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Thread: just what is an AP player?

  1. #41
    Originally Posted by kewlJ View Post
    So, redietz, tell me about JoelDeze, who is handicapping college football on Wizard's site. Do you know him? What kind of track record does he have? Or is he just an unknown member of WoV who started posting his picks?
    KJ, I don't really keep track of anyone, and I'm pretty much unaware of anyone not at least semi-famous with 20 years plus experience.

    Tracking people on forums is nonsensical. You could have one guy be 50 different folks on 50 different forums giving 50 different arrays of selections (which, by the way, is what some some handicapping businesses do when being monitored). Two or three of those 50 will, by variance, turn out to have had a helluva year. Some people, even famous people like Ferguson and Shackleford, think they know what they're doing, and they don't. They bring a couple of obvious mathematical observations to the table and try to build a strategy around them, and it's fifth graders playing Mozart. Usually not a pretty thing with pretty outcomes.

  2. #42
    Originally Posted by OneHitWonder View Post
    Originally Posted by redietz View Post
    I just turned 60, and jogging-wise, 103/104 degrees in Las Vegas is about as taxing as 85 degrees in Tennessee, where the humidity will kill you. You just have to jog before 8 AM. I must admit, though, it does feel weird to jog with such low humidity that you can feel your sweat dry and cool you like little icicles or something as it runs down your face. Very different from being soaked with sweat in a high humidity environment.
    I did a lot of running, up until about 25 years ago. Isn't the difference between jogging and running at the seven-minute mile mark? Up here, the icicles are real, and you have to take your coat off to run in the wintertime. The human body generates a lot of heat. The trick is to wear a good winter hat. Most of our heat exits our heads.

    "In Canada alone does the word refer to a soft, felted or knitted winter hat. It is interesting to note that Canada boasts the highest per capita ownership of toques, with up to seven per person in any given household, of which at least two will be mislaid each winter. Thus, as with cats and umbrellas, Canadian toques are only nominally "owned," but rather make up a huge floating population which emerges in the winter to intermix and migrate to new owners."

    OneHit, I am impressed. That is precisely the old (sort of military) definition of running versus jogging. The captain of my old high school cross-country team, whose father was military, quoted that all of the time, and I still apply that definition even though my own self-definition wishes I could pretend I was "running" these days.

    I'm not. Once upon a time, six miles in six minutes per was not that hard. Now, three miles in under nine per is not easy. Reality is a bitch, but that's aging, my friend.

  3. #43
    Originally Posted by redietz View Post
    Originally Posted by kewlJ View Post
    So, redietz, tell me about JoelDeze, who is handicapping college football on Wizard's site. Do you know him? What kind of track record does he have? Or is he just an unknown member of WoV who started posting his picks?
    KJ, I don't really keep track of anyone, and I'm pretty much unaware of anyone not at least semi-famous with 20 years plus experience.

    Tracking people on forums is nonsensical.
    I hear ya. I was just wondering, since he was using his real name, or at least a proper name (as opposed to an obvious handle), if this was someone somewhat known by that name, or had established some sort of credibility under that name. Based on the two comments here, probably not.

    Seems kind of odd, for these common folks to set up shop on various forums, as if the have some sort of expertise. On one of the blackjack sites that I 'used' to participate on there is a "resident handicapper" who makes a big deal of his picks (as if he knows what he is doing). He picks one game a week, what he considers his best game....interesting approach. HOWEVER..his record last year 7-10. This year he is off to a 1-4 start and yet keeps posting as if people are waiting for his picks. (Maybe they are but only to bet the other way...)
    Last edited by kewlJ; 10-15-2017 at 02:11 PM.

  4. #44
    You can't really tell if anyone knows what they're doing until you have a couple of years and a couple of hundred plays to look at.

    I remember one of my longtime clients was having lunch with me, and my girlfriend met him for the first time. I had started the year losing my first eight (admittedly small) plays, and my client joked, "Hey, Bob, how about we win a game one of these weeks?" My girlfriend was horrified. We guys thought it was funny she was horrified. The season turned out fine -- it was profitable.

    Then you have a streak like I had a couple of years back where I won 17 in a row. I got to do a few articles during the streak on Marc Lawrence's website, and established that I was shooting for the same odds-against as "death by reptile" according to the insurance data base. Well, it turns out that's where the streak stopped -- at roughly the same odds as "death by reptile." I had written that was what I wanted because the color-changing eyes of the alligators at the alligator bar in the Orleans are one of my favorite Las Vegas things.

    I would have hated for anyone to have evaluated me based on either short-term run.

  5. #45
    Originally Posted by redietz View Post
    Originally Posted by kewlJ View Post
    So, redietz, tell me about JoelDeze, who is handicapping college football on Wizard's site. Do you know him? What kind of track record does he have? Or is he just an unknown member of WoV who started posting his picks?
    KJ, I don't really keep track of anyone, and I'm pretty much unaware of anyone not at least semi-famous with 20 years plus experience.

    Tracking people on forums is nonsensical. You could have one guy be 50 different folks on 50 different forums giving 50 different arrays of selections (which, by the way, is what some some handicapping businesses do when being monitored). Two or three of those 50 will, by variance, turn out to have had a helluva year. Some people, even famous people like Ferguson and Shackleford, think they know what they're doing, and they don't. They bring a couple of obvious mathematical observations to the table and try to build a strategy around them, and it's fifth graders playing Mozart. Usually not a pretty thing with pretty outcomes.
    I assume you mean Mike Shackleford? Can you explain what's wrong with his mathematical observations?

  6. #46
    Originally Posted by AxelWolf View Post
    Originally Posted by redietz View Post
    Originally Posted by kewlJ View Post
    So, redietz, tell me about JoelDeze, who is handicapping college football on Wizard's site. Do you know him? What kind of track record does he have? Or is he just an unknown member of WoV who started posting his picks?
    KJ, I don't really keep track of anyone, and I'm pretty much unaware of anyone not at least semi-famous with 20 years plus experience.

    Tracking people on forums is nonsensical. You could have one guy be 50 different folks on 50 different forums giving 50 different arrays of selections (which, by the way, is what some some handicapping businesses do when being monitored). Two or three of those 50 will, by variance, turn out to have had a helluva year. Some people, even famous people like Ferguson and Shackleford, think they know what they're doing, and they don't. They bring a couple of obvious mathematical observations to the table and try to build a strategy around them, and it's fifth graders playing Mozart. Usually not a pretty thing with pretty outcomes.
    I assume you mean Mike Shackleford? Can you explain what's wrong with his mathematical observations?
    Nothing's wrong with his math. Ever. But they try to apply some of their math to sporting events in ways that are both inappropriate and naive, and that presume nobody's done it before (as in over and over and forever). You think Billy Walters hasn't hired people to do whatever Shackleford has data mined or recommended, and 20 years previously? Sometimes it comes across like a kindergardener discovering that you can eat grass if you want and usually nothing bad happens. Until it does.

    It's like when Ferguson "discovered" certain teasers were more valuable than others, won a higher percentage of the time, and made it public. Really? People knew that stuff 20 years before. They just weren't dumb enough to put it on loudspeaker.

  7. #47
    Originally Posted by redietz View Post
    Originally Posted by AxelWolf View Post
    Originally Posted by redietz View Post

    KJ, I don't really keep track of anyone, and I'm pretty much unaware of anyone not at least semi-famous with 20 years plus experience.

    Tracking people on forums is nonsensical. You could have one guy be 50 different folks on 50 different forums giving 50 different arrays of selections (which, by the way, is what some some handicapping businesses do when being monitored). Two or three of those 50 will, by variance, turn out to have had a helluva year. Some people, even famous people like Ferguson and Shackleford, think they know what they're doing, and they don't. They bring a couple of obvious mathematical observations to the table and try to build a strategy around them, and it's fifth graders playing Mozart. Usually not a pretty thing with pretty outcomes.
    I assume you mean Mike Shackleford? Can you explain what's wrong with his mathematical observations?
    Nothing's wrong with his math. Ever. But they try to apply some of their math to sporting events in ways that are both inappropriate and naive, and that presume nobody's done it before (as in over and over and forever). You think Billy Walters hasn't hired people to do whatever Shackleford has data mined or recommended, and 20 years previously? Sometimes it comes across like a kindergardener discovering that you can eat grass if you want and usually nothing bad happens. Until it does.

    It's like when Ferguson "discovered" certain teasers were more valuable than others, won a higher percentage of the time, and made it public. Really? People knew that stuff 20 years before. They just weren't dumb enough to put it on loudspeaker.
    I agree people were betting stale lines on parlays for years before Mike and others talked about it. I was betting the 1/2point cards before I ever heard of Mike. They were cutting you off even back then, SINCE MIKE POSTED ABOUT IT MORE PEOPLE STARTED DOING IT AND THE CASINOS CRACKED DOWN. Obviously, I agree this stuff should not be put on the loudspeaker, as you put it.

    Mike even says he's not a handicapper. There are people who can't/won't put their faith in any handicapper, especially since there is so much BS out there. So they are left with something that makes sense, something that uses logic and math.

    I would never put my faith in someone that's straight up handicapping.

  8. #48
    Originally Posted by AxelWolf View Post
    Originally Posted by redietz View Post
    Originally Posted by AxelWolf View Post
    I assume you mean Mike Shackleford? Can you explain what's wrong with his mathematical observations?
    Nothing's wrong with his math. Ever. But they try to apply some of their math to sporting events in ways that are both inappropriate and naive, and that presume nobody's done it before (as in over and over and forever). You think Billy Walters hasn't hired people to do whatever Shackleford has data mined or recommended, and 20 years previously? Sometimes it comes across like a kindergardener discovering that you can eat grass if you want and usually nothing bad happens. Until it does.

    It's like when Ferguson "discovered" certain teasers were more valuable than others, won a higher percentage of the time, and made it public. Really? People knew that stuff 20 years before. They just weren't dumb enough to put it on loudspeaker.
    I agree people were betting stale lines on parlays for years before Mike and others talked about it. I was betting the 1/2point cards before I ever heard of Mike. They were cutting you off even back then, SINCE MIKE POSTED ABOUT IT MORE PEOPLE STARTED DOING IT AND THE CASINOS CRACKED DOWN. Obviously, I agree this stuff should not be put on the loudspeaker, as you put it.

    Mike even says he's not a handicapper. There are people who can't/won't put their faith in any handicapper, especially since there is so much BS out there. So they are left with something that makes sense, something that uses logic and math.

    I would never put my faith in someone that's straight up handicapping.

    People were doing the "stale line, staggered games in time, set-up-middles" stuff 20 years before Shackleford decided to publicly mention it. When I posted earlier about getting hassled by managers who wanted to eyeball my parlay cards, that was in the 80's and 90's, and that was what I was doing. I wasn't even doing it in a serious fashion. Back then, no mega-games on ESPN, so you watched games at the best venue -- at that time the Stardust. Well, to get a seat, you had to be there two hours before kickoff on a Saturday. I did the parlay stagger stuff mainly to kill time before kickoff -- coffee and donuts can only occupy so much time. I was betting no more than a couple hundred dollars a week, tops, on the parlay cards with that, and they took issue, which I thought was funny, considering they should have had more pressing concerns, like being behind on weather reports compared to Circus-Circus next door.

    So some of what gets put out there as "good advice" by the math guys is really old, old hat.

    I don't blame you for passing on handicappers, as 99% are junk. You have to almost know someone personally to evaluate them. But the logic and math you are talking about as crutches are laregely outdated and naive -- they've been done and recycled for decades.

    Last word -- there are, occasionally, savants. Don't kid yourself. Mainly in college football and college basketball. They exist. Some of the college hoops guys are frightening, as I do not know how they can hold the info they do on 350 teams in their minds. Savants know the teams like you know your personal acquaintances. Teams are, after all, just organisms to be known. And I do not mean knowing players. I mean knowing the behavioral tendencies of the teams. Walters used to have some college personnel memory freaks on his roster of people, but those guys were just data memorizers -- they weren't necessarily the people doing the handicapping. They were window dressing to impress people who are impressed by personnel data.

  9. #49
    I’m still waiting for a response (actually from a different thread) from machine AP’s how today after admitting that 25 years ago casinos were identifying and roughing up machine AP’s for taking all the progressives away from the idiots that created them, are still able to get away with it for 25 years and still counting?

    My post addressing this unanswered question is here … https://vegascasinotalk.com/forum/sh...ll=1#post53612

  10. #50
    Originally Posted by blackhole View Post
    I’m still waiting for a response (actually from a different thread) from machine AP’s how today after admitting that 25 years ago casinos were identifying and roughing up machine AP’s for taking all the progressives away from the idiots that created them, are still able to get away with it for 25 years and still counting?

    My post addressing this unanswered question is here … https://vegascasinotalk.com/forum/sh...ll=1#post53612
    Certainly, the practice of consciously horning in on other persons' pots is troubling.
    Last edited by OneHitWonder; 10-16-2017 at 07:42 AM.

  11. #51
    Originally Posted by redietz View Post
    Once upon a time, six miles in six minutes per was not that hard. Now, three miles in under nine per is not easy. Reality is a bitch, but that's aging, my friend.
    I did about six six-minutes miles three times a week for fun. Not trying to be fancy with the numbers. That was just the right amount for me, in latter years. Around a horse track. I tried to finish up before the trainers and horses came out at the crack of dawn.

    You will find eight, and then a seven-minute mile. There's that point when this will happen effortlessly for you. An anaerobic process.

  12. #52
    Originally Posted by OneHitWonder View Post
    Originally Posted by blackhole View Post
    I’m still waiting for a response (actually from a different thread) from machine AP’s how today after admitting that 25 years ago casinos were identifying and roughing up machine AP’s for taking all the progressives away from the idiots that created them, are still able to get away with it for 25 years and still counting?

    My post addressing this unanswered question is here … https://vegascasinotalk.com/forum/sh...ll=1#post53612
    Certainly, the practice of consciously horning in on other persons' pots is troubling.
    You a fn weirdo trying to pretend your clever.

  13. #53
    Well, I see we don't have to have Rob around for trash talk- and changing topics.

  14. #54
    Originally Posted by slingshot View Post
    Well, I see we don't have to have Rob around for trash talk- and changing topics.
    The "hole" does seem to have those areas covered. I can't remember, is he pro or anti AP?

  15. #55
    Originally Posted by blackhole View Post
    Originally Posted by OneHitWonder View Post
    Originally Posted by blackhole View Post
    I’m still waiting for a response (actually from a different thread) from machine AP’s how today after admitting that 25 years ago casinos were identifying and roughing up machine AP’s for taking all the progressives away from the idiots that created them, are still able to get away with it for 25 years and still counting?

    My post addressing this unanswered question is here … https://vegascasinotalk.com/forum/sh...ll=1#post53612
    Certainly, the practice of consciously horning in on other persons' pots is troubling.
    You a fn weirdo trying to pretend your clever.
    Honestly, I don't know what you are talking about here. If others build up a slot jackpot, then why should a few persons try to talk themselves into feeling good with pushing them off their games, or hogging the seats.

    You should be learning by now that some questions will never be answered by those persons. It's best to put it in terms that can't be disputed. The sorts of persons who are in their own sorts of black holes.

    If you want to post here, and at any gambling board, you should have something you like to post about. Regardless what others will say about it. That way, you will have something to be happy about.

  16. #56
    Originally Posted by slingshot View Post
    Well, I see we don't have to have Rob around for trash talk- and changing topics.
    Ha, we will see how it goes.

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