For those who have entered and played before, do you have any advice?
Do your own homework and tune everything/everyone else out.
I’m not in the “listen to everyone, follow no one” camp. I just cut it down to “listen to no one.” This takes hard work; but it’s not rocket science, and I know how to find the actual information (not an in truth opinion being sold by a tout as “information”) that I work with.
And don’t spend a lot of time on social media. It’s a major time and focus leak. (Ah, if I only followed my own advice, lol . . . .)
So far, so good.
How much time were you putting in to coming up with your five selections.
When I’m not working a day job, basically every reasonably available working hour during the week and – during the offseason – extensive offseason tracking of personnel moves and other general research that I’ve held to look at until the offseason. (I try to avoid making picks in-season based on unvetted research ideas that I have or see in-season.)
When I’m instead dragging around a day job ball and chain, that all gets stripped down to what I can do with the time available after work and working out to maintain my health, both in-season and during the offseason.
To put all that in perspective, however, I basically just do the NFL anyway, even vis-a-vis live betting. So it’s not like I typically would be looking at, e.g., college football from a betting perspective in season. I focus on the one thing, as much as I can in my situation at the time, for the entire year.
Maybe there's something that I'm not even considering in making my decision to move forward or not?
To me at least, it seems easier to beat a couple of hundred or so mostly sharps than it is to beat 3000 plus entries, including statistical outliers with people with, e.g., a mindless jersey-color “system” that just happened to hit 65% that year. [Semi-tongue-in-cheek.]
That’s why I plonked down the 5K also for the SuperContest Gold this past year.
There are a fair number of sharps also over in the SuperContest Classic (regarding Rail’s other point comparing the SuperContest to the Golden Nugget contest), but there’s of course also that deluge of over 3000 total entries that drags the – overall – win percentage down in that contest.
Either way, I wouldn’t worry specifically about going against sharps. My rookie year in 2004, I beat 400 out of 405 entries, with there likely being a few sharps in that 400. And no one had ever heard of Squarepants (the SuperContest alias, not the toon) before. Just do your own homework and if you have any aptitude at this, you’ll have as decent a chance as anyone else in a given year’s 85-game sample, sharps included.
It's only an 85-game sample.
To reinforce John's point, Keith . . . one pass glancing off a WR’s fingertips, or not; one bad call; one bonehead time management decision by a head coach; etc., etc., etc., going your way or not even only just once every other week during the season can make the difference in 8 to 9 spread decisions over the course of a season. 8.5 picks is 10% of the 85 plays in the contest, a difference between a nice payout at 65% or no return at 55%.
That all may even out over time for a bettor. But 85 plays is like an 800 meter race run at pretty close to a full on sprint at an elite level, not a 10K (although it instead will feel like a marathon for you personally over 17 weeks). It may not even out for you on only 85 plays within one NFL season.
So luck – or the random distribution of expected results or whatever the math guys like ComptrBob call it – definitely is involved.
skip the Thursday game, I came in 3rd in 2000, Friday inj report is important. squarepants put plays in the last 30 mins, probably for line moves
I’m with Rail on skipping ThNF for contest plays.
But there are others that are adamant basically that (a) in their mind it’s foolish to skip ThNF when they see big “value” in that particular game; and (b) the information that comes in after ThNF, like the Friday night injury report, isn’t significant to their appraisal of "value" on their 5 picks as a whole.
Some of those guys have done quite well in the contests, IIRC.
For me, particularly when I’m working, I’m not close to being finished with my overall process by ThNF; and, especially when I’m working, cutting my NFL workload by the one game helps me in getting more or less through my process on the rest of the board.
And I like to have as much information as I can get – including, e.g., both injury information and market information – before pulling the trigger.
So, Rail is right, I’m usually there in that last hour, particularly when I’m also working, as Friday evening and Saturday morning I’m racing to get through my process even without regard to watching for any late line moves or injury information.
My internal and at times public research going back through 2011 tells at least me that just mechanically playing line moves won’t win the SuperContest. You’d almost definitely make money at the windows each year if you could make five NFL bets with Wednesday afternoon’s lines on Saturday morning. But to hit the uber high results needed these days for a contest win with the large fields (and also taking into account that the lines used to be posted on Tuesday rather than Wednesday) . . . .
But if folks feel differently, I certainly hope they enter the contests and put their money in the prize pool for me to take a shot at, even if it is a long shot for me going in each and every year.
