The Count

For the last five years, I’ve been storing weekly public betting percentages from as many sources as I can find. The goal is just to have the data. Personally, I don’t think you should use them in your handicapping at all. Not as a primary input, and not as a tiebreaker. But you’re entitled to do whatever you want. What gets me is how wide the range is from site to site. Look at CIN/ATL this week. Action Network → 57% Falcons DK → 83% Bengals MGM → 66% Falcons Pikkit → 53% Bengals They all pull from different sources (Pikkit uses bets placed in its own app), but that’s an insane spread. I won’t post the paywalled numbers, but they make it even more confusing. You can tell yourself any story you want after the game. Bengals were the public side. No wait, it was the Falcons. I ran a quick test averaging all of them, paid and free. No predictive value whatsoever. None of them have any on their own either. I understand why certain people keep pushing this but I don't understand why people keep falling for this.