PicksPal Could Disrupt Sports Betting Markets

Wasn’t the CEO of an online betting company arrested recently in US?

no idea. Tom, the CEO mentioned in the post, was previously the COO of CBS Sportsline.

Top executives of both BetOnSports and SportingBet have been arrested in the US in the last few weeks/months. Online sports betting and the facilitation thereof is illegal in the US based on the highly outdated and over-protective Wire Act.

Think these boys should start moving their servers to the bahamas.

unbelievable. it seems very, very cool, but it also seems like something’s missing. is it possible that nobody in the gambling business thought of this before? or maybe this is just the first time it’s being done online, thus enabling a ’super batch’ of top predictors?

I never bought into the ‘wisdom of crowds’ thing, and for the same reasoning I _have_ always bought into the ‘wisdom of extremely competent crowds’ thing. It’s part of why I respect Google.

i would have to think Wall Street has been doing this for ages, but I remember seeing some tv stuff about different ‘lone superstar’ mutual fund managers, who controlled funds of ‘x’ hundred million dollars and all that. I never got the impression that these solo genius fund managers had their ‘wisdom’ checked by others to build a consensus - and too often they seemed to lose money or not even match the DOW in growth, etc. (even with their power to influence the market, insider knowledge, etc.) Forget Hollywood and sports betting - someone on Wall Street is gonna want this built out. I know there are all those ‘wisdom of crowds’ sites in the financial arena, but I guess they just got beat to the punch on this one. Should be interesting to see what happens.

wow. if these folks could be right, say, 60% of the time…

and there’s always the possibility that they could be outrageously consistently correct (70%+) in predicting some very specific types of opportunities. Like, how are these folks predicting Steelers, regular season, home, against non-divisional opponents, in October?

Wisdom of crowd ideas have been used for a while in totalizer based horse racing events. William Ziemba published a number of papers showing how the win market for a race was a good predictor of the actual chances of a horse winning. Those runners with 30% of the money bet on them in the win pool tended to win 30% of the time. So the wisdom of the public as generally good at rating there chances of winning.

This is no good for actually making money on the win pool though since it’s a tote - it’ll never pay more than the percentage, combined with the totes rake you lose. But there are other pools on the same race. Show and Place pools where you bet that the runner comes 1st, 2nd or third. Or trifecta and quinella pools.

It seems the public is good at computing the winning chances of runners but lousy at picking events like place, trifecta, etc. But given the win % of the runner it’s easy to compute the chance of runners placing, getting the trifecta, etc. So given the knowledge of the win % predicted by the public as being accurate you can look for ‘good bets’ that statistically will turn a profit over time in the other pools.

That’s the theory anyway - there are difficulties in putting it into practice but it does demonstrate a use of the wisdom of the crowds in gambling in the past. Google for ‘Dr Z.’ or ‘William Ziemba’.

Chris.

Brilliant, with a capital B.

This looks really cool. As far as the legal issues are concerned, the founders must have looked into it for sure. But the market they have identified is brilliant. Lets see how does it do in the long run.

This is food for statisticians and economists. It extends far beyond the limits of betting as it may apply to any situation where a future outcome has to be predicted.

Just wondering how this may work in the financial arena. Evidence repeatedly demonstrated that there is no way to consistently beat the market on the long run.

Or may be it’s possible if the edge in knowledge/capacity is concealed from the market.

It is perfectly legal to sell picks as Wayne Alen Root (google him) and others have been doing for years. Selling info has never been illegal as far as I know. Gambling is however unless you’re in Vegas or on an Indian Reservation or off shore. Using the internet to place wagers on off shore servers is what the govt. is trying to stop using a 1960’s act intended from limiting mob bookies. Those arrested recently were running sloppy operations and actually took wagers over the phone from US locations.

Sportsbooks make money by adding a vig (vigorish) around 4% to the wager. So, to keep people betting on both sides of the game they give the underdog points. They have got to offset the bets. As a bettor, you are not betting against the house, you are betting against the wisdom of the crowd. Which, is how the system has always worked. Now, it will be wisdom of the crowd vs. wisdom of the crowd.

Vegas (sportsbooks) has known about the wisdom of the crowd forever. Handicappers (those who sell picks) have always looked at where the crowd has misjudged. There will always be people who wager with their heart and there will be those who use statistics and try to pick with their heads.

Handicappers, who sell season picks (educated guesses) for upwards of $700, will be the only ones disrupted by this. It’s a brilliant idea.

Bottom line - The human element is why there is never a “lock”. Just look at the Eagles last week!

My guess is that the top pickers will start to exit if they don’t get compensated from the revenue - do they plan to pay these people? If I’m 70% right - why would I let these guys profit from it?

Incidentally, there have been several other plays like this in the past - HSX.com comes to mind - and there was a stock-picking service that I can’t remember the name of that employed the same methodology. Meaning, people built virtual portfolios and then they built a total portfolio based on the top pickers - if I remember correctly they did really well for a while and then it blew up.

I smell problems.

1) “For $10, users can get access to the collective wisdom of the 30 best PicksPal players over the previous five weeks in a given sport, and get five predictions on upcoming games.”

Statistically speaking, approximately 3,125 of the 100,000 users would have got the past 5 weeks of predictions correct through pure chance (100,000 x 0.5^5, ignoring draws admittedly).

If it’s NOT the same 30 PicksPal players each week giving recommendations, then a lot of them have got there by pure chance.

2) If these guys do have special powers, then by selling this information to the market, they will eventually kill any potential returns, as the odds change to reflect demand/supply.

3) “Recently, however, the PicksPal team noticed that a very small percentage of users tend to be correct in their picks significantly more often that they should be statistically. When they grouped these special users they found them to be a powerful predictive force.”

It would be weird if a very small percentage of users were NOT correct in their picks significantly more often than they should be statistically.

Either the premise of the above is that these users have some special predictive powers, in which case, Pickspal are very generous to sell this at $10 a pop(!) as they could make much more amongst themselves.

Also, if these group of users aren’t fixed permanently, then there is nothing special going on.

Read Fooled by Randomness by Taleb for further clarification.

There are sites like this in the UK that have been operating for years. Nothing new here.

#10 — I agree with damian.

I think they should fit the business model to fit the reason this second idea even exists in the first place.

Did anyone leave digg for netscape’s proposition?

Why somebody would pay 10$ for collective wisdom, if there is no money involved in his bet? Just for fun to win? Or this site information will be used in real money bets ?

The reasons for those arrests were for more then just running a gambling site (which I think was already over seas). They were charged on racketeering and evading taxes. It is not illegal to sell sports tips for a flat fee.

This has been done on the market side of things at http://www.marketocracy.com

They perform “okay.”

MAxim, the picks will be used with a bookie for making real money picks afterwards which is illegal, but either way it goes on anyways. There are magazines out that pretty much do the same thing as this website, showing spreads and possible bet schemes. Seems like nothing new to me, except they also offer the free site to bet points instead of money.

I like the idea.

Can MoveOn (#11) share which sites in the UK offer this already?

I really like this idea, I have a great interst and passion for FA Premier League football but I am biased towords Liverpool FC and its great to get some info from other supporters and gamblers that know their teams best! Win- Win situation!

TradeSports.com has been in the prediction market (for money) for years. I’m certain they have a great deal more data than PicksPal.

This seems like one of the more interesting companies featured on TechCrunch as of late. Even if this isnt the first of its kind, Innovative ideas like this are great.

I dont know about the rest of you, but I am starting to get tired of reading about a new photo sharing company or a new online storage company popping up ever 23.5 seconds!

“They’ve been running this internally for a while and the results are impressive.”

The site continues to sink lower. Now you are supporting a site that claimsto give sports bet winners. … Holy internet 1997.

The title to this could not be more overstated.

sports gambling is a self correcting market. if too many people bet one way on a game, the point spread starts to shift. bookies want people to bet evenly on every game and just make their 5% or so margin that they charge. How much people win week after week is pretty irrelevant as long as someone else is losing just as much.

and if the picks really were that good they wouldn’t be sharing them with the world. they would be placing bets themselves.

Maxim are you joking? Are water bongs for tobacco use only as well?

So what happens if lots of people start using this? Sportsbooks operate like stock markets. The odds at sportsbooks are changed to reflect incoming money, so if lots of people use this data it will be self-defeating. Long-term this may provide decent returns, but every other system like this (like Marketocracy) never has unheard of success over the long-haul. The smart money just doesn’t share this info either.

(1) You can be correct in your picks significantly more often than the average - always bet on the favorite. Keep your $10.

(2) The people in that best 30 will be those who got lucky in the last five weeks, not the best, because although there are real experts with an “edge” it’s going to be a few percent and not enough to outweigh random dumb luck in the short term.

(3) Why aren’t the founders of PickPal just keeping this advice secret and betting their own money? Why do you think?

let’s see what they do at the end of the season. look at their 5 plays this week. 4 big favorites and one small favorite that actually covered in OT (lucky play).

If the top selections are chalk every week, then at the end of the year, these people will be losers. I think only 3 NFL dogs covered this week, so Vegas got hammered.

Call me skeptical but it is easy to retroactively look at the hundreds of predictions made and then choose the small subset that proves your theory — then say that it has “predictive” power.

I’d like to see what the genius picks are for this weekend published in advance here. Let’s then check back and see how they do…

“This last weekend, for example, they went 5-0 against the spread, …Tom says not to expect Genius Picks to maintain that kind of record over the long run, but the results speak for themselves.”

What exactly does a 5-0 record in a single weekend say for itself? Wagerline (http://www.wagerline.com/Handicapping/topHandicappers.aspx?sportid=1) has been giving out their top performers picks for years and it hasn’t disrupted anything.

If 10,000 people all bet on heads/tails of 10 coin flips, a decent number will get all 10 right. Are they smarter than everyone else? Can I start a site that gives you access to their picks for the next 10 coin flips?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

old idea

very very old ones

http://www.asianbookie.com is still the top

Very cool idea! These guys are selling the wisdom of the smart predictors. Listen to ESPN on Sundays and Chris Berman makes picks, he’s just not very good. Nothing illegal with that and no betting associations. I think the idea of moving this to other markets like W Street and Hwood is pretty neat. Although with Hwood the thing would be to watch for insiders. Agree that this is one of the cooler ideas on TC lately. Keep it up!

This idea is interesting, but it could be refined a bit. 5 weeks in a given sport is hardly enough to validate someone as an “expert”. You need a larger sample size to get a better gauge of their abilities (assuming that there is some skill to this, and it’s not just all luck). Beyond that, they should refine the expert picks further. For example, they could follow someone’s track record with a certain team, within a certain conference, during a certain part (beginning, middle, end) of a season. Another good thing to have would be a pick confidence heuristic… you could show how confident the “experts” are with a pick by weighing the total picks intelligently.

Sorry, but nothing will disrupt sports betting markets.

This is less usefull then following the “Smart” money.

re: previous comment from Paul about Marketocracy’s “okay” performance, judge for yourself witih real data:

Here are the top 10 fund managers in the community with the best 5-year track records:

http://snipurl.com/Marketocracy_top10

and performance of the actual fund versus the S&P500:

http://snipurl.com/Marketocracy_v_SP500

Predictit.com had this exact service in the late 90s / early 2000s. It’s hard to find information about them because rather than disrupting the sports betting markets, they simply folded.

this website is not useful, and people do not pay for picks unless:

someone has inside information

someone handicapping games has had years of success (every year) doing so

there is hard data to back up the pick

-just throwing a bunch of picks out there and expecting people to pay money for them is never going to happen. yes it’s $10 but even a $500 bettor won’t waste time with this. Obviously these VC guys have no gambling experience.

Predictit was a pig. This site is a lot more interesting. I can see lots of people using this just as a kind of office pool. Think about March Madness and there’s something like 100 million people in the country who play that. If these guys could do something with that that would be very cool.

this site is great! I am addicted already. you can even do parlays. sweet.

I think it’s just ramdomness. In a group of 100 people, 50 will choose an A/B choice correctly at random. The next week of those 50 that chose correctly, 25 will choose correctly. The next week, of those 25, 12 will choose correctly. By the fourth week, we are down to 6 peope who have chosen correctly all four weeks, but it was all just random. If I sell the choices of those 6 people for money to people based on their idea that they have a greater chance than random of choosing correctly in the fifth week, I am misrepresenting their abilities. It’s still just random, and 3 of those 6 will chose the winner and 3 will chose the loser. But then someone will claim, “But those three that are left must be really, really smart — they got it right all five weeks!”

I’ve been a member of PicksPal.com since March madness and I’ve loved it. The odds are legit lines, they cover all sports, and the props make it fun. A true test of your sports knowledge without breaking the bank, and you win prizes. Unbelievable users on the site, who are great to challenge in leagues and one on challenges.

This Pickspal site is legit. I joined about 5 months ago.
I’ve seen them on fox, on the radio, and read some positive articles in the newspaper about their past success.

Its a fantasy game where you compete to win prizes. espn offers similiar contests and get great info.

All these guys on tv think they are good and try to make predictions, but are wrong 60% of the time. Lee Corso was 4-20 at one point last season.
This site lets your picks do the talking and best of all its FREE to play. We have a league here at work and everything is updated live and real time. WHere else can you pick horses, NFL and college football all day on props and games without any money or monthly fees.

@Gaius

Funnily enough, what you just outlined is how most of the major professional picking services work….

They just garuntee wins every week, and cold call like crazy to get people to get their “free” pick. Odds say that the company will get all the picks right every 4 or 5 weeks. So on the weeks they are wrong, they lose all the customers, on the weeks they are right they are able to retain a bunch of people who go “oh wow! They just went 5 for 5!!!!” and then pay the company a few hundred bucks for their services for the rest of the season. In the end they generally end up being no better than just picking yourself.

The hook of course is just to nab enough people every 5 weeks with your “perfect record” that you make money. Everyone else from all the weeks you just let walk away, save their phone numbers, and try them again in a few years after they’ve hopefully forgotten that you actually suck.

Surely these chaps, knowing they are in the top 30, should quit playing for free and go down to their local bookmaker and make a fortune?

It’s been statistically disputed that experts are any better than backing the favourites, in fact, typically much worse. Follow the money and you’ll do better.

I’ve heard of Pickspal on the radio. Some x NFL Player and their chief handicapper who did real well in the Las Vegas Hilton NFL Contest last year hitting 64% throughout the entire NFL Season. They do a weekly show and daily Pod Costs breaking down the NFL and College weekend games. The site is tough to beat, because they have so many players, but their predidctions do well.

I think its a fantasy website not a sportsbook or casino.

No other site out there like it! You can play sides, totals, and props on just about any sport in the World. It’s a free fantasy style game that could win you some nice prizes.

Jeff

This is a great site for fantasy sports players i like playing the fantasy sports but this also lets you picks the games themselves and doesn’t cost anything which for college students is very good and its all done online so it tracks your status for you.

I find it depressing because I was part of a startup that did group and peer-to-peer “betting” using points and providing sponshored contests. The “no other site like it” and “brilliant” comments are nice to hear given that it wasn’t so brilliant 5 years ago when the investors all pulled out

Here’s a little sample from the wayback machine: http://web.archive.org/web/200.....edict.com/

Mark

Clint: I’d love to show you a chart of my Insider Trading fund. It puts Marketocracy to shame. Anybody that thinks they’re going to get rich by spending $10 for “expert” picks is a fool. The real money is being made by people with insider knowledge and they’re not sharing it with the crowd.

By the way, I keep getting spam emails from PicksPal. Just received one today from some company antmorn.com. This place claims to be CANSPAM compliant but I can tell you that I never signed up for this crap. It looks like they have an interesting service but as a principle I never sign up for sites that use spam as a marketing technique. Anybody else getting these?

“# TD

September 19th, 2006 at 12:55 pm

this site is great! I am addicted already. you can even do parlays. sweet.”

looks like Pickspal trolls as well as they handicap. my prediction is they fold within the year and i’ll bet i can find 4 other experts to back that pick up.

WHat is it called Kopland? Wierd stuff Never heard of antmorn

the only person who understands this bs is #40. When you have a million people picking games, the odds that someone gets on a hot streak is bound to happen. Just look at it like there are 25,000,000 people in your march madness pool. Someone will probably get 95% of the games right, or perhaps even get the whole bracket right. Now am i supposed to pay money for this guys picks? I think not.

Bets are won by handicapping a game and finding an edge, not selecting the most popular pick determined mathmatically.

this is a fricking joke in the “real” sports betting world. number one, pickspal players are betting on crazy prop bets, the fact of the matter is that pickspal isn’t a true sports bet simulator. so the bottomline is –  as a programmer would say –  “garbage in, garbage out!” and that’s the quote on this news…

Gaius, apply that logic to stock picking and a lot of guys would not be living in big houses in the Hamptons. I fully agree with you that it’s a lot like the last 20 outcomes they light up on a Roulette table. Only an idiot would look at those and think they can in any way impact the next spin. As we all know stats are generated over millions of iterations, not the last 5. Having said all that though, there are some people who pick stocks better than others. The best in the world lives in Nebraska.

I’ve gotten emails too.

Return-Path:
From: “PicksPal”
Subject: No Cost Sports picks

Has an PickPal marketing image that links to a redirect page on antmorn.com.

To unsubscribe from this mailing list please click here.
Or write to 268 Bush Street #4329, San Francisco CA 94104
To remove yourself from this list, click here below

Then it lists another address:
20201 NE 21 Av
NMB, Fl 33179

All removal links go to antmorn.com. Antmorn.com’s homepage says:

antmorn.com has years of experience with marketing creation. Our team has gained the vision and knowledge to develop email creatives, landing pages, and Pop Up campaigns that motivate consumers to respond. We have spent years creating, testing, and implementing hundreds of offers to our client’s consumer base.
We KNOW what is required to get the response you desire. We have sourced this data from the most reputable sites that are 100% CAN SPAM compliant. We obtain data only from the most valid sources, from consumers who have requested to receive information.

Whois data:

Registrant:
trantec
20201 NE 21 Av
NMB, FL 33179
US
786-254-8547

Domain Name: ANTMORN.COM

Administrative Contact:
Service, Customer ltvazo@yahoo.com
20201 NE 21 Av
NMB, FL 33179
US
786-254-8547

Technical Contact:
Service, Customer ltvazo@yahoo.com
20201 NE 21 Av
NMB, FL 33179
US
786-254-8547

Record last updated 09-12-2006 08:40:02 AM
Record expires on 09-12-2007
Record created on 09-12-2006

Domain servers in listed order:
NS0.DIRECTNIC.COM 204.251.10.100
NS1.DIRECTNIC.COM 206.251.177.2

Just set up the domain obviously for the spam campaign.

If this is in affliate, they should be shut down but it looks more likely from the antmorn site that PicksPal is paying them.

I’m going to send an email to the FTC about this. I’m sure the next email I will receive from them will tell me that for $10 I can get guaranteed winners for all my sports picks.

Michael,

Your excitement over the PicksPal website seriously casts undermines your credibility and reputation. Maybe you were just trying to hype things up a bit and keep the blog humming. Either way, with the load of crap that has been reviewed on your site lately, I think (and you may know better) you have already reached your peak and are slowly going downhill, along with the plethora of copycat and derivative and plain stupid websites you write about. Quality over quantity please!

Bron

MrZip: Most of the people living in the Hamptons that made their money in the stock market weren’t guys “picking stocks.” The real money is made by being involved in the creation of markets and/or having inside information (the two frequently go hand in hand). Very few people living in the Hamptons made their money sitting in front of a computer daytrading or buying stock tips from some online picks service.

Warren Buffet is a stock picker, but not in a sense that is in any way related to what’s being discussed here. Buffet, in fact, doesn’t care about the wisdom of the crowd. He selects stocks that he thinks are undervalued based on his analysis of their instrinsic value. He pays very little attention to what the market is doing in the short-term and doesn’t really care about investor sentiment. He’s held investments that are losing money because he believes that over the long-term the market will recognize the instrinsic value and correct itself, making him money. He’s been right much of the time and that’s how he’s been so successful.

I seriously doubt that we’re going to hear about somebody that just bought a $20 million house in the Hamptons because they paid PicksPal $10 to find out what bets users who have had success in the past 5 weeks are doing now. As the lawyers say, “Past performance may not be indicative of future results.” This service will make money for PicksPal but it is more often than not going to be sold to people that probably shouldn’t be betting in the first place.

Have you tried this service? I bought a pick last week, paid $20 through paypal, they promised me the pick in 20 minutes, and I never got it. By the time I got around to asking for it, it was after the game had ended (hey - I WORK for a living!) Their reaction was unbelievable — they said it had been sent, that I was suspect since I was informing them AFTER the game, picks are sent from the east coast, they sent me the pick (total garbage “insight”), and FINALLY, after I asked for my money returned (rather than take their offer to keep my cash and send me another pick), they returned my money. And they made ME feel like the sleeze.

They should be reported —- just don’t know who to.

You should check out the customer service, delivery and value to consumers before making a recommendation. Based on my personal experience with their services, you are damaging your reputation by touting this dog.

Horrible!!!!

this is the biggest pile of crap i think i’ve seen this year. if pickspals.com’s BS service worked as advertised why the f*#k woudn’t they just use it themselves to exploit the sports books for hundreds of millions of dolalrs??? i’ll tell ya why cuz of suckers… nice sham fellas… garbage in, garbage out!

One thing is for sure after this post PicksPal going to make big $$$.
Michael you should have charged them
Im big football fun but also not very good at predicting results.My personal experiense showed me that there are some gays who are really good at this.
I know someone that with his ability to predict the results he paid all his seasonlal tickets including travell money for the gamaes out of home.
The idea is great. There are people who can really analise sporting events
really well, to be able to identify these peple and and have ther predictions is big marketing tool.

All those picks they hit (save Toledo) were on huge favorites that the general public was all over. Seems like a scam to me…

Another option is http://www.Fanlete.com. Same concept (picking games) with a social networking element.

@Andrew

You must be kidding, right? PicksPal is a full blown sportsbook with fake money. Fanlete looks like something thrown together in a week where you just pick the winner and that’s all. FanIQ does the same thing but is much more developed.

#61 - Todd, they picked games against the spread, meaning by definition the public was 50/50 on each side of the bet.

Michael

Just because they were spread bets doesn’t mean that the public was 50/50 split over the spread. That’s only the case if the bookmaker is perfectly responsive to market events and moves the spread at the precise moments.

Bookmakers don’t wait to be able to lay off a bet prior to allowing a bettor to place it.

A trivial proof that spread bets need not be placed 50/50 is if there are only three bettors booking with a single bookmaker.

Rgds
Bongo

Time for me to hed to vegas baby, now what number do I need on that big round spiny thing to win?

If the Pickpal system was so good, they would not be talking about it. They would just use the system to make money.

It is the same for secret market prediction formula, roulette cheating device, etc. If such systems were working they would not let the other guys know about it.

There’s a long-established scam that works on the same principle as PicksPal.

Send out a large number of e-mails / newsletters to random people, stating that a particular stock will go up. Send out a similar number of e-mails / newsletters to another group of random people, stating that the stock will go down.

Next week, repeat - but only send e-mails to the pool of people who got the ‘correct’ e-mail last week.

Repeat for a few more weeks, dividing your pool in half each time.

Eventually you’ll end up with a pool of people you’ve provided accurate stock picks to for five or six weeks in a row, all through random chance.

Then, offer that pool of people a very expensive subscription to your incredible stock-picking newsletter. And laugh all the way to the bank.

Got to agree with Dabby. If you’ve got a system that actually works, you’ll use it, not sell it.

Just throwing this one out there but has anyone seen something like this in Korea? I just came back and there was a stock picking one there… and mobile. I can’t remember the name of the service but it was very cool and tons of people over there were using it to play stock market picks. Neat.

So, I’ve been watching this space and have a few issues:

1) If you look at Pickspal press releases, they’ve been claiming this “Wisdom of Crowds” for the last year? This is from a press release in February. Is it news because they’re charging for the picks?

While many sports experts did have Pittsburgh beating Seattle, only PicksPal.com players were sure of the otherwise surprising plays during the big game. For example, 78 percent were sure that someone besides Ben Roethlisberger would throw a pass for the Steelers, and 93 percent knew that a TD pass would go for over 35 yards during the game; both of which were covered in one play: Antwaan Randel El’s bomb to Hines Ward. A majority of PicksPal.com players also covered the game’s over/under, adding to their streak of accurate predictions stemming from the conference championships.

Other long shot props featured on PicksPal.com that took place during Sunday’s big game were Roethlisberger’s TD dive, Willie Parker’s 75 yard TD run, and Kelly Herndon’s 76-yard interception return. And although the odds were not too steep, 78% of PicksPal.com players also accurately predicted that the Rolling Stones would sing “Start Me Up” during their halftime performance.

2) How is a website with >100,000 users ranked 188K in Alexa? I know Alexa is bad, but can it really be that inaccurate?

I used to live in the Wall Street world of picking stocks. My two cents is that it wasn’t much of a science, despite what everyone says. But then again if I was good at it I’d still be there!

Wagerline is a well used site that provides sports picking contests and utilizes the data to provide consensus picks. The picks of all users, the top 10 % of users and the top 20 individuals who are deemed team experts by there success betting on a given team are available for FREE.

Check it out

http://www.wagerline.com

This sounds good but there are some flaws both for the company and the subscriber. First off. the pickpal plays of the top people will be posted on sports betting sites like the RxForum formerly known as the prescription. This will definately eat into the potential revenues of this company. If this really takes off the oddsmakers will adjust their lines after the plays are released. That leaves you the subscriber with a line that is different from what the pickpal gurus got in at. This will really come into play with key pointspreads like 3 or 7. For example, on a particular game the line opened at -6.5, it could possible move to - 7 or -7.5 leaving you at an extreme disadvantage. On the other hand, it may present good value to go the other way of the pickspal cappers.

The worst site I’ve seen for Sports picking or insite is nbx.com. What a pile of garbage. You cant even understand half the crap and their poscasts sound like the are speaking on fisher price walkie-talkie. JUST AWFUL. A couple of kids working out of their garage and trying to sell ads.

Very good points Steve A. I wonder if they use the closing line or if their odds change on their site. Will look into that.

This Pickspal must have a lot of loot. I hear them on foxsports radio every week with James Washington and on a local show here in Sarasota every Thursday on WIBQ.

Bigguy.com tried something like this and failed and wagerline is pretty cool. Hit 20 in a row and win 100,000K

Beat your Bookie with GEO TECH HUGE Thursday NIght on ESPN

Hey Four Aces you must be out to lunch or nor know how to use a computer. I bought a pick last week and I got a message right away that they would get back to me in 20 minutes with the pick. The pick was delivered to me in 7 minutes. Awesome!! And it was a win. Could not ask for a better deal.

have you looked at motley fool CAPS? http://caps.fool.com It is the same concept as pickspal, but for the stock market. it is a very powerful and useful product

The problem I see with all of the WOTC models is that sooner rather than later, the crowd is going to want something back for all of it’s wisdom. And I’m not convinced that office bragging rights will be sufficient to pay the piper.

If I were a ‘genius’ pickers (assuming I could identify myself), I think it’d be really nice if I owned my picks and I rented them to you (PicksPal) for your inclusion in the ‘genius’ picks. I still get the office bragging rights, but also some revenue share so we’re all happy.

What would you need to do to make this a reality? Not much, just a new micro-format (hPicks anyone?) and a site that would serve as a broker/aggregator for user-generated content.

Hey Mike - I just wanted to point out that this portion of your writeup is not accurate:

>For $10, users can get access to the collective wisdom of the 30 best PicksPal players over the previous five weeks in a given sport, and get five predictions on upcoming games.

I just looked at PicksPal.com today and it is actually $19.95 for a single pick. Not such a great deal.

The latest in Neural net forcasting is used to pick sports against
the betting line. Right now the system is returning over 13% . The site
is free check it out

rickjshandicappingpicks.blogspot.com

there is a similar kind of website for Cricket buffs at
http://cric.13links.com

its based on the Rails like framework for PHP, CakePHP

http://cakephp.org