Swimming with the sharks

Swimming with the sharks…

When we first started I knew that often the very first people to try any new site that somehow deals with money are always looking to find ways to take advantage of any existing system and exploit it for their own financial gain. This is sometimes done legally and sometimes done by trying to hack into the system or look for software loopholes. At any rate the early adopters often times are great sources for testing the flaws in your existing system.

For example, when we were still working with Matchbook the first Teaser users were almost all looking for Wong style teasers that crossed the 7 or 3 barrier. Nothing wrong with that but it illustrates the point that weaknesses were being probed. The first Parlay users were looking for correlations, and errors in the software that might allow normally prohibited correlations like large football spreads and totals in some circumstances.

We have looked on these people as very valuable guides on how to improve our systems.

So whenever we see one of these types make a wager our first assumption is that we are doing something wrong. Sometimes that is the case but sometimes it appears to be more like a sharp player who maybe is working for a syndicate or knows what the syndicate plays will be. Sometimes, it is just our wild imagination.

A recent example is the number of wagers we are receiving on cycling matchups. Almost every wager has had the line move in their favor after they placed the wager. So they wagered at -145 and the line is now -180 for instance. Either, they are psychic, the world’s greatest cycling handicappers, they know where the action is going or our imagination is acting up again. Don’t worry, we don’t penalize people for being smart.

We will continue to keep our eyes open and keep learning.