Month: April 2011

Live Series Betting

Hawks -145

Magic +131

How things stand at the moment going to Game 6 in Atlanta.  Didn’t catch the line on this going into last night but it couldn’t have been too different than this since Orlando played at home for Game 5.  But that means that Atlanta would have only been like a 2:1 favorite to win this series up 3-1?  Strikes me as odd, I’m guessing no one and their deceased brother must be putting money on the Hawks in this series.

 

Recent Bets Made

Going to throw down here a couple of recent bets made…

Champions League Finals – Barca vs Man U – Straight up Bet 50

I need the finals of the Champions League to be Barcelona vs Man U.  Any other Finals Match-up (i.e. Man U v Real) and Loubaka wins.  The obvious thing to hate about this bet is that it is betting on the expected, and how often does that happen?

Houston Astros worst record in baseball – Laying 3.5:1 – 30 Dollar Bet

This is the bet that refused to die.  Bet was only consummated after Houston had its only (still the case!) winning streak of the season, two in a row against the Mets.  At this moment Houston is half a game better than Seattle and has the same record as San Diego and the White Sox.

Miami Heat – -10 the pinnacle line on playoff series until eliminated – 20 Dollar Bet each series

Confused by the language on this?  Join the club.  If there is one activity I enjoy doing, it is drinking while making complicated bets against the Miami Heat.  I think this means that if Miami is -120 to win a series, JaPan gets Miami at -130 with me as the house.  I’ll clarify, or try to get JaPan to make a miraclecameo to the web site to clear things up.

 

Vagaries and Variance

As I write this, the White Sox and Royals are in extra innings because KC closer Joakim Soria allowed four runs to Chicago after recording the first two outs easily in the top of the 9th.

The following discussion took place between the befuddled Royals announcers:

Announcer 1: What are the odds in Vegas that this game would still be going?
Announcer 2: There were 2 outs in the inning. I’m still trying to wrap my head around it.

By just taking a quick glance at the Win Probability Graph, I’d argue it was probably off the board. No one would even bother betting on something like this. But with 2,500 games a season, at least a team or two will convert on a 1000/1 chance throughout the season. We shouldn’t be surprised by this because weird and unlikely things happen in baseball all the time, but we are and can’t process such unlikely outcomes.

As anyone who has gambled for a non-trivial length of time can attest, these streaks can last for days or weeks at a time. Here’s a lengthy Royals example from 2000

The Royals began the 2000 season with a respectable 4-3 record, and then things got crazy. In the last game of a four-game set with the Twins, the Royals held a 5-3 lead going into the ninth. This was back in the days when the Royals thought that closers were born, not made, and so they had paid real U.S. legal tender to Ricky Bottalico to be their closer. On this day, naturally, Bottalico blew the two-run lead in the ninth. (The Royals learned their lesson so well that after the season, they made Roberto Hernandez the focal point of the trade return they got for Johnny Damon.)

But then something funny happened. Damon led off the bottom of the ninth with a home run, and the Royals won, 6-5. The next night, the Orioles came to town; the Royals erased a 5-2 lead with three runs in the eighth, and after both teams struggled to score a putaway run, the Royals finally broke through in the bottom of the 12th, when with one out and Joe Randa on first base, backup catcher Brian Johnson went deep.

And then the next night, the Orioles held a 6-0 lead going into the bottom of the seventh, when the Royals broke through for four runs. The score remained 6-4 until the bottom of the ninth, when Gregg Zaun walked, Mark Quinn doubled to put two runners in scoring position…and Rey Sanchez lofted a flyball that snuck inside the fair pole in left field, prompting Denny Mathews to semi-famously exclaim “What is going on?” The Royals had won three straight games on a walk-off homer. In fact, these three games – I’m not making this up – are what brought the phrase “walk-off” into the national baseball lexicon. The term had been around for years – Dennis Eckersley originated it, I believe, calling it “a walk-off piece” when Kirk Gibson hit a particular home run off of him – but after these three games, ESPN.com started using the term to describe what the Royals had done, and the term has been with us ever since.

The next night, after Bottalico blew another save in the ninth, the Royals didn’t end it with a homer. No, with two out and one on in the bottom of the inning, Carlos Beltran ended the game with a lousy single. Four straight walk-off wins, three on a homer, and the Royals were 8-3 and tied for first place. They were the talk of baseball as they headed out on a nine-game road trip.

They lost all nine games.

In Monday’s Championship game, Butler had their worst scoring game since 2004 and the worst 2 point shooting percentage of any team in all of D1 for a game this season (via Ken Pomeroy). It’s unlucky for Butler that this happened with millions of people watching as opposed to away to Cleveland St., and it’s unlucky for it to happen to any one team in particular. With enough games, these vagaries balance themselves out to a degree which is what led Billy Beane to utter his semi-famous quip about the baseball playoffs being a crapshoot. Unlikely things will happen in any given game, and outside of a player or team’s baseline skill level, we’re powerless to do much about it.

This is what’s led me into futures becoming far and away the highest proportion of my gambling action. Assuming you don’t have any inside information, you’re usually looking at extremely small edges also assuming you’re on the right side of the game to begin with. With futures, the odds can be extremely favorable, moreso than any other gambling opportunity available.

The only reason the Red Sox losing four in a row is particularly notable is that it’s happened in the first four games of the season. Just like Butler, with lots of eyes and no where to hide, everything looks worse than it probably is in reality. Even if that reality involves scoring seven runs in five games. Over the next couple of days or weeks, I’ll be looking for opportunities to gamble on players or teams that are under/overperforming to start the season. It’s still a little too early to see any lines move very much, and it’s way too early to start grading our futures bets.

That said, Go Astros?

Worst Team in MLB

In his most recent post, Lou writes, “I’d…like to take the Astros for fewest wins in MLB this season if that’s available someplace.”  I made a half-assed attempt at seeing if any line like this exists, if it does I cannot find it.  So, let’s try to figure out what the line would be.

The Astros over/under this year for wins was 71.5.  We are only going to focus on teams with a projected win total of below 76, Baltimore and everyone above are excluded.  I know normally there would be a “Field” option, but I am going to ignore that for this.

  1. Arizona 72.5
  2. Houston 71.5
  3. Washington 71
  4. Cleveland 71
  5. Seattle 70
  6. Kansas City 69.5
  7. Pittsburgh 68

Seven teams in this group.  So if I were to look at this, my first thought would be, “Well there are 7 teams, so Houston has to be around 7:1.  Plus, they are better than most of the teams on the list, so to account for that, I’ll pump them up to 9:1.”  And that would probably be my offer to Lou.  But that aint’ the issue.  What we are trying to figure out is what would be the Vegas Line on this thing.  And now that I think about it, it seems borderline naive to think that Vegas would offer 9:1 odds on this when Houston is only projected to have 3.5 more wins than the worst team.  So we gotta come up with something better.  I think a good way to figure some odds on this are to compare these numbers with something we do have, odds to win divisions, combined with projected win totals.  The NL West…

  1. San Francisco – 88 – 1.4:1
  2. Colorado – 86 – 1.9:1
  3. Los Angeles – 84 – 3.4:1
  4. San Diego – 76 – 14:1
  5. Arizona – 72.5 – 23:1

As a starter this is OK.  San Fran is a little better than even money to win a division where they are 2 full games clear of Colorado.  But there are all kinds of problems doing things this way.  The most obvious is that this division doesn’t breakdown anywhere close to our fake division.  The NL West isn’t made up of half a dozen teams that are projected to finish within 5 games of each other, and that’s going to make things weird and skewed.  But let’s keep going and throw another division up for some more comparison and info.  AL West.

  1. Texas – 86 .5 – 1.2:1
  2. Oakland – 83.5 – 2.1:1
  3. Los Angeles – 83 – 2.5:1
  4. Seattle – 70 – 24:1

This example gives a pretty good demo of how Vegas works when the odds are tight like our worst team question.  Again, Texas slightly better than even money, a full 3 games clear of Oakland.  But this division kind of sucks because there are so few teams.  Some might suggest here that we go to the odds to win the pennants in both leagues since it involves more teams.  In doing so we see that…

  1. Boston – 95 – 2:1
  2. New York – 91.5 – 3:1
  3. Chicago – 85.5 – 7:1
  4. Texas – 86 – 7:1

This leads to some serious dead ends too since these odds are largely based on the divisional odds we’re struggling through, and that only adds more layers of headaches.  For example Tampa is listed with a higher win projection than Oakland, but Oakland is listed with better odds of winning the pennant.  But what this case does do is show that a 3.5 game projected win difference is only a difference btw 2:1 and 3:1 when there are a lot more than 2 or 3 competitive teams involved in figuring a winner of something.  Obviously, if these four teams were a division, these odds would not be the same in picking a winner, our AL West example tells us that.  So somewhere in between is what we are looking for.

The following then is where all this leads us in my opinion.  With some fudge math, taking everything into account that we’ve been doing…

  1. Arizona 6.25:1
  2. Houston 5:1
  3. Washington 5:1
  4. Cleveland 5:1
  5. Seattle 3.5:1
  6. Kansas City 3.5:1
  7. Pittsburgh 2.75:1

This would definitely be different if I had included “The Field,” and I have no idea how wrong or right this is.  But, I went from offering Lou 9:1 on Houston with the worst record to 5:1, so if nothing else, it’s right for me.

For schlitz and giggles I am going to write down here the number of wins for the worst team in the last few years, not sure why I am doing this, or if this will be enlightening…57, 59, 59, 66, 61, 56, 51, 43, 55.  So since the 2002 season the average wins by the worst team in baseball is about 56.  Doesn’t really tell me anything other than Vegas is going to be substantially wrong on at least one of these teams if this year follows suit, and if Vegas doesn’t know, it’s anybody’s ballgame!

NFL Futures Note

Team A – Lost in 2010 Playoffs in 1st round.  Lost in 2011 Playoffs in 2nd round.

Team B – Lost in 2010 Playoffs in 3rd round.  Lost in 2011 Playoffs in 3rd round after beating Team A in 2nd round

For those of you who have not guessed yet, Team A is the Patriots and Team B is the Jets.  And yet, the Patriots are listed by Vegas at 7-1 to win the Super Bowl, and the Jets come in somewhere around 16.5.  In other words, do not think you are getting anything resembling good value with the Pats here.