3 categories of punters

[zbrochu]

Hi guys, I've just finished writing an email to one person and I thought it would good idea to share this thoughts with you to maybe expand it a bit more in discussion. There are 3 categories of punters: 1) The guys that have math model, a very rare bread. Often they are math and stats wizard, stuggling and working on their stuff for many many years. It is important to know what sports they bet on and what stats they use. The more popular sport, the hardest it is to beat (with NBA spreads leading the pack). MLB, NFL and football big leagues are very tough too. Eurohockey, eurobasket and other low liqudity sports are better. As far as stats are concerned, the best are players based models where every player is evaluated (by his number of shots, accurate passes, tackles dribbles etc. depending on sport) and from this individual ratings overal team strenght is derived. Team-based stats are good too assuming one has access to detailed stats of teams like ball posession. If one relies only on goals scored/goals allowed he is in very very tough spot as bookmakers have amazingly accurate model for that and their numbers are sharpened by market that is affected by team news, injuries information etc. The model is like a holy graal - super difficult to find but once it is created, it can produce as many as 500 winning bets per month. 2) The guys who have "insider information". They usually specialize in some narrow fragment of any sport or market, for example Serbian Basketball. They know a lot about coaches and teams' dynamics. What players were sold, what bought and if they are good. What players are injured or suspended, what players have diarrhea this week and who is conflicted with manager. What teams struggle financially, what teams are motivated about Cups but not the league or other way around. I believe this guys can have long-term edge over bookmakers because they use information that bookmakers don't. Of course market frequently is affected strongly by this kind of information and odds are influenced . They drop a lot and drop too much so it is no longer a good betting opportunity, but all in all I think it is way to go for people who are not math wizards with deep pockets for buying expensive databases and programmers. 3) The guys who "think" they have insider information but they really don't. 90% of bettors are in this category and they don't achieve long-term edge over bookmakers. Their analyses include information that bookmakers already priced-in in odds: Example 1: "I believe Team A is better because they are in very good form at home and they have better h2h stats from previous years vs Team B". Example 2: "I watched last games of Team A and Team B and I saw they both have weak defenses and I expect a low scoring game". Example 3: "Team A is very good team , a runner-up from previous year and after few bad games they must start winning!". Example 4: "Team A have average of 3.2 goals this season and Team B have average of 2.7 goals this season. Easy over 2.5 bet". All this examples are wrong in terms of possibility of achieving profits. All this information are included in the odds. It is not that difficult to know that game A is likely to be high scoring game. But the point is to know if this game is more likely to be high scoring that bookmakers' odds suggest. Example: There is fourth round of Dutch league and there is a game betwene teeam that had 2-4 3-3 5-4 and 3-2 results and team B who had 4-1 3-3 2-2 and 2-3 results. Both teams are high scoring and high "allowing" and many people would be inclined to take bet between these teams as OVER. But bookmakers know this results too! What if they set line for this game differently and instead of giving OVER 2.5, they give OVER 8.5 goals 1.9/1.9 odds. Would you still want to take OVER in this game? I don't think so , you would be more inclined to bet UNDER. So as Einstein said, everything is relative and so should be our predictions and estimations. "Do I believe there will be more goals in this game that bookmakers think?" instead of "Do I believe there will be many goals in this game" or "Do I believe this team is bigger favourite that -1.5 1.85" instead of "Do I believe this team is very likely to win this game" Nothing new, some obvious stuff for many of you but I think it is worth recalling.

[AlanJenkins2]

Re: 3 categories of punters Excellent stuff,Zbrochu.Of course,there are also the 'mugs' who will just bet on team 'A' because they think they will beat team 'B',or put lots of odds-on bets in accumulators.They are the people the traditional bookies most want.