LOL...NBA

that 12-7 rate wasn't the over bet. it was all varieties of bets. the 10-0 run references the point spread, which implies picking winners, not just going over.

i agree. 63% is huge.

 

they don't post it in advance. they aren't announced until game time. the nba forbids refs from telling anybody about which games they'll be calling. one of the things he's accused of is tipping off his bookie about which crews are working which games -- or at least which games he was working on.

 

I hit at about 112-114% last year.

For the low, low fee of 5K, you too can receive my picks for an entire football season.

Picking Winners
c/o Kent Stanley Head
P.O. Box 77711
Laurel, MD 20724

P.S. I am only half the crackpot I said I was last year.

 

rather than arguing this in the ec thread...


In your opinion, would it be easier to try to fix pointspreads or over/unders?
I’d say over/unders (or totals) would be easier to try to fix on the floor. You would do that by calling fouls in certain situations and you could do it without showing as much bias as you would if you were trying to get one team to cover the spread against another.
Here’s the catch and it's a big one: You would make far less money betting on totals than you would betting on spreads, which longtime oddsmaker Keith Glantz reminded me of yesterday. Almost all books – legal or illegal – have significantly lower limits on over/under bets than they do on pointspreads for the very reason that totals are easier to fix. So if we’re talking about a really greedy group of people here, rigging pointspreads would be far more enticing than rigging totals.

http://www.covers.com/articles/articles.aspx?theArt=145268

there's a nice chart there too that shows that one ref has a very striking UNDER record. i thikn you need to click the link. also, donaghy's over in games over a certain number is a losing one (meaning going under for those games was a winner).

 

Never had a limit placed on me. Ever. I've seen folks who charge a higher vig on a totals bet, but not a limit.

Now Glantz says sides are better than totals because of the limit. I will take his word there. So I guess that means you'll be scrapping your plans to fix the under after all.

 

just more evidence that people have all sorts of different ideas how one might affect a game for their own purposes. i've stated in this thread that you could benefit one team or another by calling the game in a style that helps or hinders one side without looking biased.

my prefered method would not be to stick with a single bet, but look for the best bets available. point spread, over, under -- whichever. i'd have an easier time influencing a 180 o/u, so it'd be a good bet. i'm in a game with a 210 o/u so i figure it's ripe for me to influence down. i'm working the detroit/toronto game, so i know calling it tight slows the game down and helps detroit. i'd try to get as many bets going as i could for the season with the idea that a 60-70% hit winning percentage would pay off in the long run.

i wouldn't look to make large wagers on a handful of games and then be put in the position to have to make absurd calls to save by bacon if forces beyond my control enter into the equation (injuries, other refs' influence, balls not going in).


if i was reffing with joey crawford, i might take the under. he's 15-27-1 in over-under. biggest disparity in actual points and the line by about 6 under it.

the year before, bennie adams had a record of 25-43 over-under. 2nd highest point differential for that season at 5.45 under.

pretty good indication that refs can influence totals down.

 

No, it's a pretty good indication that games Joey was involved in trend to the under. It doesn't mean he's influenced the game at all until you can also show where the money moved in those games (see VPKozel above). Even then, you still have a way to go before you can definitely say he influenced it.

Trends involve looking for an edge after the fact and playing it. Influencing means trying to create the trend yourself so you can capitalize on it. Big, big difference.

The second paragraph that I didn't quote is - again, as I said earlier in this thread - a really nice description of how one would bet. Not fix.

 

no, it's influence. whether or not it was his goal is another thing, but the fact remains that joey crawford's games tended to be lower scoring ones which is evidence that something about crawford's style resulted in teams not scoring as much. it would be hard to argue that the 50-60 games he reffed just happened to be low scoring ones for other reasons. if a ref can have such an effect on a game -- then it's not hard to imagine a ref having that kind of effect on a game in a effort to make some money.

so are these terms of art that don't carry the same meanings as their everyday counterparts or something? to me, "influence" means having an effect upon something. arguing that a ref doesn't influence a game strikes me as a severely uphill battle.

not much money in fixing a game if you don't bet on it.

 

That's funny you mention Joey Crawford. Colin Cowherd said today that Crawford had a meeting with David Stern and seemed to imply he might be involved too. Apparently (and I didn't really catch this sentence so it might not be what Cowherd said) Crawford went to the same HS that Donaghy and the bookies went to.

Crawford has been a ref for like 30 years, if he has been involved the NBA has a fucking pr nightmare on their hands. The credibility of the last 30 years of the sport immediately gets thrown into question, as Crawford was one ref that nearly every NBA fan has heard of.

 

Sure. The problem is you've mistaken a trend that you've found for someone that's influencing the game (influencing meaning knowing before the fact and trying to ensure a specific outcome)....

......and think it's a good idea to bet fixing-level money on trend-level odds.

That's BEEN the problem for 50 posts now.

20 more experts that say it's possible to fix a game won't change those crappy odds.

Trying to claim that Crawford tends to call a game that goes under without any of the actual gambling evidence showing he had an interest in making them go under doesn't help either.