God’s Tid-Bets, Vol. 7
Joe Duffy (www.godspicks.com)
Tip Sheets
I’m often asked about the value of tipsheets. For football handicapping they have some value as a starting point. Sports Reporter, the Gold Sheet and Northcoast are among the best and Doctor Bob has some good technical angles but I still rate them light years behind the hometown newspapers. First of all the hometown papers have writers who cover the team full-time and specialize. Secondly the tipsheets still make a lot of money from their hard copy publications. This requires early week deadlines as they don’t have the circulation efficiency of the daily rags to get their publication to the newsstands within hours of going to press. The sheets have their place, and have value for midweek bullet points, but a quality handicapper has so many other more ripely and particularized informants.
Be the Prosecutor, Defense Attorney, Judge, Jury and Executioner
I had a debate class in college. In said classes you are given an obscure resolution and are instructed to argue on its behalf. You then have another debate where you argue against it. Who said I was wasting my time? Okay I did. But little did I know that many years later I am using that same mechanism to consistently pick winners.
I’ve heard inferior gamblers claim intense research is a waste of time because if you look hard enough “you can find enough reasons to justify either side”. No kidding. If it were not true there would be such things as a “sure thing”. Hence using the legal analogy above I can’t argue any of my plays are “beyond reasonable doubt” but I absolutely apply the civil law standard of proof “preponderance of evidence” or as it’s often called “more likely than not”.
If a good handicapper could not present at least some type of evidence for each side, there would be true locks and in reality there would be a few teams that would go undefeated and I’m not just talking in a 14-game NFL season ala the Miami Dolphins.
But what we do is objectively present facts supporting each side. Any play in which the prevalence of facts points towards one side, it becomes a premium play. But anytime we can make a strong argument for both or neither side, we must pass on making a bet on that game.
The best handicappers are their own devil’s advocate. The only exception is our “competition consensus plays”. I will be blunt, there are only a very small number of handicappers whose opinions I respect. But if one does have a very strong play on a side that I leaned towards but could did not pass our empirical test, I will make a play on it. However these plays are few and far between as I must at least have already had a preference for said selection and the list of elite handicappers who can influence my opinion is very short.
Oh and one other thing. You must be a little more open minded than Nancy Grace.
Poker a Sport?
Clearly the line just keeps getting fuzzier between sport and game. While we agree with anyone who says the WSOP is not a sporting event it certainly is sport more than the dog shows, spelling bees and hot dog eating contests that are televised on the so-called sports channels.
But Texas Hold ‘em making a screaming ascension into the mainstream I believe will continue to allow gambling in the US to go from taboo to a vice and now to the accepted form of entertainment that is should be. For gambling to gain full legality closed minds must first be opened. The WSOP is a huge step in eliminating ignorance. When that happens then elected officials like John Kyl can stop worrying about controlling where you invest your money and worry more about oh say protecting our borders.
Duffy’s plays are part of the Dream Team at Godspicks.com. He is perhaps the most published and respected author on sports gambling theory and has been featured as a regular guest as the handicapping expert on the Rick Ballou Show on Sporting News Radio, Gamblers Zoo national radio show, the Meat and Potatoes gambling show, Pro Fantasy Sports Internet radio and Grogan’s Fantasy Football show.
His Wise Guy Plays available exclusively at www.godspicks.com where daily sports handicapping information is available to crush the sportsbooks. Godspicks.com has daily sports betting free winners, news, notes and trends. Media inquiries and all questions: godspicks@bellsouth.net. There is no better source for sports handicapper free information to crush sportsbooks than Godspicks.com.

God’s Tid-bets, Vol. 8
Joe Duffy (www.godspicks.com)
This is the latest in a series, a Godgepodge of sports gambling discussion.
How Powerful Are Power Ratings?
Power ratings are certainly part of the equation but only, repeat only if one fully takes into consideration the means that are responsible for the ends. Power ratings do not take into consideration how injuries are reflected in past performance. As an illustration, let’s say Priest Holmes is leading the league in rushing and total offense but in the fourth quarter of game six goes down with an injury and misses four games.
In games seven through ten, the cumulative statistics of the first six games become irrelevant in and of themselves. Along the same token, if Holmes returns healthy for the 11th game, four of the previous 10 games are also tangential because the factors have changed immeasurably.
Even more important is by random chance KC’s opponent in their last four games played a much inferior Chiefs’ team than the fist six opponents did. Those results are included in the computer models of their foe’s power ratings but not filtered out when those players are back again.
There are just too many game results that are effected by injuries either to a team or its opponent. Assuming “they all even out” is a death knell for bad handicappers. We have emphasized the importance of home/road variables but perhaps by stroke of fortune played mostly healthy teams on the road and a lot more injured teams at home.
However the quality handicapper will make proper adjustments. So computer modules can be a valuable tool as so long as they are weighed against other essentials. Far and away the best source for power ratings is Massey Ratings (www.masseyratings.com). In his “rankings comparison” the weaknesses of each reputable power rating can be canceled by the strengths of the others. Massey calculates both the mean and median rankings.
Again we give shout out to a competitor when it’s due and Jim Feist’s site has power ratings that can be directly compared to the point spread. As far as game simulators the Statfox Game Estimator is the pre-eminent model.
Tipsheets Followup
We did get a few inquiries from a previous Tid-bet about what specifically we look for in the tipsheets that we gave lukewarm recommendations to. To answer the most common question, no we do not pay any attention to their predictions. The breakdowns do have some helpfulness but the predictions are forced and are based on limited affirmation. To embellish on our legal analogy from a previous article, based on the early week information, we would disregard the predictions on inconclusive evidence. However “inclusive” does not render the sheets irrelevant. They can serve as an early week primer of what to look at for in the hometown newspapers.
Beat the Screen
Don Best’s premium odds service has become the alpha for sportsbooks when it comes to line move information whether it’s steam moves from the major books or breaking line-up and injury information. However frankly the books have become too dependant on Best and this opens up a window of opportunity for the sharp player. This is known as “beating the screen” that is getting steam, injury or weather information before the books do.
When Best comes out with their overnight injury report, they do not conceal the fact that their information comes from our favorite source of up-to-the-minute information: the hometown newspapers. It’s amazing how quickly and almost synchronously the odds are adjusted once Best sends out their initial report.
However the early bird get the worm simply by waking up nice and early and getting the injury updates from the same source before Best sends them out. Generally said resource sends out the compilation once completed at approximately 10:30 A.M. EST. This is hours after the same information is available to Johnny-on-the-spot bloodhounds.
I’m surprised at how dilly-dally the books are about football weather. The lines go haywire once Best sends reports altered weather updates. Yet this information is far from classified as one can get live weather radar on a number of sites such as weather.gov or weather.com.
Predicting line moves can be done by those who get their intel earlier.
If You Are So Good Why Do It For a Living?
Over the years I’ve heard a lot of blanket proclamations made about handicappers. The industry has more than it’s share of bad apples unfortunately, but all-inclusive statements about all members of any group be it a religion, race, gender or occupation should be categorically disregarded.
This single most preposterous rhapsody is when somebody bloviates, “If you are so good at what you do, why don’t you simply bet your plays instead of selling them?” This is so asinine for many reasons, but appears to be built on some nutty belief that betting plays and selling them are mutually exclusive.
I would normally not answer a question with a question, but when one amounts to “why do something for a living that you are really good at doing” can best be responded with “of all the professions, why would sports handicapping be the only one on the nine (or is it ten?) planets in which if you are actually good at it, you should not do it for a living?”.
Don’t let the bad apples blind you to the fact that you should take comfort not distress in the fact your handicapper is good enough to do it full-time. True there are more people who do it for a living than are actually good enough to do it for a living, but the only people who benefit from unconditional biases against adept handicappers would be the bookmakers.
Joe Duffy of Godspicks.com is perhaps the most published and respected author on sports gambling theory and has been featured as a regular guest as the handicapping expert on the Rick Ballou Show on Sporting News Radio, the Meat and Potatoes gambling show, Grogan’s Fantasy Football show, Radio Baseball Muse and Finn on Sports. Formally of the famed Cadillac Club 900 number, his plays can be gotten one and one place only: part of the Dream Team of Godspicks.com. Media inquiries and questions for future Tid-bets can be sent to Godspicks@bellsouth.net

God’s Tid-Bets, Vol. 5
Joe Duffy (www.godspicks.com)
How New is New?
There is a common belief among gamblers that first year head coaches are safe to bet on in the preseason because they are going to be eager to impress. There is a functional truth to it, but the oversimplification of this tenet can and is naive. We won’t argue as a general guideline new coaches might be more eager to get that “W” under their belt more than a senior counterpart in a inconsequential contest but the “newness” theory goes beyond the head coach. Even if the head man returns, new coordinators who are in charge of play calling, new schemes that do happen even with returning coaches and new key personnel are often more important to handicapping, however it’s not because of a desire to win a meaningless game.
When major changes are made from the previous year, key players will play longer in the initial preseason games and play calling will be much less vanilla. Basically the more changes made, the more the preseason is needed to evaluate even proven players.
The NFL coaches have their own website, appropriately NFLcoaches.com that lists all changes from head coach, to coordinators to position coaches. However the ultimate source for how the changes will and will not effect the spread outcome is still the hometown newspapers which are extremely accurate for playing rotations and how sophisticated schemes and play calling will be.
The new coaches creed is not false, but much further inspection is required before blindly betting. Of equal emphasis is cognition that the theory does not begin and end with the head coach.
Handicapping Umpires
More and more databases are carrying sophisticated statistical analysis of umpiring statistics especially how they relate to the over/under. Backtracking I have found no statistically significant time tested value.
In fact, Baseball Prospectus does a breakdown from a different standpoint than many of the gambling sites. Too often we find that for example an umpire’s ball/strike ratio does not correspond into more or less runs. In other words, arranging a list of all umpires based on which call the highest number of strikes is much too dissimilar to that of which umpires games result in the highest number of runs, slugging percentage and batting average. Cross referencing with over/unders on the gambling sites, there is even less correlation. Random chance will have umpires behind the plate with unequal power and pitching matchups to their counterparts.
One must also realize that umpires are constantly evaluated with consistency topping the list of criterion. By no means would I suggest there are no variances among the umpires but they are much closer to being uniform than starting pitchers, bullpens, ballparks, defenses, weather conditions and other factors.
If an umpire were blatantly a pitcher’s or batter’s umpire, he won’t last long in the Show. Acknowledging they had been lax, baseball took corrective steps in 2001. According to Ralph Nelson, MLB’s Vice President, Umpiring, “Beginning with Opening Day there should be a recognized and consistent application to the strike zone, but it may not be as drastic as some may have anticipated.” He continued, “Major League Baseball does not feel that players or teams should have to adjust to individual umpires.”
Hence even if there was an edge to the gamblers in the early years, this advantage has been lost since baseball is taking extra steps to insure uniformity. Sorry folks after an in-depth and objective harmonic analysis we conclude trying to handicap umpires is pseudo science.
Waking Up is Hard to Do
We discussed in a previous Tid-bet how and why mid-season coaching changes more times than not have short-term benefit essentially because it lights a temporary fire under a team. Teams more and more often simply go through the motions and it takes some type of stimulus to put and end to it.
Though years of experience tells me replacing the coach is the ultimate short-term wake-up call, it’s not the only one. Kenny Rogers’ well publicized attack on a cameraman was followed by the Rangers ending a funk with an impressive winning streak. Making a few monetary units riding that streak ourselves, we knew it was no coincidence. The proverbial “players only team meeting” is another instance. Always keep an eye for falling teams to have something to rally around. It need not be positive, in fact often is not. Sometimes in baseball for example it’s a manager shuffling the batting order on in basketball a coach changing line-ups.
In basketball there can be major ramifications as often changes mean a quicker line-up that means more scoring or it could mean a defensively challenged team makes corrections in that area. As we’ve said intensity or lack thereof shows up more on the defensive end in hoops. Hence as another rule the rebirth generally makes evident itself in lower scoring games.
Joe Duffy of Godspicks.com is perhaps the most published and respected author on sports gambling theory and has been featured as a regular guest as the handicapping expert on the Rick Ballou Show on Sporting News Radio, the Meat and Potatoes gambling show, Grogan’s Fantasy Football show, Radio Baseball Muse and Finn on Sports. Formally of the famed Cadillac Club 900 number, his plays can be gotten one and one place only: part of the Dream Team of Godspicks.com

Just Pick the Team That Wins Outright?
So often we warn gamblers about the mortal sin of using inductive rather than deductive reasoning. The quintessence of that is the rapid circulation of the insipid illogic of “all you have to do is pick the straight up winner of a game and chances are you will have the spread winner.” It’s always followed by some stat where the outright winner has covered 80 percent of the time. Duh.

When an underdog wins they cover 100 percent of the time. The favorite cannot cover unless they win outright. It’s impossible. The only scenario in which a team can win and not cover is when the favorite wins but by a smaller margin than the spread.

Not shockingly the numbnuts who perpetuate unscientific preposterousness almost always quote stats relevant to the NBA or NFL. In college sports there are more mismatches and hence larger spreads where the margin is larger for a favorite to win and not cover.

If a team is a 3.5 point favorite the only way the team that wins will not cover is for the favorite to win by one, two or three points. Any other result will have the team that wins covering. At what percentage do these half-wits think a team should win and not cover?
Obviously the stupidity of this widely circulated inductive blather can be refuted from now until eternity. Or at least until an underdog wins but fails to cover, whichever comes last. But to those who subscribe to it as if there is any logic, thanks for keeping the books in business for the rest of us.

Weather or Not?
We do plan on writing an article on how weather effects our football handicapping. But to be honest it’s only a minor part of baseball soothsaying. First of all most of our baseball selections are side plays anyway. While bad weather would generally effect a speed team most, we believe in the proverbial adage of both teams having to play under the same weather conditions.

As far as totals, wind would be the biggest factor. One could argue about rain or bad conditions hurting an offense or defense more, but when it comes to wind conditions it’s hard to argue that wind blowing in from center will benefit the pitchers while if it’s blowing straight out it will help the offenses. We won’t argue that if wind is blowing out to left field and one team has a left handed pitcher facing a predominately right handed line-up, while the other team has a right-hander on the hill, the team facing the lefty may have a slight edge. But we look at it this way. How often do you hear a manager scratch a pitcher simply because of the wind direction? So if baseball managers seem to think for the most part it will effect pitchers pretty equally we consider from a standpoint of picking sides weather advantage is negligible.

Obviously wind direction is important in determining whether the weather benefits an over or under, but wind speed determines how much. Generally 15 MPH and “gusty” is when sharp players should start paying attention.

In football weather is a much more important factor with both sides and totals but we will address that in a future article. I had a nun teacher who used to say, you change your mind as often as the wind blows. I wonder if she bet baseball totals.

Databases
We are often asked about our favorite handicapping databases. I don’t mind giving shout outs to our competitors when they deserve it, especially when I am quite confident that I employ said data better than their in-house handicappers do. Vegas Insider, Covers, Jim Feist, Sports Data Bases (which is on Freescoreboard.com) all have the vital information that a handicapper desires. For the most part it’s not so much what each source has and does not have, but how it’s organized.

However the mac daddy as far as we are concerned is Foxsheets, which is the Statfox premium service. It has pretty much what the other databases have plus systems and is more in-depth than any of their competitors.

Covers and Feist assemblages actually do unique calculations that is specific to their site. Feist’s site does direct comparisons of major offensive and defensive categories. For example if New England is playing Philadelphia in the NFL one can see the well organized contrast of which team has better yards per pass statistics on each side of the ball in football or in college and pro basketball shooting percentage both offensively and defensively and the exact margin of difference.

Covers does margin of cover which a lot of sharp players consider essential. We prefer the first cousin once removed theory that we call dichotomous ATS and straight up streaks. For more information consult our previous articles. But like the “margin of cover” it does appraise which teams are undervalued and which are overvalued.

Ultimately the old “garbage in, garbage out” theory applies. The indispensable datum is widely available but the time and knowledge on how to apply it is possessed by only a learned few.

Joe Duffy of OffshoreInsiders.com  is perhaps the most published and respected author on sports gambling theory and has been featured as a regular guest as the handicapping expert on the Rick Ballou Show on Sporting News Radio, the Meat and Potatoes gambling show, Grogan’s Fantasy Football show, Radio Baseball Muse and Finn on Sports. Formally of the famed Cadillac Club 900 number, his plays can be gotten one and one place only: part of the Dream Team of OffshoreInsiders.com

God’s Tid-Bets, Vol. 10
Joe Duffy (www.godspicks.com)
Here is the latest in a Godgepodge of articles about sports handicapping information, most based on your questions and feedback.
Redux: Picking the Team that Wins Outright
In Tid-Bets Vol. 3, we rightfully deflated the illogical figment of just picking the team that wins outright and you will more times than not have the spread winner. We considered writing an entire article debunking the endless flaws in this unsystematic witlessness.
However we were confident most gamblers could see through this air castle and only touched on the hallucination. Showing there is a sucker placing a bet every minute this flapdoodle is actually gaining steam and perhaps qualifies as one of the great incongruities in sports gambling. On high volume posting boards, I see cyber back-slapping every time some lunkhead “tracks” this belief. It’s happening more often, not less. Stop the insanity!
Consult Vol. 3 for the main reasons this is inductive and not deductive, but if there were any veracity to this, why would quixotic ones waste their time betting the games ATS? Since the prevailing premise behind this urban myth is “it’s so much easier to pick the SU winner than the spread winner” why don’t these fancied geniuses just pick dog winner after dog winner on the moneyline?
There are plenty of underdogs that win outright, many huge dogs in fact. If one wants to postulate how much easier it is to pick the SU winner, why waste such foreknowledge on collecting $100 for every $110 risked? Just keep picking those 250 dogs and get your money’s worth.
I don’t want to ruin this fool’s gold with such a logical question, but like I keep saying, I guess those pipe dreamers are needed to keep the books in business for the rest of us.
No oddsmaker will go broke underestimating the intelligence of the betting public.
Radio Active
We’ve mentioned before how satellite and internet radio can be a valuable tool. Perhaps we are a bit biased but the best gambling radio show portal is GamblersZoo.com for over–the-air and/or internet sports gambling broadcasts.
Quality Not Quantity
One FAQ I get that frustrates me goes something like this, “Last Saturday I got your plays and you had 14 releases. This Saturday, I buy them and you have only four, even though there are about the same number of games.” Sometimes they will refer to it as inconsistent even though we won.
Any smart player always allows the quality of the card to dictate how many plays they release. We’ve had complete Saturday college basketball cards in which we’ve released just two plays and we had a Thursday night football card with two games and we had plays on both sides and both totals including three Wise Guy plays.
Betting a certain number of games for the sake of doing so or forcing bets on any game is simply playing the lottery. A sharp player must pick his spots. One should be leery of a sports service that guarantees a predetermined and invariable number of plays. It may be smart from a marketing standpoint because clients get a comfort zone with routines, but it’s horrible from an investment standpoint.
Do you think Wall Street wizards got there by habitually buying and selling set amounts? Sports brokers certainly won’t either.
Duffy’s plays are part of the Dream Team at Godspicks.com. He is perhaps the most published and respected author on sports gambling theory and has been featured as a regular guest as the handicapping expert on the Rick Ballou Show on Sporting News Radio, Gamblers Zoo national radio show, the Meat and Potatoes gambling show, Pro Fantasy Sports Internet radio and Grogan’s Fantasy Football show.
His Wise Guy Plays available exclusively at www.godspicks.com where daily sports handicapping information is available to crush the sportsbooks. Godspicks.com is the top source for NFL picks, college football winners and more.

Don’t Have a Tendency to Overvalue Coaches Preseason Tendencies

Just say no.  Too often the wannabee sharp player will tell you how much they love a preseason game because one coach is 7-3 ATS in the preseason and the other is just 10-20. The non-reasoning is that the first coach wants to win more.

First of all, ATS trends have little or no value in preseason NFL betting, but even if they did just about any that apply to a coach’s preseason record would be statistically insignificant. But more importantly one must ascertain if there is a rhyme to the reason.

For example Jimmy Johnson had a horrible ATS record in the exhibition games at Dallas because the variables basically stayed the same.  They were a marquee team that had high bettor’s appeal but they barely gave their “Triplets” of Smith, Aikman and Irvin a cop of coffee in a game. However the same spread fate continued with Barry Switzer because the same set of circumstances applied until the day Michael Irvin’s career ended on the dreaded Veterans Memorial Stadium turf.

And the Pokes being a great fade had absolutely nothing with their lack of motivation to win, it was simply a lack of justification to play their front line players. I would not bet my worst enemy’s money on for example any Steve Mariucci preseason historical record because a complete change of circumstances makes all numbers irrelevant.

Fluid circumstances are the primary reasons for the coaches’ historical record in preseason. Bluntly I’d rate coaches inclinations barely above random chance as a rationalization for the records and thus as a handicapping tool.  True Bill Parcells is a rare example of a coach who does seem to consistently put emphasis on the final score but an overwhelming majority of perceived annual dispositions of any specific coach are more imagined than real.

Offshore Drilling  Requires a Refinery

Yes we drill the offshore books the same way we did the Vegas sports odds and outlaw books before that.  We keep refining theories, systems and angles. I keep a database of what I half-jokingly refer to as “almost plays”.  These are plays I like but the base principles are established more on theory than proven track record and hence cannot rise to the level of premium play.  I then group each play under the theorem in its own memory based program. Once this premise has been proven to withstand the test of time it is upgraded to our empirical process.

Some recent revelations have resulted in our releasing and winning many more favorites in baseball. We were in some respects victims of our own success. “Bad” days consisted of going 2-3 and thanks to big dogs we still turned a small profit. We had slumps that resulted in hitting 44 percent yet still with a positive ROI.  Potential chalk winners resulted in us passing on the games because we got so biased against laying the lumber.

We deprived ourselves of the profitable fact that even with the much higher winning percentage required, baseball favorites under the right set of circumstances can have the same probability/risk ratio as our tried and true dogs and small favorites.  Thanks to tracking theories we have rectified that.

Another demonstration is how we rate our system plays. In the past we yielded to what statisticians use to measure the reliability of data: z score.  Who are we to argue with PhDs? However upon tracking the deviation from the mean as it applies to handicapping we discovered that the simple return on investment (ROI) is an even more accurate way.  The ROI is based simply on one-unit per play and includes the juice.

So instead of insisting a system have a z score of 4.0 or above to be statistically reliable, we now use 80 units or higher as standard.  Essentially it puts more emphasis on sample size and less on winning percentage.

We Love the Information Age

It looks like one of our favorite sites for college sports information Collegesports.com has added even more colleges to the network.  This will both increase and streamline our ability to not miss a beat both on the gridiron and hardwood.  Along those lines now that ESPN U, CSTV and Fox give us three channels dedicated to college sports, they and the other major sites such as CBS Sportsline are greatly increasing the amount and quality of coverage in their respective premium and “insider” packages.

The offshore sportsbooks are somewhat handcuffed because intense competition has forced them to come out with lines earlier and earlier.  Yet the pinpoint accuracy of information available late in the week from the ever increasing sources continues to widen the gap between handicapping’s upper, middle and lower classes. Luckily there is no shortage of rank and file gamblers to keep to books solvent.

Now many sports bloggers are a worthwhile source.  Not so much gambling specific but there is no shortage of sports fanatics out there and a few do have some good insight.  We will keep an open mind and two open eyes.

Grand Master Handicapper Joe Duffy is widely accepted as the top sports handicapper ever. He was General Manager of the Freescoreboard scorephone network and CEO of OffshoreInsiders.com, the premier hub of world-class handicappers.