A couple points here.....
First of all, Loophole, I absolutely and unequivocally agree with everything you addressed in your post, epecially the following excerpt: "I would much rather see an exchange of ideas, a dialectic or debate if you will, of thoughts on handicapping rather than a list of plays as i feel the former assists me much more personally in my ultimate goal of playing a higher percentage of winners." Count me in along with the minority here. Exchanging ideas and thoughts: quite a novel concept.
Secondly, I know Kosar quite well and he is as knowledable on the subject of sportsbetting and has as much to offer as anybody on this board. I don't want to speak for him, but I feel relatively safe in saying that he subscribes to the same theory as loophole (and myself). The REAL power of a forum such as this is in the exchange of ideas, information, concepts and strategies. Unfotunately there has been a decline in interest, in regards to this, among the masses. Slapping up a list of plays every few days or so, in my opinion, has little value. My grandmother can do that. And at the end of the day, what have you learned, what have you acquired that will make you a more successful (profitable) sports bettor? Nothing. But those are the threads that are the most popular. Why? Because people want winners and they want them NOW. Nevermind the reasoning. It's easy, there's no thinking involved, and it requires little time. Short-term satisfaction, plain and simple. I really don't have a problem with this. To each his own. What DOES bother me is when somebody DOES start a thread that may lead to a positive debate, it either goes unnoticed or it is blasted, as was the case here, and followed by "gimme more info if you don't mind". A typically simple, effortless, and thoughtless response.
I've already posted my thoughts on the "2 dog days" theory in another thread, so I'm going to refrain for now from repeating it, but I cannot believe that the legitmacy of hedging two totally independant plays is still being tossed about. With all due respect to Fletcher, his theory of "taking the profit and going home when 1 dog hits" holds no water. The only way this concept would be logical is if, for example, showing a profit "at the end of the day" meant whether or not your gas and lights would be shut off the following day. If this isn't the case, then this theory makes little sense, especially in regards to securing long-term profit. If you find that a play has value, then the results of a totally unrelated event should have no bearing on this perception of value. It either has value or it does not have value. And quite frankly, I don't see the point in coming up with a precise number of the frequency in which this happens. If the theory itself is illogical, than the data supporting said theory is rendered illogical. As Kosar mentioned: "My post was in part meant to illustrate the folly of hedging totally independent bets because 'it just can't happen 2x in one day'." Exactly! His post was not intended to come up with a figure which could be applied, it was to dispell the notion above. The numbers, in and of themselves, are meaningless. To further illustate my point, I would have exactly the same interest in knowing "the percentage of times a 'big' dog hit after one hit earlier in the day" as I would in knowing "the percentage of times a 'big' dog hit after the Pope sneezed." There is no correlation in either.
Lastly, I want to say that my intentions of this post were not to defend or offend anybody. My interest is solely in a place whereby we can all share our ideas (whether they are right or wrong) in a civil manner to make ourselves better gamblers. If somebody has something to offer, no matter how trivial, this place should be a platform where they feel comfortable sharing it. If somebody has something to offer, I wanna hear it, and perhaps, LEARN from it. After all, isn't that what it's all about?
