Ok, I do get your point now – you are saying that any book that decides to copy DG is a lost cause for DG subs. If we post early, they copy. If we post after they post, and you manage to hammer a few lines, they’ll realize what you are doing and limit you. So therefore our posting decision should not depend on these books, which leads you to the conclusion that we should post as early as possible because that’s best for the only books we should care about: the ones not paying attention to us.
And so I guess I have a couple points. First, this logic doesn’t really apply to the books that don’t limit but do copy us (aside: does BOL limit? I don’t know). Look at BOL on our site right now for the Euro event. For outrights there was a decent amount of value, and now for T20s (which were posted later) there is nothing. If we posted on Tuesday morning, maybe BOL has T20s up by then and people can probably grab some value there. Or maybe that value would be wiped out by non-DG people by then, or maybe BOL just waits and doesn’t post T20s until we do. I don’t know, but seems possible a later release would be beneficial there. I would apply this same logic to Pinnacle, who know doesn’t post until Tuesday morning: if we held off and waited until they post, would that be useful for our subs? Maybe.
Second, I think there are a lot of books in between the two types you describe (“copy DG” and “ignore DG”). For example, I think if we posted our numbers right when Bet365 posted their outrights (but hadn’t posted some of their other markets yet, so Monday morning UK time), I think this would have an impact on the numbers they end up posting for the finish positions. And this would be bad for DG users. I also think this might be the case with FD: if they were forced to post all their markets before we do, that would probably be good for our subscribers. I honestly don’t think FD is spending much energy trying to limit DG subs – they are just lazy and it’s easy for them to copy us if they can. There are tradeoffs here in terms of the value that gets eroded, but I think it’s possible the late post makes a difference.
As for market influence, I do think we would some influence even later in the week. The recent blog post we did analyzed line movement, so could be worth skimming the last two sections if you haven’t seen it. That’s where I pulled the 60% number from (and that is comparing BOL openers to Betcris, so it likely overstates the movement of BOL to Betcris). Honestly, I just don’t often see the closing lines that far from our numbers, so unless DG subscribers are somehow repeatedly out-betting the whales, it must be that our model is pretty good. I’m not saying there aren’t ever +EV bets at close at BOL/Pinnacle/Betcris, because there are, but it’s pretty rare for there to be a >10% edge. (This is all regarding matchup markets only.) As for mid-tournament, it’s pretty rare for us to even have a single +EV bet at Betcris on round matchups, and they are generally taken to be the sharp book. With R4 matchups/outrights involving players near the lead, you could be right. We re-analyzed our pressure adjustments this off-season and did make some tweaks that I thought brought us closer to the market, but I know last week there was a big disagreement with Schenk/Simpson, and there have been a few others.
Another point in favour of us having late influence (not a ton necessarily, just some) is that bookmakers over the last few years have started opening a lot closer to our numbers (before we’ve posted anything for the week). This is probably another sign that the market from the previous weeks is closing near our numbers (if they are basing the opening number for the next week off last week’s close). If there were all these sharps massively influencing things late in the week, I feel like this wouldn’t be the case – they should be opening up the following week (ignoring course-specific considerations) at the numbers the sharps pushed things towards.