[Ganchrow]

To what extent do you think that forum or tout fades exist? In other words are there individuals out there who are just such horrific cappers that one can expect fading them to be a profitable long-term strategy?

Obviously, given a large group of people all making picks, we'd expect, simply by chance, some to significantly out-perform the average and some to significantly under-perform the average.

This is not what I'm referring to.

I'm specifically questioning whether or not one might reasonably expect a player's poor at a certain part of the season to be predictive of further negative performance as the season continues.

So what do you think?

[acw]

Yes

[Sam Odom]

Yes BUT after the fact...

[Doug]

JR Miller

[Ganchrow]

Yes BUT after the fact...

Right but if you come to a conclusion such as this ex post then by definition it's not predictive.

[Wheell]

I can only think of two fades that have been somewhat "popular." In the modern era there was a guy who did picks for the NY Post who was so consistently bad people faded him (loved chalk in a bad era for chalk), but he's no longer with the paper and I think he's actually dead. The other guy was back in France a few hundred years ago known as La Folle (the clown or the buffoon).

It is hard for a guy to be worse than noise because if he is losing he might change his methodology.

[freebie]

I would rather fade a terrible player than to follow a good player.

Love to fade.

[operaman]

I don't think people like you mention really exist.

If a person can predictably underperform the market that person would have to be utilizing something that had real value that was being either intentionaly or igronantly misused.

Kind of like a person who scores 1 on a sat test. They could be a total idiot who got very unlucky or a knowing individual that missed the questions for some reason not having to do with ability.

You can't have a person who has no skills having skills.
Ones skill level should be an absolute value. neg values dont exist.

[Arilou]

A slight fade isn't just possible, I think it is probable. For any given player who picks, on average that player...

1) Is not picking at random. If he was, he would be uninteresting. Instead, he is picking in an attempt to win. I give everyone THAT much credit. This means that the average picker will be under 50% - just not under 49%. You can't fade on your own, but factoring in is fine.

2) Is sometimes being followed. This is the key. Suppose I told you that on today's top MLB game, I flipped a coin and then decided to bet 100 dimes depending on the result. When I do that, I will move the line. Therefore, if I tell you which side I bet, you should fade it, because I've reduced their value and increased the value of the other team. If a tout has a following, and the tout is a 50% capper, you can get a better price going against him than going with him... assuming the fades are much smaller in size than the followers, which is generally safe.

To summarize, you can find a 49.5% capper who then gets a following that plays his side, resulting in a decent spot if you can get down at a market-fair number rather than paying juice, or you can use it as one factor among many, which is what I would recommend. In the interest of full disclosure I have never tried this, but if you're reading them anyway I would keep those factors in mind. It is FAR easier to be a fade than to be worth following - and it might be better to fade the WINNERS than to fade the losers...

Hopefully that's food for thought.

[jjgold]

Only way to fade anyone is follow them and wait for them to go on a real good run and then start to fade them and this goes for professional or non professional cappers. It does not matter, its all about %'s. Everyone goes into losing streaks

[Arilou]

jjgold, be very careful. You are dangerously close to the gambler's fallacy there: A person being on a good or bad run has no bearing on what they will do next, other than indicating how good they are. Fading someone because they are "due for a bad run" is folly. However, for a POPULAR capper, this makes some sense because winning creates a following and therefore his picks move the market more, potentially creating value.

[raiders72002]

It's much easier to find a person that hits 45% than it is to find a guy hitting 55%. In 2002 in the RR at the RX I started a daily thread called T F Z and listed the the plays of fades along with guys that were good. Fades were very profitable.

We then moved over to OGD and then over to my old site and used the same concept even though most of our posts were from guys that were very good handicappers.

It was an invite only section and Bigboydan and onlooker were members of the guys that were good.

[bigboydan]

Hell yea fading=winning.

I think everyone reading this thread has probably ran into a cold streak while capping games themselves. If you can find a poster that hits at roughly a 30-40% clip over the course of time, of course your gonna consider fading them. Or at least compare your capping with that fade in order to see if you might have overlooked something.

The bottom line is this... If you can find an edge wouldn't you too take advantage of it? I know I would if I was in a betting slump.

[Ganchrow]

Some very good points here. A few comments follow:

Is not picking at random. If he was, he would be uninteresting. Instead, he is picking in an attempt to win. I give everyone THAT much credit. This means that the average picker will be under 50% - just not under 49%. You can't fade on your own, but factoring in is fine.

I think one can look at this from the perspective of the efficient market hypothesis, which would suggest that a market player would be unable to secure economic profit. Realize it doesn't claim that a player should be unable to pick better than 50%, just that he'd be unable to make consistent money doing so. As such I'm not sure I can agree with your argument that a player making a serious, dedicated, and concerted effort to win should on average pick worse than 50%. In fact, by the above logic I think we should expect many pickers to be able to out pick a coin flip -- just not so well as to turn a profit.

Is sometimes being followed. This is the key. Suppose I told you that on today's top MLB game, I flipped a coin and then decided to bet 100 dimes depending on the result. When I do that, I will move the line. Therefore, if I tell you which side I bet, you should fade it, because I've reduced their value and increased the value of the other team. If a tout has a following, and the tout is a 50% capper, you can get a better price going against him than going with him... assuming the fades are much smaller in size than the followers, which is generally safe.

I largely agree with you here and think a version of the above represents the only real argument in support of the possible existence of profitable fades. (Whether it outweighs the arguments against is another matter entirely.)

Still, if indeed such coin flip touts existed and were numerous, then on average we'd expect their net impact to be zero as we'd expect an equal number of people picking the opposite side from any given tout. In the real world, however, where the number of touts isn't quite unlimited (although some days it might feel differently), then as you suggest we would still expect some impact conditioned on knowing one tout's picks. Furthermore, we'd expect this impact to be broadened were there great consensus amongst tout picks.

Of course the theory of competitive markets would suggest that touts would at the very least endeavor to pick better than 50/50, and for the reason I gave in response to your first point I suspect they'd succeed om average. As such, if they're already making picks with slightly above 50% accuracy, then it's conceivable that the market impact wouldn't even bring the price of the fade down to parity. Furthermore, for a tout that does not engage in any handicapping whatsoever (and indeed for any tout), there's always going to be incentive to pick differently from the market -- especially when "the market" consists of other tout operations owned by the same operator. This will serve to further lessen innovations away from the mean as there will always be touts looking to recommend the side opposite the tout consensus.

it might be better to fade the WINNERS than to fade the losers...

Right on. I'd have to completely agree with you here.

I return to the intention behind my original question, which was the issue of whether one could identify players or touts who have tended to pick poorly, and then extrapolate that into the future as a moneymaking opportunity. While it's almost certainly true that it's easier for a large tout to be a better fade than follow, the same logic can't be equally applied to forum handicappers or small to medium-sized touts whose picks don't create appreciable market impact.

As such I'd continue to be exceptionally skeptical of the claim that one can make money fading forum handicappers who have ex-post been identified as "bad".

[Ganchrow]

The bottom line is this... If you can find an edge wouldn't you too take advantage of it? I know I would if I was in a betting slump.

Of course. The question is whether there's "autocorrelation" in picking. In other words, if a bettor does poorly on his last n bets, is he more likely than usual to do poorly on your next bet? I would tend to doubt this.

I think everyone reading this thread has probably ran into a cold streak while capping games themselves. If you can find a poster that hits at roughly a 30-40% clip over the course of time, of course your gonna consider fading them.

Good luck finding consistent 30%-40% pickers. Obviously if you look over a stretch of bettors then purely by chance you'd expect to find players at both extremes of success -- but this doesn't implies that this performance can necessarily be extrapolated to the future.

[Ganchrow]

It's much easier to find a person that hits 45% than it is to find a guy hitting 55%. In 2002 in the RR at the RX I started a daily thread called T F Z and listed the the plays of fades along with guys that were good. Fades were very profitable.

Interesting.

I'd be rather curious to see if this represented a statistically significant effect.

[jjgold]

It is impossible even for a professional capper to go any better than like a 15-2 , 19-3 type run or so and when he does or anyone else does bet the opposite on his next 20 games and you have a good chance of winning. It is all about statistics and the outcomes are basically 50% of picking a winner regardless of what you think.

[gridironguy]

I am a GREAT fade in baseball, but unfortunately for you guys I quite betting it years ago. If I had continued, I would've posted plays here and you guys would've made a fortune fading me!

[Ganchrow]

It is impossible even for a professional capper to go any better than like a 15-2 , 19-3 type run or so and when ... anyone .. does bet the opposite on his next 20 games and you have a good chance of winning. It is all about statistics ...

I agree. It is all about statistics.

However what you're referring to is not proper statistics but rather the Gambler's Fallacy.

[Sam Odom]

For the Craps/Dice degenerates...

All of my adult life I've been waiting to learn how or when to jump into the BEGINNING of a "Hot Roll"

[Ganchrow]

For the Craps/Dice degenerates...

All of my adult life I've been waiting to learn how or when to jump into the BEGINNING of a "Hot Roll"

They'll have to tell you two rolls later.

[bigboydan]

Good luck finding consistent 30%-40% pickers.

I guess you haven't seen Mr.Newleywed's picks yet.

[acw]

Ganchrow,

You should enter the Asian bookmaking world. Some bookies consider some guys such good fades that after they bet, the bookies will give them an even better price. From a bookmakers point of view I do not think that this is smart, though yes, there are some real good fading technics out there!

[Ganchrow]

I guess you haven't seen Mr.Newleywed's picks yet.

No. I have not not.

But sight unseen I'd still happily book the reverse action at 4.55%.

[BigBollocks]

Fades do exist and their name is JJGold....

[Ganchrow]

You should enter the Asian bookmaking world. Some bookies consider some guys such good fades that after they bet, the bookies will give them an even better price. From a bookmakers point of view I do not think that this is smart, though yes, there are some real good fading technics out there!

Interesting. I'd have to point out however, that just because anecdotal evidence exists that certain Asian bookmakers are paying for fades does not imply the action is profitable.

[jjgold]

The best fades are guys pressing for money

[TLD]

I suspect there are some touts and forum blowhards and such who will predictably lose at greater than chance levels, but I don’t know if it’ll be by a great enough margin to be profitable to fade, or whether it’s promising enough to really research it and try to identify them.

The question is, is there something about how they’re selecting their plays that not only is non-random but is negatively correlated with winning?

Here I think it’s important to keep in mind their goal. And that’s to look good, to sell themselves, to establish bragging rights, to come across like a sharp or a big shot, to generate a following, etc. Not that winning is irrelevant to that. In fact it’s the single most important thing they could do to further their goals. But the overlap between winning and marketing is not absolute, and if there are things they do for the latter purposes that in the long run actually run counter to the former, then we have our potential fade.

Not having bothered to study touts and such in detail I can only speculate, but I would guess many would have a systematic bias toward popular or “public” picks, for a number of reasons.

One, you want picks your customers—or forum readers—will like. You want, “Oh good, he’s picking A. That’s where I was leaning anyway. Good choice,” not “Oh my God, he’s picking B? What is he, nuts?”

I actually think this can be a big psychological factor. Just speaking from personal experience, I’ve done quite well on the NFL for years, and I have a couple friends I share my picks with. Even on that level, and even with people who know me and who know what kind of success I’ve had, I still routinely feel a twinge of embarrassment when I e-mail them my picks, as my system generates primarily “contrarian” plays where I’m betting on big underdogs, teams that have been especially bad lately, etc. It’s become a running joke between us, where I’ll often preface the picks with something like “I’d like to apologize in advance for…” or they’ll kid me about, “Well, the Texans are the very definition of a ‘team in disarray’ the way they’ve sucked all season; somehow I knew you’d make me bet them again this week!” I’d hate to have to try to sell such picks, or try to win friends on a public forum with them.

Two, it’s a lot more forgivable to be wrong when everyone else is too.

There was a funny article a long, long time ago in Esquire magazine where the author interviewed numerous stock market “experts.” What he found is they consistently tried to stay within the consensus of other such “experts,” including by subtly trying to ascertain during the interviews what his previous interviewees had told him before committing to an opinion themselves. No one’s going to fire you or think less of you when you’re wrong if you can point to all your rivals and say they were wrong too, but to be the only one saying IBM will tank when everyone else is bullish on them makes you quite vulnerable if you’re wrong.

Now, you could say that, correspondingly, a contrarian pick that wins will get you more credit than a consensus pick that wins, but I don’t the effect is nearly as great. Consider a football coach trying to decide whether to go along with his math whiz assistant’s advice that one should go for it on fourth down far more often than teams do in real life, or should go for more 2 point conversions or whatever. Does the coach think “Sounds great. If I’m successful being different like that, I’ll really establish my reputation as an innovative genius and build job security,” or does he think “No way. Any time such a decision doesn’t succeed, I’ll be second guessed from here to Kingdom Come. No thanks, I like my job”? I think it’s pretty obvious in which direction the psychological bias works.

Three, if you’re picking “good” teams that your audience likes, that’ll mean mostly favorites, and when you do lose it’ll more often be a “bad beat” that you won’t be blamed as much for.

Consider the not at all uncommon situation where your powerhouse 17 point favorite is up by three touchdowns late against the hapless underdog, and the underdog gets a meaningless touchdown against third stringers at the end to cover. You lost, but you’ll likely get a lot of “That was a fluke” and “How can you be expected to handicap what’ll happen when all the back-ups are playing?” and “Hey, you were on the right side. Clearly they were the better team by more than 17 points the way they dominated that game when it counted,” etc.

But if you’re on the underdog and they fail to get that meaningless touchdown at the end, no one says, “Ooh, tough break the way they threw three incompletions and punted down by 21 in the last two minutes there. They could easily have covered the 17 after being outclassed the whole game.”

Four, you want picks that generate good “write ups.” I might have discovered that double digit underdog road teams win 55% of the time, but that doesn’t help me much with explaining why I’m making a certain pick. For one thing, it takes one sentence at most to say, leaving a lot of blank space to fill. For another, by stating a factor like that openly, I’m increasing the chances it’ll become widely known and used and the value will disappear.

It’s better, all else being equal, that I base my picks on plausible factors that fit nicely in a little essay that’ll make me look knowledgeable to readers. So I should dissect a game the way sportswriters and sports radio types do (speaking of picks to fade!), focusing on the big name players, rookies in key positions, where the game is being played, that it’s a big rivalry, etc.—the kind of stuff that readers will recognize as relevant. A lot of it they’ll already be aware of, or at least they’ll find it persuasive because it’ll generate a reaction in them like, “Yeah, if I had the time to really research these games and think them through, these are just the kind of things I’d look for. This guy clearly knows what he’s talking about.”

If the unexplained or minimally explained pick loses, you look bad. If the pick with the fancy schmancy write-up loses, you’re more likely to, again, get some responses like “Yeah but don’t worry. You were on the right side after all. There were a lot more reasons to like your team than the other.”

Write-ups definitely help you. In fact sometimes people will even post things like, “I’m not just blindly following so-and-so because of his record. He actually explains his picks. He really takes apart the game; he’s not just flipping coins here. He’s a sharp guy, even if he’s in a bit of a slump right now.”

So you want picks you can justify to a receptive audience, not embarrassing picks it’ll be an uphill struggle to convince them have merit. Which again means popular picks, picks with reasons that the masses will agree make sense.

Five, for a moneyline sport like baseball it’s better to pick favorites to boost your record, and again favorites are more likely to be popular plays.

Picking favorites isn’t helping you in terms of “units,” but as long as people are affected at all by win-loss record—and they are—it helps how you’re perceived. 20-12, -3.2 units simply looks better than 12-20, -3.2 units. (And if you can get away with just posting the 20-12 part without the units, so much the better.)

So on the whole, I would say the bias would be toward making easily justified rather than embarrassing picks that fit in with the pre-existing expectations of your customers/readers and what they’re being told by other “experts.” You want to be on the band wagon, not being run over by it.

But then the question is, is this non-random factor correlated with winning, losing, or pretty much neutral?

I would think on the whole it’s lightly correlated with losing. Maybe it’s a bias that makes a guy who would normally be able to pick 50% pick at 48% or 49%.

If you’re making popular picks based on factors even casual bettors agree are relevant, not only are those factors already surely built into the line, but I would think they are more likely to be overrated by the line than underrated.

I doubt they’re typically overrated a lot, because there are enough sharp people out there betting in a contrarian fashion to make the market reasonably efficient, but in the long run I’d still expect to come out better on my “Oh my God, you’re picking who?!?” picks than on my “You’re right; they’re clearly the superior team” picks.

So I would tentatively conclude that posting picks in a forum and especially trying to sell picks introduces a slight factor against those picks. But I am not convinced it is enough to overcome vig to where fading such picks would be profitable. Furthermore, if what makes them systematically worse than chance is that they are favorites or teams on a winning streak or teams that the majority of bettors believe will cover, etc., then I would think it would be a more efficient use of your time and effort to identify those factors and use them in your handicapping directly, rather than to infer that a given tout seems to be influenced wrongly by them to some small degree in his picks and so should be faded.

[homedog]

It's much easier to find a person that hits 45% than it is to find a guy hitting 55%. In 2002 in the RR at the RX I started a daily thread called T F Z and listed the the plays of fades along with guys that were good. Fades were very profitable.

We then moved over to OGD and then over to my old site and used the same concept even though most of our posts were from guys that were very good handicappers.

It was an invite only section and Bigboydan and onlooker were members of the guys that were good.

The good ole days

Ganch,

As bbd mentions in the post below raider's, NW may not be the best but he is definitely on the short list.

masterl is another one that has been "unbeatable". He even changed his style this year to play dogs and is still losing his ass.

[Ganchrow]

As bbd mentions in the post below raider's, NW may not be the best but he is definitely on the short list.

masterl is another one that has "unbeatable". He even changed his style this year to play dogs and is still losing his ass.

So are you suggesting that these two are simply "jinxed"?

[homedog]

So are you suggesting that these two are simply "jinxed"?

No jinx. They are just really bad.

The difference between the two is that NW thinks he is a wiseguy. Master doesn't comment at all other than to post his plays. His record speaks for itself.

[Ganchrow]

No jinx. They are just really bad.

The difference between the two is that NW thinks he is a wiseguy. Master doesn't comment at all other than to post his plays. His record speaks for itself.

What you seem to be saying is that these two are just such horribly bad cappers that no matter what they do they just can't help but pick losers. If it's truly the case that some bettors just have the knack for picking losers and can't help but do so, then shouldn't there be a roughly equivalent players on the other side who just can't help but pick winners? Are there really players out there who can just look at a card and effortlessly determine the winning side at a profitable clip? That seems like Hollywood fantasy to me ...

[homedog]

What you seem to be saying is that these two are just such horribly bad cappers that no matter what they do they just can't help but pick losers. If it's truly the case that some bettors just have the knack for picking losers and can't help but do so, then shouldn't there be a roughly equivalent players on the other side who just can't help but pick winners? Are there really players out there who can just look at a card and effortlessly determine the winning side at a profitable clip? That seems like Hollywood fantasy to me ...

I have only seen it work one way in consistent fashion.

[Sam Odom]

They'll have to tell you two rolls later.

In Vegas once and a guy next to me at the table said "You have to wait for the Hot Shooter." I responded with "Tell me when he is up to shoot."

The guy said "You'll know when he makes 5 passes!" True story.

[homedog]

Kodiak is another great one. His dubious performance is well documented (not by him). He is one of the forum touts that tries to compensate for his losses by chasing and does nothing but dig himself a bigger hole long-term. His martingale attempts to get back to the + side are hilarious. Even when he wins the 10x normal bet to get back on the + side he crows like he has conquered the world.

Funny shit.

I take it you don't believe in the fade Ganch?