Originally Posted by Half Smoke View Post
Originally Posted by redietz View Post
so what are you supposed to bet? The opening line underdog, the Vikings, or the current underdog, the Bears?
this has already been discussed

the data is based on the closing line most common to most of the books

if a bettor doesn't get the exact line from closing it may hurt him or it may help him - and even more likely it didn't matter at all - no way to tell and not at all likely to make any real difference in the long run

but everybody gets it - you don't like the strategy - that's cool - when it comes to betting sports everybody won't agree on everything

btw for what it's worth - based on the comments from you that I've read - I do think you know a great deal about handicapping, particularly football -

I also agree with mickey's points that computer modeling (such as what Billy Walters has done) is superior to what any individual can accomplish, even a very informed individual, betting or recommending bets based on his opinion

computer modeling combined with the vast amounts of statistical data that was compiled and analyzed easily identified a great many more plays than any well informed individual could possible uncover


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With the proper resoruces and computer training, you could train models off of existing video footage and get far more detail. There are tons of little statistics that a human can't really take all in but if broken up properly and fed to an AI/LLM algo then it might take the modeling to the next level and find weak spots in lines. Kinda like how having a finer granularity on horse racing was used at some point to get an edge on the existing bettors of the time. With football though there are far more variables one could plot/measure via a video footage.. (as compared to horses)

Anyway, just a thought.