I completely disagree with Fez on the market

I agree with all you have said [QUOTE=RealWorldSports;34204]I've hit 60% in a sport for 2 years several times over the years. But you don't know that you're going to do it in advance and you're not doing it in other sports. I've had a lousy college football year, 2nd worst I've ever had, but am doing pretty well in the NFL. Yet my confidence level heading in would have been much higher in college. Whenever someoone is saying "I'm 62% in this sports over the past 2 years" there's a reason that they're not saying "over the past 3 years". 60% in a sport for a couple of years is eminently doable. Knowing in advance that it is going to happen and knowing that the run is over is extremely hard. 55% for multiple sports combined for a couple of years is extremely hard.[/QUOTE] That is the reason that I took exception to CompBob-Jay has done it in the NFL for 7 years, not 2. I do not see the correlation AT ALL by bringing in his record in other sports. I guess he is trying to say FJays NFL record will float back to his record in all sports? If that is the case, IMO it means absolutely nothing and is wrong. If not, I have no idea why it was brought into the thread?

Members is right on point with the intent of this thread. It was aimed solely at the NFL, and solely this season. That was not my doing, it was borne out of comments from Fez. He said "NFL" and "this season". Not me. Members is one of the guys on forums who has that "information" and knows who is on what. I appreciate the fact people want to discuss long term win rates, multiple sports, and the like. However, those arguments are tangential to the topic at hand. This thread was started solely for this year's NFL, and if anyone could win. I agree that people will have bad years from time to time. But to state that NO ONE is winning this year in NFL is the argument I was disproving. It's flat out not true. And if someone can't admit they are having a bad year, if they simply say that "no one is winning", I think is very telling.

nonsense/vague waste of time question: Can anyone win in the NFL? reasonable question: given a hypothetical infinite sample size, can anyone maintain a better than 52.4% picking sides in the NFL vs. widely available mid week #'s going forward in today's market environment? tout = midweek, widely available # handicapper going forward = not concerned with past results

Wunderdog is 94-49 66%.:eek:

[QUOTE=sundown;34201]real hard to throw computer bob under the bus for his comments. the guy evokes binomial distribution as a probable cause for someone's successful subset and points to an overall mediocre 2010 large set as evidence of this. seems to me his agenda is to try to pound some logic into people's heads. i would detect an "agenda" from someone that takes statements out of context and then runs a wild tangent on them......[/QUOTE] hey hey hey, CB was the [I]second[/I] guy to bring up binomial distribution. :D This and Bob's posts are right of course. Measuring how difficult a sport or particular season are to beat has nothing to do with pointing to random guys on the forum and saying "look, X is winning. If he can do it, then clearly the sport is beatable." If you simultaneously flipped a million coins 10 times, a little less than 1,000 of the coins would land on heads 10 out of 10 times. Does that make these 1k coins more likely to land heads on the 11th flip? Some people have a hard time grasping the concept of variance (positive and negative) because of our innate fear of randomness. Thus, we tend to assign nonrandom cause to random events - for example, handicappers with 0 edge running hot for one season as somehow predictive of their future results and/or how much inefficiency exists in a given market.

Fairway Jay NFL ov/un 12/2010-12/2015 53.6%. Oops 1st bet just came in. Make the OV +100 un -120. Tim Trushel Football is very good. Fairway Jay NFL is very good. Tim has a uncharacterisitc subpar year, no problem. CNTRL/ALT/DEL, as we all 'knew' Jay NFL was 'the nuts' not TimT football, right? C'mon now....... The ugly truth is that a sample size of 300 yields some bizarre funky results.......and give a sample size of 70 and anything can happen.

[QUOTE=Fezzik;34236]53.6%. Oops 1st bet just came in. Make the OV +100 un -120. Tim Trushel Football is very good. Fairway Jay NFL is very good. Tim has a uncharacterisitc subpar year, no problem. CNTRL/ALT/DEL, as we all 'knew' Jay NFL was 'the nuts' not TimT football, right? C'mon now....... The ugly truth is that a sample size of 300 yields some bizarre funky results.......and give a sample size of 70 and anything can happen.[/QUOTE] Very true about sample size and misleading results, but we bet on single event games dozens of times a day without worrying about short term variance, so no need for a 5 year window for wagers. If you'd like a semi-longterm bet let's discuss Fairway Jay's next NFL season. Since money has come in on the under already, I'd be interested in over 53%.

Is Fez backing off his premise that the NFL is unbeatable this season? It sounds like he is and is not in the same breath. Once again, several of his comments go back to one of the unfortunate displays whereby he builds up things to make them seem so impossible/improbable, only to make his own difficulties seem "normal". I am referring in this case to when he mentions things such as: "The ugly truth is that a sample size of 300 yields some bizarre funky results.......and give a sample size of 70 and anything can happen." and "...start posting their next 500 plays" As we all know, the issue at hand is the NFL this season. The fact is, most wise NFL handicappers are not going to see a huge edge in making 30 bets a week, so it will take multiple seasons to see how they do over 500 plays. Most very sharp handicappers will pick their cream of the crop bets to share with their clients. So if a guy has 70 plays so far this year, that means he's averaging close to 6 releases each NFL weekend. Seems completely normal to me. And if this guy is hitting 56, 59, 63, or 66%, than Fez's argument that the NFL is unbeatable this season is trash. So first it's "it's impossible to win in the NFL this season", and then it becomes "it's impossible to win in the NFL this season if you've made 500 plays". Ironically, the following was posted in early November, detailing Fez's NFL record to date: [QUOTE=ComptrBob;32232]I have excluded all NFL picks made before Sept 11. The range excluded was for selections made between April 29 and August 31. Summary 31 NFL selections made during the season (first 9 weeks) unweighted W/L, weighted units: NFL sides: 7-8-1, -1.55u NFL totals: 6-3-0, +6.50u NFL teasers: 1-5, -7.80u[/QUOTE] I don't know how many additional plays he made in November, but over 9 weeks, Fez was averaging just over 3 selections per week, and not seeing good results (net -2.85 units) According to ComptrBob for Fez's football record in 2009, he went: Weight W L 1 59 55 1.5 0 1 2 58 62 3 3 8 4 0 2 So 2009 he released 248 plays, which I assume includes college, (which starts a week earlier) and running through the Super Bowl, that's roughly 10 or so plays a week. And we see he still finished without positive results. My point is, it really does not matter how many games you are playing each year. You can forget all the crap about high sample rate. Some guys don't have a good feel for narrowing down their card, so they have hundreds of bets a year. Other guys are gifted to be able to narrow down a card and select 5-10 NFL wagers a week and hit a good percentage on those. If a guy is hitting 56%+ this year and only giving out 5 plays a week, those are solid results to me. Again, if people want to digress into talking about long term success and maximum win rates, feel free to do so. Personally, I disagree with Fez and others there as well, as I've seen guys who are hitting at long term rates of multiple seasons in the NFL. I'm talking over 56% for 3+ years. I guess these guys are freaky incredible and the best in the world? Personally, I don't think so, I think they are just very good, but I'm sure there are more out there than people think. Especially guys like IrishTim who thinks the market is so efficient its impossible to have long term success like that. My friend, what happens when someone does achieve that success? Do you go "poof" like dandelion spores? But all we are talking about here is the 2010 NFL season. 30 plays, 60 plays, 90 plays, it does not matter to me. I am seeing guys beat it and Fez says that's not the case, so one of us must be lying.

[QUOTE=IceTea;34243]Is Fez backing off his premise that the NFL is unbeatable this season? It sounds like he is and is not in the same breath. Once again, several of his comments go back to one of the unfortunate displays whereby he builds up things to make them seem so impossible/improbable, only to make his own difficulties seem "normal". I am referring in this case to when he mentions things such as: "The ugly truth is that a sample size of 300 yields some bizarre funky results.......and give a sample size of 70 and anything can happen." and "...start posting their next 500 plays" As we all know, the issue at hand is the NFL this season. The fact is, most wise NFL handicappers are not going to see a huge edge in making 30 bets a week, so it will take multiple seasons to see how they do over 500 plays. Most very sharp handicappers will pick their cream of the crop bets to share with their clients. So if a guy has 70 plays so far this year, that means he's averaging close to 6 releases each NFL weekend. Seems completely normal to me. And if this guy is hitting 56, 59, 63, or 66%, than Fez's argument that the NFL is unbeatable this season is trash. So first it's "it's impossible to win in the NFL this season", and then it becomes "it's impossible to win in the NFL this season if you've made 500 plays". Ironically, the following was posted in early November, detailing Fez's NFL record to date: I don't know how many additional plays he made in November, but over 9 weeks, Fez was averaging just over 3 selections per week, and not seeing good results (net -2.85 units) According to ComptrBob for Fez's football record in 2009, he went: Weight W L 1 59 55 1.5 0 1 2 58 62 3 3 8 4 0 2 So 2009 he released 248 plays, which I assume includes college, (which starts a week earlier) and running through the Super Bowl, that's roughly 10 or so plays a week. And we see he still finished without positive results. My point is, it really does not matter how many games you are playing each year. You can forget all the crap about high sample rate. Some guys don't have a good feel for narrowing down their card, so they have hundreds of bets a year. Other guys are gifted to be able to narrow down a card and select 5-10 NFL wagers a week and hit a good percentage on those. If a guy is hitting 56%+ this year and only giving out 5 plays a week, those are solid results to me. Again, if people want to digress into talking about long term success and maximum win rates, feel free to do so. Personally, I disagree with Fez and others there as well, as I've seen guys who are hitting at long term rates of multiple seasons in the NFL. I'm talking over 56% for 3+ years. I guess these guys are freaky incredible and the best in the world? Personally, I don't think so, I think they are just very good, but I'm sure there are more out there than people think. Especially guys like IrishTim who thinks the market is so efficient its impossible to have long term success like that. My friend, what happens when someone does achieve that success? Do you go "poof" like dandelion spores? But all we are talking about here is the 2010 NFL season. 30 plays, 60 plays, 90 plays, it does not matter to me. I am seeing guys beat it and Fez says that's not the case, so one of us must be lying.[/QUOTE] People are winning plain and simple and will continue to win. Fezz like to rationalize him (and his buddies) bad results with the entire world. No way. Members, Ice Tea and myself have seen multiple winners this year and other years. I know many cappers who are attacking this time of year. One contact LOVED Arizona St yesterday. I know people attacking the football betting board right now. I am. Meanwhile Fezz cannot make a pick and tells us his buddies are disagreeing on picks? Come on.!!!!

Someone mentioned before that it was time to end this thread, so I hope it dies soon. Fez (and a few others) think the lines are tight, but some of you guys know people that are firing right now - and winning. How valid are these results? Who knows? The sample size is kind of small. Let's just agree that you guys disagree. More disturbing to me is that I see the Fez "sticky thread" has been removed. Does that mean we won't see much of anything from him for a while? I hope not.