How this place works

House Rules

Ten of them. They are short because they get enforced. Everything else is etiquette, and etiquette is not a moderator's problem.

1. Show your work. A pick with no reasoning behind it is a guess. Post the number you landed on, the read that got you there, or the slip itself. Nobody needs a spreadsheet, but they do need something to argue with.
2. Everyone starts at zero. First account, first bet, no idea what a middle is? You are in the right place. Ask the question. Somebody here was exactly where you are, and most of them remember it.
3. No touts. No sellers. Nobody sells picks here, promotes a paid Discord, or runs a tail service. This is the one rule with no appeal, and it is the reason the rest of the board is worth reading.
4. Post the losses too. A record you only update after a win is not a record. The bad weeks are where the useful conversations happen anyway.
5. Argue with the read, not the person. "Your model is not accounting for the back to back" is a contribution. "You are an idiot" is not. Take the shot at the reasoning and leave the person alone.
6. One thread per game. Look at the board before you start another. A single busy thread beats four dead ones, and it is where the line movement actually gets tracked.
7. Tag your spoilers. Plenty of people watch on delay. Put the result behind a spoiler tag in game threads and let them get there on their own.
8. Bad beats belong in the beats board. Everyone has one. There is a room for them. Keeping the feed for reads and analysis is what makes the feed worth opening.
9. Keep it legal. No account selling, no bonus abuse rings, no promoting books that do not pay out. Check what is legal where you live before you act on anything you read here.
10. Do not say it here if you would not say it at the counter. Slurs, harassment and posting somebody's personal details end the account. There is no warning for this one.

Your account

# How do I join?

Register with a username, an email and a password. Email is never shown publicly and is only used for password resets and the notifications you opt into.

# What does the site store about me?

A session cookie so you stay logged in, a preferences cookie for read/unread state, and your IP address on each post (visible to moderators only, used for ban evasion). Nothing is sold, and there are no ad trackers.

# I forgot my password.

Use password recovery. A reset link goes to the address on your account. If you no longer control that address, a moderator cannot help you — that is the point of it.

# Avatars and signatures

Both live in your profile. Signatures are plain text and short BBCode. A signature that is a sales pitch is rule 02.

# What are ranks?

Ranks are automatic, based on post count. They measure how much you have said, not whether you were right — the only number that measures that is the line on your posts.

Posting

# How do I post?

New post from any community's page starts a thread. Reply or the quick box at the top of a thread adds a comment. There is one composer and it previews exactly what will be published, because the preview calls the same renderer the thread does.

Flood control: 5 seconds between posts.

# What makes a good slip post?

• The number and the book. “PHO -3.5 (-110), DK” not “took Phoenix”.
• When you got it. A line at open and the same line at tip are different bets.
• The reasoning, in one paragraph. If it takes five, it is a thread of its own.
• The screenshot. Drag it onto the composer.

The community will check your math. That is not hostility, it is the entire product.

# Formatting

Type the tags, or use the toolbar. Ctrl+B and friends work.

There is no [img] tag on purpose: it would make every reader fetch a file from a stranger's server. Screenshots go through the attachment system.

# Emoji

Type the code, or hit the emoji button in the composer. The classics still work — :), :D, ;) — and there is a set for this board:

Codes inside a code block, and inside a link, are left alone. Pasting a box score URL that happens to contain PHO:DEN will not turn it into a grinning face.

# Attachments

Up to 10 files per post, 0.2 MB each. Drag a screenshot onto the composer's drop zone, or click it. PNG, JPEG, GIF and WebP. Anything else downloads rather than displays.

# Editing and deleting

You can edit your own posts. Deleting a post that has replies leaves the thread incoherent, so it is a moderator action — use Report and say why. Deleting a post does not delete the votes on it.

The Line

# What is the +/- number on a post?

It is the post's line: upvotes minus downvotes, written the way a betting line is written. +7 means seven more people think the read is right than think it is wrong. -3 means the opposite. 0 means the room is split, or nobody has voted.

# How do I vote?

• Chevron up or down on any post or comment.
• Press the same one twice to take your vote back.
• Press the other one to switch. One vote per person, per thing.
• It works with JavaScript off. It just costs you a page load.

# What is a downvote for?

“This is wrong and here is why” — ideally with the “here is why” in a reply. It is not a disagree button, and it is definitely not a you lost button. Everybody loses. The line is about the process.

# Hot, New, Top

• Hot — what the room is arguing about right now.
• New — most recent activity first.
• Top — the highest lines, all time.

Messages

# What is U2U?

User-to-user messages — private mail between members, in Messages. Folders, drafts, an ignore list, and an address book for the people you talk to most. Your mailbox holds 500 messages across all folders.

# Why can’t I message anyone yet?

Because rule 02 is real. A throwaway account that can DM the member list on day one is the single most effective way to tout a board, so new accounts cannot start a conversation.

You can always reply to anyone who messages you first. An unsolicited reply is a contradiction in terms, so answering your own inbox is never spam and is never blocked.

Everyone below staff is also capped at 10 messages per hour. Post three times and stick around for half a day, or post twenty times and go immediately. Either way it is hours, not days.

# Someone is bothering me.

Add them to your ignore list and their messages stop arriving. If it is a tout, report the post instead — an ignore protects you, a report protects everyone.

Moderation

# My first post is “waiting on a moderator” (quarantine)

Normal — though this board currently has quarantine switched off. Every new account's first post goes into quarantine and is read by a moderator before it appears. It is usually minutes. Nothing you wrote is lost, and once one post clears you never see this again.

Quarantine is also why a brand-new account cannot start a conversation in Messages: an unvouched account and a tout look identical to the software.

# How do I report a post?

Report under any post. Say what rule it breaks. Reports go to the moderators of that community, not to a public thread.

# Can I become a moderator?

Moderators are asked, not applied for, and they are picked from people whose posts already do the job — correcting a number, sourcing a line, telling someone their model is overfit. Do that for a while and you will get a message.

# What gets you banned?

• Selling picks. First offence, permanent, no appeal.
• Fabricating a slip. Same.
• Harassment, doxxing, or encouraging someone to chase a loss.
• Ban evasion with a second account.

Being wrong about a game is not on that list and never will be.

Still stuck

Ask in the Lobby — someone will know, and the answer helps the next person. For anything private, message a moderator.

If you hit an error page with a reference code on it, send us that code. It maps to exactly one line in the server log and turns “the site broke” into a fixable bug.