Originally Posted by redietz View Post
Originally Posted by mickeycrimm View Post
Originally Posted by redietz View Post


The specific thing I took exception to was Dancer recommending dabbling in sports betting as if it were something that was easily amenable to statistical analysis. It's one thing to take advantages of bonuses and bonus whore yourself as much as possible if a recession squeezes other forms of APing. It's another to think a game of opinion can be beaten in the same way that video poker or blackjack can be beaten. If Stu Ungar couldn't beat sports, why would any non-specialist think they can beat sports? This whole sharps/squares lingo fosters the illusion that sports is generally beatable. It's not.
Unger couldn't beat blackjack either. And it was a beatable game. He was a degenerate gambler with no expertise in sportsbetting.
He was better at gin rummy than poker.

What people fail to realize is that there are folks with more money than everybody on this forum combined who have been running data-mining programs every day on every sport for decades. You can't just wander in and apply some basic math to win at sports unless books make blatant mistakes or unless you're bonus whoring, which won't sustain you. Asking a video poker player or slot player or poker player to expand into sports betting because times are tough in a recession is just, in my opinion, real bad advice.
Unger could never hold on to money. Couldn't go to sleep with a dollar in his pocket.

Red, if the line on a particular NFL game was -6 just before kickoff and someone offered you the choice of taking the dog at +8 or the favorite at -4, and you knew absolutely nothing about the two teams....would you take the bet? And if so, which way would you bet?