Phillies +140? Whaaaaaa?
Joe Public is going to be all over the Dodgers tonight as he shouts his "must win" mantra and all that nonsense. Ok, this may be a "must win" but that situation rarely makes teams actually play better. Phillies were NL best 44-37 on the road. Line value is line value. I'm going to wait until all the squares lose their ass in the NFL today and then go back to the window to take the "must win" Dodgers. So maybe about 6 pm tonight, this silly price could look even sillier. It will be Phillies for me at whatever price I find prior to game time.

Sunday Night NLCS
Phillies +153
Sure enough, we get an even better price as NFL losers chase with baseball and predictably are betting the "must win" favorite.

5-0 top of the 2nd Dodgers

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Season records mean very little with the Dodgers. Everything should really be recalculated to the post Manny acquisition.

This thing is far from done.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Should have went with Joe Public on this one. They might know what they are talking about.

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No Chris, they don't. And you don't either. Enjoy your acorn.

I recognize it's far from done, GD. I never suggested it wasn't. And I also recognize most of the guys on this board pick games based on opinions about the teams and the sports and don't pay attention to probabilities or expected value. I wasn't basing my play on the season record. I was basing it on the line value. The line opened at -145/+135. Based on the math and the linesmakers' history of hanging good numbers in the playoffs, I thought that was a fair price. But when the donkeys pushed it up to -155/+145 and then as high as -163/+153, I thought there was value in the dog as there often is. If I can bet games at 13 percent better than the opening line as I did here, I will take that proposition 95% of the time (assuming full information) in any sport. If you want to make the case that the books hung a bad opening number and that +153 was the right price, I'd like to know what data you would use to make that case. So I lost one. If I have a 13% discount to the opening number, I will fire away at that as often as I possibly can because in the long run, that is a very profitable strategy.

I was about to say - coast is definitely the utmost source on here about value betting. I understood his reasoning for his play last night. It wasn't about who was going to win per se - it was about the value in the wager. He took a small shot at a 3-2 bet.

Sure there was value. The pitching matchups looked to favor the Phils, especially with Moyer in a huge ballpark. The Phils were road warriors this year in a season that overwhelmingly favored home teams.

In this playoffs, teams down 0-2 have gone 2-1 in game 3s, for whatever that is worth. Both teams that won were at home in Game 3. Two teams were clear dogs in those series' (sox and brewers) and won while the cubs were favorites and lost. Those numbers are now 3-1 and 3-0 at home. It's a small sample size but is notable when combined with the home team slant throughout the year.

On the other hand, home field advantage teams have only gone 2-2 in the playoffs so far.

I'd love to see a historical analysis of Coast's "must win" hypothesis, with "must win" being defined as Game 3 when down 0-2 in a series of any size. My gut tells me it is about 50-50.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

You can look at numbers I can look at the pitchers. Dodgers pitcher was hot as hell and Jamie Moyer is 80. I took the side of Joe Public.

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When you try and look at things too much and overanalyze it, you wind up losing more than you do winning. I usually take a minute to actually sit back and look at a game and than places my bets as such. Philly isnt a world beating team by any means, I dont know why you would take them with so much confidence at LA. Philly is the same team that squeaked into the playoffs. Yeah the Cubs got in and they were the favorite, but I didnt bet the Cubs(or the Dodgers). You have to look at things as a WHOLE. Not just a few games.

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Sorry you missed the point GD. Oh well. My play had nothing to do with any must win scenario of mine. It was that kind of logic that was driving others to bet the Dodgers. The reason I bet the game was the price. I still don't think the number the linesmaker hung on that game was wrong.

I consider myself to be bi-coastal, if you consider the Fox River to be a coast.

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"All crowds boycotting football games shouldn't care who sings or takes a knee because they aren't watching." - Nas