If Sports Betting is an efficient Market?

Do thing's like arbitrage and hedging bets equal throwing money away? They should if the market is efficient. I happen to be of that opinion, whats everyone else's thoughts? Any hedgers and arbitragers out there? Also if the sports betting market is efficient or you believe that it is, then is beating the closing line by the vig be the most important attribute of a sports betting handicapper?

No arbing is not throwing money away. Your ROI will be lower but since it is risk free it can be scaled much higher. I.e 100% of avail BR on a First Bonus Bet compared to 2-5% on a simply +EV bet.


Hedging is less cut and dry but sometimes if your position has improved so much, it can make sense to extract the equity from the bet even if it is at only 95% of its fair value. That is moreso for futures or big MLs. Hedging like a side at halftime is usually dumb.

The 3rd part is mostly true. If the market is giving your bets the finger then you probably aren't going to overcome 4.55 long term. More to that subject though

Arb/scalp still exists but it's hard as hell now. Books move on air and w/o something like neteller it is hard to do.

Great point On Arbitrage, never thought of that angle with the bet sizing. Getting a lot down though can be risky if you don't get approved on the second one or they change the odds before you can get them both in. Scalping on moves later in the day though are bad for your ROI.

RenoChazz said:

Great point On Arbitrage, never thought of that angle with the bet sizing. Getting a lot down though can be risky if you don't get approved on the second one or they change the odds before you can get them both in. Scalping on moves later in the day though are bad for your ROI.

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There are a lot of ways to skin a cat. There are times when NFL odds comeout on Sunday night and a team is -2 and you feel pretty confident it is going to go to 3, this represents a lot more value than a regular move obviously. Regardless of your opinion about this game, it is best to hit the 2 right then and there. If it doesn't move then you could say it is a -EV bet, but that is just another element of risk/reward. A lot of value in just being able to predict market sentiment.

Also as far as hedging goes, when matchbook basically dealt like -102 it was a far better strategy. Matchbook was awesome for stuff like that. There is a lot of talk about legalization and if it did happen it wouldn't go to this extreme but I'd rather just see a giant exchange network with ample liquidity than anything else.

An exchange with liquidity would absolutely kick the books ass in a free market environment so therefore it is likely a no go.

Irrelevant. /end thread


But philosophy is necessary and serves it's purpose as an ancillary mechanism. Of course, the irony here is the Latin ancillaris, having the status of a female slave.