Pinnacle & Neteller Coming Back--I Hope So...

The Future For Internet Gambling Is Starting To Brighten

Matchbook is good, but Pinnacle is better. Most pros have a workaround in place, but if the UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act) is repealed, that would pave the way for a lot of really good things for sharp gamblers.

First, if you got poker skills, I would brush up on them because there would be a tremendous increase in US poker players if the UIGEA is repealed and that means a lot more....you guessed it-fish. Another wave of the good 'ole poker days coming again? You remember those days at the turn of the century when guys were going all-in with 6-7 offsuit?

It's all based on the multi-billion dollar tax windfall state governments and the federal government would get from something Americans are already doing anyway-but poker.
Are hookers and blow getting the legal thumbsup next? Probably not, but you never know.

Here's a link to an interesting article regarding a Goldman Sachs report on online gambling estimates if the UIGEA is repealed: Goldman Sachs article.

Is An Army of These Guys Getting Ready To Flood The Internet Poker Market?

Here's an article by Jacob Sullum at Reason.com that analyzes U.S. companies and the online market: Reason.com's US Companies & the UIGEA repeal.

Wikipedia link to The Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act.

British Newspaper The Guardian weighs in on online betting and the US market:

Bet comes good as US moves to end ban on online gambling

And H.R.2667's Opencongress.org's section that give some good info and pertinent links:

Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act

The future does look somewhat brighter poker players, and even for sports bettors. I have a feeling we will see Pinnacle again, Neteller may come back in another form.

I'll be posting more info on this in the next day or so. Thanks for coming.

Profitable Opportunities for MLB Runline Bets

You're name is Joe Square and you took the Red Sox on the run line. You're up by only 1 run in the top of the 9th, and to make matters worse, Jonathan Papelbon just took the mound. What do you do? Nothing like taking matters into your own hands.
Just run on the field and hope they stop the game early. Be honest, which gambler hasn't wished he or she could have stopped a game or two early like this. Seriously though, don't do this.

This is a reprint of an old article:

The Inside Wagering Line from Pinnacle Sports Book by Simon Noble

With Major League Baseball in full swing, there are many wagering options available to the savvy player. One that is often overlooked is the run line bet, which is the MLB equivalent of an NFL 1.5 point spread. While nearly every player, professional or otherwise knows what the ‘3’ in the NFL is worth, far fewer understand the value of the ‘1.5’ in baseball.

Consider a typical match-up between Boston and Tampa Bay, which may look something like this:

Team	Run	Line	Moneyline	Total
Tampa Bay Devil Rays	+1.5	-101	+202	OVER 10 -107
Boston Red Sox	-1.5	-109	-220	UNDER 10 -103

An unsophisticated bettor might jump on Boston -1.5 (-109). His reasoning is simple, Boston is a good team and I’d rather lay -109 than -220 on the game.

A more knowledgeable bettor would realize that Boston is a public team and that the public likes playing the favorite on the run line to ‘save juice’. Following the age old adage ‘fade the public’, he can blindly play these types of match-ups – the underdogs on the run line against public teams – and possibly grind out a small profit.

An educated bettor would also know that only Pinnacle Sportsbook offers a 10-cent run line that offers up to 50% better value than the industry-standard 20-cent run line. By making run line plays at Pinnacle Sportsbetting, the smarter player will almost always get the best price.

The most informed sharp and professional players will not only look for the value of the reduced juice lines at Pinnacle Sports, but will apply an additional level of analysis. Using the same type of research done for NFL point spreads, these professionals know what the spread is worth in MLB. First, they look at the market price to see what it ‘suggests’ that 1.5 runs is worth.

A sharp player will convert the game moneyline and run line to a percentage chance of winning. In this match-up, the no-vig moneyline for Boston is (-220-202)/2 = -422/2 = -212. This suggests Boston will win (212/312) * 100 or 67.9% of the time.

Similarly, the no-vig run line price is -105 for Boston which is again calculated as (-109-101)/2 = -210/2 = -105. This suggests that the wager Boston -1.5 on the run line will win (105/205) * 100 = 51.2% of the time.

The market ‘believes’ Tampa Bay will lose by exactly 1 run 16.7% of the time (67.9-51.2). The sharp player knows that in the AL, large favorites with totals in that range have won by exactly 1 about 18% of the time over the past 8 years. When the market price and historical price differ, it suggests that either the Tampa Bay run line (+1.5 -101), Boston moneyline (-220) or both have value. A 1% error isn’t enough to make a professional pull the trigger on a play, but it’s a starting point in their analysis.

How often does a run line favorite win by exactly one run? This is actually a very complicated question that every sportsbook posting early openers must address. Pinnacle Sports book uses a simple conversion chart that uses the moneyline and the game total to give a run line price. While not perfect, it gets us fairly close to the right price (and sharp players betting overnight lines get it in shape for us relatively inexpensively).

The most important factor for determining a fair price on a run line is whether the home team is favored and the visitor is getting +1.5 runs. Home teams win several more 1-run games than visiting teams. The reason for this is simply that games end anytime the home team has a lead entering the bottom of the ninth inning.

If the game is tied at the end of 9 innings, there’s only a 7% chance the home team will win by more than 1 run. On the other hand, a visiting team that scores 1 run will usually attempt to continue scoring to build up a cushion. This one difference makes a huge difference in pricing – all told, home teams win 1-run games about 17% of the time, while the visitors manage to win by 1-run just 11% of the time.

Another important factor when pricing a run line is the game total. The lower the total, the more likely a game will end as a 1-run game for the favorite. While a game total in no way guarantees that many runs will be scored, it’s a pretty good indicator of how much offense there will be in a game.

For example a contest between strong pitching teams may have a game total of 7 runs. Assuming the home team wins and only 7 runs are scored, there are only four possible scores: 4-3; 5-2; 6-1 and 7-0. On the other hand, if 11 runs are scored, there are six possible winning scores for the home team: 11-0; 10-1; 9-2; 8-3; 7-4 and 6-5 – there are 50% more ways for the home team to win. Oddly enough, these lower-totaled games see home teams win by 1 run nearly 50% more often than games with totals above 11.

Another vital factor to consider is how heavily a team is favored. Teams that are heavily favored are more likely to win by exactly 1 than a team closer to Pick’em. This is almost counter-intuitive because one expects good teams to blow out weaker teams. On the flip-side, a team has to win the game before it can win by exactly one. The numbers don’t lie and there is more value playing the run line against large favorites.

To get an edge against the linesmakers at sportsbooks, you should also take a look at the relief pitching for both teams. If the game is close after 5-6 innings, the bullpens will come in to play, making +1.5 runs more valuable. Similarly, laying 1.5 runs, you’d want the opposing team to have a weak pen. Understanding this angle can give you a winning edge, especially against opening numbers.

This column hopefully gave you a better understanding of what goes into making a run line. You can ‘wing it’ based on ‘feel’ and set a number subjectively by considering the factors mentioned in this column. Or you can do some data crunching to create your own run line conversion chart. A diligent programmer with some experience in data mining could tackle this in a reasonable amount of time. The information is readily available on the Internet to create this, or solve nearly any numbers problem in MLB betting.

A point worth remembering is that successful handicappers usually have some skill at this and most groups of professional bettors have at least one ‘number cruncher’ among them who didn’t muck around at the back of the class and paid attention in school during math lessons.

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Please stay off the field. You don't want to be this guy:

Is There A Betting System That Works?

Question: Is There A Sports Betting System That Works?

Answer: Yes, There Are Many, But You Won't Find Them In A Book

Then where will you find them? You're on your own on this one, that's where. The best you are probably ever going to do in a book is find vague generalizations of gambling principles in my opinion. I know a very successful sports betting professional, and while a very well-mannered and trustworthy guy, the conversation has gone dead every time for years whenever the conversation turned to gambling strategies. We can talk ad nauseum about the gambling industry, other gamblers' successes and failure, but when the conversation turns to what he is doing to make money, he goes mute.

Can you blame him? Loose lips sink ships, and in the gambling world, nothing could be truer.
He gives me his picks, they make money for me, and I'm grateful.

I'll tell you what it takes to become a successful sports gambler. Years of apprenticeship, guts, discipline, a first-rate mentor, some college-level math skills, and a keen sixth sense.

Win enough bets and these could be yours...

The Most Important Player In The Miami Heat Organization Is...

Question: Who's The Most Important Player Right Now For The Miami Heat ?

Answer: None Of The Above.

*****************************************************************

My answer is this guy:

Miami Heat General Manager Pat Riley

Mission Impossible?

Yes, Pat Riley, the general manager of the Miami Heat. His job is filling out the roster of this team, and his mission is to get 5 to 6 quality NBA rotation players without having to pay them. With an average NBA salary of $5 million per player, he's got about that much TOTAL for about 5 guys.

Here's the Heat's depth chart for all practical purposes so far:

PG-Mario Chalmers/Jason Williams
SG-Duane Wade/Mike Miller
C- Joel Anthony
SF-Lebron James
PF-Chris Bosh

It'll take a while to explain the Miami Heat situation in it's proper detail.

The reason Pat Riley is the most important person in the organization is because he's got to put this team together, and he doesn't have much money by NBA standards to do it with. A general explanation of the NBA Salary Cap System will help people understand the Heat's challenges in putting together a championship team.

Each team has a salary cap of $58,044,000 to spend on player salaries for the 2010-2011 season. I'll spare as many of the gory complexities of the NBA salary cap system because this is a blog, not a book, but what I put down here should suffice to understand what's happening.
James, Wade and Bosh took less than the "max-out" deal, which is what they had coming originally in their contracts. This means they took a pay-cut, offering to work for about $14.5 million this year salary-wise instead of about $16.5 million each. I don't know how they're gonna get the rent paid after this pay-cut, but they'll try.

Mike Miller signed for $4.6 million this year to back up Flash at the shooting guard position. Riley traded away Daequan Cook in June and Michael Beasley last week which clears $3.4 million and $4.5 million of cap space respectively. Riley also waived James Jones in June to open up another $2.8 million for signings.

Now there are exceptions to the cap, such as the Mid-level exception and the Bi-annual exception and Bird Rights, which gives teams more money to spend on free agents, but the Heat didn't qualify for none of these, which would have given them approximately $12 million more to spend on free agents, which could have gotten them a quality free agent or agents (they can split the money between players), and an easy resign for Udonis Haslem under the Bird Rights exception. Still with me?

So how much does Riley have to spend in real terms, who can he get, and what do they need?
After signing Mike Miller, Riley has about $4 million left, plus the league minimum (a little over $1 million a year) for incoming vets.

Players/Prospective Players:

1. Mario Chalmers-PG (signed)
   
2. Duane Wade-SG (signed)
3. Mike Miller-SG (signed)
4. LeBron James-SF (signed)
5. Joel Anthony-C (unsigned will probably sign-backup)
   
6. Da'Sean Butler-(Out until Fall/Winter-Knee)
   
7. Chris Bosh-PF (signed)
8. ?-PG (starter or back-up)
   
9. Udonis Haslem-PF (unsigned)
10. ?-C (starter)
    
11. ?-SF (backup)
    
12. PG-Kenny Hasbrouch (may or may not make team)
    
13. C-Dexter Pittman (may or may not make team)
14. PF-Jarvis Varnado (may or may not make team)

These last 3 guys main job will be collecting splinters if they make the team, and Da'Sean Butler is out until probably Christmas with a torn ACL. So in other words, Miami ain't got much after the big three, and backups Mike Miller and Mario Chalmers.

Question: Can the Heat sign Derek Fisher?

Answer: Probably not. Lakers offered him about $2.5 milion for next season, down from $5.048 million in 2009-2010. He wants $5 million for the next 2 years and the Heat can pay him a max of $3.6 million by adjusting Miller's contract. Plus, Kobe said the Lakers must resign Fisher no matter what. Checkmate.

Question: What about Shaq?

Answer: If Shaq wants to come play for free (about $1 mil a year), he's more than welcome. Crazy as this sounds, Shaq might pull the trigger on the deal to catch Kobe at 5 rings.
Shaq's Message to Kobe.


Question:Udonis Haslem?

Answer: He's got to make a major pay-cut this year (he made $7.1 mil in 2009-2010), but if Riley can back-load his contract, he may stay. He's played in Miami all 7 years he's been in the NBA, so I have to believe he wants to stay, especially on this team. If he can get his money down the road, Riles may convince him to stay.

Conclusion

Pat Riley I believe, will make or break this team's chance at being the dominant team in the NBA. If he gets quality help into Miami, watch out. If not, they'll be another elite team, but a flawed team that will have many challenges to overcome to win a title, and a real underdog to meet expectations, which are nothing short of hosting the Larry O'Brian trophy next June.

My Opinion

Riles has to really put his skills to the test getting some quality players to come play for the Heat on the cheap. If he's smart, he'll have LeBron, Flash, and Chris Bosh waiting at the airport in the limousine for Shaq, and anyone else who wants to come to Miami and check it out. If they all put in serious work recruiting some at least semi-serious players, they can gain real dominance. Something tells me they just don't get it right now. I don't think they realize just how important getting this help really is. They will a year from now is my opinion. Right now, they look like a 60 win team who will need bench support to win it all. They don't have that right now, and they'll need some luck with their signings to get it. We shall see.

Can I Get Rich Gambling?

Question: Can I Get Rich By Gambling?

The short answer is yes, you can get rich by gambling. People do it every day. Ask Phil Ivey and a slew of professional poker players. Sports bettors don't do ESPN, so we're pretty much invisible.
Do a lot of people get rich in the gambling industry? No, but you can.
The best way I've heard a successful gambler put it is "It's a hard way to make an easy living." But the truth is it's only as hard as you want it to be. For every guy in the business I see making good money, I see 30 guys struggling to keep a roof over their heads and food in their mouths. I'm not even talking about the guys who tried it and are back at their day jobs. Why?

What's the difference between the guy who just bought his 2010 Lexus with cash, and the guy who's trying to keep his 1996 Ford Escort on the road? In my opinion, 4 things:

1. Edge
2. Guts
3. Smarts
4. Discipline
   

If you can't find an edge, give it up, cause you can't win without an edge. But believe it or not, an edge is not as hard to find as you might think. Once you know you've got an edge (not think, but know), you've got to have the guts to put your money behind it. That's easier said than done. And once you've got the edge and the guts, you got to know how much to bet and how to manage your money, which is where the smarts and the discipline comes in. Discipline is betting under control when your emotions are telling you to press it after a few wins, and to bet the correct amount of money when your insides are crying, telling you to chop your bet way down or pass after a few losses.

Funny thing is, successful gambling has nothing to do with following your emotions-in fact, most of the time making long-term winning bets will run contrary to your emotions, at least, in the beginning of the time you start making winning bets.

To be continued...

Miami Heat Outlook

Question: Miami Heat is +180 to win it all this year, takeback -260. Their season wins total is 62.5. Any opinions?

Wait on the 62.5. There are a ton of developments yet to occur over the next couple of months that will affect this wager.

My first reaction on the title is +180 to win it all is a real sucker bet. You've still got 4 very competent teams in the Lakers, Magic, Celtics, and Hawks capable of beating Miami. Miami will probably have to beat 2 of them to win it all.

At -260 or -240, the smarter money would be on fading the Heat imo.

But if they get a cream-puff early season schedule, you may get -150 fading them to win the title around Xmas.

I don't think it's beyond David Stern (by far the most dominant player in the league) and the NBA marketing machine to do everything possible to max this NBA/Miami Heat media-money circus by giving them lots of home games and/or bottom-feeders in November and December (remember, 16 of the first 20 Lakers games last year were home games) to get them out to a 25-2 start, and really get the hype going.

But after saying that, I'll say this: Miami has a lot of work to do, and they've got some big holes in their lineup as of the day of this writing.

The big three ($50+ mil this year) definitely make them formidable, there's no debating that. But they still need 10 more guys to make a team (NBA teams are required to have 13 players under contract).
Back-up shooting guard Mike Miller gets paid $4.6 mil this year, so he's happy.
But now you've got about $5 mil total this year left for everyone else, which includes 3 second round rookies, and about $1.2 million each (+-league min for a vet) for the vets.
All this could- no, make that probably will leave the Heat's 2nd team vulnerable to the second units of teams around the league.
It may be hard to get a decent role playing vet to give up several million bucks late in his career cause he's gonna really need that money down the road. For all practical purposes, you're asking an established NBA vet to play for free, by NBA standards. This is no joking matter, and something these guys will be taking very seriously making their off-season decisions as they figure out how they are going to take care of their families for the next 35 years.

The combination of good role players and good chemistry needed to win an NBA title will be much more than an automatic for this team. They won't be on Glory Road to a 70 or even 65 win season with minimum wage, maximum age vets.

Boston's bench single-handedly won them 2 games in the finals vs. the Lakers, and if the Celtics had one more home game, their bench may have given them the title. Forget Kobe Bryant, the Finals MVP for the Lakers should have been the pilot who flew them out of Logan International airport in Boston back to L.A. after game 5.

When you get past the hype and down to the nuts and bolts & chemistry that will be tested over 100 regular season and play-off games, Miami winning it all is very far from a given in my book. That's my 2 cents.