This is true. There are more dog bettors out there now and this in turns creates some good chalk lines.

The best part is that 95% of these ‘edgy’ dog bettors are consistently playing the wrong pups.

Squeeky has mentioned this before, but a lot of the so called contrarians out there are fakes. They play some of the proper sides, but they water them down with a bunch of borderlines plays that only contain value in their own minds.

I don’t think contrarianism can ever be stemmed. There is just too much dumb money out there.

Vegaswatch,

I think that is a good analogy. It took me almost two full years to get comfortable dropping large sums on unpalatable sides. I am not sure if I would ever gotten used to it if I was getting to play good teams along the way.

“While overall, DIPS theory—which states that pitchers have little control over whether or not a ball put into play becomes a hit—has been shown to work pretty well, it has also become clear that it does not apply consistently to every pitcher.

For example, in his second version of DIPS, McCracken adjusted for the fact that knuckleballers tend to allow lower batting averages on balls in play (BABIP) than the average pitcher, and that lefties tend to allow more hits on balls in play.”

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/dips-again/

“While overall, DIPS theory—which states that pitchers have little control over whether or not a ball put into play becomes a hit—has been shown to work pretty well, it has also become clear that it does not apply consistently to every pitcher…For example, in his second version of DIPS, McCracken adjusted for the fact that knuckleballers tend to allow lower batting averages on balls in play (BABIP) than the average pitcher, and that lefties tend to allow more hits on balls in play.”

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/dips-again/

Ok, off-topic, but I’ll bite. For whom are these not true? Because I am still clinging to the notion that they are, indeed, true.

This, at least in my fucked up mind, is reminiscent of the whole sabermetric “revolution” or what have you. At the beginning, you have these shocking revelations like “Clutch hitting doesn’t exist”, and “Pitchers have no control over balls in play”. These, like never laying chalk, are for the most part correct, but not 100%. Over time, people establish that the original statements were generally true, but not all the time.

Point being, it seems like the way to perfect the “contrarian” strategy is to go way overboard with it at first- say, never play a single favorite- learn that, understand that, and then adjust it to something less dramatic.

If that makes sense. Which I doubt.

Don’t forget that four years ago, contrarian chalk was very hard to come by. It’s only been in the last eighteen months or so that the average square bettor has learned about the “edge” that there is with dogs and Vegas has started setting lines to trap them.

When I first started applying contrarian thinking to betting, I would refuse to even consider playing popular name teams like the 2008 Celtics, regardless of circumstance.

In a way this was good because I got used to backing bad teams in a hurry, but it was still way too narrow of a way to think.

I am not saying that it is a good idea to run around laying chalk on a consistent basis with the best teams in the league, but sometimes the circumstances will justify it.

Very slipper slope though.

When you say smarter and more open-minded, do you just mean an ability to use math on props? Or do you mean something else? I agree, I was at first dismissive of NFL Teasers being +EV (through the 3,4,6,7 and especially those with smaller O/Us) but I’m starting to change my tune slightly as I learn more of the math behind it (I still haven’t bet any, but I’m not completely laughing at the thought.)

I like it, especially at + money like you got on the first bet. I think your average idiot would make a snap judgment towards Cleveland.

Stuff like that happens all the time. They probably have a matrix that automatically updates odds as they are bet into. Somebody must have recently played Boston to sweep.

Zach,

I used Boston -3.5