First, I think this is the most fascinating site for sports betting. Can I say it's ahead of its time? The consensus page alone is an interesting study from day-to-day. Just simple facts: 4,000 people "bet" on the Notre Dame Alabama compared to 4,500 for a regular season NFL game, 1,700 on typical college basketball games and 2,300 on typical NBA games. Would have never thought that college football was that low. Would never have thought that 64 % of the public would have taken Notre Dame.
But why are the winners of the league contest based on these people who bet on EVERY SINGLE GAME: both over/under and pointspread. I mean consider our NFL regular season champion, elizalovesolly. Bless her heart last Saturday - she thoughtfully placed 143 separate bets across the board. If I was to track her, I would have lost 30,000 dollars in December and this was prime time for her "skill" sport, NFL football. Is this really the sign of a champion? Is this how Billy Walters bets on a given sports Saturday - laying 143 separate bets for 500 (or 5,000 or 50,000) a pop?
But, in 2012, she did go 261-181 on NFL games equating to being up 30,000. It's just that in every other sport since March 2012 when she joined, she's down 22,000, 28,000 and 24,000.
I've got nothing against Eliza. But she's an average nobody like the rest of us, myself included. She happened to get a cross section of her upside picks in the NFL contest. Overall, nothing special except stamina to day-after-day fill in 100-200 dots.
So here's to the league contests becoming just a little more realistic compared to real betting. Give each person a "budget" of 5,000 a day to bet. If they want to spend it all on one game, let 'em do it. If they really have the inside scoop on 100-200 picks, like Eliza does, they can spend 50 a game and go for it. I'd honestly like to see if among our amateur crowd we have a future (or current) Billy Walters. With the current contests, we don't know what we have