Do you enjoy a good competitive game of "Texas hold 'em"? How about a quick shot at "21"? Or maybe your weakness is the "slot machine"? The many games of chance are a great way to lose a few bucks and maybe enjoy yourself for a very short while. Just about everyone has thrown a few bucks towards the Nevada education fund in the form of a casino game right? RIGHT! It's even safe to say that more than a few folks have bankrupted themselves via the city of sin. Well what I want to discuss over the next few posts and perhaps sporadically over the life of "THE CAVE" is the purest form of gambling(oxymoron anyone?)... sports gambling.
This is such an interesting business to me. Obviously anyone that follows sports tightly has tried to predict a game here or there and has been correct, perhaps maybe even against the odds a little bit? I know I have and it is an absolute rush! Correct predictions breed confidence, and a sports gambler is born! From this point, it usually only takes one winning bet to create a BEAST! This is a tough habit to break no matter how strong you think you are. My disclaimer: Stay away from it! That being said, lets talk about what I believe is the moment one decides to give up a chunk of change.
All of us have been there. You are chatting about some up coming games and someone brings up "the line" on a game and you stop, mentally grab onto that information, put it through your sports betting computer and the output... "Vegas has that one wrong! I could bet this one!". Real technical huh? Yea, your mental computer is more in tune than hundreds of odd setting criteria put together over decades of number crunching! That's believable. "But they missed on this one!", you tell yourself.
THAT'S IT RIGHT THERE!
That's what bookies all over the world have made trillions off of..."They missed on this one." That phrase has made many casino owners rich men in the bright lights of Sin City. But why? Why can't anybody beat Vegas? How do they get that line to look so appealing?
We'll that my friends is what interests me so much about sports betting... the criteria used to place odds.
We've all heard them occasionally let out by an odds setter or a "sports betting aid website". Things like "they are 1-12 when crossing two time zones on a back to back." or "they are 13-0 when playing at home after a bye week." I love these stats! They amaze me! Anybody can take the average points of every player on two NBA teams and make a estimate on who will finish with more points at the end of the night, thus winning. What is incredible is to take that but apply a stat like, the second time a team faces Paul Milsap in a season he averages almost 6 points fewer than the first time they face him. That's huge!
That is why the odds makers are so amazing to me. The criteria used is so much more in depth than anything we could imagine. I'm not a betting man, but I am a stats man and that is why "odds" interest me so much.
In short,
STAY TUNED! THERE IS MUCH MORE TO COME!
1 comment:
I can honestly say that gambling is the only thing that gets me interested into March Madness. You are dead on, it is rush and makes you feel like you are P. Diddy dancing it up at a night club! I know a couple guys that loves sports but unless they have money on the game they are not interested in watching... now that isn't right! Also there are so many ways you can bet on a game... it creates a game within a game.
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