Miracle Covers

March 11

Nothing doing yesterday in NHL and nothing again this evening either on a short schedule. Capitals are a lean and nothing more. Since we have a free day and I teased this earlier in the week, I’d like to briefly move onto baseball. The top play for this season and will be my 10 point confidence pool play is Tampa Over 79.5. Long time readers of this site are aware that odds tend to get over adjusted when teams lose key players as their replacements qualities are often only briefly considered. Such is the case for Tampa who were slightly unlucky last season overall.

Tampa also represents what is far and away the best longshot opportunity for futures and that’s for them to win the AL East at or around +750. If you have Tampa as a mid-to-high 80s win team, as I do, then this payout is way, way off and should be much closer to 2-3:1. Also consider that the AL in general and AL East specifically are very clustered with lots of similar win totals across the league. Consider this bit from Ben Lindbergh:

The AL is a prognosticator’s nightmare. As Phil Birnbaum and Neil Paine have noted, there’s an absolute limit to the accuracy of baseball projections. Even if we were omniscient when it came to team talent levels, we wouldn’t be able to predict luck. And luck has large effects: As Birnbaum wrote, “On average, nine teams per season will be lucky by six wins or more.” So what do we do with a division like the AL East, where the worst team is projected to finish only six games behind the best? Even if those projections were perfect, it wouldn’t be at all unusual for the worst team to beat the best one through better luck alone.

Tampa to win the AL and World Series is around 27 and 55 to 1 respectively, but the division and seasonal plays are where the action should be.

Game 7

and I’ve got nothing…No bets, no leans. There is probably some value on the Giants at +125 to +130 but this is a game to pass on. Devils got smushed last night 8-3 after being up 1-0 after 8 seconds and 3-1 halfway into the 2nd. Undone by a near own goal in the first and some nitty and/or dumb penalties to the top powerplay team in the league. Nothing doing on either game tonight, but a full slate again Thursday

Tuesday

A poor 0-0 yesterday as Washington and Edmonton won covered easily, with both teams playing arguably their best games of the season. I will be re-working some of my modeling this next week to try and keep this from happening again. Single play tonight and it’s a longshot, New Jersey +170 @ Pittsburgh. New Jersey is challenging the coinflip theory of shootouts, having lost their last 10 billion in a row, so they’ll likely need to win outright versus our usual strategy of forcing overtime and hope the result goes our way.

The under (7) looks good to me tonight in baseball but I am passing and not playing.

Saturday

I still can’t find a freaking hockey game that is suitable enough to my liking. Rangers away to Montreal are really close, but I am still going to pass. Boston @ Toronto is another not terrible option I’m also choosing against. Should be something NFL or otherwise tomorrow.

UPDATE: Giants/Royals UNDER 7 -125

Sad Day

Lots of fucked up shit going on the world right now.  But this tweet sure made me snicker:

NCAA, NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB have stopped bettors from legally wagering on their games in N.J. for now. Illegal bets expected to continue.

— David Payne Purdum (@DavidPurdum) October 24, 2014

LOL

And they will:

I like the under in the KC vs SF WS Game 3 at 7 (-110)

and Winnipeg -105 at home vs TB