I agree with Sammy, the public often does decent in the early season, IMO it's part of the 'plan'.
Wagerline is not always an accurate description of the public.
The public is generally better in college sports than in the professional ranks, one reason is many are privy to info that the books simply dont consider enough or have access to, and some of this info has a MUCH bigger affect on the outcome in NCAA than in professional leagues where backups are not really that big of a dropoff from a statisitical value standpoint.
A lot regarding this topic is highly debatable b/c "the public" is not easily definable and the number of events for a sample size to be significant is also another issue. My thoughts on this: a large sample size is not necessarily needed for something like this b/c the books already have the sample size from one hundred years of games which is what they basically use to determine their values. They also have a good idea about what money will go where on an offered spread and THIS has a large affect on the spread on some games. In other words the true odds are not always offered b/c the betting pattern would not be desirable on some events.
Most of my BIG wagers are based upon several angles lining up. Two of these are: the public going the opposite way, and a line being off enough to capture a key number. Not always but those are a couple of angles that historically win. It's not an exact science, the public does win sometimes, and the oddsmakers are really dumb sometimes. But I also think that the latter is purposeful on occasion to give the 'public' a taste of winning, if someone NEVER wins they wont bet, the books have a system with which they get the money in the end.
From what I have noticed, fading doesnt work as well until after week 4 of the NFL. In the NBA I think fading is even better, the public doesnt generally have a clue about what NBA numbers should be. They dont realize that there are key numbers in the NBA just as the 3 and 7 are important in football. I'll put it this way: for the last couple of months of the NBA regular season fading public money was a very, very good. This approach didnt work very well in the beginning of the playoffs, it cost me a little, I quickly ignored this angle and did my own thing with a lot better results. I'm not sure about fading in the playoffs, I usually dont pay attention so much to this angle during the playoffs as I feel I have strong enough numbers to outweigh the regular season angles.
Another thing to keep in mind is that some shops have a lot better numbers to base moves off of. A move at Pinnacle is more tell-tale than a move at SIA, for example.
I hope some of this makes sense, I think you are looking at something that works, the key is to divide it into subsets, and throw out the losing sets. Keep in mind that what works one season doesnt necessarily work the next, you have to be ready to switch gears quickly, the public has had winning seasons before. I feel it is very important to use MULTIPLE angles in evaluating the sports market. One year one angle works well, the next it might not as the books adjust and/or teams' playing styles change. The best angles are ones in which the value will almost certainly always be there b/c the money will almost certainly be going to the other side in a situation, year after year.
