> DarkKobold wrote:

>> HC, quick questions...
>>
>> Is this something being done for free, i.e. fake gambling, or is it
>> something you have to pay for?
>>
>> Really, not a word of this thread made any sense to me, I'm just
>> curious if a pauper is gambling away his last pennies.

>
>
> rec.gambling.sports is a newsgroup for the discussion of sports
> betting.
>
> The multi-village idiot has in the past proclaimed his expertise in
> being able to pick winners against the spread. When you bet on a
> basketball game, there is a favorite that is minus points and an
> underdog that is plus points. Also in general, there is a "vig" or
> "juice" on the wager, meaning for every 100 yo bet to win, you pay 110
> if loses. That means to break even you have to be ble to achieve
> slightly less than a 53%% win rate. Anything over that is profitable.
>
> What he does on the newsgroup is "fake." He's not actually placing any
> bets in the newsgroup, it's more like a simulation. But that's what we
> do on RGS, we discuss the liklihood of one team covering the spread
> against another.
>
> As an example, this Sunday, in the NFL playoffs, The Indianapolis Colts
> (have you heard of Peyton Manning yet in your part of the world?) are 3
> point favorites to beat the New England Patriots. If yo want to bet on
> Indy, they have to win by 4 or more in order for your bet to win. If
> they win by 1, or 2, you lose your bet even though they won the game.
> If the win by 3, it's a "push" and there's no win or loss. On a "push"
> there is no vig. If you bought a ticket at a Las Vegas Sportsbook
> window to win $100, you would be refunded yoru $100 on a push. If yoru
> bet wins, when you go to cash in yoru ticket, you get your $110 back,
> plus teh $100 you won on the bet.
>
> There is an entire slimey indutry surrounding the sale of sports picks.
> People are willing to pay somebody else for picks, so there is a never
> ending list of people that claim to hit certain percentages, hoping to
> rope somebody in to pay them for their selections. The problem is, that
> when you factor in what the "tout" charges for his picks, depending on
> the amount the winning percentage that oneneeds to be at to break even
> goes up from the just under 53%% threshhold, because afterall, you have
> to cover the cost of the picks from the tout with the winnings, so the
> B/E point for the tout goes up.
>
> Gordon Roy Parker, creator of the Internet asshole "Ray Gordon" used to
> have a section on his website and probably still does called "the
> Revolution." It's his sports picks service.
>
> He hasn't asked anybody to pay him for anything yet, but he showed up
> the other day and proclaimed that he was going to post 100 picks for
> free, and win 60 of them, for a 60%% win rate.
>
> A few things about that, while a sample size of 100 games is a heck of
> a lot better than say 10 or 20 games, still even at 100 picks we're not
> at a high enough sample size to determine if the tout's rate of success
> or rate of failure for 100 picks is a true indicator of his ability or
> just a skewed varience of what his true ability or inability actually
> is, due specifically to the small sample side and something called
> random chance. Parker knows this, yet is determined to "trick" those
> that might not into thinking he's any good at something before he's
> actually proven anything valid or not.
>
> Parker posted three plays his first day. After he posted them, he
> decided that he didn't like one of them anymore, so he declared that he
> "bought it back." That means that after placing a one unit "bet" on the
> team you thought would win (risking 1.1 units to do so) you go ahead
> and place a 1 unit "bet" on the other team, thereby cancelling your
> bet, at a loss of 0.10 units. (You would win 1 unit on the side that
> won and lose 1.1 unit on the side that lost, netting out a 0.10 unit
> loss).You have to do it that way because once you make the bet, it's
> made, you can't just change your mind, you're locked in. In this case,
> the game just so happened to have landed on the number . . . the
> pointspread was 11 and the game ended as an 11 point difference between
> the two final scores. So he didn't lose the 0.10 units, both of his
> bets (one made at -11 points, the other made on the same game but the
> other team at +11 points) "pushed" or tied, so both his bets were
> refunded, at 0 loss.
>
> Again, these aren't real bets, but he's doing the simulation thing to
> show everybody how great he is at picking winners against the spread in
> basketball.
>
> Why he's doing it is anybody's guess.
>
> I do it for the comraderie of it all and I have a keen interest in the
> discussion of the "math"behind the "science" of handicapping.
>
> That can't be Parker's reason, there's no comraderie there for him,
> he's an asshole at RGS like he is everywhere else, and everybody hates
> him.
>
> To answer your questions directly, I don't know if the idiot is
> gambling or not, but if he is and he's in Philadelphia, he's breaking
> the law. Even if he's betting online with a sportsbook outside the US.
>
> If he is promoting gambling to US citizens he is breaking the law.
>
> Let me ask you this . . . if Parker actually *could* pick winners
> against the spread at a rate of higher than 53%%, why does he live in a
> slum in Philly, and not a Penthouse in Vegas where he can ply his trade
> legally and live like a King off the winnings?
>
> Do the math, a guy that hits 60%% a year, starting with a $10,000
> bankroll should by year two be making big money annualy.
>
> Does that sound like the multi-village idiot?