I've been wondering what value sites like wagerline.com bring to handicapping?
Specifically I'm interested in the tracking of "experts" for each team.
It's an interesting concept to take a persons record on a particular team and use that as the criteria to rate them an "expert" for that team. It seems like it should work...but I'm not so sure.
For example today's NBA game Seattle at Houston has Houston as 7 point favorites. So far there are 9 "expert" picks for Houston and 0 "expert" picks for Seattle.
I'd tend to go with Seattle covering based on the recent return of Ray Allen and Brett Barry. In any case I wouldn't think 9 out of 9 "experts" would jump on Houston.
I noticed a similar thing last night where a slew of "experts" were on Idaho over Eastern Washington in an NCAA basketball game. All the experts were on Idaho. Idaho covered the spread by a point....but it didn't seem like a clear case before hand as was indicated by the "experts".
It seems to me that two theories could be proposed:
(a) this is a closed system where feedback loops are self generated ie. people on wagerline read what other people on wagerline think and a herd mentality takes over.
(b) People actually do their own research and then come to wagerline to put down a well thought out pick.
One thing I have found valuable about tracking sites is the ability to track your wagers by sport. It might make you decide to concentrate on what you are good at rather than shotgunning bets on every sport available.
Specifically I'm interested in the tracking of "experts" for each team.
It's an interesting concept to take a persons record on a particular team and use that as the criteria to rate them an "expert" for that team. It seems like it should work...but I'm not so sure.
For example today's NBA game Seattle at Houston has Houston as 7 point favorites. So far there are 9 "expert" picks for Houston and 0 "expert" picks for Seattle.
I'd tend to go with Seattle covering based on the recent return of Ray Allen and Brett Barry. In any case I wouldn't think 9 out of 9 "experts" would jump on Houston.
I noticed a similar thing last night where a slew of "experts" were on Idaho over Eastern Washington in an NCAA basketball game. All the experts were on Idaho. Idaho covered the spread by a point....but it didn't seem like a clear case before hand as was indicated by the "experts".
It seems to me that two theories could be proposed:
(a) this is a closed system where feedback loops are self generated ie. people on wagerline read what other people on wagerline think and a herd mentality takes over.
(b) People actually do their own research and then come to wagerline to put down a well thought out pick.
One thing I have found valuable about tracking sites is the ability to track your wagers by sport. It might make you decide to concentrate on what you are good at rather than shotgunning bets on every sport available.
