The well known bettors will place bets knowing others will emulate it, moving the odds in favor of their real bet they have yet to place. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the big Vegas books are in on it since they make their money long term on vig, and don't have to worry about short term losses (thus enjoying any increase in bets those schemes generate).<p>There is an older 60 minutes episode on Billy Walters that is a good watch for anyone interested in people trying to beat sports books.
Post author and co-founder of SigOpt (YC W15) here. Thanks for all the great questions and comments, I'll be around all day answering questions. Feel free to ask anything about the post or what we do at SigOpt (or how).<p>All of the code can be found here: <a href="https://github.com/sigopt/sigopt-examples" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/sigopt/sigopt-examples</a><p>More about how SigOpt works here: <a href="https://sigopt.com/research" rel="nofollow">https://sigopt.com/research</a><p>Other discussions here: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/3yy0vp/using_model_tuning_to_beat_vegas/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/3yy0vp/usi...</a><p>and here: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10819170" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10819170</a>
Vegas odds aren't even the most accurate odds to beat. I.e you can already beat Vegas odds by looking at odds pinnacle, 5 dimes, bet 188 and consider them the true odds. It's called arbitrage betting. If you have a model that can truly beat the market, then it is the players I mentioned that you want to beat.
It's not clear from the article what the input data is. I had a look in the repo, it wasn't clear from that either. Is it the normal fare you'd expect?<p>I've heard of prop betting firms using stuff like "distance travelled by the away team" and other logical things like that.
I love this, but is anyone else a bit put off by someone appending PhD in their name _on a blog post?_<p>I'm not salty or anything, and it wouldn't have influenced me into reading the article or not. It just puts a bad taste in my mouth.
There is a TED-talk on this:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66ko_cWSHBU" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66ko_cWSHBU</a>
(The Math Behind Basketball's Wildest Moves)