Re: Value 101
<table id="post1968167" class="tborder" align="center" border="0" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tbody><tr valign="top"><td class="alt1" id="td_post_1968167" style="border-right: 1px solid rgb(43, 41, 94);"> I'll do my best here to shed some light on this situation. Keep in mind that this discussion is on CBB even though the same concepts apply for the NBA though the push rates on some #s are different.
Any wager made at -110 has to hit at a 52.38% rate (110/210) to break even. Any wager made at -170 has to hit at a 62.96% rate (170/270) to break even. So the 3 points you are buying have to be worth 10.58% (the difference between 52.38% and 62.96%) or more to make buying the 3 points a better proposition than just playing the market # at -110. FWIW, each half point you buy after the 1st theoretically cost less than the last though it seems you are paying the same 10 cents for each half a point. Let me show you how this works. A bet made at -100 has to hit 50% (100/200) of the time to breakeven. At -110 the bet has to hit at 52.38% (110/210)to break even. So those 10 cents are worth 2.38% (the difference between 50% and 52.38%). Here are the following 10 cent buy break even rates:
-100 50% (100/200)
-110 52.38% (110/210) 2.38% more
-120 54.55% (120/220) 2.17% more
-130 56.52% (130/230) 1.97% more
-140 58.33% (140/240) 1.81% more
-150 60% (150/250) 1.67% more
-160 61.54% (160/260) 1.54% more
-170 62.96% (170/270) 1.42% more
So as you can see here the farther you get away from -100 the less the cents are worth. Another words all cents are not equal and generally speaking the more points you can buy in sequence the better being that you are theoretically paying less for each additional half a point.
I've ran numerous ranges on my cbb database last night to be sure not to misinform here in this post. The conclusion I have come to is that it is better to buy the 3 points from -110 to -170 with all favs between 4.5 and 20 and all dogs between 1.5 and 17 in CBB. Once the fav gets over 20 the samples get small and I don't trust the data as much though it does start to indicate that the points start becoming worth a little less once the spread gets that high. The thing you want to avoid when buying 3 points is buying the 1 or zero because the 1 is worth less than the 2-20(meaning less games land on 1 than 2,3,4,5,etc) individual and the zero is obviously worth 0 (being that a game can't land on 0 via OT). Generally speaking all the points from 2-20 are roughly worth 4% with the exception of the 3 being worth close to 5%. I've come to this conclusion by running ranges of games that correspond to the given pointspread. EX For a 5 point fav I ran all games with favs between -2 and -8. In this 2833 game sample the fav covers -5 49.7% of the time. Now when I make this a -2 point favorite using this same set of 2833 game the fav covers the -2 63.5% of the time. So this bet at -2 is 13.8% (difference between 63.5% and 49.7%)better than the bet at -5 and you are only paying 10.58% going from -110 to -170 (shown in the paragraph above). This example from -5 to -2 same as the dog going from +2 to +5 is one of very few where you can show a profit long term from just single handedly buying the 3 points. Another words if -5 is a 50% proposition then buying 3 points down to -2 would be a 63.8% proposition being that those 3 points are worth 13.8% (shown above). We saw above that at -170 you have to hit 62.96% to break even and now this bet at -2 hits at 63.8% making this a +EV bet solely by buying 3 valuable points. Tack on a 1-2% opinion (meaning you handicapping gives the 5 point fav a small edge) and you now have a pretty damn good bet at -2 -170.
All other consecutive 3 point sequences that are between 2-20 that don't include the slightly heavier 3 are worth approx 12% (4-7,6-9,10-13,11-14, etc). So it is better in all of those spots to buy the 3 points being that we are only paying 10.58% (see above)for the extra 12% in winners we pick up.
Now the extreme worst situation to buy these points would be crossing the zero. Going from -1.5 -110 to +1.5 -170 would be about the worst thing ou could ever do being that you are essential buying a completely worthless point ion the 0, and the 2 most worthless points after that being the -1 and +1. In this example you would be gaining about 6% with the buy being that those 1's are worth about 3% each and paying 10.58% for them thus making your bet 4.58% (difference between 10.58% and 6%) worse buying than it originally was.
Sidenote: Playing with different total ranges I unexpectedly found that it barely changed the value of the points you are buying if any at all.
Long story short (too late for that) is that most of the time it is correct to buy 3 pts for 10 cents a half point in cbb but not all of the time. I hope this sheds a little light on this subject.
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