Well, what the odds makers want to do is get the same amount of money to be bet on each team in a game. And if that happens, because of the 10 to the 11 odds, the losers pay off the winners and there's a little bit money left over for the casino. So if there are two bettors on a game and each bet's $11, that's $22 bet, and one wins, the other loses.
So the $10 pay is paid off out the $11, that's a $1 left for the casino. 1 out of 22 is 4.5%. So if the casino gets an even split of the money on a game, then they make a 4.5% profit on that game. It doesn't matter which team wins. So that's what they want to do. Now, if one team has an 80% chance of winning and the other team has a 20% chance of winning, whatever that means, but everybody likes the 20% team, then the point spread is going to be shifted https://casinoslots-sa.co.za/online-casino-list. So to get more money bet on the team, that really should be the one that everybody's betting on. So the betting public is foolish, the point spread may give a statistical advantage to the smart bettor who knows that the money's coming in on the wrong team. So that's different from roulette. On the other hand, if the betting public is-- it's different from roulette in the sense that it's sort of like the stock market. The odds are determined by the public, and if the public doesn't know what they're doing, the bettor who does know what he or she's doing can take advantage of that situation. On the other hand, if the betting public is smart, equalizing the betting action will also equalize each team's chance of winning, and the game will be equivalent to a coin toss. So you don't want to get 10:11 odds for betting on a coin toss. So in order to win in the long run, you have to find situations in which the betting public isn't smart. In other words, in which your chance of winning is greater than 50%. So it turns out that if you just look at some basic situations, like how often does the home team win, well if you look at the years 1993 to the present, the home team actually wins the game almost 60% of the time. But when you factor in the point spread, it's almost a 50/50 split. So if you just think I'm just going to bet on the home team because I know they win 60% of the time, you're going to lose because the point spread completely equalizes that. So what do people do? Well, in one form or another, a lot of sports bettors do data mining. Of course, some of them don't actually use software, they just pour through data by hand. But nowadays there are a lot of sophisticated sports bettors who actually use software. So in general, data mining software is used to find predictive patterns in large data sets. So people use data mining for all kinds of things-- investment strategies, web surfing patterns just to try to find patterns. I wrote some software to search football data that sort of points out some of the issues of data mining. I was actually motivated by badgering from some attorney friends who were avid sports bettors and didn't like doing all the stuff by hand. They thought it would be great to automate the process of trying to find good betting situations. So I did that a couple years ago. It basically uses sequel to query a football database. It has a user-friendly interface necessary for lawyers. There's a procedure in the software that automatically generates query, so it does a random queries. And it finds good results and saves them in a separate file, and just forgets about bad results where good means better than coin tossing. So it uncovers trends or possibly-- it uncovers trends that the user wouldn't think of. There's no best strategy when you look for patterns like this. But instead you try to collect a bunch of good strategies, such as it turns out that by data mining from 2000 to 2006, the Baltimore Ravens were 17 and 3 versus the point spread. That's an 85% success record when they lost their previous game and their opponents play their previous game on the road. So the question, of course, is for any thoughtful data miner, is this really meaningful or is it just a random coincidence that you found by data mining? So first of all, you have to define what a good strategy is. Win percentage doesn't work because 1 and zero is 100%, and that's, of course, meaningless. 17 and 3 is only 85%. So as I mentioned a minute ago, one way to define good, or weird, or out of the ordinary is to compare the strategy to an appropriate probability distribution. In this case, coin tossing. So you see if the strategy does a lot better than coin tossing. It turns out that that 7 and 3 record of the Ravens, if that's really coin tossing. In other words, if it's just a random fluke. The chance of getting something like that is about 1 in 1,000. So just use the binomial distribution. For those of you who know basic probability distributions, the chance of getting 17 and 3 are better, out of 20 is about 1 in 1,000. So a statistician would reject the null hypothesis, which means you would say that's not just chance. So in other words, that would be considered, in some context, a good strategy. So the question is should you bet on Baltimore in this situation? Well, interestingly enough, technology changes the meaning of unlikely and context in situations like this. There's something called the law of very large numbers, which says given enough opportunity, weird things happen just due to chance. So when you're mining through data doing lots of queries, saving the good ones-- by good, I mean good compared to coin tossing-- discarding the bad ones, the meaning of 1 in 1,000 sort of changes a little bit. So in fact, using a modest PC, this particular data mining software does about 1,000 queries a minute when it's doing the automated query thing. It's generating queries at random, analyzing to see if they're better than coin tossing, saving them in a file if they are. Anyway, that's lots of opportunity for weird things to happen just due to chance. So even if you generate this data by tossing coins, you'll find 17 in 3 result about once a minute. And you can turn this on and let it run all night, so you can find all kinds of great stuff. So statisticians consider something statistically significant if the chance of occurring is less than 1 in 20 under a suitable hypothesis. In the data mining environment, even 1 in 1,000 doesn't necessarily mean rule out chance. So more generally, these kinds of techniques in which you're doing repeated queries and analyzing them sort of comes under the general heading of multiple comparisons. You're testing lots of statistical hypotheses at once. What happens is you might find some useful things. You might find some strategies in which you'll win money, but a lot of the stuff you're going to find is just random stuff. So that's one of the issues with-- it's one of the big issues when you're doing things like data mining of this type that you have to deal with. And of course, there are some standard procedures for dealing with that. The main remedy is you apply your strategy that you've developed by looking at some data to a fresh set of data and see how it works there. So what statisticians would call it, or decision theorists, you'd have a training sample and then a new data set that you'd apply your thing to. So if it's just due to chance from mining the training set, it won't work on the new data. Or you can do a simulation, do a lot of random queries and compare your results to a probability model. So for example, if you're doing a lot of random queries on this football data, and you draw a graph of the results, you should see a record of 17 and 3 occurring with a frequency of about 1 in 1,000 if it's just due to chance. If you get some weird pattern in your histogram or whatever graph you're looking at, then maybe there's something other than coin tossing going on. Any questions so far? AUDIENCE: Well, it seems like you could also just bet on all of these clues. And the ones which are still-- which are useless are going to be 50/50 for you. It would be a small amount, as we've seen today. And the ones which are actually useful will win the money. DR. MICHAEL ORKIN: That's exactly what lots of people do, except with the part about winning money. It turns out that the 10:11 are a little bit deceptive, and you have to win more than 52.4% of the time in order to make a profit because of that. But that is a standard strategy. People they, either by hand or using software, find lots of these types of situations that look like they give you an edge, and they'll just bet on them. And they'll even write them, like this one's really good. So I'll bet more on the one that's really good than the one that's just sort of good, and I think some people are modestly successful doing things like that. Any other questions? So let's see, an earlier version of the software was featured in Wired magazine in 2002 in the street credit section. But let's actually look at the software for a sec, if I can get it up Here So this is called the optimizer. Let's say you want to see how the home team does from-- so it has this sort of user-friendly interface-- 2001 to 2006 in the month of September. Can you see that? I guess you can sort of see it. You get the statistics, and you can see that the home team from 2001 to the present, not including last week's games. So SU means straight up, they're 144 and 110. They won close to 57% of their games. But versus the point spread they're almost 50/50 at home-- this is just the home team. And this Z-value is sort of that's the measure of how far away from coin tossing it is. A Z-value, a large Z-value means very unlikely under coin tossing. There's another kind of bet in football called the over/under where you bet on whether the total score will be over or under a particular number. So this software keeps track of that, too. So if I wanted to look at a particular team, let's look at Atlanta. How did they do in September? So Atlanta's 5 and 3 on the road, 4 and 4 at home versus a spread in September and so on. Suppose I wanted to see which team had the best September record, looking at all records of this type. I just click optimize and I see that Jacksonville is actually 12 and 4 versus the spread in September, which gives them a-- so that's another one of these good records. So you can also look at what happened in the last game, won or loss. So let's look at games where the home team-- just playing around here-- won their last game and played at home in their last game, how did they do? So pretty much 50/50 against the spread. So this is basically just a statement of the query up here. Then you can also look at a list of the games for that query.
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LAURA: So do you want to hire us? ASHLEY: No. MARISHA: You would be like our boss. Have you ever wanted to be a boss? Like, in charge? ASHLEY: Well, I am.
LAURA: We could ask you for days off sometimes. MATT: A heavy greenish-grey-skinned mitt slaps onto Beau's shoulder, as you glance over to see the large, well-groomed half-orc man standing there. "I'm terribly sorry, but we've got it taken "care of. If you wish to pay entry, you can, but the rules are the rules. So sorry." LIAM: Do they get stored in some sort of locker or something? ASHLEY: I hold them. And if you want, I can stand right next to you guys. You can keep your eye on me the whole time. TALIESIN: She's very trustworthy. LIAM: That seems fair-ish to me. MATT: "Yasha, does that seem-- all right." MARISHA: I look at him as I take his hand off. What's your name, by the by? MATT: "Bo." MARISHA: Good name. MATT: "Thank you." LIAM: Well, that's funny, because your name is also Beau. MATT: "Really?" MARISHA: You didn't have to-- maybe let me choose when to tell people-- MATT: "No, no, I'm curious about this. How do you spell your name?" MARISHA: Well, it's short for Beauregard. MATT: "Oh, mine's just B-O." MARISHA: That's unfortunate. I mean, it's great. Did kids make fun-- never mind. MATT: "It's not inaccurate." And he flicks the side of his mustache. (laughter) LAURA: Like, is his mustache especially B.O.-y? Like, what? That's really gross. MATT: Make a perception check. LAURA: Ew. I don't want to perceive this. I'm glad I didn't roll very well. MARISHA: Can I make an insight check? Is he a creep or is he just-- MATT: Make an insight check. Eight? Thankfully, you're not in proximity enough to catch a whiff of his mustache. MARISHA: Natural 20. MATT: Okay. Interestingly enough, he seems very well put-together. And he seems like he's just fucking with you. He's having fun, and he's messing with you, and he's just casual and competent and actually pretty well-groomed. He doesn't smell. And he seems more just enjoying the discourse. MARISHA: It's funny, see, my name's Beau because my parents wanted a son. MATT: "Well. If it helps with any other confusion, call me the Breaker. Well, if you see the rest of "the show, perhaps you'll see why I got my name." LAURA: Are you in the show, too? MATT: And he cracks his arms. "I am. Towards the end." TRAVIS: Now I want to see the show. MATT: "Well then. May I?" You can see now the crowd's starting to queue up behind you pretty heavily. "Besides, if you're going to enter, we've got to get through the rest of this riff-raff. Do "you wish to join in?" LIAM: I pull-- all I have is a dagger, but I just hand it to Yasha. LAURA: Just one dagger? ASHLEY: I promise you I will give it back. LIAM: Yes, here you go. ASHLEY: I promise you I will give you all of your weapons back. LAURA: Pinky-swear me, Yasha. ASHLEY: Ugh. I don't like-- LAURA: Yeah! Now we're best friends. Here's my sickle. MARISHA: I have a staff, but I also use it as a walking stick, so I like to keep it on me. TALIESIN: Can you not walk around without it or something? LAURA: She has a really bad limp. MARISHA: Sometimes I get a little twinge, a little disc issue. TALIESIN: Can you hand me your staff so I can watch this? I want to see this limp of yours. Purely for my own entertainment. MARISHA: Are you patronizing me, Mollymauk? TALIESIN: No, I'm hoping that you're going to patronize us. (laughter) MARISHA: Can I keep my stick? (laughter) ASHLEY: How about this? I'll take it, and I can just carry you to your seat. MARISHA: Deal. LAURA: How are you carrying all of these weapons? ASHLEY: Because I'm really fucking strong. (laughter) ASHLEY: You. Can I give him a pat-down, because you're-- MATT: Sure, roll an investigation check. I'll give you advantage because you're really good at this. LIAM: I open up the coat just so she can see the books. ASHLEY: I don't think I find anything. 12. MATT: You find two books and a modicum of change and nothing else on him. He's actually pretty sparse as far as collectibles and keepsakes. ASHLEY: I just thought your chest looked rather square, so I wanted to see what was happening. LIAM: I'm practically concave. Is it concave or convex, I forget? ALL: Concave. MARISHA: Convex would be funny. (laughter) SAM: I'll hand her my shortsword, but not my little crossbow. MATT: Okay, make a sleight-of-hand check to try and hide that. SAM: Four. Oh, wait. 12. MATT: You have advantage on that, technically, right? Dexterity checks? SAM: Well, did you give me dexterity or just stealth? How does that work? LAURA: I think it's just stealth checks with the blessing. MATT: Let me double-check that real fast. ALL: Going to the book. MATT: What the heck! SAM: We're playing First Edition, right? MATT: No, it is stealth. You're correct. Yeah. LAURA: Sorry, I wish I wouldn't have said it and then you could have had advantage just then, but I'm not a cheater. SAM: No, you're not. LIAM: Out of game. MATT: You see him slowly pocketing this crossbow. ASHLEY: No, no, no. Little girl. SAM: I'm just a little girl. ASHLEY: Give me your other weapon. SAM: This is a toy for little children. All right, here. I'm sorry. LAURA: Are you keeping track of what goes with what person? Because it's a lot. TALIESIN: She's very good at this. ASHLEY: I'm very good. LIAM: I just drag Nott five feet over. That is two strikes against you. I think we should really just sort of enjoy the show tonight. SAM: All right. But what if someone attacks us? LIAM: Well, I'll handle that for you, okay? SAM: All right. MARISHA: Also, little girls don't tend to tell people they're little girls. SAM: This is my first time. (laughter) LIAM: When someone is a goblin in the middle of a town where people hate goblins-- LAURA: Stop saying the word 'goblin'. People are going to hear you. SAM: I mean, she's kind of right. (laughter) LIAM: Technically, I dragged her away, but you know, D&D is funny with what is known and not. TALIESIN: I heard you over the earring. ALL: Aww. LIAM: RIP. ASHLEY: Wait, I didn't get your weapon. TRAVIS: Hah. ASHLEY: Do you want to stare at me all day, or do you want to give me the weapon so you can go watch the show? TRAVIS: That's an interesting choice. ASHLEY: It's not really a choice. TRAVIS: Sure. MATT: What do you pull out? TRAVIS: My falchion. SAM: Your what? MATT: A falchion, a large, curved sword, emerges from a sheath on his back. SAM: What is that? ALL: It's a large, curved sword. (laughter) ASHLEY: I twist it around a little. Play with it. This is nice. TALIESIN: Very nice. ASHLEY: I like it. SAM: It's a falchion! LAURA: You're going to hang out with us the whole night? ASHLEY: I'll hang out beside you so you can watch. MATT: Make a perception check. TRAVIS: 11. MATT: 11, that's enough. As she spins the falchion around, you notice that, affixed to her back, in uncharacteristically clean leather towards the rest of her outfit, what appears to be a slung-over sheath and a very large bladed weapon, larger than your falchion, affixed to her back. MARISHA: I just like how everyone says 'falchion'. LIAM: It's pronounced 'felching'. (laughter) TALIESIN: I'm going to pick up my cards in a very specific order very quickly and start stacking the deck. ASHLEY: All right, well. If you want to follow me, I'll take you to your seats and I'll stand beside you the whole time. TRAVIS: Fucking lead the way. TALIESIN: Hey, Jester. Before you go. Tiefling to tiefling, and thank you for keeping this rabble in check. LAURA: Of course, you know, they're a lot to handle. TALIESIN: One on the house. And I pull two cards. LAURA: Yes? What are you telling me? TALIESIN: I pull the Moon and I pull the Shadow. Does this mean anything to you? LAURA: Oh, yes. TALIESIN: Well, think about it. Put it away. ASHLEY: Beau. MATT: Both her and the half-orc turn to you. ASHLEY: Little one. I just go over and I fireman-style over my shoulder. Since you can't walk. MARISHA: Oh. (laughter) MATT: Just carries her right in. Perfect. Folks begin to prod their heads out into the open air, curious about the source of this unusual din, and you find your vision capturing a small procession of flamboyantly dressed people parading through the central road. A lanky man of some obvious elven descent leads the pack, his long, ashy-brown hair curling ever-so-slightly past his mid-back, his long coat and tails knocking around by his skipping step. Two halfling women in purple and green bodysuits dance from side to side, handing flowers to children and flyers to adults, as a bald man in a neck-frilled frock coat of bright red, his face adorned in vibrant orange makeup to look like the setting sun behind him, plays the violin that you heard earlier in an upbeat, jovial manner. A tall half-orc masculine man with a well-groomed handlebar mustache that curves out to the side, billowing white silk shirt and black trousers, follows behind with a big drum slung over his shoulder, going (drumming) along with the fiddle. The tiefling man of lavender skin that you saw earlier walks along with a grin, juggling two curved scimitars as he walks in place, almost loses one and catches it, continues to go.
Families are beginning to gather out to see this display. The two dancers part, and then a woman of short, fiery red hair and dark skin walking between them, lifting a small candle before-- fwoosh! A giant burst, a gout of flame emerges from the front of her mouth, brightens the vicinity, and everyone collectively gasps and begins cheering and clapping as they continue the walk. There, to the back of it, you see the rather burly-looking pale woman, arms crossed, just following behind and keeping an eye like a security guard to ensure that no business gets out of hand. The gasps and the cheers begin to follow, and as the procession continues down its way, the families and civilians begin to gather and follow behind. As the last bit of the sun sets behind the mountain range, the torches glowing, the procession curves through the center of the Loch Ward to the edge of the Ustaloch itself. Through the fishing village, more folks begin to gather. Do you all follow? ALL: Yeah. LAURA: And I cast Blessing of the Trickster on you again, just in case. SAM: Thank you. MATT: People following the parade, you see faces, eager for this fresh form of entertainment. Children laugh and chatter excitedly, while the Crown's Guard in their familiar bronze and vermilion uniform try to maintain order between themselves being quite curious or visibly mistrusting of these hooligans that suddenly have usurped the evening air. The procession continues towards the eastern side, out along the southern edge of this Loch Ward, to the Ustaloch's southern place, towards the new, completely constructed, large, dark blue tent. Lengthy streamers of white and silver flap with the cold winds from the top of the structure. As you guys walk, you watch as the horned tiefling you had approached earlier slowly saunters up to your side, you recognizing these individuals you had spoken with earlier. MARISHA: I go, Molly! Molly, hey! TALIESIN: Oh, it's my favorites. Hello. LAURA: We came! TALIESIN: I'm so glad you all came to see the show. It's going to be great tonight. ASHLEY: (deadpan) It's going to blow you away. (laughter) SAM: The hype continues. ASHLEY: You're going to love it. TALIESIN: First show of a round's always the best. Without fail. MARISHA: Where are the best seats? TALIESIN: Well, I'm always partial to the front. Then you're right in it, if something goes wrong, it's nothing between you and whatever terrible, bloody mess is going to happen. It's just the best. MARISHA: What? TALIESIN: Nothing, nothing, you're fine. ASHLEY: It's going to be great, but before you go in, I do have to give you guys a pat-down, 'cause you can't go in with any weapons. MATT: At this point, a voice rings out behind you, you see as the carnival master Gustav glances over your shoulder and goes, "You two, skip ahead, quick. We need to go ahead and set up. Looks like "we're already having quite a few people excited to come here, so at the door, interior to set up. "Meet us at the front. Actually, you know what? You'll be on card duty. We need a little extra "change on the side." TALIESIN: Card duty it is. MATT: "All right. Folks, excited for your patronage." As he spins around and addresses the whole crowd now and says, "Enjoy the night air. Walk slowly. We need just a moment to set up." And the half-elf man bows and tips his large-- it looks almost like a top hat that gets floppy towards the top and flops forward, and he puts it back on top and begins sauntering, continuing the music, but picking up their pace to get ahead of the crowd as they draw you all slowly towards the exterior tent. And that's where we're going to go ahead and take our break. (yelling) TRAVIS: Face is on fire. LAURA: Am I the only one going, do we really have to give up our weapons? I don't feel okay with this. SAM: Ashley, I'll do whatever you want, but if you take my weapons I might kill you. ASHLEY: I'd like to see you try. (yelling) MATT: All right, so. We'll be back here in a few minutes. We're going to take a quick break. We have our weekly giveaway from our friends at Wyrmwood. We have a white oak complete dice tower system that's a three-piece set. That's going to be given away to one of you there in the chat. The password, if I recall, is 'beginnings'. Yeah. This one. If you're in the Twitch chat, if you want to be part of this, when you're prompted there, go ahead and enter the word 'beginnings' once. If you enter it more than once, you'll get disqualified, so be careful with that. Otherwise, it gets this spamming spree of chaos. So the word is 'beginnings'. When prompted, go ahead and enter that, and we'll come back from the break with the winner of that. Regardless, guys, welcome to the beginning of the new campaign. (yelling) MATT: We'll see you here in a few minutes. LIAM: Magic! LAURA: Magic! [break] MATT: Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. Guys! Wow! LIAM: Grenade lobbed in by Foster at the last second. MATT: I know. Welcome back. So, first and foremost, we have our winner of the white oak complete dice tower from our friends at Wyrmwood. The winner is GTDevoto. Congratulations. Denova will reach out to you and get your contact information. Everyone else, thank you for entering. We'll have more with each future episode of Critical Role, thanks to our friends at Wyrmwood Gaming. Also, as a heads-up for those who aren't familiar and for those who may be, we have a Tuesday aftershow of this called Talks Machina where our friend W. Brian Foster Esq., just mixing up all of his names-- you guys know him, Brian W. Foster, friend of the show, is the host of the show, and he'll be there Tuesday talking about this episode tonight with some of the cast. 7PM Pacific time on Tuesday. So. Anyway. (laughter) MATT: Bringing us back. TRAVIS: Bring that ass back. SAM: Five dragons swoop down. (laughter) MATT: It's so hackneyed. As you guys begin to approach the outside of this large, dark navy tent, people are being inspected and ushered through by the well-groomed half-orc on one side, and the pale woman, Yasha, you met for a second time approaching the outskirts of this carnival, with entry fees being collected by both as people begin to pass into this large structure. A few feet off to the side, you see a small crowd gathered around Mollymauk, who is sitting atop a small blanket and has cards splayed before him, a similar set that you saw Jester toying with earlier, and a farmer sits across from him, listening intently. "All right, so what can you "tell me about this here cough?" TALIESIN: How long have you had it? MATT: "Oh, going on like three, four months." (coughs) TALIESIN: It looks like it's getting better. Oh yes. Does it feel like it's getting better? MATT: "Oh, right now? Yeah." TALIESIN: Yeah, look at that. I would maybe breathe a tincture or something. Let's-- yeah, maybe you should get that looked at. MATT: "From who? What do the cards tell me?" TALIESIN: Some sort of physician, perhaps. MATT: "Right! Of course! Oh, thank you so much." And he places a-- TALIESIN: Platinum Dragon be with you. Thank you. MATT: Stands up. "Dear, a physician!" And he walks off. (laughter) MARISHA: What happened to 'no sick people'? TALIESIN: This is outside the tent. MATT: Yeah, he doesn't enter the tent. He goes off to the side. MARISHA: Fair. TALIESIN: It's good to see you all here, though. LAURA: Here's the thing. Some of us have weapons that we don't want to pass away to other people, so how much of a chance is it that we could get through without having to do that, you know? ASHLEY: Well, you can't see the show if you have a weapon on you. LAURA: Right. And we really want to see the show. But, you know, we are really good at security, like all of us are really strong, and we could fight things that came up, too, so maybe it would be best if you don't take our weapons, and then we could help. MARISHA: Actually, here's a deal. We'll make you a good deal. You waive our entry fee and if anyone needs to be kicked out, or any security needs to happen, we'll help you out. SAM: Like deputy bouncers? MARISHA: Like deputy bouncers. ASHLEY: Well, see, funny thing about that, though, is that's my job. So. |
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