Originally Posted by mickeycrimm View Post
Originally Posted by AxelWolf View Post
Originally Posted by redietz View Post
I'll spell this out for the low-IQ crowd one more time.

If you want to use the phrase "Expected Value" as a substitute for "personal opinion," for sports betting, be my guest. But you acknowledge that there is no actual calculus, no probability theory, that is applicable. Your personal experience and personal history, tracking x number of plays for y years and z events, may render a situation as being defined as "+EV" by YOU in PAST TENSE. Why you feel as if your personal history with non-random events allows you to anoint your opinion with the phrase "Expected Value" as if "Expected Value" is a mathematically sound estimation from probability theory is beyond me.

Well, it's not beyond me. People want to dress up their personal opinions and personal histories with Shroud of Turin importance all the time. But it's the last thing that I would expect "APs" to do. Your estimations are all, as the investment literature says, "no guarantee of future events," mainly because you are trying to assign actual future values to non-random events using the probability of random events. If that's how you want to perceive yourself, be my guest. But God you ain't. Thinking you have cornered some semi-precise estimations based on a few years of betting a sport is arrogant beyond words.

And if your estimates aren't really all that precise, then why not just refer to them as "my estimates." Instead of labeling stuff as "EV" as if you are dealing with the actual concrete math of random events.

If you want to use "EV" in past tense for sports betting or for middling applications/descriptions or for auto-profit -130/+140 arbitrage applications, cool. That's the proper use. But don't go beyond those specific applications, claiming you have "+EV" going forward using Strategy A for Sports A, B, or C. You have only a general idea what the EV MIGHT be going forward. The proper phrase isn't "the EV is," the proper phrase is "my opinion is."

Basically, my problem with people assigning "EV" to non-random events has to do with their conflating their opinions with math. I've always used "EV" with the "Expected" referring to precise mathematical estimates. Once you substitute your opinion and use the "Expected" as in "What YOU Personally Expect" versus math, you are going mega-arrogant and calculating things way beyond any likely precision.

This nonchalant use of "EV" for non-random events by alleged "APs" blows my mind. It also blows my mind that they call me arrogant when they are the ones deciding that their personal opinion is math itself.

Point spreads do not create coin flips. How hard is that to understand? Point spreads are designed to balance betting, not create 50/50 results. That's kindergarten basics. This has little to do with the math of random events. You are dealing with a permeable universe of non-random events.
If you can't use past history to estimate your EV how/why did you come up with a percentage telling investors how much they should expect to make on your website?
Axel, you’ll never get an answer to that question.

Of course you will.

(1) That site reference is from a site roughly 30 years old. I would expect that I have learned how to be more precise and accurate in my language in the intervening 30 years.

(2) Second, and more importantly, Axel paraphrases as opposed to direct quoting (obviously), which allows him to use the phrase, "telling investors how much they should expect to make" instead of quoting from the site directly. He does that a lot.

(3) And even using Axel's misrepresentative language, "telling investors how much they should expect to make" is clearly an opinion, not a math formula. Last I checked "should expect" is not "the EV will be." I have no problem with "should expect" as used by "APs." I have an issue with assignation of a math formula as opposed to "the history has been" or "we expect to."

(4) On that site, I used the phrase "our modus operandi is," not "we will" or "the EV is." "Modus operandi" means "method of operating." "Modus operandi" in this case refers both to past results and future goals. There is no reference to EV, guarantees going forward, or a specific math formula. Even 30 years ago, I didn't think anyone would believe sports betting could yield something as fairy tale-ish as a mathematically grounded "EV." No one in the business did, and there were hundreds, if not thousands, of people in the business.

(5) In none of the sports gambling papers I have read from the National Conferences on Gambling and Risk-Taking, which stretch back to 1980, have I read anything "assigning EV" to sports betting except as it related to reporting in PAST TENSE. I gave a paper at one of these conferences, by the way.

6) I would think, as with the stock market, that one legally cannot and should not anchor "EV" going forward to past results.

7) And finally and most obvious -- whenever you have persistent, one might say addicted, gamblers, some of the questions you have to ask yourself are, "Do they overestimate their expertise? What indications would there be that they do so? Can you assign something as denotatively precise as an "EV" label to what they are doing? What kind of security blanket does using a phrase like "EV" provide, when in reality there are no such security blankets? Are they substituting math lingo for expertise to provide them comfort and a rationale to bet? Are they adopting specific language to hide their lack of expertise? Are they adopting specific language to hide their lack of historical knowledge regarding spreads and sports? Are these gamblers using 'EV' as a crutch concept to make them think they have some edge when in reality they may or may not?" Which leads to...

8) Are the people writing about "EV" vis-a-vis sports betting underestimating or overestimating their abilities to predict events? That's the bottom line. I suggest going to the social-psychological literature, and there are literally thousands of papers on the subject, regarding whether Americans underestimate or overestimate their knowledge and abilities and skill in predicting future events. I'd say the literature runs about 90/10, but that is, of course, just my opinion. Despite thousands of papers on the subject, it's not a math formula using "EV."