Been building a sports betting model for the past year and the biggest lesson so far: your gut is wrong more often than you think, and it's wrong in a predictable way.

A few things that consistently trip people up:

• Recency bias on line movement. A team drops 40 in the first half and the line moves 3 points — most bettors chase that number instead of asking why the book moved it. Sometimes it's sharp money, sometimes it's just public overreaction. You need volume data to tell the difference.

• Home/road splits get overweighted. Everyone knows home court matters, so it's already baked into the opening line. Betting 'home team is tough at home' after the line already reflects that is just giving the book free equity.

• Back-to-backs are underweighted for role players, not stars. Stars rest or play limited minutes and everyone prices that in. It's the bench guys whose efficiency quietly craters that the market misses.

We track model vs. closing line value every single day (posted publicly, wins and losses both) inside Full Court Picks — if you want to see how a data-first approach actually performs over a season instead of a hot week, come take a look.