Re: Dave Cokin, portrait of a fraud tout
Completely false. It doesn't matter who VI chooses, haters always going to have a problem with it, no matter how many they have eliminated.
I was waiting for you to show your ass in this thread as soon as the VI system was mentioned. The first tout site I used was Sharp Sports Betting. They required a line be widely available, defined as available at a certain percentage of offshore/Vegas sportsbooks. I don't remember ever seeing a complaint about a line grading there. Sometimes a tout would quote a line that wasn't widely available (usually not out of malice, more likely the line had moved while they were releasing or simply an error), a poster would point it out and the admins would always correct it.
It is trivially simple to look at feed with a bunch of legitimate offshore and Vegas books, and pick a line that's available or better at, say, 6 out of 20 books. That gives the tout an advantage over a strict consensus line to account for the ability to line shop, while removing outliers from square books that quickly boot winners or simply don't pay.
The most obvious issues with VI's system --
1) They allow the use of lines from casinos that have closed for the night. There is zero argument this is a legitimate practice, and yet you've defended the VI system for years.
2) One of their prominent advertisers is sportsbook.ag and they include that book in the system. Sportsbook.ag has a long history of stiffing winners. They stiffed me enough that I could buy something like 230 of your season packages with that money. Even people who've won as little as $500 have reported taking 4 months to get paid. It is absurd to quote lines from a sportsbook that can just arbitrarily choose not to pay winners if they so please.
3) The use of books like 5Dimes reduced juice feed, where, the limit is only $500 in the first place, if you consistently bet there when they have the best line out of however many books VI is currently using, your limits will be quickly zapped to $50, and once you win maybe $20,000-$30,000, you'll be outright booted.
Hilariously, when I brought up this issue in the past, you repeatedly claimed "You said Pinnacle is fine but they have reduced juice and now you're objecting to 5Dimes reduced juice," which is a blatant indicator of your complete ignorance of betting markets. Pinnacle takes higher limits than almost anybody, and will often take 10x, 20x, or even 100x as much as 5Dimes reduced juice will. The higher the betting limit, the more likely the line is to be indicative of a widely available line. A line available at one book for AT MOST a $500 limit, and less for those who bet in the style of VI grading (consistently betting there when they have the best line) is NOT a widely available line.