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Picks, 6/1/10

A couple of one-run decisions went the other way Sunday and Monday, yielding one small loss and one bigger one. This isn't a big deal.

This is: I'm really struggling to find value in the lines. I expected this to be easier in April than at later times, but I didn't expect so little value apparent on June 1. May 30 and 31 were light days as well. Whether a short-term blip or an improvement in oddsmaking, there simply isn't a lot out there to recommend tonight. I could stretch and fill with four or five marginal plays, but if I'm keeping to the standards that I have been so far, we're left with...

Colorado +113, one unit. Same reasons as always.

Hopefully this will change, or this is about to become one boring series.

Comments

By: DonChrysler
On: 6/1/2010 3:56:00 PM		 Taking a shot with the Pirates at +137. This is partly because Lilly's ERA doesn't reflect that he's pitching poorly and has lost velocity. Mostly though, I just took a look at the Cubs lineup. Lou has gone with Fukudome, Castro, Nady, Colvin, Soriano, Fontenot, Baker, Hill. Not pretty.
 
By: DonChrysler
On: 6/1/2010 6:53:00 PM		 Well I was right about the Cubs' lineup, but perhaps not about Ted Lilly. Who knew Neil Walker would bail me out?
 
By: Erickson
On: 6/1/2010 8:23:00 PM		 On setting lines - perhaps this underscores the importance of shopping around a little? How uniform are the various sportsbooks? Is there more or less variance online than there might be in brick-and-mortar casinos?
 
By: Joe Sheehan
On: 6/2/2010 9:35:00 AM		 Not only is their variance, but my understanding is that it's predictable. Some shops tend to shade lines towards favorites, others to dogs. It is absolutely essential, if you were doing this for real and you live where it's legal, to have multiple outs for placing bets. Line-shopping is worth dozens of units a year. Even assuming this is less an issue for baseball than for higher-volume sports, you still want to get the best line possible, even if it's +117 vs. +113.
 
By: Shawn Young
On: 6/2/2010 11:43:00 AM		 Joe Sheehan writes in part:
===
"Even assuming this is less an issue for baseball than for higher-volume sports,..."
===
and I would humbly suggest he's got this backward in a way: baseball is THE high-volume sport to the serious bettor. The NFL runs 13-16 games a week; baseball can average 13 games a day, every day, for six months.

There are a lot of games in college football, and more in college hoops, but most serious gamblers in those sports concentrate on a handful of conferences or less.

So when Erickson writes about the importance of shopping lines, and Sheehan echoes Erickson by saying:
===
It is absolutely essential, if you were doing this for real and you live where it's legal, to have multiple outs for placing bets. Line-shopping is worth dozens of units a year.
===
it's my claim that truer words were never spoken. If the casual reader takes nothing else away from this board, that statement alone, over a lifetime, could save a gambler tens of thousands of dollars, easy.
 
By: Joe Sheehan
On: 6/2/2010 3:26:00 PM		 Shawn, the handle on baseball is far, far less than the handle on football. It's not even close. This is true whether in Las Vegas or in dealing with offshores. The reference to volume has to do with the impact of the volume/caliber of money bet on games, how it moves lines, not the volume of action available to a bettor.

We all agree, however, on the critical importance of line-shopping and multiple outs. Not sure how easy that is with UIGEA kicking in.
 

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