Arbusers

arb12 wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 14, 2023 9:06 pm

EuroLeague Basketball,
Partizan Belgrade vs PAO Athens just finished a few minutes ago.

A BIG WARNING TO THE ROOKIES IN THE BUSINESS: never ever trust live-score services of any kind! I don't know exactly how many live score core suppliers there are, but the exchanges and the bookies are their big clients.

Very often the published current basketball time is wrong and occasionally the published current score is wrong.

Bearing in mind that in the fourth quarter, Željko Obradović's team (pre-match heavy Favourites) had to overcome a minimum of 8 points to reach the Overtime and 9 to win, as well as the constant change of the lead in the final minutes of this clash, the bogus three points in favor of PAO in their last attack is more than outrageous. Given these circumstances in the fourth quarter in Belgrade, this is unacceptable! Imagine how many inexperienced people in business could trust this "service" and place a very large stake in the market.

Not to mention that the wrong live score service is a supplier to at least one of the biggest agencies in the world...

It happened again in the Euroleague Basketball a few minutes ago.

In the second half and especially in the fourth quarter Real Madrid vs Partizan Belgrade.
For example, I spot one thing via video signal, that happened on the pitch (Real Madrid leveling the score 84:84), but one of the Livescore services announced 84:88, and one of the biggest agencies through its Livescore announced 86:84 in favor of Real through two bogus free throws! Moments later, the bogus cases 2 and 3 were corrected to 84:84 (as in the video signal from Madrid), but at the same time, obviously, large sums were thrown into various markets.

The basketball timer to the end of the match was again incorrect and so on.

Remember Panathinaikos' fictitious three-point shooting vs Partizan Belgrade, announced by that "service" days ago...

I am wondering what kind of volumes went ''wrong'' in this case, and what price movements did they cause instantly.

Both Higgins and O'Sullivan are often doubtful and therefore their markets are eliminated from the pre-calculations at all. Spotted and confirmed for many years so far.

But Ronnie's turnaround from almost winning the quarterfinal through seven-in-a-row "unlucky" frames vs Brecel is beyond the level of hypocrisy.
I suspect that a very popular hero after his career will be invited to give a MasterClass in psychology at any top-notch university. The combination of a sudden lack of motivation at a certain stage of the game X due to his age combined with TV charisma is a recipe for Y if the odds range is Z.
X - the frequency of occurrence and the exact timing of the "happening" in the chosen by someone "event" are unclear.
Y is pretty clear.
Z - unstable data so far.

By some analogy with the sport of soccer, I remember some of the performances of Atlético de Madrid when I spot that some of the pre-selected by me indicators of their current sporting form are in swing dance, but the next published odds for the next games insisted that Atlético are overrated time and time again. In that case, my analytical model prohibits my further calculations due to obvious possible consequences. The frequency and extent of hypothetical further damage are unknown. But statistically, they are very likely. Same as earthquakes. That's why you better stop trading during this time frame suggested by your logic and analytics model.

I mentioned it in other threads as well, but let me speak about it here too, as I believe it fits very well in this thread.

These last seasons I m watching closely Milwaukee Bucks because of Giannis (and Thanasis). I believe I know the team very well and I can understand the over all mentality, starting from the coach and finishing to the last bench player.

In last Eurobasket I noticed the national team of Greece being wrapped up by Giannis and all the systems were copied from the Bucks so Giannis would do the job properly. Don't get me wrong, Giannis is by far the best player in the world these last 3 years and there is no-one else in the horizon as we speak to challenge his position. Every team should be built around Giannis.

Like the Greek National Team, Milwaukee Bucks have an Achilles heel. If the opponent is very lucky with 3 pointers and if Giannis is not at his best level, then the opponents will win. In addition, there is a level of collapse in Bucks, not being able to maintain a big difference they could achieve at every point of the game, and especially 2nd and 3rd quarter.

As you understand, this creates immense trading opportunities if the Bucks manage a 15-16 points difference in 2nd-3rd quarter. Something similar is happening with 2-3 teams in Euroleague (guess who). This is not calculated correctly by bettors and bookmakers' trader, and they offer lavish odds that can't be missed in play.

I hope this is enough food for thought.

arbusers wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 28, 2023 10:17 am

I mentioned it in other threads as well, but let me speak about it here too, as I believe it fits very well in this thread.

These last seasons I m watching closely Milwaukee Bucks because of Giannis (and Thanasis). I believe I know the team very well and I can understand the over all mentality, starting from the coach and finishing to the last bench player.

In last Eurobasket I noticed the national team of Greece being wrapped up by Giannis and all the systems were copied from the Bucks so Giannis would do the job properly. Don't get me wrong, Giannis is by far the best player in the world these last 3 years and there is no-one else in the horizon as we speak to challenge his position. Every team should be built around Giannis.

Like the Greek National Team, Milwaukee Bucks have an Achilles heel. If the opponent is very lucky with 3 pointers and if Giannis is not at his best level, then the opponents will win. In addition, there is a level of collapse in Bucks, not being able to maintain a big difference they could achieve at every point of the game, and especially 2nd and 3rd quarter.

As you understand, this creates immense trading opportunities if the Bucks manage a 15-16 points difference in 2nd-3rd quarter. Something similar is happening with 2-3 teams in Euroleague (guess who). This is not calculated correctly by bettors and bookmakers' trader, and they offer lavish odds that can't be missed in play.

I hope this is enough food for thought.

Well done Mr. Arbusers!
I spotted your post on the day of publication, but I was so busy with other sporting trading activities very different from basketball trading.

My opinion is similar to yours when fundamental analysis through a very deep understanding of the game as a whole and every component of contending teams (coaches, absolutely every player on the pitch, the deep hypothetical impact of tactical decisions, etc.) are greatly helping the classical approach when only crunching the odds and various pre-match numbers, offered from the market makers' end to the traders. And if we extrapolate these processes properly over the very long term plus proper risk management, compounded profit growth will be in effect.

And let me write here some side impressions about the NBA and beyond and the game as a whole.

"I love this game" was a very nice NBA slogan in the glory era of Michael "The Air" Jordan, "Magic" Johnson, Dražen Petrović, Vlade Divac, Toni Kukoč, Larry "The Legend" Bird, Dino Radja, Dennis "The Worm" Rodman and other Minotaurs, wasn't it? Does anyone mention them in the modern popular media or remember the contribution to the Basketball of coaches like Pat Riley, Chuck Daly, or Phil Jackson? Fortunately, the Colossuses like Gregg Popovich, Željko Obradović and maybe Pini Gershon are still active and they aren't yet forgotten…
Thank you all Masters, for the Masterpieces you've created! We were blessed to watch your play on the pitch and your coaching approaches!!! Rest in peace, Dražen Petrović and Kobe Bryant...
Additionally, I admire the legendary facts about Krešimir Čosić, Nikos Galis (why those two weren't in the NBA???) and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, if any older forum member has watched their games on a regular basis, let him write a few words here.

In the Olympics, I'll never forget the "Dream Team 1st Gen", 1992...

Those were the times when Basketball was to some extent purer Basketball and to some extent lesser kind of marketing product and maybe a lesser behind-the-curtain poisonous Las Vegas influence related to the contemporary NBA.

In my opinion, the changing of the NBA's set of rules in the late 1990s till the mid-2000s (banning most of the previous physical pressure and body contact in general), plus the 3-sec defensive rule, changed the NBA forever:
- If you remove the marketing-influenced glasses, you'll see, that European Basketball become most harder one. I support the interviews months ago of Luka Dončić and Giannis Antetokounmpo, who said that European Basketball is way harder than in the NBA, while most talented worldwide stars are playing in the NBA, scoring more easily than in Europe.
- The perfect marketing machine produce more show for those people, that aren't so deeply dedicated technically in the game. For many watchers Kings @ Clippers 176:175 months ago would be much most enjoyable than the recent clash Olympiacos vs Fenerbahçe 78:82. Without underestimating at all the quality of the Kings @ Clippers match, I think some people would prefer a high-scoring-show and they can't view the way Itoudis won over Bartzokas after the moment of that long-distance famous three pointer of Vezenkov (55:51) till the final score of 78:82.
- In my perception, the hidden Las Vegas influence raised enormous times than it was before. Those famous "dead-or-alive" battles under the old rules in EVERY possible NBA match are gone nowadays, no matter the regular season or Play-Offs, no matter if the match is a "dead rubber" or a deciding one. Now those battles are appearing from time to time, usually in the Play-Offs. Pseudo-injuries, pseudo-tiredness, and others are mixed with the real ones. The a massive lack of gladiator-like passion for success for many of the contemporary players, but sparkly spotted when the old stars participated. The high-scoring show is guaranteed, but sometimes the basics behind the scene aren't fair.
- I'm wondering what the results would be if Michael Jordan (69 points vs Cavaliers) and Kobe Bryant (81 points vs Toronto) were playing according to the contemporary contactless rules with their gladiator-like passion for success in absolutely every match. 169 and 181 respectively? I'm pretty sure that some of the contemporary stars, great scoring nowadays wouldn't achieve great success in the old contact basketball. Neither in Europe today to the same extent.

Don't get me wrong. A deep respect for the hardworking real contemporary Stars like Antetokounmpo, Popovich, Spoelstra, Dončić, B'holzer and so on passionated "I LOVE THIS GAME"-lovers, but some myths are wide-spreading and only the marketing depts and Vegas are benefitted from that. For example, when a much better team in terms of discipline, defense and so on, in the regular season and in the Play-Offs, prefers to prolong "suddenly" the series to 6 or 7 matches.

When it comes to the Eastern Conference, I personally enjoy watching the game performance and enjoy myself processing the data related to those three teams - Heat, Bucks & Celtics. That's the reason I was reacting to your posting about Milwaukee.

Additionally, I love to watch the games between those three teams, trying to interpret for myself some of Popovich's students' ideas on the fly in the Celtics (via former coach Udoka) vs Bucks (via Budenholzer) vs Spoelstra's changing ideas (he hasn't been an assistant of Coach Pop though).

Nothing to add to your posting, you've described the real things in Bucks as they're. The trained eye of the beholder.

At the same time, your posting inspired me to rethink some of my practices. Let me explain.
After Udoka's leaving announcement and after the very bad start for Miami 2022/23, the database about them is almost null and needed to fulfill with the new data for a long time, that's why lots of my activities were diggin' into other markets based on a very different sport, relatively unknown in the US and Europe (except England). The liquidity is let's say 30 to 100 times greater or something. If the Bucks make the error to remove B'holzer, I won't watch them anymore with a passion.

Those above-mentioned teams and many others sometimes have the "ability" to win or lose a given quarter to 15-20 or more points. Amazingly! Till your posting, I avoided in general the second and third quarter trading in such a case of a big points difference a big tradin' and preferred to collect data and to "predict" some things.
For some reason, the initial and the last quarter were so convenient for me in terms of trading in that cases. Thank you for your brainstorming ideas!

You again touch so many issues that I can't touch altogether.
But in my view, if MJ was playing today, he would never stand a chance against today's monsters. The same applies to Maradona for football, and any other GOAT of the previous decades. Every player should be judged ni his time context and every fiction bringing them today, condemns them to the average, if not lower than that.
Thanks for all the comments.

Atlanta Braves @ NY Mets at Citi Field, Inning Fifth.
You'd better hurry before the value odds window closes, Pinnacle and American-focused Offshores are quite wrong right now.
What a generous present!

Some patterns could be very useful for avoiding traps. Use them and you will survive! For example, when your pre-analysis told you to avoid a given match and much later in the game, some agencies behave in a certain way.
That's very interesting, minutes ago Pinnacle disappeared at halftime in a suspicious-to-me match in Hong Kong, IBC slightly changed some exposures in a "strange" way, and Sing boldly raised the exposures... All these actions were almost immediately before the "suddenly" scored by the underdog goal, WOW!

Addendum: I'm not telling you that the agencies' behavior must shape your market expositions. I spot for the N-th time the cases where according to the preliminary analysis of my model the match X vs. Y should be avoided at all costs and subsequently, some agencies react in some way, confirming some doubts.

Despite Lyon's well-known behavior on the pitch under Laurent Blanc, despite the obviously pre-game insisted rare value of Over 3.5 market today, despite Montpellier's implied high score (remember the last away game vs Monaco), I didn't achieve at all the true probability of the final result and the turnaround from 1:4 to 5:4 as well...

Has anyone modeled that event pre-game? I'd love to read the impressions of eyewitnesses from the POL stadium if there are any. I think the video is unable to air all the visible and hidden accents.

Today’s gane of Olympiacos v Monaco in the final four of Euroleague, is the perfect example of what I previously described in this thread.
I believe the El Classico will be the same, and the final will also give an upset or near upset opportunity.

arbusers wrote: ↑

Fri May 19, 2023 5:33 pm

I believe the El Classico will be the same,

Very true. I took the opportunity at the 2nd time of +9 for Barca of the 3d quarter. Maximum performance.
I ll do the same for the finals. And I m also intrigued from the NBA playoffs. Thank you very much for sharing and of course thanks to the OP.

The EuroLeague Basketball 2023, The Final. Olympiacos Piraeus vs Real Madrid soon.

In general, I agree with the agencies' very preliminary opinion that the Olympiacos team is a favorite before the EuroLeague Final'2023 Kick-Off. But the leading pre-match odds aren't those I've calculated upon some probabilities, though.

Now some thoughts regarding the in-play markets.
In my opinion, the most important sports-tactical things on the pitch will mostly depend on how exactly the Hellenic team will initially build their game and react to certain things from the opponents.

The processing model you've selected requires input data for processing. While the set of various quantitative RAW data (A1, A2, A3..., Zn-1, Zn) via selected by you Stats, aren't hard for primary and secondary processing (they already have digit value), the right estimation of the set of selected by you qualitative factors (α1, α2, α3..., ωn-1, ωn) is required before the processing.

I'm pretty sure you've already got tons of Stats and various quantitative data, that's why I'm goin' to mention only just a few of the large array of quality factors, selected by me for further evaluation by my side:

- Chus Mateo's interpretation as an assistant of Pablo Laso regarding the naive lost EuroLeague Final 2022 vs Anadolu Efes.

Who exactly wins when the big real Favorite on the pitch (but so slim pre-match Favorite according to the agencies' odds) acts needlessly nervous in a very likely winnable game? And those unnecessary risky shootings instead of applying heavy tactical discipline at the end?

The original starting unstoppable game plan and game pace, whose components' ratio was brilliantly prepared by Pablo Laso against Anadolu Efes' current peculiarities and their sporting form on the 21st of May 2022, secured the Real team minimal but very safe +EV, and at the same time, secured them peace of mind through relatively riskless resource usability.
Why those tactics weren't defended in the third quarter the manner they were initially contrived, and totally abandoned in the fourth quarter?
And last but not least - even with the psychological meltdown in the last quarter, when Anadolu took a minimal advantage in terms of points and not in terms of supremacy, it was clear that the Real team still had a much better sporting potential to win, but why refused to cool down emotionally and to return to proven tactical discipline at least for one or two attacks and chose the most difficult decision that day?

- His contemporary vision as a head Coach and possible tactical management regarding similar events, if they happen?

Again, keep this in mind when preparing your analyses, the processing logic apparatus is not the same for a one-time final game, and for one tournament game from many in-a-row.

- The very deep understanding and analyses of "The five-games-long series of nightmares & horror vs Želimir Obradović's Partizan Belgrade". I mean the notable Play-Off for the History.
Here could be written five volumes of books for the five clashes. In short, the top-notch champions-like style Real played only in the fourth match of that series in Belgrade when the series become 2:2. Not to mention pure luck avoiding series elimination by 3:0 in the end of match number three. The "stunning" coming back from death, from conceded minus 18 (41:59), or if you prefer from 56:72 in the fifth match in Madrid wasn't their merit.
In general, a disappointing performance against a team with much less financial budget, playing with an wildcard to the Euroleague.

- Lessons learned from the Breogan team, 8th of April 2023, ACB.
- Baskonia, twice, March.
- Lessons from the contrasts in these two: Stable sink vs Unicaja, SemiFinal for the Coppa, February, with Deck and Tavares vs the win after the brilliant 4th quarter vs Unicaja, May, ACB, absent of both Deck and Tavares here!!!

- Various likelihoods regarding Tavares vs Olympiacos. I'm wondering if he fails here, who will be the second leader?

In brief, that classy team is full of instability indicators and selected Time Series, backed by the right Stats might be helpful.


When it comes to analyzing the quality of a Favorite, some of the qualitative factors that need to be evaluated properly are:

- The key to the Bartzokas' Fortress is hinted at by some of Itoudis' decisions in the five-match-series against Fenerbahçe. So calculations of the probability of extreme force and short-time supremacy applied by Real in a given period of time plus Mateo's orders similar to some of Itudis's are a must!

- The computation of the probability of relative neutralization of both Europe's MVP Vezenkov and Kostas Sloukas.
Again Itoudis (former Željko Obradović's assistant in PAO), match number four in Istanbul, Vezenkov 2pts for 29 min and Sloukas 3pts for 22 min.

- NBA possibility noise and the estimation of possible overreaction factor for Vezenkov.
And one more thing, almost hidden. When Sacramento's coach was in Piraeus to watch Vezenkov, I got the slight impression that it was somehow a hidden rule for the entire team that Vezenkov was not at his peak. Days later in an interview, Mike Brown hinted at something similar, he knows today that he didn't show his full potential but he's extremely valuable, etc. I hope I'm wrong, but if 1 percent is true, that's a hidden potential conflict within the Hellenic team. Neither Vezenkov nor Nicol Eleftheriadou would be happy about that.
Another possible psychological reaction might be thoughts the failed NBA stint of former Olympiacos player Tyler Dorsey at Dončić's Dallas Mavericks , etc.

And so on, and so forth.

The 10 points difference is a psychological barrier for the bettor and when Olympiacos was ahead for 12 points I started collecting value. Unfortunately for me I wasn't able to exploit the full potential of the game, because at the very same time the exit poll of the Greek election was announced and I had to take care of a cross arb at this very time.

But I wanted to talk about something else.
In these last 2-3 years there are 2 monumental shifts taking place in Basketball:

1st, the importance of 3 pointers. Games are decided by 3 pointers. And these 3 pointers are getting longer and longer. Soon we will see the majority of 3 pointers coming from 8m long. We will see many Stephen Currys, many Bane Prelevics, many Peja Stojakovics and less Antetokounmpos. That is why the best coaches out there, like Itoudis, are working with the psychology of the players.

2nd, the importance of luck in the game. But how would you define luck in this game? I came to the conclusion that some teams are luckier than others and this should be taken into account in combination with the fact that some teams lose it all and collapse instantly.

Clearly, Olympiacos is not a team that collapses, but Real Madrid is a very lucky team.

Lastly, the Euroleague and the NBA are both moving to uniformity in style of play.