games and player/team news.

That was probably the 20th league I had priced up that week against a  league he knew like the back of his hand, in the end and I priced them up with more weight to his line than mine.

He followed football but when it came to the non league stuff, he really followed football at that level. He was offered a contract with us but got a better offer from Tony Bloom and the last I heard he was still working with him.

Fast forward 2 years and it got to the stage where the Monday mornings were like a comedy hour, every firm now got the same tissues that they all paid for to make sure there were no arbs amongst the big firms. So it didn't matter if you swore blind one team were a great lay at 11/10 coz if the tissue said 10/11 you wouldn't/couldn't be too far away from that line. So what then happened was we all started getting in at 10 am, spending a few hours going thru the fixtures because it didn't matter any more what our thoughts were on a game, we never had any more arguments about a price coz the tissue told us what most of the other firms would be.

In the end the coupon got finalised by 2 people that were now more Dept managers than football compilers. So we were getting paid to follow football but now didn't really need to follow football as closely as before.

So what happened was one by one most of us left to do other jobs either within the firm or elsewhere.

This is the crux of your point Rich. These days there are now almost no football compilers around, there are trading teams that take tissues and manage prices thru to kick off using Betfair and the Asian market to do the pricing for them.

The lower down the ladder you go the less interested the people that shape the markets higher up become because they just cannot get their bets on. So the tissue followers that are setting the prices now have almost no knowledge at all in most of the games they have out. If like the guy in the story above think that football is easy coz everyone follows it and follow it like that then you wont beat it.

If like the the guy that knew the Conference like the back of his hand you will have so much more knowledge than the market will in some cases. Didn't Horseplayer put up a non league bet a few weeks ago where Laddies were fielding chunks of cash on a team that couldn't put a match day squad together?

That's info that the guy doing football for Laddies didn't know, he is now someone that follows football but doesn't really follow football because in most cases now he doesn't need to.

So the truth is you can deffo be a good judge of leagues that firms neglect but thinking you follow football close enough and really following football closely enough to make it pay is the tricky part. If you do then you will find edges that you are almost never going to find in the main leagues.

[Chompy]

I'd like to raise a couple of points

Bets were missed last night despite being up for 48 hours before the event (and then collated for easy use)

The excellent 49ers bet (we hope) was placed as soon as it was seen. Understandably

The non-placed bets needed support to be placed, but with the best will in the world (to pick one example)
a first goal scorer bet on Dean Hammond is unlikely to be supported. Who knows enough about or has seen Mr Hammond to say anything either way?

Same for a lot of the more specialist bets in some sports. How can they be supported enough to be backed if no one has the knowledge to row in behind?

Similarly the Watford bet was tipped in two places. Is that not enough? The Watford tip was put up by someone whose team they were playing, and I tend to think when someone is actively prepared to tip against their own team (who watches as a season ticket holder) that's quite a powerful signal


Just food for thought.

The Watford bet - yes, down to me that - I SHOULD have backed it. Not ducking resdponsibility, but my job next door is pretty heavy right now, & I have a lot of stuff on my plate irl. Hard to find the time to do all the things I'd like......

The Hammond FGS bet - these are tricky, in truth, & usually I just sort of go by gut feel, knowledge of the poster, da de da.

I would wager a good deal of money that if we backed every FGS bet ever placed here, we would have lost a ton of money.

Awkward.

It isn´t that long ago that we bet on every football bet someone fancied, their own team or otherwise and knocked in a huge amount of the roll. I think what we have at the moment is about right. Always back anything suggested by Red, Neil, Keith, Horneris, Dubai or Bobby but for everything else there should be a compelling reason or support from one of the aforementioned in order for us to back it. I think Fred has the balance about  right at the moment.

Oh and please don´t back the draw in the Milwall football, it´s as near as makes no difference impossible to have any edge there.

Not sure i agree with this

Yuh, The Sicilian and anthonyl shocking emissions.

[TightEnd]

Really interesting post Phil

I am fanatical about lower league and non-league

I am convinced, and indeed do in practice, that give me and similar people a coupon on English football minus the top two leagues each week, and ask for 2-4 bets a month, and we'll beat it

Small sample size on thread backs that up so far

[millidonk]

Loved that post Phil.  A real insight.

[the sicilian]

I'd like to raise a couple of points

Bets were missed last night despite being up for 48 hours before the event (and then collated for easy use)

The excellent 49ers bet (we hope) was placed as soon as it was seen. Understandably

The non-placed bets needed support to be placed, but with the best will in the world (to pick one example)
a first goal scorer bet on Dean Hammond is unlikely to be supported. Who knows enough about or has seen Mr Hammond to say anything either way?

Same for a lot of the more specialist bets in some sports. How can they be supported enough to be backed if no one has the knowledge to row in behind?

Similarly the Watford bet was tipped in two places. Is that not enough? The Watford tip was put up by someone whose team they were playing, and I tend to think when someone is actively prepared to tip against their own team (who watches as a season ticket holder) that's quite a powerful signal


Just food for thought.

The Watford bet - yes, down to me that - I SHOULD have backed it. Not ducking resdponsibility, but my job next door is pretty heavy right now, & I have a lot of stuff on my plate irl. Hard to find the time to do all the things I'd like......

The Hammond FGS bet - these are tricky, in truth, & usually I just sort of go by gut feel, knowledge of the poster, da de da.

I would wager a good deal of money that if we backed every FGS bet ever placed here, we would have lost a ton of money.

Awkward.

It isn´t that long ago that we bet on every football bet someone fancied, their own team or otherwise and knocked in a huge amount of the roll. I think what we have at the moment is about right. Always back anything suggested by Red, Neil, Keith, Horneris, Dubai or Bobby but for everything else there should be a compelling reason or support from one of the aforementioned in order for us to back it. I think Fred has the balance about  right at the moment.

Oh and please don´t back the draw in the Milwall football, it´s as near as makes no difference impossible to have any edge there.

Not sure i agree with this

Yuh, The Sicilian and anthonyl shocking emissions.

TBH its comments like this that stopped me reading this thread for a good while..think it was a good choice on the whole

[Bad Beat]

 Really great post Phil.

 I suspect you were going back 10 years there but I really remember the fun we had about 7 years ago with the UEFA cup on a Thursday.

 The coupons for midweek football were priced on a Saturday/Sunday (I guess) and went out to the shops on a Monday morning.

 Obviously the main business was on the Champions League. That was the one the wagons wanted a bet on, that was the one where an odds-compiler had all the information available online and that was the big turnover stuff.

 All the dirty-thieving bastards, (I was in there), were just interested in Thursdays. Teams that finished 5th in the Uk playing teams who were 3rd in Greece, Ukraine, Portugal and Poland. Lovely jubbly.

 By about Tuesday the Betfair market would start to show you who was going to win and things that were evs on the coupon would be heavily traded at 1.62.

 You then had two days to get round as many shops as possible. They couldn't pull the coupon until Thursday morning because most of the wagons were still using it to bet on the CL.

 They just restricted you to £50 bets. Sometimes you could get lovely multiples.

 One team drew at 4/7 and let me down for a five-fold and all the 4-folds and trebles.

 I might have given the Ladbrokes share price a hit that day.

[tikay]

Dean - YOU don't have to follow their selections, you can just ignore if you wish.

As a general rule, I do tend to follow their suggestions, though.

[redarmi]

http://www.oddschecker.com/basketball/nba/houston-rockets-at-oklahoma-city-thunder/total-points

Two of the highest scoring teams in the NBA square off in Oklahoma tonight. Rockets avg over 102 points a game and OKC 104.

James Harden going back to Oklahoma for the first time since his trade will fire him up and I expect him to have a monster game tonight.

If you look at the oddschecker link O207.5 on pinnacle is still a favourite over the under. Therefore I suggest betting O205 on PP just simply on the fact that we have 2-2.5 point edge on the market right now.

Is it 'Great Value?' No. Is it a '+EV bet' Yes, imo.

Got a lot to write on Neils posts but will have to wait until a bit later but on this game 2.5 points against pinnacle is enough for this to be a bet without further thinking.

[the sicilian]

Dean - YOU don't have to follow their selections, you can just ignore if you wish.

As a general rule, I do tend to follow their suggestions, though.

nothing to do with selections... first point was although the guys mentioned are knowledgeable and prob the best punters on the thread..to state that you should follow their lead blindly without question cannot be correct... personally i have my own mind..right or wrong ... taking into account an 'experts ' wisdom is + ev but not gospel..

As for Chompy i just tire sometimes of his attempt at being amusing when he so clearly is not...

[Bad Beat]

 I had a kid working for me who used to go out on his bike and I had a map of London with all the betting shops on it. It was a fun game.

 Just to make myself clear, (in case I wasn't earlier), I'm not saying that you can't find value on lower division football and we can't win there (or premier football for that matter).

 I do repeat what I hope we all know that you can't win just by looking at the table and the last 6 games for each team. You need something else. It could be team news, it could be a strong view that the table tells a lie and that one team has over-performed and one has under-performed, it could be that the market is in love with one team (like Liverpool), it could be that you know about a change in tactics and formation, it could be that you believe the original basis for one team has changed (it may be time to say WBA are the real deal or maybe it may be time to bet they regress to what we would have thought in Septrember).

I just think that a lot of the time we will find that we get 5/4 something that even in our heart of hearts we couldn't make it shorter than 11/10.

 There is nothing wrong with having 100s of bets like that and nicking a tiny amount of equity on each. That is generally what my betting looks like.

 I do think it's important though to really get stuck in sometimes, and the thread should do that with things that could be massively wrong. Phil's running back bet looked in retrospect like 1/4 and 11/4 should haqve been the price. It isn't really possible to be that far out in footy.
 

[Bad Beat]

 Glad you are here Red. I meant to ask...

 In NBA if we accept that the Pinnacle line is correct...it is just right (it may not always be but for the sake of this point)...

 How far away from it does a total have to be to bet it blinly at 10/11 and be plus ev?

 How about a side?

 How about NFL and college football?

 Feel free to ignore if you'd rather not answer.