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BGonline.org Forums
Skill in Sports Betting
Posted By: Joe Russell In Response To: Skill in Sports Betting (Chuck Bower)
Date: Sunday, 26 July 2009, at 1:35 p.m.
I remember a young, naive about sports betting, backgammon player(YNBG) that made the comment: 'parlay cards are sucker bets'. The YNBG was shown a football parlay card, by a friend who lived in Las Vegas, where you could pick 3 to 10 teams. It was a half point, no ties, card and had a point spread for every college and pro football game of that week. If you picked 10 teams correctly it paid 800 for 1. Well before he could say that should pay 1024 for 1, his friend said: 'and it pays 40 for 1 for 9 out 10'. Then he was excited. He realized the card actually paid 1200 for 1. So the positive equity would be 1200/1024 = 17.18%. But that was not all, because the card was printed on Tuesday, by Saturday morning, because of line movement, you could find many games where you were a 53 to 57% favorite to win, assuming the closing line to be accurate. So this card was actually over 100% positive equity. That is not bad. The card did not last the whole season but his friend enjoyed it while it did. There were many other very good cards and still are occasional cards where the player can get a small advantage-nothing like the old days, alas. Now that not so young backgammon player says: 'parlay cards, they are usually sucker bets'. And his friend says from his multimillion dollar home on the golf course: 'yep'.
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