pokerjoe

Timmy Jernigan out, prob Lawrence Guy in on the Ravens DL. -1/4 pt. Jernigan is good but only plays about 25 snaps a game. So if you think he's 1/2 pt better than his sub, but he only plays about 1/2 the defensive snaps ...

Y-day Beason and NYG are confident he'll play; today he's ruled out. Injury impact: nil. They signed Jasper Brinkley 2 days ago. He's no downgrade. His pre was fine, in Dallas. Now he's going to play against them? 2 days later? Knowing their playbook and tendencies inside out? He'll get snaps, as will, probably, R Unga, who's looked fine in the pre.

But how much of you BTCL is shopping, and how much from actually beating the later line movements? I had tonight's under 52 at Stations (you probably did as well). I don't consider that BTCL, that's just line value, which is great, but there was no aspect of anticipating later line movements involved.

Much truth to this. Love Ed and RAS for their conduct, but have argued with him that his CLV is circular and that not much of it would occur if he didn't release his plays.

BTCL by shopping isn't really the same as CLV. Picking up edges by line shopping is line value, which is great and necessary, but not really CLV. It's edge no matter what happens thereafter. If the line moves against you or for you, every half point you pick up still has value. CLV is concerned with where the consensus sharp line moves after you bet. Just plain old line value isn't controversial or arguable. CLV is both those things.

I think Justin is responsible for the idea of "beating the closing line." He writes about it in "Conquering Risk." He was doing some work for Pinnacle and noticed that the difference between a player's betting line and the later, closing line, more quickly predicted future success than mere win/loss records. Justin's view was the bookie's view: when profiling players, the sharps are the threat, not the lucky. The lucky you send a limo for. Being able to see who's who is very useful for the books because they want to know who's action to respect for moving the line, booting, delaying or crippling ... and who to send the limo for. The expression has value to the bookies. That doesn't mean it has value to us. We don't get paid for BTCL. We get paid when we beat the spread. The point might seem trite, but the whole idea of BTCL, from the player's side, is trite. BTCL doesn't actually tell you anything. It's a gigantic "duh." If I say the way to make money in this game is to "beat the spread," would you get excited? Telling you to "just BTCL" isn't much different. So let's look into who and why and how some players BTCL. Or maybe I should say, of what is BTCL a manifestation. 1) Line shopping helps you BTCL (I'm distinquishing line shopping from bet-timing). If the line is -7, and you, through shopping, find -7' or -6', you'll BTCL. 2) Bet-timing helps you BTCL (I'm distinquishing bet-timing and steamchasing). If you like a fave at -7, correctly anticipate that the line will rise and so bet early, you'll BTCL. I bet-time. I know I'm better off, for example, betting CFB totals early than late. This is broad bet-timing, and is simply a matter of comparing how I'd do betting at different times. Bet-timing is about getting the best price, and as such is an adjunct of line shopping. 3) Steamchasing helps you BTCL (I'm distinquishing steam chasing from syndicate membership). Steamchasing is BTCL, to some extent, at it's purest and oldest. To say it's BTCL, in fact, is redundant. Steamchasing, really, is best understood as syndicate betting without being a part of the syndicate (and by syndicate I really mean sharp action generally; RAS isn't a syndicate, but from a book's POV may as well be). Steamchasers distinquish between sharp action and general market drift, and also distinquish between acting in time and having missed the boat. Further, they "steam anticipate," which is a great skill (related to bet-timing, I suppose, but obv I'm distinquishing it here). Most of the guys who talk about BTCL are steamchasers, and for them it's a useful shorthand for "doing their job right." It's more useful short-term than "making money" because there's much less variance. There's still a large measure of line shopping involved, but line shopping isn't the same thing as steamchasing. Steamchasing is really about the ability to recognize what line movements mean, and even anticipate them, and that's a skill separate from, once having labelled the movement, acting on it. I don't personally steamchase (we can't all do everything), but I recognize the potential for profits with it, when done right. A really good steamchaser (market reader) can sometimes see a line move a half point at only one book, so that the broad market line remains the same, recognize that half point indicates a sharp side, and bet, +EV, even though he won't BTCL. But even steamchasers don't make money BTCL. They make money by being able to read market moves and react quickly, or even anticipate them. You can use the semantics of BTCL here, I admit, but "BTCL" doesn't tell you how to make the money. BTCL reflects the skill, but is not the skill. Steamschasers don't make money with BTCL. They make money making +EV bets, and where the line settles afterwards doesn't change the EV of those bets, and it's ridiculous to think it does. 4) Syndicate membership helps you BTCL. Originators (and syndicate members are essentially that, in that they are, even if mere beards, extensions of the originator), are the ones who most deeply BTCL, and are most problematic for books (though books are probably generally unable and uncaring about distinquishing between steamchasers and syndicate players). This is where the advice "just BTCL" gets really pointless. It becomes tantamount to saying "get involved with an originator's syndicate." Other than RAS, I know of no way to just "join" a syndicate (and yes, obv, I'm labelling RAS a kind of a syndicate; it's a publicly available one). But even originators don't make money by BTCL. They make money by handicapping. The difference is huge, so I'm going to say it again: they BTCL the most of anyone, but they don't make money from BTCL. BTCL is the effect of the betting that follows their profitable handicapping. Essentially, they BTCL the most, and potentially earn the most, but don't earn anything from BTCL. They earn from handicapping +EV bets. You can make money line shopping. You can make money anticipating market direction. You can make money interpreting line movements. You can make money handicapping. What you can not do is make money with BTCL because it is merely a reflection of handicapping or betting skills, not the cause. Here are some more points: If your focus is on BTCL, you aren't going to come up with anything new, because if it's new, it won't be in the CL. I BTCL big time in CBB totals. But that's coincidental (well, maybe not, because I don't really know how everyone else is approaching things; but it isn't deliberate, anyway, in that I don't know how everyone else is approaching things). IOW, if you focus on BTCL, you'll never be the originators who are the biggest cause of BTCL, because they cause BTCL by handicapping. (and using BTCL to reverse engineer originator's action still isn't the same thing as making money with BTCL; it's making money with reverse engineering). Some of the real BTCL nuts will say that no one wins handicapping. The illogic of that is mindboggling, considering that, if no one is outhandicapping the openers, how can the CL be more efficient than the opener? They misunderstand their own results. They'll cite stats about how they lose when they don't BTCL and win when they do, failing to understand that, no, what's really happening is they're losing when handicapping poorly and winning when handicapping well, and BTCL is somewhat correlated with that. If your focus is on BTCL, you'll fall if the cause of BTCL falls. Suppose you were on Dr Bob after his heyday. If you got his picks early and bet well, you'd BTCL big time. And get slaughtered at some point. You'd have been BTCL and slaughtered. BTCL is absolutely not in and of itself blindly a predictor of profits. Yes, the market is long run more efficient at close than at start, GENERALLY, but that isn't the same thing as being more efficient for any given game SPECIFICALLY. If you've been in this game a while you've seen a lot of hot hands come and go. Things change. I've known two steamchasers who won for years and then got wiped. I kind of think it's always a matter of time, blustering posters here notwithstanding. Think "Black Swan." If your focus is on BTCL, you'll miss all the +EV bets that come about at the CL itself. This truth alone reveals the illogic of BTCL. If a line is moving the right way, I wait until it settles. Sometimes, then, I'm better off, not BTCL, but tying it. If you agree that's possible, then you are admitting to a logical flaw in the theory of BTCL. If the Lakers are home and fave of -8, and I like the dog, I know there's a good chance it'll creep up to -8' by game time. So I'll wait. I'm deliberately not trying to BTCL. Does that mean I can't possibly have value? I think it's ridiculous to live in fear of opposing line movements. If I like the dog when the Lakers are faves, if it creeps up a half point close to game time, that gain of a half point is pure value, imo. IOW, I'm saying the CL was less efficient than a previous line. If your focus is on BTCL, you'll become what poker players call "results oriented." That's a terribly misleading phrase, in that it means, actually, that you should not be results oriented (short-term results), you should be EV oriented. Here's my point, re BTCL: if your focus in on BTCL, if you bet and the line moves such that you should have bet later, you'll think you failed. And if it moves your way, you'll feel like a winner. But that's being results oriented. Inasmuch as line movements can be, from your POV, random, what they do after you bet can not intelligently be seen as the measure of your bet's wisdom. It's like judging the wisdom of your flush draws by whether they hit, not whether they were priced right. Let's say, by my metric, I like a CBB total <140. Let's say I know RAS is going to release a play on that total, but I don't know which way he'll go. Then, his release, which will move the line, is just a random variable, from my POV, and unrelated to my bet's wisdom. It might be correlated to my bet's outcome, but that isn't the same thing as saying I was wrong to make the bet with the information at the time of my wager. If you make a football bet, your bet should not be judged stupid if, later, your QB is announced out with an injury, nor judged brilliant if it's the opposing team's QB announced out. These are post-bet randomizations, and not at all related to your bet's wisdom. Okay, enough. I did this a little quickly. I'm not getting paid to write it. It's also a little tl;dr. That's less okay, but, WTF. I not getting paid to edit it, either. Cliffs: from the books POV, BTCL has value; from ours, no. Don't tell yourself to BTCL, tell yourself to line shop, bet-time, market-read and handicap.

http://www.sportsbookreview.com/forum/handicapper-think-tank/716057-misunderstanding-beating-closing-line.html

BTW--and I'm not a tout, I've been on the sports betting forums for 15 some years, but--Pitt/NE u52 is available at Stations. This is a game with 6 major injuries for the two teams combined, ALL on offense. But even without that info, Pinny has the line at 50.5 and that alone warrants your interest. I don't generally pick off weak numbers just to do it. Might be why I can still bet at Stations. Plus I'm not a heavy hitter (300-600 is my range). But this one stands out. I like the under anyway, and seeing a free 1.5 points ... means I must jinx myself with a posted pick, lol.

Gameday update: Pitt: Le'Veon Bell, Martavis Bryant, Maurkice Pouncey all out for GM1. Collective damage: -1.75 pts. New England: RB LeGarrette Blount, WR Brandon LaFell, C Bryan Stork -1.25 Stork was Q prev, now IR-E (injured reserve, eligible to return). This prob means Ryan Wendell moving to C and rookie Shag Mason or Josh Kline starting. Rotoworld is saying Shaq Mason, footballguys depth chart saying Josh Kline (which makes more sense to me, the latter having a better pre, by PFF ratings, than the former). ESPN depth chart of course doesn't even have Stork's absence listed yet. I should explain that subtracting points for injuries is done from the team as set at the season's start. So if a guy is IR from the get-go, I don't deduct any points for his absence. He was never in. Injury impacts are useful not only for deducting points off a rating, but also for seeing changes as the season progresses. If a team's been really suffering, and has had, maybe, an average of -7 points of injury loss (possible with a good QB out), then as players come back, and their injury deduction is "only" -2 or whatever, that's a positive thing. The question isn't just what is the damage for this game, it's "what is the damage for this game compared to the team's average game." This info is also useful in rating team performances. If Brady had been out the first 4, any team playing NE in those 4 should have their performance judged with Brady's absence in mind. My rule, to be consistent, is that anyone IR at the season's start is not listed as a deduction. Anyone later added to IR is listed as a deduction, and will be deducted the rest of the season. I'll be back prob on Saturday night for Sunday game updates.

Hate the spaghetti bowl. LA-ish. Terrible.

Jeff Adams is now starting LT for Houston. He's a guy who can't be rated off his play. The guy who had been listed as starter, Xavier Su'a Filo, can be rated. Did Adams raise his game? Unlikely. More like Su'a Filo, who's been injured, can't come back to decent form, if he can come back at all. Coach speak about Adams means nothing. Meanwhile, the Texans will start Jeff Adams at left offensive guard. Adams drew praise from O’Brien. “Very bright guy, very smart guy, can play four out of the five spots,” O’Brien said. “He’s a very versatile guy, very dependable.” I would say this is a 1/4 pt drop off from where an unexceptionable Su'a Filo would be. It's an example where I have to put a number on something that admittedly is rough to do. Experience helps a lot. It's a judgment, and I'm open-minded about it. After GM1 it might be clear the guy is okay OR it might be clear he can't play at this level. So I might be adjusting my estimate on Su'a Filo's injury impact retroactively, but I do know, again, just from having done this so long, that the measly -1/4 pt I make it now is the most balanced estimate. But one thing to remember about NFL injuries is that the league's talent is like a pyramid. The elite guys are few, the good players more common, the average players more common still, and then there's an ocean of weak players like Jeff Adams is likely to be, and between them it doesn't much matter if they get injured. Su'a Filo is fairly weak and his loss isn't that massive no matter who takes his place. If Adams were to be knocked out, his loss might be almost trivial.

Don Best free injury feed: 09/07/15 RB Tre Mason Hamstring probable Sunday vs. Seattle But from ESPN Of most import, running back Tre Mason (thigh) is listed as not participating after he watched the practice from the sidelines. Rams coach Jeff Fisher said again Wednesday that Mason will be a game-time decision Sunday against Seattle. “I’m hopeful," Fisher said. "Will probably be a game time decision.” So at the least he should be listed as Q. Benny Cunningham would move to start and I guess Isiah Pead would be RB2.

Some of the more useful websites: http://www.rotoworld.com/playernews/nfl/football-player-news and http://www.rotoworld.com/teams/injuries/nfl/all/ These sites do cover non-fantasy positions, but sometimes sporadically. It's really good for the DFS positions, though. http://subscribers.footballguys.com/apps/depthchart.php?type=all&lite=no&exclude_coaches=yes is good. I actually audited the various depth chart sites last year, and these guys won. But they all have errors. https://www.profootballfocus.com/ twitter.com, but it's a zoo. I'm not racing for info, generally, trying to beat moves. I'm not sitting in front of the computer hoping to pick off slow moving lines. But if I was I suppose I'd put more effort into watching my twitter feed. http://sportspyder.com/sports/nfl/teams does have a twitter feed as well, but twitter is so fucking noisy. The articles spider is what I like about this site. Still also use: Google news search "last 24 hours."

The base of the work is done by program, yes. I started out, many years ago, using Madden NFL ratings. There are so many players, who the hell can keep track of them all? And Madden is non-horrible, it really is. So I used them and started tweaking them, which is still a non-horrible way to start on this. But now mostly what I do, for the initial rating, is manipulate profootballfocus ratings. It's easy to download them then adjust them for, essentially, strength of schedule. OL's going up against the J.J. Watt are going to, unfairly, have worse ratings than OL's avoiding him, and that has to be accounted for. If a player was a full-timer last year and on the same team, his rating is fairly dependable and can be a touchstone for other players. But there's still judgments to be made. Rookies, players coming off injuries, and players switching teams/systems, can be tough to rate. I've done some work on this, DB work. PFF has ratings from past years so it's possible to study pre-season ratings as reg season indicators (they're poor, not surprisingly, but useful within certain restrictions). So then we're left to wait for their first few games, but that's still a small sample. But how much to weight early season games, depending on the situation, can be derived from DB work. (DB is database). Because I've been doing this so long, I've learned that the main trick is to let the coaches eval for you. There's a rookie--I already forget his name, I deal with so many players--who was not highly regarded by draft choice, but who's led to the release of one decent vet and the subbing of another. So without him playing a reg snap I can raise his rate to at least that of the two guys he beat out (although sometimes guys are released for salary reasons). Or if you have a guy coming back from an injury who is not a clear choice, in the coaches' eyes, to take the spot of a lower rated player, than you can assume that he isn't now better than the lower rated player, unless maybe the lower rated player has raised his game. There are guidelines for choosing which is which (the higher rated guy has dropped or the lower rated guy has risen), but default is to use a mid point. But with all this, the ratings have to be fairly fluid, yet not reactionary. Again, DB analysis helps. A guy who rated well last year in 200 snaps who is struggling in 100 snaps this year can be dropped in rating more quickly than a guy with the same ratings who played 1000 snaps last year. So the starting rating is mathy, but a common-sense eye needs to be kept on them, although even that can be translated into a math-based adjustment. I've learned how quickly to adjust rookie ratings, for example, as data come in on them. Not too much, not too little, as you might guess. Sometimes I rely on the line moves for help. If I'm consistently underrating a team--say Philly this year, as I was--then it's pretty easy to see that it's probably my rating on Sam Bradford that's the issue. I can then, if I want, adjust his rating until it makes the line make sense. He's a player coming back from an injury and in a new system so his rating should be very fluid. His pre was great, obv. Yet going nuts on him is a bad idea. Bortles last year, after all, had a good pre. The other thing that DB analysis reveals is how to weight the positions. That's pretty simply done, and the test mostly is to see what weights make the pointspreads most sensible over the years. ABS(PR-line), reduced as much as possible, from a sizable DB, is pretty much the test. That then has to be smoothed out for each team's particular usage habits. TE and TE2 (that is, the starter and the sub) means different things on different teams. PFF (profootballfocus; I'll try to at least once explain my abbreviations) has snap counts, so it's easy to use that to adjust impact weights. Surprisingly maybe, figuring injury impacts is easier than figuring team rates as a whole. You only have to fig the diff between the starter and the sub in the former, and if a player isn't injured, then no error matters. So if I underrated Sam Bradford, it wouldn't matter unless he got injured, whereas in making the team ratings as a summation of player values, it matters right away, and constantly.

I have to make another note. By points, I'm obviously talking about generic points, not push-frequency points. Generic points are for capping, push-frequency points are for betting. Important distinction. The former must be translated into the latter. And now I must go play cards. I like it that I'm getting some responses, btw. That's my pay-off: feedback and news. Tracking all these teams, especially in CFB, is time-consuming as hell. At least with the NFL you don't have to go sifting through CFB fan forums to find out if the FS is in or out or who the backup LG is or whatever.

One more note: these are, obv, all sides adjustments. No totals adjustments. In the NBA totals can be adjusted straight out by player absence impact (it isn't simple, but still ...). But football totals are trickier propositions. Having multiple defenders on one team out might lower the total, which is counter intuitive. if it allows a slow-paced opposition team to be on the field longer. Plays per minute is key (I know all you guys took the time to fig Garoppolo's plays per minute compared to Brady's in the pre games). I won't go into it more than that, but you understand why I can't just note total's impacts of injuries.

BTW, because I hadn't started my big pre-game push yet, I'd missed that DeAndre Levy out. Putting it in makes the line for that game more sensible for me. That happens a lot. I start out with a naked PR which projects lots of bets. Then I add injuries and keep updating them, and nit-pick the HFA, and as if by magic the initial differences between my PR and the line evaporates. Without accounting for the Saints decimated secondary, the NO line looked juicy. Now, not so much. That's the way it's supposed to be. If your handicapping is moving you away from lines, you're missing the boat. You should be approaching the lines, and then where you still differ, search some more, and then, if you still differ, you can bet. But so often a line looks good only because you missed an injury or weather update or forgot that a team was travelling 3 time zones or whatever. In the NBA, many times a year I'll find what looks like an off line, search for injury info, find nothing public, bet, and then at gametime hear of a late scratch.

You mean Mike Evans? Still listed as prob, but no he didn't practice again. If he's out, that's brutal for TB. I'd make it, Assuming Louis Murphy gets his snaps and Russell Shepard (or someone of that caliber) gets Louis Murphy's snaps, -1 1/4 pts. By "Shepard getting Murphy's snaps," understand that I mean that Murphy was going to get some snaps anyway. Now he'll get more subbing for Evans, and someone else will get his as WR3. WR3's have impact, obv. After the season starts and snap counts are proven, it's easier to see how they distribute. Some teams have WR3's or RB2's or TE2's almost as co-starters, for other teams they're pretty light in import.

Let me investigate further, which means let me google search news in the last 24 hours (I do that a lot) . "And it's looking increasingly likely they'll do it without starting linebacker DeAndre Levy, defensive tackle Caraun Reid and right guard Larry Warford." Warford still listed as Q. Tomlinson is a dropoff, but positions rate differently in impact. I love OL guys, but not all positions are equal in impact. This is math stuff, DB crunching realities, but even just being a fan you know QB is more important, RG less. This is the first I heard of Levy being out. I know he's not been practicing. The shit keeps coming and it's a constant job. I get, from various depth charts (none are perfect) that his sub would be either Josh Bines or Travis Lewis, both of whom have played a lot this pre, and have looked ok. But it's a big drop. I'd make it -1 pt.

I'm going to assume you don't actually mean, "Do the books over compenstate," and instead mean, "Does the market wrongly compensate?" Because the books don't have much to do with it, and the market is as likely to under compensate as over. And the answer is yes. Adrian Peterson was way over rated by the market. Don't kid yourself about the alleged brilliance of the NFL market, either. There's more dumb money in NFL betting than any other sport. Market efficiency isn't determined only by the amounts traded, but by the quality of the investors. Three old guys at a cattle action might all be so sharp that the prices are near perfectly efficient. Then add a bunch of drunk yahoos with pockets full of hundreds and see how off the prices get. The NFL is like that. Yahoos abound.

I should add that 1/2 point in handicapped edge is worth less than a 1/2 point in line value. If the line is 7 everywhere but you find 7.5, that extra half point is absolute value, which is worth more than capping value, AINEC. Nonetheless, you get the idea: it's all about accumulating edge.

Handicapping is putting a number on things. A golf handicap, a horse racing weight, aren't just vague ideas, we don't say, "uh, I don't know, you're better than me, how about I get some strokes. Just, you know, some." If you aren't putting a number on everything you weight in sports betting, you aren't handicapping. ATS systems and such, because they aren't putting weights on their alleged impacts, don't count as handicapping. Mere awareness that there are injuries pre-game isn't handicapping. You have to be aware of them, properly weight them, and then add them to a non-stupid team rating, or use a player-based model that changes as the projected lineups change. I doubt that there's much interest in this subject because I know that very, very few people actually handicap, but at least for the first few weeks, because I do the work anyway, I'll post injuries that impact team values, with my estimation of those impacts. I won't discuss methodology, but if you see errors in my injury list, let me know. I won't do this for CFB because it would be too tedious to write it all up, and the work required is so great, as is the resulting edge, that I don't want to share it. But NFL injury info is more easily found and the betting pools so large that I can't see how I'd be hurting myself. Also, as I said, I know the truth is that almost none of you handicap anyway. And if you don't have a list like this, trust me, you're not handicapping and you're not winning. PR is power rating. Q is questionable. Pts are too be deducted from your PRs, but if you have none, at least from your estimation of what the line should be. If you don't even have that, GTFO. Yes, I work on quarter and half points. How do you think you beat sports? It's by accumulating small edges, in capping and line shopping. Those of you who think "Why worry about a guy who might be worth 1/2 point?" I have to ask, do you not worry about getting an extra half point in line value? Squares don't. Squares will say, "I got my one guy and don't need more outs," or "I'm not going to walk from Caesars to Bellagio for 1/2 point." Arizona: Massie and Lupati combine -1/2 pts off the team's power rating; if WR Floyd (Q) is out, -1/2 more. Atlanta: Only WR Roddy White a concern. -1/2 point if out. Baltimore: no impacting injuries for WK1. Buffalo: McKelvin out; -1/2 point from PR. LeSean McCoy a Q; -3/4 pt if he's out, although I think he'll play. DT Dareus is out, C.Bryant replacing him. Kid had good pre. Only -1/4 pt loss? Maybe -1/2? I'm waffling. With players who don't have many snaps in the league, estimations are more ... estimatory. Carolina: Many Q's, but prob few outs on GM1. If C Kalil is out, -1/4 pt, if Lotulelei is out, -3/4, but if either CB Norman or Tillman is out, -1.25, and if both are out (unlikely), -2.25. @LibbyWeihsmann reports both practiced. Think non-QB injuries don't matter? Panthers, if every questionable player misses this gm, drop 3 pts in value. They won't, but don't guess, cap and pay attention. Don't be the guy wondering why the line's moving pre-game. Chicago: I have to assume Kyle Long is moving to RT and Ducasse is taking RG, because I can't imagine give Leno playing time. Ducasse had a mediocre pre; Charles Leno failed to be even that. Must be Ducasse with the start. WR Jeffery should be in. Cincy: LB Burfict out, AJ Hawk in at LB; -1/2 pt. Otherwise, Bengals are good to go GM1 (DL Michael Johnson returned to practice). Cleve: WTF is wrong with CB Gilbert? Lost role to Desir who is lauded for his "work eithic", which means he's no stud. Dropping CLE PR 1/2 pt even without an official injury. LB Mingo should be g2g, which is g2g for CLE because sub Solomon is -3/4 pts in drop-off. Otherwise Only 2 RBs on duty and Duke Johnson is in protocol? They'll pick up a journeyman, which is ok: Crowell and Duke are journeymen themselves. Dallas: Dez Bryant is fine; Hardy and McClain are out, but only -1/4 pt drop each. Old news: Scandrick out, -1.25. Denver: Derek Wolfe out, -1/2; TJ Ward out, also -1/2 Detroit: G2G. RG Larry Warford a Q for GM1, If out, essentially subbed by Laken Tomlinson, which would be -1/4 pt in PR. GB: Letroy Guion is out, but trivial impact. Houston: Arian Foster out, of course, which dropped the team's PR a full point. Otherwise, clean for day 1. Indy: All impacting Colts ready except for Robert Mathis (Q), which, surprisingly, would only cost 1/4 pt value. Jax: TE Thomas out, -1/2 pt. S Cyprien, -1/4. DL looks a mess w/ Branch and Marks out (Hood IR), but those non-studs are -1/2 combined, so the team as a whole looks 1.25 pts off value this week. KC: RB Davis in concussion protocol; if out, -1/4 pt (but I'd say probable). Dontari Poe out, -1/4. Miami: Have no impacting injury concerns for GM 1. Still have trouble figuring values for the rookie P and rookie K. All I can do is use the rates for the guys they beat out (I call this triangulation), and some pre-C performance. It isn't that simple, but you get the idea. Minny: Have no impacting injury concerns for GM1. New England: LeGarrette Blount is the only impacting injury for the Patriots for GM1. -1/2 point. Starting lineup unclear in a few spots. NE is always a pain for lineups and injuries. New Orleans: GM1 injuries of impact: all in the secondary. Lewis and Byrd. -1.75 from PR. If C.J. Spiller doesn't go, Ingram will carry more than he will anyway. Still, prob -1/4 pt. NYG: Victor Cruz, Will Beatty, Jason Pierre-Paul all out, total damage -1.5 pts. Assume Beason is playing. NY Jets: Sheldon Richardson is the only injury of note. -3/4 pt. Oakland: g2g. Philly: TE Zach Ertz the only key Q, at a cost of -1/2 a point if he misses. Practiced today, though. Pitt: Le'Veon Bell, Martavis Bryant, Maurkice Pouncey all out for GM1. Collective damage: -1.75 pts. SD: TE Gates only impacting absence. -1/2 pt. SF: C Kilgore, LB Brooks out. Combined damage -3/4 pts. SEA: Assuming Kim Chancellor is out, -1 pt value. Earl Thomas not up to snuff yet. Take -1/2 pt off for that? -1/4? Call it. St. L: Todd Gurley out, but not much drop-off. -1/4 pt of value. TB: RT Demar Dotson out, Cherilus in, but not much drop off there. Take 1/4 pt off Bucs value. Tenn: RB Cobb out, no impact. DL Hill out, CB McCourt out, -1.5 pts in value combined. Wash: No injuries of note for GM1. And yes, I'm saying RG3, in or out, doesn't matter to the team's rate. Skins have mediocre QBs.

I envy you. My boys were also great youth soccer players. Way too much fun. To everyone else, wow, I thought for sure I'd get the usual troll shit response. Thanks.

Children will make you happier than anything else you will ever do. Better than winning at gambling, better than the best steak dinner, better than the sex that led to them. They cost, in the USA, about 250,000 each, on average, to raise middle class. Worth it. They take time and effort and cause great stress. Worth it. If instead you think your car or house or any other shit is making you happy, you are--no other word for it--ignorant. You will never love anyone like you love your kids, and no one will ever love you like they do. Unless of course you're a shit human being, in which case, don't have children, have a beer. Imagine a town with two restaurants. Half the people go to one restaurant, the other half go to both. The people who try both say the second one is far better, but the people who only try the first one refuse to believe it. That's what it's like trying to convince childless people that they aren't even close to being truly happy.

Corporations are not people and are not due any more ethical consideration than a rock. Corporations are formed by people expressly so that they can stop being people, with ethical considerations, and instead be a legal fiction that can walk away from liabilities. If a corporation can steal $100 at a cost of only a $10 legal fine, it not only will steal it, but must, to fulfill its obligation to maximize shareholder profits. If it refrains from theft it can only be because the legal ramifications or negative PR outweigh the benefits. Ethics will never enter the equation. And let's remember that corporations have tremendous influence with writing the laws and can afford the best lawyers and they work constantly to legalize their theft. A little girl selling lemonade is a person. A corporation isn't. With a corporation the only thing you should be doing is the only thing it's doing: making a calculation. To speak of ethics with regards to dealing with a corporation is ignorant. Corporations are legally prohibited from having ethical concerns. All they can do is maximize profits. There is not a corporation in American that would not own slaves if slavery were legal, OR not so illegal that the costs of owning them outweighed the profits. There is not a corporation in America, after all, that will refrain from dealing with Asian factories no matter how horrible the work conditions, unless negative PR becomes too great. There is not a corporation in America that will not weasel out of a debt it it can. There is not a corporation in America that won't fire long time workers if the balance sheet looks better. Grow the fuck up.