Smokey The Square

As some of you may have seen, I recently spotted a Tweet containing what I was fairly sure was some rather poor advice. 

We all make mistakes, so I didn't reveal the account name, but after pointing out the inaccuracy of the Tweet, rather than simply admit he was wrong, the person in question gave some responses that made absolutely no sense, before later deleting his nonsense. 

He appears to be fairly new to betting, and the handle SmokeytheSharp can only be an ironic nickname in the same category as nicknaming a morbidly obese guy "Tiny". 

Fortunately he has very few followers, so feel free to become the 168th if you'd like, though I wouldn't recommend it.

The Tweet in question stated, with no qualifications:

Saying 'never' is rarely a good idea, but the idea that big teams might be over-bet and that there thus might be value in opposing them isn't new, and it's an angle I've looked at in some detail. 

Ignoring the fact that "in the long run" you will either be up or down overall, and will almost certainly not ALWAYS lose, I quite politely pointed out that:

This is very poor advice.

With almost 19 seasons of data, blindly backing the Los Angeles Dodgers when favourite has a positive ROI from more than 2200 matches.

If the 'tip' had specified 'Away / Road favourites' it would have had some merit (the Yankees are actually the worst team to back in this situation), but at home, these two clubs are actually the best of the 30 clubs to back when favourites.

When faced with these facts, the first response was this:

Who said anything about "winning records"? My response clearly referenced ROI so again, I very politely suggested that Smokey:

I should have said "are positive" but as I said, we all make mistakes. The response this time made it quite apparent that we were dealing with SmokeytheSquare:

What?! Presumably he later realised the error, and it's no wonder he deleted his Tweets. 

Obviously this is complete nonsense as I, again, patiently and politely pointed out, even taking the time to include an easy example:

Our friend then tried a different tactic, the old trick of moving the goalposts, writing:

But I thought the original Tweet clearly talked about the long run? No, apparently we're not talking about the long run at all, but we're talking about 'now', which of course is a term that needed some clarification. Is it a Day? Week? Month? Season? 

The answer is that, for Smokey, the 'long run' is a season. It's probably not the definition most readers will have of a 'long run', but so be it. 

How true was the statement that if you bet both those teams consistently [to level stakes] you'll lose over a season?

Not very. Profitable each of the last four seasons:

The response? To delete all the Tweets, although at the time of writing the original one is still there.

As for the other two "tips"?

Number 1 makes sense. Squares tend to like Home teams and winning teams, so if there is any value, the first place to look would be Away teams with losing records. 

And in fact, there is value on these teams when they are favourites and have won their previous game. The market likes the team, hence they are favourites, yet still undervalues them. If you look at games where such a team has won their last two games, the ROI is even better (4.1% on the Run Line since 2004). 

"Rule" number two is good advice except for games when the pitcher is from the American League playing an inter-league game. In this situation, the ROI is 5.3% since 2004, so again, never say never. 

Until this season, ERAs across leagues cannot, and should not be directly compared due to the different rules in place, but that will probably change. 

Unfortunately, of his 167 followers, it's highly probable that the vast majority do not validate these claims for themselves. It could be costing them money. 

Apparently the account is going "private" for the NFL season in a few days time, but the evidence suggests the guy has no edge and frankly, little idea about how sports betting works. 

One big clue is that there is no record keeping. There are a few green ticks for some winners, some red crosses for some losers, but the majority have nothing next to them at all. 

Make of that what you will, but importantly there is no running total, and no way of verifying whether a follower would be "in the can" or green all over.

This lack of verifiability was the reason I stopped discussing the Bundeslayga System on this blog, (it requires a lay price and being Exchange bets, an accurate historical record is not readily available), but after corresponding with my old friend Stewboss, I may have an acceptable compromise and in a few days plan to add it to the "Sacred Document". 

If you signed up, "stand back, and stand by" as someone once said.

One of the intentions of this blog is to educate people into not believing everything they read and to verify claims such as the ones made by Smokey. Unfortunately there are a lot of Smokeys out there but it's not necessarily all bad. Claims such as his can be easily verified and this process may well lead to discovering an angle that you hadn't previously considered.