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There is no Place Like Home, Except Often the Road
Joe Duffy “www.godspicks.com)
If there is one consistent general theory or category/sub-category that applies to successful handicapping in every sport, it would be exploiting home/road anomalies. That is discovering select teams that play significantly better at home than on the road or in some cases visa versa. In baseball this is also true with pitchers. We feel the term “home/road anomalies” is more accurate than the commonly accepted HFA (home field advantage) that many handicappers use.
This holds to form much more so than any other variances such as rested/unrested in the NBA, lefty/righty stats in baseball, grass/turf in football and baseball, day/night etc. In the NBA in particular nothing jumps out at us more than a team that is a home dog despite a fairly significantly better home SU record than the road team’s away mark. We have explained in previous articles why so many systems and theories that hold up don’t Amake sense@ to the inexpert eye but make dollars to the trained eye.
Obviously in such situations the road team is the better overall team and hence the public still prefers betting the superior team even if closer scrutiny at the home/road anomalies nullifies the supremacy. Then again the notion of the general public actually being aware of the home/road anomalies is laughable anyway.
This is of course assuming there are no major roster changes via injury, trade etc that have changed one or both team’s dynamics.
If injuries or roster changes explain why there is a road favorite, said theory does not apply. Likewise one must still put the circumstances under inspection. In the NBA and NHL “remember them?) for example the schedule maker generally favors the home team. If there is a three game in four nights or five in seven nights versus a much more rested team, it is by and large a scenario that sees the home team benefiting. But sharpies must be aware of both the rule and the exception.
Be cognizant there are actually teams that play better on the road or more accurately from a handicapping standpoint their home/road variance is less than the norm. Thus especially when getting points they become of great value on the highway, but are also great go-against plays at home. The teams with disproportionately better play on the road will sneak under the oddsmaking radar much more than Jekyll & Hyde better-at-home teams.
Boston, Philadelphia, New York and Chicago are examples of sports cities that far and away have the most passionate fans. Passion is a double edged sword. There are no better fans and hence home field/court advantage when the home team is playing well, but conversely when a massive slump hits so often being host is a home field disadvantage.
Pittsburgh is one of the great football towns in the nation and even in the post Steele Curtain days the Steelers were pretty invincible at home. It’s unlikely anyone knowledgeable would dispute the fervor of the faithful intensified their HFA. But the easily rattled mega talented Kordell Stewart was a much better quarterback on the road throughout his career than at he was the confluence of the Allegheny, Ohio and Monongahela. The boo-birds became the 12th man for the wrong team. This is a prime example as circumstances changed there was also a colossal modulation in home/road variance.
Conversely the same can be true but for completely different reasons in Miami and Atlanta for example. Arguably the two worst pro sports towns in the USA the empty arena at Phillips Arena in Atlanta for the Hawks is no benefit but when things are going well the bandwagon fills up quickly. Ask the Heat. One pony towns like Portland and Sacramento had magnified eminence on their home courts because of fan enthusiasm and conversely were disproportionately overvalued on the road.
I have seen some worthy power ratings in my day. Most take into account individual HFA that is acknowledging that the extent of home field advantage is not across the board. However with only a few exceptions even the more accurate rankings are oblivious to the equally important piece of information that road disadvantage is also not global. Recognizing one and not the other can actually be counterproductive and be another example of the would-be handicapping kingpin outsmarting oneself.
Any time there are off-court or off-field distractions so often the road is a sanctuary. We see this often with college teams under investigation for the proverbial Apossible sanctions@. From a handicapping standpoint these teams become undervalued on the road but overvalued at home. This is why the Trail Blazers went from a great home court to the Jail Blazers struggling in Oregon.
Exploiting these deviations is a three-step process. First one must find the statistical irregularity. Then one must analyze why the anomalism exists. Finally one must accurately conclude whether the state of affairs that led up to the deviation has been altered. If so, one must disregard the anomaly. If there is no significant fluctuation in the then and now comparison, the sharp player has a winning angle to build towards the preponderance.
To paraphrase a famous movie line, when searching for your wallet’s desire look no further than a team’s own backyard.
Just don’t forget how the other team performs away from their house.
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, 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 are widely respected as the biggest play in the handicapping abyss.

One of our successful angles is our “dichotomous ATS and SU game”. We discount 98 percent of trends, but this has proven to be the exception to the rule. Basically if a team has a great SU record but horrid ATS record or visa versa, you ride for that to continue as it is the sign of which teams are most under or overvalued.

We also speak of our “competitor consensus”. If we do not have a lean towards one side but it does not rise to the level of premium play, but get a strong play or consensus from the few other handicappers we respect, we pass it as a “competitor consensus”.

Combining the two tools, we have one area which proves to be extremely nice to our client’s bankrolls.

In our endless brainstorming with other professional handicappers and VIP gamblers, we believe the “dichotomous angle” not only overlaps with some of their procedures but in trading intel with our outsourced contacts combines the best of all of our worlds.

A technique used with those who are crackerjacks in this approach is dissecting margin of cover. Notice we said margin of “cover”, not margin of victory.
 The patriarchs on this prescription have slightly different wrinkles on how exactly to apply it. However the baseborn premise is that if a team’s spread win-loss record is at a high percent, its handicapping value is verified or nullified by how close the spread wins and losses were.

As an illustration, let us say a team is 15-5 to the Vegas odds for the year. The mere trendmeister would say that is a team to bet with. Those who research margin of cover, the much brighter gambler in fact, scrutinizes much deeper.

If for example the five ATS setbacks were by a combined 43 points and the 15 wins were by a collective 38 points, the 15-5 trend is fool’s gold. However if the 15 covers were by an average of 10 points per game and the setbacks by 2.5 points per game the trend becomes an angle.

Sure the 15-5 team would be the “better” spread team but I’ve yet to find a place in which you can bet retroactively. In foreseeing the future the fact their “margin of cover” was a negative seven tells us they are not a “strong” spread team and their record is not a symptom of being undervalued, just having had fortuitous covers.

We strengthen, weaken or cancel plays based on whether our information trafficking enhances or contradicts our own findings.
Both the dichotomous and margin angles ensure that trends pass the litmus test of rising to being an “angle” before application.

Having an information trade treaty with other masterminds safeguards there will be systematic checks and balances.

And getting big checks with nice balances from offshore is what it’s all about.

Duffy’s plays are part of the Dream Team at Godspicks at OffshoreInsiders.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, Gridiron Gamblers, Pro Fantasy Sports Internet radio and Grogan’s Fantasy Football show.

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Take the Bookmaker Off Of This Year’s Christmas Gift List
Joe Duffy (www.godspicks.com)
Yes ’tis the season for giving, but why do you insist on helping your sports investment bookkeeper pay for that new Beamer every Christmas? Thanks to you he can buy one for his wife and girlfriend too. I hope you have a warm and fuzzy feeling knowing that you have stuffed the stockings of every one of your BM’s loved ones.
I have warned you before, but just like the Surgeon General’s warning, it just seems to go unnoticed. No bookie feels like Mr. Scrooge around the holidays because his phone rings from people who celebrate the season of the sucker bet.
Are you dreaming of a green Christmas just like the one that we Wise Guys know?
\There are many “sucker bets” to which the gambler becomes an all too voluntary participant, but none costs him more money than the ultimate trap-betting on teams in “must win” games especially versus teams that have no chance at making the playoffs.
The reasons that this costs gamblers millions a year are more plentiful than spiked eggnog on Christmas Eve, but let us count ways. The first is the outlandish belief that the team that has no chance at making the postseason has nothing to play for. As if a job is not something to want to save. One must realize the ramifications for an also ran tanking their final games or game. It can be fatal from a high six figure a year minimum career standpoint.
Let us use the San Francisco 49ers for example. Take a look at their roster and tell me how many guys you would lay the vig and bet they definitely have a job sewn up for next year. Furthermore, even for those players that you can safely assume will be on some NFL roster, how many current starters will you wager are insured of starting the following year?
Chances are not many. Most of the players who allegedly have no motivation to perform are merely fighting for their football lives. Did you ever hear the saying that fear is the best motivator? Kurt Warner may be the all-time feel good story about going from stocking shelves to stuffing pictures of dead Presidents in his fat wallet. But players on teams with two or three wins entering the final week or two of the year have to do whatever it takes from being the nameless guy who takes the reverse rout of Warner.
Not to mention, the chance to play spoiler in many cases versus a hated division rival is well, at the risk of using a cliché, that team’s personal playoff game. No team worth its weight in steroids will shrug off the thought of another team celebrating clinching a playoff birth at their expense. Knocking a team out of playoff contention and solidifying one’s job for the following season acts as enough to debunk that twisted thinking, but not so fast there is further reason why betting on teams in must win games is twisted.
There is an unfounded assumption that teams perform better when they have to win. Teams that perform their best under pressure are not in must win games at the end of the year. They are instead trying to pick up their 13th win. If a team is 8-6 for example heading into the final two weeks, are the pro “must win” people telling me the six losses were in non-pressure games?
Plus gamblers must know one of the Golden Rule’s (hey what happened to my cheesy Christmas references?). The oddsmakers are one-step, no two-steps; no make that a country mile ahead of you.
The little known fact is that Roxy and the linesmakers also factor betting pattern when making the line. Believe me they are more than aware of the convoluted traps that most gamblers fall into. If you insist on going with the “must win” team, get ready to lay at least three extra points bare minimum.
In addition to the twisted accepted wisdom there are other factors that lead a gambler down the path to arrears. The public of course loves betting favorites to begin with. But they essentially feel safer betting quality teams and despise investing with pathetic teams almost as if there is a subconscious belief that the oddsmakers have no idea of the talent discrepancies when posting the line. Somehow the physiological pain of four losses out of ten when betting on the Cowboys is worse than the six losses out of ten betting on the Rams.
I do not know how many times I have heard people say to the effect, “I would rather lose betting on the (superior team) than lose by betting on the (horrible team)” not knowing of the actuality that they are espousing a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Not that I should complain. As somebody who sells picks for a living I realize if it were not for people losing money on their own, I would not have many clients. But for those of you who do bet on your own put this article under the Christmas tree this year and your will have a Happy Betting New Year.
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, the Meat and Potatoes gambling show and Grogan’s Fantasy Football show. His Wise Guy Plays available exclusively at www.godspicks.com are widely respected as the biggest play in the handicapping abyss.

Well I had an English professor in college who despised clichés with a passion. Hey I just realized that was a cliché. I do not know if Professor Mc Vie was a betting man though, because with apologies to my English mentor the old saying applies to money management in sports betting: it is a marathon not a sprint.

While some scores and odds gamblers may fall prey to the assurances of boiler room scamdicappers maintaining to have inside information and hitting 95%, I have a surprise for you. No gambler, handicapper, wise guy, nobody is slump proof.

For that matter even Joebagofdonuts making his hunch plays for his $10 parlay card will go in streaks. The recipe is to find a handicapper or invest the time yourself to insure that the winning steaks outnumber and outlast the losing streaks.

Frankly the formula to winning in sports is well-informed handicapping and money management. Even if somebody can win consistently, if one’s betting amount is haphazard one can lose a lot of money.

Bookmakers drive around in new Porsche’s not just because most of their clients grapple to hit 45% of their plays, but also because a preponderance of gamblers use the “panic” or “greed” methods when deciding how much to wager.

Any sports betting links player who increases his bets when he is down to try to win it back in one bet is destined to live in a box by the river. That is why Monday Night Football is the greatest thing to ever happen to a bookie. The bookie’s second best friend is the Sunday night game. Both are considered “bail out games” by the uneducated risk taker.

But even worse is the player for stakes who presses his luck during a hot streak and increases his bets. I have seen so many suckers go 15-5 for example and still squander capital.

The quandary is a $50 bettor for example when he is hot has the attitude, “Could you imagine how much I would have made if I bet $200 a game?” Even worse is the guy who goes 5-0 and realizes how much he could have made if he put money on a parlay. Yes 20/20 handicapping is great but I do not know a sportsbook that takes those types of antes.

Any bookmaker will tell you with 90% of gamblers, the more they win one week, the more the bookie looks forward to the gamester’s phone call the next week. Too many gamblers always find a way to give the money back and then some.

Even I have had nightmare days, but because of money management the Wise Guys and I have no idea what a losing month or season is.

The recipe is to stake the same amount based purely on how much one likes a game, not how much one is up or down in the short run. However there are actually two adaptations of acceptable money management.

One is the Godsey Theory, which is the most straightforward and the other is the Kelly System, which the units are equal but always relative to the bankroll.

The Godsey Theory is a fundamental as it gets. The way to divvy the units can be different as long as it is constant, but the key is not change the rating system or units per play.

Personally I only bet plays in two different units. Wise Guy plays are my top play and majors are .75 units of a Wise Guy play.

So as it applies to a $100 player, he would bet $100 on my Wise Guy plays and of course, $75 on my majors. Much like putting the same amount every month into the stock market, this method must be bet religiously.

However the Kelly System is similar but is based on a set percentage of one’s bankroll, not a set amount. Generally the maximum bet is 1/20 of the total bankroll.

Using the same one unit and .75 unit rating procedure, if one’s bankroll starts out with a $2,000 bankroll, Wise Guy plays would be $100 (5% of 2,000) and a major would be $75 (3.75% of (2,000).

Let’s say the gambler goes on a huge losing streak and his bankroll drops to $1,325. Then a Wise Guy play is still 5% of his bankroll, but is it $66.25, while a major is still 3.75% at $49.69.

When his bankroll is increased to $3,330 for example a Wise Guy play increases to $166.50, while a major would be $124.88.

Accurate handicapping and great information is the heart and soul of sports gambling. But without a responsible and thus concordant money management modus operandi it will all go for naught.

With both the Kelly Theory and the Godsey theory, your amount or percentage as the case may be never varies according to your streaks. I have never heard of a progressive betting system that works long-term. I know many in sports are based off of questionable betting procedure in blackjack or other casino games. The funny thing is the blackjack players who I know who swear by these methods always seem to forget when they lose and remember when it wins.

Now that is a degenerate gambler indeed. Somebody has to pay for those fancy chandeliers and ostentatious creature comforts at those multi-billion dollar casinos. Let us just make sure it is not you or me!

If one considers any game a “bailout” game, that is the first sign of trouble. Gamblers love to add up the wins and losses before deciding how much to bet on the Sunday night NFL game and Monday Night game. If a gambler had a horrific Saturday and Sunday, he starts betting parlays or coming up with schemes on how to win it all back with the two remaining prime time games—big mistake. Whether you are up 10 units or down said amount, the amount that you bet if at all on the Sunday night game should be based purely on how much you like that game. The Monday Night Football game is no different.

I cringe or at least wish that I was on the other side of the window when I hear a gambler who is down a few sheckles figuring merely how to get his debt below his “square up” amount with his man. Do not get me wrong, the goal of course is to not pay your man, but show me a guy who says he collects from the BM 52 weeks a year and please give me a chance to sell you stock in the Brooklyn Bridge.

Just like the stock market gambling has its ebbs and flows and to accept that one will not turn a profit 52 weeks a year is the first step on avoiding the endless pitfalls that make the bookmakers filthy rich.

The point is that with proper handicapping and money management you will collect from the man much more than he pays you, but there are some weeks that if you are down late in the week that you have to accept that it is going to be one of those periods where he collects from you.

Conversely the gambler often does the opposite. If he enters the late Sunday card significantly up, he may often get conservative just to insure a profit for the week or perhaps worse press his luck and increase his bets. Both are stupid. Anyone who lives and dies off of a one game or one day is destined to subsidize his “man’s” lifestyle.

“When you believe in things that you don’t understand, you suffer. Superstition ain’t the way, yeh, yeh,” Stevie Wonder. Those are words to sing and gamble by. I realize that there are times that it seems like everything is going right for you and there are times when no matter how hard you handicap the games, you just feel like in the final minutes or innings of a game if it’s close, you will lose.

I know the feeling. I have gone in some slumps and I will have three games on the dish going down to the wire. I just know I am watching heartbreak in progress. It boggles the mind how when things are not going your way every backdoor cover goes against you. But never, ever let such superstition affect your betting. The same is true when you are in a run where every late break goes your way. Pressing one’s luck is every bit as dangerous as panicking.

Never vary your bets based on the feeling that you are snake bitten or in a hot streak. As someone who sells picks for a living I am more than aware how gamblers love betting someone’s hot streaks. Finding a quality handicapper is much more important and profitable than worrying about who is hot and who has the big plays.

It is harmless if superstition affects your rooting habits, such as wearing your lucky shirt on an NFL Sunday. Buy never cross the line of it entering either your handicapping or the amount that you bet.

Joe Duffy generally considered as the greatest scorephone handicapper ever joined Internet guru Mike Godsey to form the most powerful handicapping alliance ever. Known as the handicapping’s “Dream Team” their plays are as little as less than $6.00 per day at OffshoreInsiders.com

 

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See the Changes Made to Make Some Change
Joe Duffy (www.godspicks.com)
With apologies to the androgynous David Bowie, if you don’t want to be a richer man than don’t face the strain. But if you do want to profit when handicapping basketball, your “gonna” have to be a changed man.
With the top high school players more likely to enter the NBA draft and if not stay in college for a cup of coffee, the sharp player has to recognize the complexities that it brings to handicapping.
There are many reasons why Young Turk handicappers have surpassed some old school prognosticators. The obvious reason is so many of the moth-eaten soothsayers use out-of-date handicapping techniques ignoring the Internet and various computer programs. However less obvious but even more importantly is also not acknowledging that once tried and true theories have become obsolete.
Among the examples:
Senior leadership: the great seniors of the past are now third and fourth year NBA players. Maryland was the exception in 2002 not because of experience but it just so happened that Maryland was a throwback—two superstar seniors. Lonny Baxter and Juan Dixon did not lead Maryland to the Promised Land because they were seniors, but because they were two NBA prospects that actually stayed around for four years. Plenty of teams could compete with them as far as veterans on the roster, but none were in the same league talent wise.
Unlike the recent past, never handicap so-called leadership ahead of talent. Perhaps an academic school like Duke or Stanford will combine both, but if a teams four-year players are not going to be found on a lot All-Conference or All-American teams, don’t be counting on their birth certificates to compensate for lack of height, muscle and speed.
Talent will overcome lack of experience, but you can keep your bookmaker in business waiting for the reverse to happen.
If the opposite were the case, mid-major teams would wear the glass slipper every year, as they are the schools that have more four-year players than the big boys.
I will put my back-to-back great recruiting classes of sophs and frosh ahead of your senior laden team whose top player is a mid level Australian league back-up prospect.
Preseason publications: I use to quietly giggle at those who said preseason publications were worthless once the season tips off. Related to what is stated above, the supermarket year books used to be very valuable as the squads with the most returning starters always got out of the gate the quickest, while teams with the most new quality talent would peak late. However once March came it was time to go back to betting on the vets.
Street & Smith’s and the many worthy imitations used to be ideal reference books for such. Of course one would have to make adjustments for injuries, but I successfully used my endless pile of storehouse arsenal throughout the year.
Up until the mid-90s I would compile the consensus predictions of all the publications. I would weigh each conference’s official coaches’ poll 50/50 with the hacks’ cumulative opinion as I found these to be good power ratings.
When a team with consensus preseason conference rating of say 5.6 (average predicted finish) was a big favorite to a team with a rating of 2.4 and the teams were healthy, but the “5.6” team was playing much better, the comparative consensus ratings were a gold mine in sorting out overachieving and underachieving teams.
More times than not, the hypothetical situation said look for both teams to return to their talent level and bet the “2.4” team.
With such turnover on the rosters, teams are much streakier and so much harder to predict than 10 and 20 years ago. Looking at a team’s recent three and five game performance is more valuable than ever. College hoop squads don’t “rise and fall to their level” like they used to.
Bigger homecourt advantage. Don’t take me out of context. I never said there is no difference between a freshman and sophomore-laden team and one with a bunch of third and fourth-year starters. Lack of maturity shows up on the road a lot more than at home. Home court advantage, especially in the first 15-20 games is as big as it ever was. Home dogs and small favorites, especially when playing well, deserve a longer look-see more than ever before.
In 1985, those theories that worked in 1980 and even 1970 often held up. No only has the game itself but thanks to technology the way sharp players handicap has also been greatly altered. Hence so had the way the lines are made and moved.
Too many dinosaur diviners are estimating today’s outcomes with yesterday’s attitude. So handicappers, time better change you, because you can’t trace time.
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.