Originally Posted by
redietz
Mixtures of common sense do about as much good as thoughts and prayers.
I'm going to free wheel this, so please bear with me. This is stream-of-consciousness debating, so if I whiff on some stuff, let me know.
Regarding empirically proven, here's an interesting thought. If the wisdom of the crowds in total moves the lines certain ways, and those ways are correct more often than not, what you are requiring to explain the existence of sports books is that the moving of those lines not involve more success than the house edge. Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you are in essence saying is that the people moving the lines have a theoretical edge against a 50/50 proposition since they are right more often than they are not. So for your theory to actually work for any length of time, you are requiring the line moves to be correct, but not overly correct so as to overcome the house edge. If they are overly correct, they drain the sports books and the books go out of business. That is asking for the just-right-bed for Goldilocks.
I have a rule of thumb in gambling. If you prefer to believe something, it's probably in your best interests to not believe it. Why would anyone believe the wisdom of crowds is more accurate in predicting events than a roundtable of experts or algorithms based on historical data?
Another way to look at this, rather than me saying "the wisdom of crowds," is to just call it what it is -- money. Money is paper. Money has no IQ. The money that moves lines does not come with sourcing. Why should money, in and of itself, be more accurate in predicting events than roundtables of experts or algorithms based on historical data?
Now I'm talking about in general. Yeah, if there are major injuries, line moves will be correct more often than incorrect. And in bowl games, the slow leakage of who is or isn't playing is likely to generate line moves that are correct more often than incorrect. But that really is not the core question in those instances. The core question is at what point is the advantage gone from the wager? And I would argue that the first handful of large bettors who get down do have an advantage, but the majority of people who miss betting the virginal lines do not. So in most cases, the "market" keeps generating line movement well after it makes sense to do so. It can be argued that, based on opening lines, yes the "market" was correct. But based on the bulk of the money wagered, which came after the value was gone, the "market" was wrong to keep hammering the game. So in total, without a chronological breakdown and a breakdown of how much was wagered when, the "market" may be wrong more often than right. The people whacking the game initially based on injury or sitting-out info are usually few in number and large bettors. To describe them as a "market" seems unnecessary to me. The masses who piggyback the info in a tardy fashion seem to fit more the definition of a "market."