doesn’t have a variable for?http://www.allconverter.net

It’s somewhat of a fallacy that Vegas always tries to balance the wagers 50/50. They have the best information in the business and will shade their wager balance to reflect a house advantage based on their information compiled over years of doing sports business.

In effect…sometimes they are making a wager to maximize their overall profits. Why wouldn’t they if they know for a fact what the true odds are based on a large statistical sample?

“IF” the information from pickspal is true in regard to their record…it certainly will influence the wagering markets if they continue to post records above 55% ATS. Once the herd effect kicks in…viral marketing works fast.

Just look at the Dr. Bob story this past year. He was moving Pinnacle lines like crazy on Thursday when his picks came out. It doesn’t take much money in today’s connected world to move the lines. The books are now ultra-sensitive to the herds.

MJ
http://www.blackboxwagers.com

They should change the above to reflect which one of your friends sent this to you in the subject line. I almost thought it was spam because the person that sent me the invitation didn’t have their email/user id in it.

Another thing that’s worth noting here is that no money is changing hands. There is a psychological effect when you’re just predicting a result and have no risk. Therefore people using a service like PicksPal (who might not even be real bettors anyway) are probably more likely to make predictions that are different than the picks they’d make if they were putting money on the line. Many of PicksPal’s users have probably never placed a real bet in the first place.

Shredder
http://www.monomachines.com

=P

The only thing that has impressed me about PicksPal is their ability to scam so much venture capital, and their ability to get press. Their predictive ability doesn’t impress me in the least.

Sports bettors for years have tried to “follow the smart money” with varying degrees of success. Of course that necessitates to knowing who the “smart money” is, but I can definitely tell you that they’re not making random picks for “bragging rights” on a website like this. This sort of service would be more valuable for getting an idea about who the general public–which we refer to as “squares” in the biz–is backing. Over the longterm going against the general public is a good idea.

The notion that this will “disrupt betting markets” is laughable. Its not even on the radar screen of 99% of the bookmaking industry in Nevada or offshore, or the players and handicappers who move any significant amount of money. The minority who is aware of it, quite frankly, could care less about the opinion of PicksPal’s “geniuses”.

I agree with the post that suggests to not send money to “geniuses” who can hit even a high percentage for a single year. I’ve been doing this fulltime for most of my adult life and work 14 hours a day to keep myself and my clients in the black. Every year someone claims to be a genius because they hit 60%+ but the trick is to do it over the long haul.

Just checking a few games I also notices that their spread data seemed to be dated on a couple of games, if they don’t update their data as the event nears, their results are useless.

I think this is another great example of just that. It’s funny that these top users don’t even realize what great data they are pumping out.

- Josh

Where’s your head at? - http://www.StateOfBrain.com

I also think the idea of predictive markets for the stock market is quite dumb - the stock market itself is a predictive market. It’s easy for a lot of amateurs to forget that the stock market is manipulated on a daily basis and there are people who have information that is not publicly known, so the basis on which the average person makes their stock picking decisions may seem rational but isn’t going to make money because you’re playing checkers against people who are playing chess.

Did a quick search for March Madness and this is what came up: a guy betting he could win another guy’s Facebool pool - smart way of monetizing if he would have done it for money.

http://www.gottabet.com/event/detail/968

If you have 1,000 people picking stocks for 30 years, the normal curve guarantees the following: 10 people will achieve 30% annualized returns, 10 will have -30% returns, and 980 will be somewhere in between. We’ve seen some of the winners: Warren Buffet, George Soros, Peter Lynch. Recently we’ve seen a prominent loser: Brian Hunter, of the now-defunct Amaranth Advisors, lost $4 billion in two weeks (that’s “billion” with a “b”). He’s thinking about starting his own hedge fund.

If you have 10,000 men playing professional baseball over the course of 100 years, the normal curve guarantees that there will be a few who will bat .400 over a season (Ted Williams), a few who are stuck under .200 (Bill Bergen), with the rest somewhere in between. [As an aside, the normal curve for batting averages has narrowed over the years as players have improved at every position. Thus a four standard deviation performance 70 years ago would equate to a five standard deviation performance today. The upshot? It’s quite unlikely that we’ll see a .400 season in this century.]

In conclusion, please DO NOT send money to people with a successful two-month (or four-month, or six-month) string of predictions. One in 1,000 of them will continue that streak for a few years; 999 of them will not.

[from my blog at twilightsong.com]