Swain Scheps

Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-24-2022

Business intelligence process creates an environment for better decision-making. To make successful business decisions, you need to gain insight in business intelligence, follow the main steps of the key performance indicators (KPI) cycle, find the best source to store and process operational data, and assess and use standard business intelligence applications.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-14-2021

Sports betting can be an incredibly fun hobby. But if you’re doing it to make money, you need to understand that most people who gamble on sporting events end up losing money. That’s how sports books and casinos stay in business after all. But if you learn a little about how bookmakers and betting markets work, develop a strategy, and apply a fair amount of know-how, you can go from being a money-losing dabbler to a knowledgeable gambler who stands a good chance of winning in the long run.

Article / Updated 05-19-2020

Baseball bettors tend to get enamored of teams on a roll. As pitchers get hot, and especially as the teams themselves start to roll, their odds get slightly longer than they’re worth. And the inverse is true as well: Teams who have hit rough waters look worse in the eyes of the average bettor than they really are. Game odds are a function of the oddsmaker and the bettors. The oddsmaker estimates a team’s chances of winning and sets the odds accordingly, with some adjustments for predictions of the public’s perception and perhaps an adjustment for park and weather effects. But then the odds are released into the wild. If bettors wager heavily on the favorite, their odds quickly get longer, and if bettors heavily bet the underdog, the odds go the other way. Team streaks Teams on win streaks tend to attract unearned attention from bettors. Remember the lesson of coin flips: Just because a coin has come up heads 5 times in a row, it doesn’t suddenly become more (or less!) likely to hit heads on the 6th flip. Sure, baseball teams aren’t coins. The trials aren’t independent because teams can get down on themselves or feel that they have a certain level of momentum. But there’s also a psychological effect at work on the betting side. If you bet against a team on a 10-game winning streak and lose, you’ll feel like the guy that does a faceplant into the plate glass window, thinking it’s a door. So, it’s not just a matter of bettors flocking to the streaking team; it’s also a matter of the normal attention you would expect the other side of the bet to receive starts to attenuate as the streak goes on. Add it all up, and you have potential for profit. Bet against home teams on a moderate roll. History has shown a steady trend of +EV betting is available if you’re willing to bet against a home team on a winning streak. After 4 wins, the public seems to take note of the hot team and the over-betting begins. Run line and moneyline bets against the streaky club have shown a positive ROI in the neighborhood of 5 to 10 percent. And there are several ways to make it more lucrative, such as finding the streaky team that’s a rare home underdog. This might happen if they’re up against the road team’s ace starter, for example. BET the win streak ends here You should do your own exploration, but here’s the setup you’re looking for: During the MLB regular season The home team has won their last 4 games AND The home team last lost 5 games ago BET the visitor’s moneyline or the visitor’s run line. A home team on exactly a 4-game win streak has offered contrarian bettors an overall 7-percent ROI on both the moneyline and run line bets. And the good news is that this scenario comes up about 100 times per year during the MLB regular season. In the data I looked at, if you blind bet this system, you would have made money in 8 of the last 10 years. The trend works on a 5-game win streak as well. If the home team has won exactly 5 games in a row, betting their opponent blindly would have yielded you 11 percent on the visitor’s moneyline and 6 percent on the run line. Progressive Betting You’ve probably heard of the Martingale or similar betting strategy where you bet 1 chip, and if you lose, you bet 2 chips. If you lose again, you bet 4 chips, and so on. In theory, you’re eventually going to win, so as long as you increase your subsequent bets by enough, you’re guaranteed to win. It might work in very short-term situations, but because casinos and bookmakers have betting limits, you quickly run out of real estate to increase your bet. The fact that baseball teams on win streaks are often over-bet makes it tempting to apply some sort of progressive multi-game betting strategy to the situation. For example, if you bet against the 4-in-a-row team and they win, you could double your bet and try betting against the same team again. In this scenario, your initial bet would lose a little over half the time. (Remember, you were betting on the underdog, so it’s ok to have a sub-50-percent winning percentage.) If you followed up that loss with a double-bet against that same streaking team, you’d end up with a positive ROI, even though it would be especially painful to lose two in a row. In general, I don’t recommend progressive betting, but I have encountered handicappers and pickers who swear by multi-game betting systems like this. I suggest these precautions: Have a clear exit strategy; no open-ended systems. If your plan is to make increasing bets against a streaking team, set a maximum number of losses (how about 2?), at which point, you bail out. Make sure that the betting limits of your bookmaker are high enough relative to your bet amount so that you can easily increase your bet as needed. More streak betting What about a 6-game winning streak and higher? Here, the numbers aren’t so clear because the sample size dips to the point where the effect becomes harder to measure and more volatile. Betting against the home team on a 7-game streak was a money loser in 2019, but it only happened 6 times, so it’s hard to say if the system loses its potency or if there simply aren’t enough instances to take a good measurement. It’s possible that what we’re seeing is that bettors overvalue a team on a win streak by a certain standard amount, whether it’s a 4-game streak or a 10-game streak. But the team themselves doesn’t gain any kind of momentum edge until the win streak has gotten close to double digits. At that point, they really do have an edge in terms of confidence that raises their chances of winning beyond what the betting public sees. It’s possible, but I wouldn’t blame you for being skeptical of that rationale. What about the other way? Do baseball bettors undervalue teams on a losing streak the same way they overvalue teams on a winning streak? The short answer is no. Unlike betting against teams on a win streak, betting for teams on a losing streak has not been lucrative. And it makes some sense when you consider the basic behavior of bettors: They bet for teams rather than against teams. Even though both insights are potentially profitable, bettors pay much closer attention to winning streaks than losing streaks, so the former get overvalued while the latter remain undistorted by the market.

Article / Updated 05-19-2020

Betting on baseball is fun. When a game can change so dramatically from year to year, it can be difficult to demonstrate a system’s effectiveness over a long period of time (one of the characteristics of a high-quality system). For example, Major League Baseball sees big fluctuations in offensive production, and the most recent season, 2019, is the poster child for this phenomenon. In the years 2005 through 2018, there were 2 games with a total north of 13, and in 2019, there were 20! Some of my favorite systems and angles to explore are ones revolving around "extreme" odds, like very high or very low totals, or extreme disparities in the moneyline. Betting against home favorites in extremely high total games (13 or more runs) was profitable in 2019. The underdogs won 11 games straight up and lost 5 for an ROI over 50 percent. That’s not a big enough sample size to reliably determine if we’ve got a winning system or not, and ideally, we’d like to look backwards and see if this system was profitable in previous years. Unfortunately, there just aren’t enough games totaled at 13 or greater to supply us the history we need. BET under extreme totals! While the 2019 season saw the virtual disappearance of games totaled 7 or lower, they aren’t extinct, merely endangered. Betting markets appear to find it difficult to bet that a game will land on 7 or fewer runs when the league average is closing in on 10 runs! You can profit from the market’s inability to imagine a game without much offense. Here’s the setup: In the Major League Baseball regular season If a home team is an underdog AND The game total is 7 or less BET under the total. Over the last decade, this system has produced a 55-percent record and an ROI of 5.6 percent. This system would have put you in the black nine of the last ten years. In high-scoring seasons, the opportunities are less abundant, but baseball changes from year to year, so by the time you read this, the high-flying home-run hitting offenses of 2019 might just be a distant memory, and you’ll have opportunities to bet under the 7-run total in droves. The success at betting under extremely low totals is an indicator that there is a certain gravitational pull in the betting markets, almost certainly created by bettors’ preconceived notions about what a reasonable outcome is. The reality is that when two aces face each other, with great bullpens behind them, 4–0 and 3–1 games are relatively common . . . but gamblers have reflexive discomfort betting under extremely low totals. Having said that, the number of games with totals at or below 7 has been steadily shrinking as run production has gone up. Make the total bet at –110 odds. When the under is bet heavily, the odds will change before the total itself will move from 7.5 to 7. For example, if bettors are pounding the under 7.5 at –110, it will move to 7.5 –115, then 7.5 –120, and 7.5 –125 before moving to 7 –110. And as the odds move from –110 toward –125, the break-even win percentage increases. You have to win 55 percent of your bets to be profitable on –125 odds. BET big favorites! Although studies have shown that heavy favorites and home teams tend to get undue attention from bettors, the results of the last decade of baseball unequivocally show that there’s money to be made betting with the favorite rather than the opposite. If we assume home favorites get over-bet, the same is not true of road favorites. Here’s a simple setup you can watch for: In the Major League Baseball regular season If a team is favored by –201 or more (i.e. a more negative number) AND That team is on the road BET the road team’s moneyline. It’s simple but profitable: A bettor who started following this strategy in 2009 would have seen a 12.3-percent ROI since then with only two down years. This table give you the data. Betting Big Favorites Year W/L Record ROI 2009 13–1 +35.4% 2010 15–7 –1.4% 2011 6–9 –41.5% 2012 9–0 +45.5% 2013 9–1 +29.6% 2014 5–1 +20.3% 2015 12–4 +7.3% 2016 29–9 +9.7% 2017 38–11 +9.4% 2018 65–14 +17.1% 2019 87–20 +13.9% Total 288–77 +12.3% A few things to think about with these systems: The data I collected comes from a combination of sportsdatabase.com and my own homegrown baseball database. My data suggests heavy favorites are three times as likely to get more expensive than less expensive (which is an indicator that favorites naturally get more attention from bettors, or possibly that this is a publicly known system). That is, a game listed at –220 is much more likely to go off at –230 than –210. That means betting early is important for this system. These 365 games have an average line of –241, or a 70-percent break-even rate. The 78.9-percent win rate of this system is more than enough for profitability, but you can see where shopping for the best odds matters. I’m listing ROI rather than a flat profit number because clearly the amount of money a bettor makes is dependent on how much is risked. I don’t flinch at showing the very negative returns from 2011 because there were so few betting opportunities. If you were using some form of Kelly bet-sizing or flat-betting, you wouldn’t have lost much of your bankroll on this strategy. We can conclude that the game has been changing in recent years. Particularly, the prevalence of high road favorites has gone through the roof, indicating that perhaps Major League Baseball has a parity problem. In 2014, there were only six betting opportunities out of 2,430 regular season games, and in 2019, there were over 100. Data suggests that betting on the road run line favorite is slightly more profitable, and I’ve even gotten this recommendation from people within the bookmaking industry. As with any system, this one could dry up tomorrow, or it could continue for another decade. If more people know about it, more people bet it. If more people bet it, the prices on big favorites go higher. As big favorites get more expensive, the break-even percentage goes up. The good news is, like any long-standing, simple, broad system, this one is begging for an astute bettor to dig in and refine it. Maybe the win percentage gets better if you avoid high-total games or exclude big public teams like the Yankees and Cardinals. BET pitcher’s duel losers! In the spirit of betting against public sentiment, consider the premise that there is nothing more pathetic in modern baseball than a team that loses 1–0. Your batters are so ineffective that they can’t produce a single lousy run for your poor, overworked, overachieving pitcher. Keep your eyes peeled for situations where good teams are on the wrong end of a 1–0 shutout. It appears to have a motivating effect on the next game’s batters: In the Major League Baseball regular season If a team lost by a score of 1–0 in their last game AND The losing team is favored in their upcoming game BET on the favorite team’s moneyline. In the last decade, this situation has come up about 10 to 15 times per season and has produced a +11-percent ROI. It works at home and on the road, but the very best situation seems to be when a team loses 1–0 in their final series game against an opponent. These teams effectively take their frustration out on their new opponent, building a 56–25 record, for a +18-percent ROI.

Article / Updated 05-19-2020

Starting pitchers are the most dominant factor in any baseball game’s outcome, and in sports betting, the oddsmakers rely heavily on their recent performance to set the odds of any game. Look beyond traditional statistics. Let me say that a different way: Don’t just look beyond them; don’t look at traditional statistics at all. You’re not trying to figure out who’s going to win the Cy Young this year. You’re looking for pitchers who give their team a better chance at winning than the oddsmakers give them credit for. Wins, losses, and ERA are garbage when it comes to picking winners. Consider these statistics instead when you look at pitchers: WHIP: This stat, walks and hits per inning pitched, is becoming more commonplace and very useful. It’s like the more familiar ERA in that it’s normalized (ERA over 9 innings, WHIP over 1 inning), but it’s walks and hits. The downside of WHIP? It doesn’t give pitchers credit for being able to escape from jams in the form of reduced runs allowed. FIP: You can figure out that IP means "per inning pitched," and FIP is known colloquially as Fielding Independent Pitching. This stat normalizes stats based on fielders’ range in the infield and outfield. Strikeouts and walks: In some form, these stats are favored by baseball prognosticators. Some say strikeouts per inning minus walks per nine innings is all you need to know about a pitcher’s ability to get outs. BET on rest The only time teams get more than a day off is during the All-Star break in the second week of July. Nevertheless, there are opportunities to bet on teams that are more rested than their opponents. Consider this setup: For regular season MLB games When the home team has more rest than the visitor AND The game total is 9 or more BET over the total. It’s not life changing, but the result is 145–105 over/under in the last decade. That’s a 58-percent system for you to study, use, and refine. Home/away splits Major League Baseball has one of the smaller home field advantages in all the major sports. But small doesn’t mean nonexistent, as there are lots of reasons it helps to play at home: Home baseball games mean continuity, less travel, and players living at home. Fielders have a chance to get more familiar with the contours of the foul areas, outfield barriers, and in some cases the weather conditions. Your hitters and pitchers can get comfortable with the lights, shadows, and the critical site line between home plate and the pitcher’s mound. Over the long run, a team’s general manager can build a team to match the ballpark. For stadiums with a shortened right field, you can stack up lefty power hitters. For smaller ballparks in general, you can trade away your fly-ball pitchers for ground-ball pitchers. And of course, if you’re the Houston Astros, you can plant bugs in the opposing team’s clubhouse and fine-tune the closed-circuit camera system for stealing signs! (Sorry, Astros fans. That was in the past, right? We can all have a good laugh about it now. Right, Dodgers fans?) Just so you know the premise is true, the table shows some data from recent seasons. It’s a small sample, but looking further back shows roughly the same advantage for the home team. MLB Home Field Advantage Regular Season Home Team Win % Home Favorite Win % Home Underdog Win % 2016 53% 59% 42% 2017 54% 60% 43% 2018 52.7% 60% 40% 2019 53% 62% 38% If we knew nothing else about two major league teams facing each other, we would install the home team as a –112 favorite. That moneyline equates to a shade over 53 percent in terms of break-even winning percentage. Betting on home field advantage is tricky in baseball. Teams that start off playing well at home don’t always finish well at home. For example, in comparing home winning percentages of 2019 teams between the first and second halves of the season shows that 4 of the top 5 home field performers were languishing in the middle of the pack before the All-Star Break.

Article / Updated 05-19-2020

Baseball was a statistician and probability expert’s sport early on and, after horse racing, was what popularized sports betting. The standard listing for baseball bets (shown in the following figure) shows a handful of key pieces of data: Time/Date: When the first pitch is schedule for each game. Rotation numbers: The unique identifier for each side of a baseball bet. Teams and starters: The away team is always listed on top, and the home team is always listed on the bottom, with projected starters (and sometimes whether they are right- or left-handed). Opening odds: This is optional, but bookmakers sometimes show the opening moneyline and total. You can’t bet on those numbers anymore, but it can give you a feel for where the betting markets are leaning when you compare the opening numbers with the current odds. Current moneyline/total: At a minimum, a baseball odds listing should show the moneyline odds for the favorite (with a negative 3-digit number), and the game total (which will be somewhere between 5 and 15). The baseball moneyline By now you’re familiar with the moneyline. A moneyline bet is a bet on a team to win the game. It doesn’t matter by how much; it doesn’t matter if it’s in 9 innings or 19 innings. To split the betting action between teams of differing quality, oddsmakers have two choices: They can handicap one team by including a point spread. Betting on either side will be close to an even-money 11/10 bet, but the final score is adjusted by a certain number of points to determine the winner of the bet. The alternative is the moneyline, where the final score of the game indicates the winner, with no point or run adjustments, but the payout schedules are different depending on whether you bet on the favorite or the underdog. There are different explanations for why baseball doesn’t operate with a point spread. One theory is that margin of victory in a baseball game has less to do with the quality difference between the two teams. Another is that overall variability of the game makes it more difficult to attach a spread to. Historians point out that after horse racing, baseball is the original bettors’ sport, and by the time the point spread was invented in the 1940s, there was enough accumulated knowledge and tradition in offering odds on baseball bets that the points spread simply wasn’t necessary. Either way, a moneyline is a moneyline. Baseball moneylines are no different from any other moneyline: You need the team you bet on to win the game if you want your bet to pay off. Moneyline encoding The moneyline of a baseball game comes with several key pieces of information. Let’s consider a baseball game where the home team is listed at –110 and the road team is listed at +100: The home team is a slight favorite. The break-even winning percentage for a bet placed at –110 odds, as you know by now, is 52.4 percent. (To calculate breakeven rate on a negative (favorite) moneyline, divide the line by itself less 100 (–110/–210). The break-even percentage on the underdog (+100) is 50 percent. The bookmaker’s vigorish, or theoretical hold, is about 2.3 percent. A moneyline by itself does not tell you how much vig is being charged by the bookmaker; you need both the favorite and the underdog moneylines to determine what the vig is. There are no ties in baseball (except in the occasional All-Star game). Your moneyline bet is on the final result of the game, including extra innings (if they are necessary). Win-loss record perils If you’re a moneyline bettor in baseball, you can’t judge your success by looking at your win/loss percentage. If you bet on every baseball team with a –170 moneyline in the 2019 season, you would have won 62 percent of your bets! That sounds like a lot of winning, right? Let’s do a quick calculation to see if you would have broken even: Since we’re looking at bets in the past, we know the actual winning percentage of the bets (62 percent). What we’re interested in is the break-even winning percentage of bets at a –170 moneyline. If those 2019 bets won at a higher rate than the break-even winning percentage, it means they would have been profitable. If the actual winning percentage is below the break-even rate, they would have lost money. For a favorite, the break-even winning percentage is the moneyline (–170) over itself minus 100 (–270). Here’s the calculation: –170/–270 = 62.9 percent So you have to win 62.9 percent of –170 bets to make a profit. That should make sense to you since every time you lose a –170 bet, you’re losing $170 (or $17 or $1.70), and every time you win that bet, you only win $100 (or $10 or $1, respectively). Winning less than 62.9 percent means you’re losing money, and that’s just what would have happened in 2019 had you bet on every single –170 favorite. It might feel strange to win 62 percent of your bets and lose money, but since 62 is less than 62.9, that sad fate is what would have befallen you. The flip side of that is that if you’re an underdog bettor, it feels strange to win less than 50 percent of your games and be profitable, but that’s what happens sometimes. In 2018, if you had bet on the Marlins every time they were +250 or greater underdogs, you would have won 2 and lost 5. But because those occasional payoffs are worth so much more, that 2–5 record would have also netted you a +14.3-percent ROI. Point spread bettors can generally tally up wins and losses and judge whether they’ve been successful or not. And the point spread gives you an explicit message, “The betting market thinks Team A is 6 points better than Team B.” There are no such signposts when you’re a moneyline bettor. When wins and losses become less meaningful, you are forced to think in terms of win probability, ROI, and returns. But don’t be afraid: With a little experience, you’ll learn to calculate in your head. When you see a moneyline on a baseball game, you’ll be able to do a quick mental calculation on the implied odds and decide whether they match your expectation on the outcome. Total runs bet Bookmakers offer the typical total bet on baseball, and it works just as you’d expect. The oddsmaker sets a number of total combined runs in the game. Bet the over and you’ll need the teams to score more than the total. Bet the under and you’ll need the pitching to dominate to the point that the total scored runs is less than the total. Bookmakers offer baseball totals as straight 11/10 bets with –110 odds on either the over or under. And as you might expect, baseball totals are offered in increments of 1/2 runs. As with football and basketball, any extra game play is included in your total bet. In other words, extra innings count toward your total. If you’ve bet under 8.5 and the 9th inning finishes at 4–4, you’ve got a losing ticket, because the game will continue until one team tops the other. Run line bet Since oddsmakers don’t offer a point spread in baseball, there’s no such thing as a standard 11/10 side bet with –110 odds. But Major League Baseball obviously has teams with wide quality differences, and sports books realized long ago that some bettors don’t find extreme moneylines appealing. Favorite bettors don’t get enough payoff to make it worth it, and underdog bettors start to feel like they’ve bet a longshot prop, where the payouts are handsome but rare. The result was the run line. The run line is like a hybrid between a point spread and a moneyline, and it operates according to these rules: A favorite run line bet means a –1.5 handicap is applied to the final score. A favorite run line bet is offered at odds equivalent to a moneyline bet on the favorite plus about 80 to 110 points. An underdog run line bet means a +1.5 handicap is applied to the final score. An underdog run line bet is offered at odds equivalent to an underdog moneyline bet minus about 80 to 110 points. When oddsmakers tweak your chance of winning, they make an equivalent adjustment in the payout schedule to maintain the same level of risk and return. Spotting the underdog a run and a half means that run line bet is more likely to win, but, as you would expect, the bet pays less in the event of a win. And it works in reverse for the run line favorite. These adjustments allow the bookmaker to maintain a level of profitability while offering bets that appeal to bettors’ different tastes and appetites. As always, examples pave the path to comprehension. This table shows a pair of games with the moneyline odds listed alongside the run line odds: MLB Games with Moneyline and Run Line Odds Team Pitcher Moneyline Run Line Miami Marlins P Lopez -R +170 +1.5 –130 Philadelphia Phillies V Velazquez -R –185 –1.5 +110 Atlanta Braves D Keuchel -L –105 +1.5 –210 New York Mets M Stroman -R –105 –1.5 +185 The Phillies are favored in the first game, as evidenced by the lower moneyline. If you bet the Phillies run line, you take on a –1.5 handicap for the game’s final score, but in exchange, your payout schedule improves from –185 to +110. If you bet $1 at –185 odds, you profit 54 cents. With the run line bet, your $1 bet makes a $1.10 profit. In this case, the odds shifted 95 cents in your favor from –185 to +110. If you like the Marlins run line bet, you’ll get +1.5 runs added to your final score, but you lose a full dollar on your odds, from +170 to –130. The second game is illustrative because the teams are listed as even in terms of moneyline. But the oddsmaker always picks one team to be the run line favorite and one team to be the run line underdog. Bookmakers take a variety of approaches on baseball odds. Some offer low-vig betting where the theoretical hold is as small as 5 cents. (For example, a moneyline favorite is listed at –105, and a moneyline underdog is listed at +100.) Some bookmakers offer noticeably better odds on favorites at the expense of underdogs, and others, vice versa. While the run line handicap is always 1.5 runs, the odds differential — that is, how much the moneyline odds increase or decrease for the run line — can vary as well. The lesson is that regardless of your baseball bet, you should (appropriately) have at least 3 outs! That is, make sure you have betting options so that you can get the best odds possible on your bet. The moneyline favorite always gets a –1.5 run line handicap, and the moneyline underdog always gets a +1.5 run line handicap. In cases where the moneyline odds are completely even, the bookmaker picks one side to be the favorite. If you’re curious about how often the run line comes into play, here’s the breakdown of the 2019 season: Favorites won 1489 games and lost 918. Of those 1489 games, favorites won 376 by just 1 run, so the moneyline favorite bet won, but the run line bet would have lost. And 2019 is in line with historical averages. Assuming you pick a winning favorite, they’ll win by exactly one run about a quarter of the time. Baseball’s “ACTION” condition Because starting pitchers are so central to the outcome of a baseball game, most side bets (money line, run line, and 5 inning line) are conditional. Look at the moneyline and total odds for this game: Time Gm# Team Pitcher M/L 24-Jul 909 Houston Astros J Verlander - R –240 5:35 PM 910 Tampa Bay Rays D Castillo - R 210 The default moneyline bet on the Astros/Rays game is called a listed starters bet. That means your bet is conditional on the starting pitchers listed with the bet actually starting the game. To be specific, a bet on the Astros is only valid if both Justin Verlander and Diego Castillo start the game. Technically, oddsmakers consider it a start as long as the listed pitcher takes the mound and throws at least one pitch. When you make a baseball bet, you’ll see specific language on your betting ticket or on your online betting receipt that states both starters have to play for the bet to have action. If either pitcher fails to start, the bet is called no action. No action means your bet is effectively cancelled. Bettors at live bookmakers should take their ticket back to the counter, and their bet gets returned. If you bet online, your wager will be returned to your account automatically. There is no juice or fee charged on a no action bet; it’s treated like any other push. In addition to listed starter bets, many bookmakers offer the option of placing an action wager on baseball. If you choose an action bet, your money is on that bet, regardless of any changes to the starting pitching. But there’s a catch: The bookmaker reserves the right to change the odds if there’s a pitching change. In the example above, if you had checked the "action" box when you made your bet on the Rays, you’d accept that should Verlander and Castillo both start, your moneyline odds would be set at +210. And that makes sense, as anyone who saw Verlander play in 2019 knows he was a hard man to break, so if the Rays were to do it, you’d get rewarded for your Tampa faith. Now consider the scenario where Verlander pulls a hammy in warmups and the Astros turn to an untested rookie to start the game. The chances of Tampa winning just went way up. Bookmakers aren’t willing to accept that kind of risk in baseball, so there’s no way they’ll pay you +210 on a fourth-rate starter subbing in for Verlander. If you had taken a standard bet, Verlander’s absence would cancel your bet. But if you took an action bet, your payout schedule changes to reflect how the betting market would otherwise feel about this pitching change. An action bet means you’re still in on the Rays, but the bookmaker gets a chance to reset the odds and payout schedule for the ticket you hold. There are very few circumstances where advantage bettors would consider placing an action wager as a +EV play. Action wagers are for fans of a team, or for people watching a big game on TV, who don’t care all that much about who’s on the mound or what the odds are. There is money to be made betting baseball, but not through action wagering. There are virtually no other circumstances where you don’t get paid the odds stated on your betting ticket in sports betting. Bookmakers protect themselves from big swings in win probability for a given team by either halting betting altogether on a game with a big injury question mark or circling the game. It’s slightly out of fashion these days, but when a bookmaker offers a circled game, it means there is incomplete information on injuries or playing status of one or more key players. A circled game means you can still bet on it, but at reduced limits. 9 divided by 2 = 5 inning lines There’s no such thing as halftime in baseball. Sure, the middle of the 5th inning is halfway through the game, unless it isn’t, when the home team is winning and doesn’t bat in the bottom of the 9th. Most bookmakers now offer their version of a halftime line on baseball games called the 5-inning line. As you might expect, the 5-inning total is around half of the game total. The moneyline usually lands very close to the game moneyline as well. The run line has a slight difference: Instead of a standard –1.5/+1.5 handicap, the 5-inning run line is -.5/+.5, but like its full-game cousin, the 5-inning run line is a derivative of the moneyline. All 5-inning bets resolve once the home team has made 3 outs in its half of the 5th inning. The average innings pitched per start is around 5.5, so as you would expect, the 5-inning moneyline is a much more pure reflection of the two starting pitchers than the game moneyline. It’s very rare for a starter to pitch a complete game, so game moneylines have to account for bullpen and closer quality in addition to the starter. Baseball’s 5-inning results are tightly correlated with the full-game results. The 5-inning leader goes onto to win the full game 7 times out of 8. For total bets, games flip-flop a little more often; a 5-inning under ending with a full game over (and vice versa) happens 1 game out of 6. Like other derivative bets, bettors might find some opportunity in monitoring full-game odds against 5-innings odds for situations where one reacts to news and another doesn’t. For example, if word comes out before the game that one of the team’s big sluggers is a scratch for the game, you might see the game total drop by a full run as bettors flock to the under in light of the diminished offensive firepower. In theory, that same loss of offensive firepower would be felt in the first 5 innings as well, so the 5-inning total should dip by a half-run just like the full-game total did. But often that’s not the case. But because full-game odds get more attention from bettor than 5-inning odds, the latter is often less responsive to market forces, even though the two results are highly correlated (see preceding paragraph). If the market correctly downgrades the full-game total by a run, the 5-inning total should shrink by a half run. But often it doesn’t. That’s a classic +EV opportunity for a 5-inning under. It’s something akin to the market getting new information that causes a certain stock to rise. If the market has determined that company is suddenly more valuable than they thought previously, then the preferred stock, call options, and other associated derivative investments should go up too. So if the betting market thinks there will be fewer runs scored, all bets based on run scoring should reflect that new valuation. Other common baseball bets Beyond the “big 3 bets” (moneyline, run line, and total) and their derivatives, most online casinos offer a smorgasbord of prop bets, but the most common are as follows: Team scoring total Bettors can wager over or under a team reaching a certain score: Rockies at Rangers — Team Run Total Rockies 4.5 Rangers 5.5 over–120 under +100 In this example, there are 4 possible bets on offer. The Rockies team total is 4.5, and a bet on either the over or under has implied –110 odds. If the Rockies score 5 or more, your over bet wins and the Under bet loses. If the Rockies score 4 or less, the under wins and the over loses. That result happens regardless of the Rangers score, and regardless of whether the Rockies win or lose. All that matters for this bet is how many runs the Rockies score at the end of the game. The Rangers’ team total works the same way. In this example, the bookmaker is trying to balance action toward the under 5.5 side of the bet by making the over bet slightly more expensive relative to the under. As you know by now, if the action gets too lopsided on the over, the bookmaker might increase the Rangers’ team total to 6. Team total bets are good alternatives to betting sides (moneyline and run lines) or overall game totals when you have a good feel for one side of the pitcher vs batter matchup, but not the other. Will there be a score in the 1st? This is a binary yes/no bet with moneyline-type odds, given like this: Rockies at Rangers — Will either team score in the 1st inning? YES –140 NO +115 The bet is decided as you might expect. If you bet "NO" and the 1st inning goes in the books with the score 0–0, you win. Any other score and your bet wins, regardless of who scored, and how much they scored. Odds for this bet are based on the quality of the leadoff hitters and early-game pitching tendencies for the starters. Some great starters (Yu Darvish comes to mind) are prone to give up runs early and then settle in. Some notes on 1st-inning scoring to help you bet: If you’re wondering, there’s a run scored in the 1st about 52 percent of the time overall, so odds for each side will hover close to even, with occasional forays into 2-to-1 territory for games predicted to be shootouts. The top teams in terms of 1st-inning scoring percentage are normally between 35 percent to 40 percent by the end of the year. 1st-inning scoring is largely a function of overall runs scored, but you’ll see cases where bad offensive teams appear at the top of the 1st-inning scoring percentage rankings; they have a knack for scoring early even though they don’t score as much late. Teams with productive hitters batting first, second, and third sometimes lack quality throughout their lineup, so are more likely to be at the top of the rankings in terms of 1st-inning runs without owning other offensive categories. The reverse can also be true where high-output teams fail to score in the 1st. When betting on the 1st inning, consider the manager’s approach as well. Some like to scratch out runs one at a time instead of waiting for a big rally. If a manager likes to bunt, steal, hit-and-run, you’ll see a higher percentage of runs scored in the early innings when the top OBP (on-base percentage) guys bat. 1st-inning run-scoring consistency is largely predictable during the season. For the handful of seasons I analyzed in the late 2010s, the leading teams in 1st-inning scoring 8 weeks into the season were still near the top of the list by the end of the season. For example, in 2019, 8 of the top 10 1st-inning scoring teams at the halfway mark ended the year in the top 10. The starting pitchers are a different story though. The starting pitchers leading the league in 1st inning runs allowed are much less likely to be on the list in the second half of the season. Further analysis needed: There’s an opportunity for bettors if they can identify those teams that have lost their 1st inning punch. In 2019, the Dodgers and the Mariners were scoring in the 1st inning regularly at the halfway mark, but they fell of greatly and landed out of the top 10 in 1st-inning scoring percentage by the end of the year. If you could identify the factor or factors that led to the drop-off, you could get out ahead of the market and bet "NO" on runs scored in the 1st at advantageous odds.

Article / Updated 05-19-2020

Because NFL teams are constructed according to strict rules—the NFL salary cap, draft structure, standardized schedule, and other forces aimed at maintaining parity—the talent level from top to bottom occupies a narrow band. That means successful teams have superior coaching, schemes, preparation, treatment, technology, process, contingency planning, and so on. The paragraphs that follow discuss non-football factors that have an impact on the game. Some of the best handicappers and analysts will tell you that winning bets is gaining mastery over these elements of the sport. Schedule spot (travel, bye week) When we build a mental model of what an NFL team is, it’s tempting to imagine it as a static list of players, slotted into positions, each with a statistical profile that, when combined with the other players on the team, reveal themselves to be a big deterministic machine. Generalizing is a habit: “This team is good” and “that team is bad,” but it’s a terrible habit for someone trying to predict performance. Teams are a function of their players, but its important to remember that they function in context. The way they perform on the field is as connected to who they’re playing against, how healthy the teams are, how rested they are, and so on. Yes, the teams you’re watching this week has the same names and jersey numbers as last week, but they aren’t really the same. Travel There have been scads of studies devoted to travel effects on pro football teams. A 2013 Stanford study expanded on previous theories about circadian advantages enjoyed by west coast teams playing night games on the east coast due to their body clocks being set to "afternoon" while the east coast team’s body clocks were set to "bedtime." Other studies have tried to determine if the stress of travel has a detrimental effect on teams crossing time zones in either direction. I twisted the data every way I could for teams going coast to coast in either direction and couldn’t find an angle. That’s probably an indication that the betting market has priced these travel factors into the point spread. Having said that, in the last four years betting against Eastern Time Zone teams playing at any time on the west coast has netted a 34–19 spread record. Not much to hang your hat on. You can take advantage of the market when it underreacts and when it overreacts. In an ideal world, you find a factor that affects betting outcomes of games that nobody has considered. Bet it for profit until other people start mentioning it. Then when you finally hear other bettors mention it, consider betting the other side. A Boston College research team led by Kyle Waters took the Stanford study one step further and tried to isolate specific travel distance as it impacts winning percentage. They concluded that NFL teams’ winning percentage drops 3.5 percent for every 1,000 km traveled, with bigger impacts when the team changes time zones and when they play outside. That’s a built-in disadvantage for teams in the west. If your team is in California, Arizona, or Nevada, your team spends easily twice the time in the air than a team in Ohio or Pennsylvania. BET on early season wanderers I didn’t want to drag you through that discussion without giving you a system to look for. This system takes both time and space variables into account: In the NFL regular season AND It’s the first half of the season (week 9 or less) AND The home team is based in the Eastern time zone AND The road team is based in the Pacific time zone BET the road team’s point spread. This system comes up a few times a year and has gone 42–23 (64 percent, with a modest Z-score of 2.3). It is possible, after all, that both the Stanford and Boston College research studies are correct (that winning percentages drop with more travel) and for the betting markets to have totally overreacted to this phenomenon in the form of plum point spreads for the visiting team. Rest I am a believer that rest is a useful add-on characteristic when evaluating matchups. While I think the oddsmakers build bye weeks into their models, I think it’s helpful to set aside preconceived notions of what player rest actually does for betting outcomes. Rest is very likely a net positive in terms of improving player health, and for most coaches, more time is good for game-planning activities. But there’s also value in routine and focus, which are sometimes at odds with rest. By far most NFL games are played on the reverse-Genesis schedule: Work on Sunday, rest for six days, work again the next Sunday. But with Monday and Thursday night games interspersed with bye weeks, plus Thanksgiving day and a few Saturday games late in the season, there are a lot of rest possibilities, as you can see in this table. Rest Days in the NFL Rest Days Before Regular Season Games Home Team Away Team 3 6.3% 6.2% 4 <1% <1% 5 8.9% 8.6% 6 60.6% 59.1% 7 6.1% 5.4% 8 <1% <1% 9 4.6% 6.3% 10 <1% 1% 12 <1% <1% 13 5.1% 5.5% 14 <1% <1% BET the curse of the well-rested Look what happens in the latter half of the season when a home team is playing after an unusually long rest period: During the NFL regular season It’s week 9 or higher AND The home team is playing after more than 8 or days of rest AND The home team lost their last game BET on the road team’s point spread. This system actually works with or without a loss in the previous game, but this setup has gone 65–28 ATS since 2012 (69 percent with a Z-score over 3) and went 10–7 in 2019. I like this approach, and I think there’s much more to be discovered when looking at rest. Rest differential The NFL takes pains to pit teams against each other that have a similar rest profile so neither team is at a major disadvantage. Obviously, it doesn’t always work that way. This table shows the distribution of rest differential. Rest Differential Rest Differential Frequency Road team more than 3 days extra rest 7.3% Road team 1–3 days extra rest 14.6% Home team’s rest = road team’s rest 62% Home team 1–3 days extra rest 12.3% Home team more than 3 days extra rest 5.2% Injuries Injury creates uncertainty around games. Uncertainty means higher variance of possible results. This you probably already knew. The biggest challenge for someone examining the games is not when a player is hurt; it’s deciphering injury information for players who might play. A Football Outsiders study looked at NFL injury reports and calculated that when a player is listed as Probable, they play 95 percent of the time, and 32 percent of the time when Questionable. But teams, general managers, and coaches have different approaches to reporting injuries. Perhaps not a major factor, but if there’s a player who’s key to your handicap listed as probable, it’s a good idea to understand the team’s history in reporting injuries. Teams also demonstrate their ability — or lack thereof — to make adjustments to scheme and style in the event a key injury. The 2017 Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl in spite of a rash of injuries, which most people credited to coach Doug Pedersen’s adjustments to play-calling, personnel groupings, and so on to fit the strengths of the remaining healthy players. As a Dallas fan, this is doubly painful because the Cowboys of the last decade have shown the opposite skill: the collapse like a house of cards when key players sit. The final point on injuries that sharp analysts watch for is that players will play before they’re at 100-percent speed. Going at 80 percent if you’re a precision-route wideout like Amari Cooper can mean the difference between a 9-catch day and a 2-catch day. I like these three approaches with skill position prop bets: Fade a yardage total for a skill position player returning from a minor injury that’s kept him on the sidelines for at least two games. Watch for big performance dips from skill players that occur without explanation during a win, and fade the yardage total prop the following week. Is there such thing as "injury prone"? And are certain injuries subject to re-aggravation more than others? Yardage total prop bets for skill players are usually built on assumptions of full speed, but going under that total on a player with even a 10-percent or 15-percent chance of having to come out of a game can move the bet into positive EV territory. Weather Football is an all-weather sport, although the NFL has sensibly started pausing games if they’re in the eye of massive electrical storms. When it comes to whether effects, we’re interested in three basic factors: wind, precipitation, and temperature. It should go without saying that everyone reacts differently to weather. I can think of some notable examples of skill players who had particular issues with certain conditions. Hall of Famer Troy Aikman, who played high school and college football in Oklahoma and Southern California, was vocal about not being able to comfortably grip a wet ball. Data scientist Josh Mancuso studied three decades of NFL data and drew a handful of conclusions about quarterback play in bad weather: Games played in high wind (20 mph or more) have the greatest negative impact on QB production. QB efficiency doesn’t change much in bad weather, but production metrics (touchdown passes, and yards passing) take a hit. A different Stanford team led by Rory Houghton-Bery drew some fascinating conclusions in a 2017 paper about weather when they tested differential effects for the home and road team. As a rule, rain and snow are an advantage to the home team and produces statistically significant increase in point differential toward the home team. The inference they made was that home teams are more used to the bad weather. Makes sense to me. Teams playing in a dome see more home-field advantage than a team that plays their home games in the open. Run-heavy teams (if there are indeed any left in the NFL) get less of an advantage in bad weather than a pass-heavy offense. Wind is the great equalizer; it’s bad news for both teams’ offensive expectations. Bet under the total on a windy day. Multiple teams have looked at the impact of temperature on a game. If you’ve ever tried to throw or catch a football in bone-chilling cold, you might be surprised to learn that cold weather — by itself — has not historically limited total points in a game. If anything several studies have found that extremely hot weather has more of a negative impact than cold weather. A numberFire.com article written during the 2017 season is probably the most useful of all. In 256 regular season games, 20 percent of the games were played in moderately windy conditions (7–12 mph) where average total scores dipped by a point, and 15 percent were played in high wind (over 12 mph), where total scores were down over 6 points on average, with the under bet winning 19 times and losing 11. Wind looks like a promising angle for a fundamental handicapper, but it’s hard to pass final judgment on an angle like this without more precise data. The biggest question is always this: Does that betting record represent wins and losses against the consensus closing total, the opening total, or some total in between? What wind data is being used? Was that wind as measured at the stadium? If you looked up the wind speed for Hot Springs, Arkansas (or a random city of your choice) on May 2, 2010 (or a random date of your choice), you’d probably see a single vector representing an average direction and velocity, but that doesn’t necessarily represent what’s happening at the stadium.

Article / Updated 05-18-2020

I don’t have much patience or appreciation for betting NFL team-specific angles. When I hear someone tell me that the Raiders are 15–6 ATS in their last 21 visits to the east coast, I roll my eyes (in the nicest way possible). If there’s no connecting logic behind a trend, I dismiss it. If you read the article on preseason betting however, you’ll see I’m an advocate for some coaching systems. Long-tenured coaches develop and retain tendencies that get passed onto their teams. ©sutadimages/Shutterstock.com BET Belichick's slow starts It’s a strange one, I know. But as successful as the man has been in all aspects of his NFL coaching career if you’re reading this and Coach Belichick is still in the business, take a look at his team’s performance in late-round playoff games. It’s downright eerie how slow the Patriots start in these high-leverage games. In 10 games, the Pats have scored a touchdown in the 1st quarter once, a field goal once, and 0 points in the first quarter in all 8 other games. Sure, it’s a little flimsy, but I had to mention it. In an NFL playoff game If Bill Belichick is the coach AND It’s the Conference Championship or the Super Bowl BET under the 1st quarter. BET a case of the Mondays This germ of this idea came to me from Las Vegas sports betting media mogul R.J. Bell. I’ve tweaked it slightly from his version, but I’m not sure I understand the reasoning other than a MNF win is a shot in the arm. It comes up a few times a year and has gone 39–13 ATS in the last two decades (75%, Z-score of 3.47). Most importantly, this system was a perfect 4–0 in 2019. In an NFL regular season game The home team’s last game was at home on Monday Night Football AND The home team’s most recent game resulted in a win AND The home team played less than a week ago AND The home team is favored by less than 7 or the home team is a dog BET the point spread of the home team. BET restless on the road This is an example of the rest conundrum. It makes sense that more rest is better, but there are many situations where that’s not the case; this is one of them. This system has gone 39–15 ATS (72-percent, Z-score of 3.1) in the last 7 years, but more interesting is the fact that it’s an 85-percent winner as the leg of a 6-point teaser, which rises to over 90 percent when the home team’s rest is a day more than the road team’s rest. In an NFL regular season game When the road team is favored AND The game total is greater than 42 points AND The home team has at least one extra day of rest BET the point spread of the road team. INCLUDE the road team in a 6-point teaser. BET growing totals It’s slightly more convoluted than I’d prefer, but the results are real: 54 overs and 25 unders (74 percent, Z-score of 3.15) in the last 15 years of results. I like this system because I believe it identifies a hole in the betting market. The market recognizes there’s a good reason to think both teams will score more than they did before, but there are enough bettors who aren’t convinced and who continue to bet the under. The result is the total isn’t quite as high as it should be. In the NFL regular season or playoffs If the game total is 4 points or more than the home team’s previous game total AND If the game total is equal to or greater than the away team’s previous game total AND Both team’s previous game over/under results were either under the total or no more than 1 over the total BET over the total.

Article / Updated 05-18-2020

Preseason NFL football gets a surprising amount of betting action. In fact, many sports books report there's more money wagered on the Hall of Fame Game (the first preseason game) than on the rest of that day's events combined, which includes a summer Sunday of baseball, tennis, golf, and summer league basketball. NFL teams play four preseason games during an excruciating mini-season in August and early September. Teams typically will play twice at home and twice on the road, but there are occasional promotional games in non-NFL cities. There is serious talk among the powers-that-be of finding ways to reduce the number of preseason games without losing the associated gate and media revenue with the two home games each owner gets per year. One proposal is to trade preseason games for a longer regular season. But, the NFL Players Association appears to be solidly against adding two regular season games. It will all come down to the renegotiation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement between players and team owners. What makes preseason NFL football so underwhelming as a fan is the uncanny valley: It resembles a real NFL game in every way, from the announcing voices to the stadiums to the uniforms, but something is just disturbingly out of whack. The new normal is to keep veteran players quarantined. Stars often play no more than a series in the first few games and not at all in the last preseason game. Thankfully, we have gambling to keep us cool in the dog days of summer. Preseason football doesn’t have to be a choice between the lesser of boring and who cares. In a meaningless game, populated mostly by spare players running a playbook straight out of last year’s Pro Bowl (erp), at least you have the ability to make it interesting through a wager. Preseason lines and limits The fact that sharps make bets on the preseason should tell you that it’s worth pursuing. In fact, sharp action often outweighs the public on individual games, and that means you’ll see bigger odds moves, and when it happens, you can derive more meaning from it because it’s less likely to be fueled by the tourists and occasional squares. If you are a high-dollar bettor, you’ll notice that preseason betting limits are much lower than regular season limits. Some bookmakers limit bettors to 20 percent or even 10 percent of a maximum bet they might take in the regular season. Bookmakers are constantly trying to balance opportunities for increasing handle against the risk of getting beaten, and they have extra risk in high-variance games. Bookmakers want contests between two teams that put winning above nearly everything else. Because preseason games are meaningless, team and coaching motivation can be hard to pin down, which means outcomes are harder to model. Preseason carries an elevated risk of a single piece of information about the game might confer a big gambling advantage (like a coaching staff’s plans for playing their 1st string quarterback), and there’s nothing oddsmakers hate worse than losing the information battle with gamblers. We know the NFL regular-season side and total markets are efficient: The oddsmakers models are accurate, there are lots of bettors who process and bet on new information, and oddsmakers quickly adjust lines. A good research idea might be to compare the efficiency of the preseason and regular season betting markets. With lower limits and more professional bettors, are there any systematic weaknesses in the preseason market that aren’t in the regular season market? You can get a sense for how efficient the market is by measuring the average distance between closing lines and winning game margins. This is sometimes called the spread margin. The lower the spread margin, the closer the game margin was to the spread. In recent seasons, the preseason NFL number has actually shown itself to be tighter (9.2) than the spread margin for regular season games (9.5). So are preseason games as hard to beat as regular season games? The tighter spread margin difference between regular and preseason could be attributed to swings in points scored. (If an oddsmaker sets a game at a pick’em, you’d see a lower spread margin if the game ended 42–0 rather than 44–0, but it would be hard to say that the former score represents a materially better spread on the game). And the golden rule of bookmakers is that they lower their betting limits when they feel vulnerable. That makes me think the preseason is worth looking into if you’re a bettor. Preseason as predictor Let’s start with a basic question about NFL team performance: Do teams that win in the preseason go onto win in the regular season? The answer appears to be no. Writer Chad Langager did a study a few years ago where he looked at ten seasons of data and found very little correlation between preseason winning percentage and the subsequent regular season winning percentage. But of course, we're not trying to predict regular season winning percentages. We're looking for betting opportunities in the preseason. Betting on head coaches The surest spread play in the NFL preseason revolves around coaching tendencies. If you played a sport competitively, then you undoubtedly had a coach tell you that it was important to "practice like you play" and that winning had to become a way of life, not just an outcome. On the flip side are the coaches who treat preseason as the fans see it: basically meaningless, and wins are certainly not worth risking player health over. I can see both sides of the argument, but really, I’m just glad there are coaches out there who can be so easily profiled. Coaches come and go, but there are some who stand out when it comes to the preseason. Preseason win-obsessed: John Harbaugh Mike Zimmer Preseason win-oriented: Bill Belichick Jon Gruden Mike Tomlin Pete Carroll Preseason losers: Jason Garrett Dan Quinn Matt Patricia Jury’s still out: Doug Pederson Sean Payton Ron Rivera I separate out Zimmer and Harbaugh because together they have won nearly two-thirds of their preseason games and have spread records to match. The approach is simple: Bet on the coaches who like winning; bet against the ones that have losing tendencies (if they’re still in the league); and on the occasions when one type plays the other, bet a little bit bigger. And in case you’re worried about tracking coaches and their straight-up winning percentage, understand that preseason spreads rarely stray beyond 4 or 5 points, so the straight-up winner is usually the point spread winner as well. If you’re reading this article in 2020 or beyond, there will inevitably be some new names in the coaching ranks, and some of the guys in the above list will have faded away. More important, some of the coaches I didn’t list will have accumulated enough data to reveal themselves to be a Zimmer-type or a Garrett-type. Before August comes around, do yourself a favor and look up the current coaching crop’s preseason ATS record. Considering the coaching angle is so widely discussed, it’s surprising that it has not been priced out of the market yet. During the 2019 preseason, some analysts claimed the Zimmer-coached Vikings and Harbaugh-coached Ravens had more expensive point spreads than they normally would have. Maybe so, but they both continued to win. Other potential factors related to coaching include coaches on the hot seat. It’s been theorized that they’re more likely to try and get wins in the preseason. After all, when you’re fighting for your job, every non-losing result helps. In an admittedly unscientific look at this, I counted 7 “consensus” hot seat head coaches going into the 2019 season. I threw out two of them (Garrett and Zimmer) who had already been profiled. That left 5 hot seat coaches who, drum roll please, went a combined 7–14 in the preseason. Clearly this needs a deeper look. BET on week 2 losers Systems are hard to come by for preseason NFL, but this here’s one that’s intuitive, well known, and surprisingly has not been squeezed out of existence: In the NFL preseason Both teams are playing their second preseason game AND One of the two teams lost their first preseason game outright AND The other team won their first preseason game outright BET the point spread of the team that lost last week. Statistically, the correlation between the winning percentage of a team in the preseason and their winning percentage in the regular season is 0.0944. Values between –0.1 and +0.1 suggest no correlation between two variables. Other preseason betting factors Here’s a list of basic factors to consider when assessing a preseason game: How long will starters play? Most coaches have playing time recipes determined well before the game. Look for games where one team plans to leave starters in longer than the other; consider a 1st half or 1st quarter wager. The 2nd string quarterback is often the pivotal player when it comes to preseason results. Beyond the quarterback, look at differences in overall depth of bench talent for the two teams. In the salary cap era, it’s hard for teams to be both good and deep at the same time. In preseason games 3 and 4, watch for skill position players on the bubble. If the team is only planning to keep two quarterbacks, find prop bets to take advantage of a third-string quarterback who’s likely to be going for the big splash to save his skin. Interceptions anyone? Skip it. Spare yourself from watching it. Do some calisthenics. Play with your kids. Call your mother.

Article / Updated 05-18-2020

Bookmakers offer the widest variety of sports betting action on regular season and playoff NFL games, including moneyline odds on both favorite and underdog, plus a standard –110 point spread along with alternate lines for both favorite and underdog. NFL totals are almost as popular as betting the sides, and are also listed as a standard –110 bet along with alternate totals at odds. Odds notation Nothing should surprise you about the basic odds listing of an NFL game. The following figure gives you a summary. In compact settings, bookmakers don’t bother telling you that the favorite’s point spread is –4 and the underdog’s point spread is +4. They assume you know that’s the way point spreads work, so they use the space to list the favorite spread and the total. Derivative betting and props NFL football has a full slate of derivative bets on each of the big three (moneyline, point spread, and total), where bettors can bet 1st quarter and 1st half pregame nearly everywhere, and preemptive bets on all quarters and the 2nd half at some of the larger books. Other popular derivative bets include team total points for the full game, halves, and quarters. NFL prop bets are some of the most extensive on offer due to the stat-heavy nature of the game now. Plus, it helps that there’s no squeamishness with betting on individual athletes on performance stats like yardage totals, total carries, total catches, scoring, and more. Depending on the betting venue, NFL games are set up perfectly for in-game betting on propositions like whether the next drive will end in a touchdown, field goal, punt, or turnover. Some bookmakers even offer app-based betting on whether an upcoming play will be a run or a pass. Futures betting for the NFL NFL bettors have a full menu of off-season betting options, the most common futures being the following: Team regular season win total (over/under) Team to make the playoffs (yes/no) Division championship (multiway moneyline bet) Conference championship (multiway moneyline bet) Super Bowl champion (multiway moneyline bet) Individual player season stat totals (over/under) Most major bookmakers leave team futures open starting before the season and continuing through until the bets are resolved, adjusting odds along the way. Betting sides for the NFL The public loves betting the favorites in NFL football. You need to aware of some key numbers. I use the term key number to define a score or margin that is relatively more likely to appear. Because football is most often scored in 7s and 3s, games tend to end at a final margin derived from them. That’s why 10-point wins or 13-point wins are more likely than a 12-point wins. Bookmakers take this into account in football point spreads and totals, not just when they set odds, but when they move odds. You’ve learned in earlier chapters that if the action is too lopsided on one side of the betting, the oddsmaker responds by altering the odds to make the “overbet” side more expensive, thus making the other side of the bet cheaper. In a game where all outcomes are equally likely, the bookmaker would have a set level of betting imbalance that would trigger a point spread change. But the wide variation in the likelihood of football outcomes means oddsmakers have corresponding variance in the amount of over-betting they have to see before they’ll move the odds in a football game. Look at the following figure and you’ll see the frequency of NFL final margins. For example, because a football game margin of 12 points is just as likely as 13 points, oddsmakers (and sharp bettors) don’t see much difference between those two spreads. But 14 is a key number, so bookmakers require a much bigger market signal before they’ll move a point spread from 13-1/2 to 14. Key spread numbers The lumpy nature of the NFL’s margins leads to certain point spreads being stickier than others. Fully 40 percent of NFL games end with a margin of exactly 3, 6, 7, 10, or 14. A bookmaker who opens a team at –7 will require significantly more action to move the spread to –7-1/2 because it’s such a major stopping point for game margins. And 3 points is another key number. Fully 8 percent of NFL home teams win by exactly 3 points, which means there’s a huge difference in betting on a home favorite at –2-1/2 versus –3-1/2, even though they’re only an extra point apart. If this were a game scored one point at a time (like volleyball perhaps), the oddsmaker would be indifferent about moving the point spread smoothly up or down as action becomes unbalanced. Not so with football. The lesson: Shop around. When you’re thinking of betting a side that’s lined in the neighborhood of +3 points, shop around and see if you can find +3-1/2. And by the same token, as an underdog bettor, you can’t consider +2-1/2 and +3 to be in the same probability neighborhood as you might think of +4-1/2 and +5. Betting at +5 rather than +4-1/2 will almost never matter. Five is an incredibly rare game margin. In the last 20 years, there have been 77 games lined at +4-1/2, and in only one case (1.2 percent) did a team getting 4-1/2 points lose the game by exactly 5 points. That means the difference between those two-point spreads is almost nothing. In fact, if you were betting on a team at +5 and you had a chance to sell a half point, it just might be worth it. Selling points Selling points is an action you can take with some bookmakers when you’re finalizing a point spread bet. By giving back a half point on your point spread (for example, from +5 to +4-1/2), the bookmaker gives you a more advantageous payout schedule. (For example, instead of a –110 bet, or risking $110 to win $100, the bookmaker will ask you to risk $102 to win $100 as compensation for your half point.) Let’s look at the same half-point difference between +2-1/2 and +3. There have been 152 games in the last 20 years where the home team was a +2.5 underdog. In 13 (7.5 percent) of those games, the home team lost by exactly 3 points. So, you might say for underdog bettors, the half-point that moves you to 3 is worth 7 times as much as the half point that moves you to 5. Is it worth it? Let me work it. If you treat NFL margins and total score patterns as actual probabilities for the future, they become good-use cases for putting our knowledge of break-even winning percentage to work for us to compare two bets. In this case, we’re contemplating selling a half point back to the bookmaker in exchange for a more advantageous set of payout odds. Again, the bookmaker has offered to mover our odds from –110 to –102 if we’d be willing to move from +5 down to +4-1/2. Should we do it? At –110, the break-even winning percentage is 52.38 percent. At –102 the break-even winning percentage becomes 50.2 percent. It might seem like small potatoes, but professionals are constantly on the lookout for advantages like this, as they would welcome a 2.18-percent edge because they know — like casinos — that tiny edges make a big difference in the long run. So now we look at what we lose when we give away that half point. As I discussed above, a 5-point margin is extremely rare. It only impacted 1 out of 77 games lined at +4-1/2, and a home team losing by 5 points at any spread has only happened about 1.5 percent of the time. But since the 2.18-percent advantage gained is more than the 1.5-percent advantage lost, you should make that bet. It’s a positive EV play, so sell that half point! What about moving from +3 –110 down to +2-1/2 at –102 odds? We already know that at –110 we need to win 52.4 percent of the time to break even, and –102 gets us to 50.2 percent. But that 2.18-percent advantage we gain is outweighed by the fact that at +2-1/2, we know that 7.5 percent of the time, a bet that would have previously won for us will now only push. Stick to the three points unless the bookmaker can give you a better price for moving from +3 to +2-1/2. There is a generic rule of thumb that the correct price for moving off of a key number in the NFL is 25 odds points, or in our case, moving from –110 to +115. In other words, if a bookmaker isn’t willing to up your moneyline by at least 25 odds points (and most won’t), don’t sell that 1/2 point. There are some excellent free calculators online that can help you work through the math on buying and selling half points on NFL bets. Moneyline betting Oddsmakers offer the usual handicap-free moneyline bets to bettors who aren’t interested in the point spread. The only thing you need to know about NFL moneylines is that they are tied into to the key numbers I talked about in the previous section. The table shows that a rough equivalent between an NFL moneyline and point spread (assuming –110 odds) on some key numbers. NFL Moneylines and Point Spreads Favorite Point Spread Moneyline Historical Straight Up Win% Underdog Point Spread Moneyline Historical Straight Up Win% –2 –130 59% +2 +110 41% –2-1/2 –140 58% +2-1/2 +125 42% –3 –155 58% +3 +140 42% –3-1/2 –175 63% +3-1/2 +155 37% –4 –200 66% +4 +170 34% –6 –270 72% +6 +210 28% –6-1/2 –300 84% +6-1/2 +220 16% –7 –330 75% +7 +250 25% –7-1/2 –360 82% +7-1/2 +280 18% –9-1/2 –400 76% +9-1/2 +300 24% –10 –450 75% +10 +325 25% These numbers are from 2013 onward to incorporate the most recent rules that had a direct impact on scoring. That means for some of the oddities you see, it’s entire possible there’s not enough data yet to smooth out the curve. And in case you’re wondering, no, it’s not an accident that the winning percentages associated with each point spread are the inverse of each other. These are rough equivalents. While point spreads can make the odds look placid and calm on the surface, moneylines are more prone to churn beneath the waves. Moneylines don’t automatically move in perfect sync with spread moves, and it’s not uncommon for bookmakers to use the moneyline as a way to fine-tune action on either side of a game. A typical NFL Sunday might have two games where the favorites are both listed at –3 +100, but one moneyline is set at –155 and the other is set at –145. The lesson? If you’re a moneyline bettor, shop around. Total bets Where other sports have smoother distributions of total scores, football does not, with its 6-point touchdowns and 3-point field goals. Bettors should treat totals like they do point spreads: warily. Some point totals are much more common than others, as you can see. NFL parlays NFL moneylines, totals, and point spreads are available for betting in multi-way bets called parlays. A parlay is the equivalent of betting on one game and then automatically putting the winnings toward a second bet. The bookmaker kindly does this for you automatically. Best of all for NFL bettors, you don’t have to worry about the timing of the games; you can parlay games that start at exactly the same time, and they’re treated as if they get bet in sequence. Standard parlay payouts are as follows: 2 bets 2.6 to 1 3 bets 6 to 1 4 bets 12 to 1 Parlay bets come with restrictions. Most bookmakers forbid you from parlaying an NFL spread and total on the same game. For a parlay bet to win, every leg must win. Should one of the legs push, the parlay bet reverts to the odds of a parlay with one bet fewer. For example, if you were to bet a three-way parlay, three wins pays 6-to-1. If one of the best were to push, your parlay would be treated as a 2.6-to-1 two-way parlay. NFL teasers NFL teasers are a popular multi-way play. Bettors get the benefit of a set number of points for as many different point spreads or totals as they choose. For a 6-point teaser to break even, bettors must win each single leg 72.3 percent of the time. For a 6-1/2-point teaser to break even, bettors must win each single leg 73.8 percent of the time. For a 7-point teaser to break even, bettors must win each single leg 75.1 percent of the time.