Matt Holthe's Fleeting Thoughts

I've never bet on someone to win a golf tournament, and I don't know if I ever could. There are too many variables involved to know who is going to win. But for this weekend's US Open, it looks like Tiger Woods is at +150 and Phil Mickelson has the second-best odds at +800. Using the money line formula which I blogged about , this means that if you think Tiger has better than a 40% chance of winning, betting on Tiger might be a good idea. For Phil, the break-even point is somewhere around 11% chance of winning. That's the problem I have with betting on golf champions... I have no idea what kind of percentage to associate with each player. If this exact same US Open were played 5 times, would Tiger win 2 of those? I'd say probably. But would he win 3? Not so sure about that one. If it were played 10 times, would Phil win once? Probably. Would he win twice? Maybe not with all his off-the-course issues going on with his wife fighting breast cancer. Looks like I'll ...

There's a new resort in Las Vegas (technically, I think it's in Henderson) called The M Resort . It's on the strip, but way south of Mandalay Bay. This resort supposedly has a great rewards program (sign up and get a free buffet, no matter if you play that day or not). But one interesting thing I've heard about the resort is a concept they are calling "in-running" wagering in the sports book. You can bet on games while the game is going on. If it becomes obvious that your original bet is going to lose, you can make a hedge bet on the other side and at least get some of your money back. It sounds similar to sports betting exchanges on the Internet where you buy/sell lines on games even as the game is ongoing. More information can be found on the M Resort web site .

After two different posts on money lines, we have some background on money lines and determining whether it's a good bet or not. Next, let's take a look at upsets in the NCAA basketball tournament first round. Since the tournament expanded in 1985 to 64 teams, the games have been broken up into four regions. In each region, a #1 seed plays a #16 seed, #2 plays #15, and so on. Coincidentally, there have been 25 years (1985-2009) with 4 games each year (1 per region), so we have exactly 100 games to work with - it makes it easy to figure out percentages. Note that 100 games is not a good sample size. There are too many variables (a team might have been seeded higher/lower than it should have been, only 4 games/year, and so on). But it's all we have to go on. A #16 has never beat a #1, so that isn't considered here. A #15 seed has beaten a #2 seed 4 times (4%). Based on the money line formula ( found in this post ), if the #15 seed has a money line of +2400 or higher, th...

Tuesday I posted how to find a good money line bet . Today we'll determine how to know if the bet you find is really a good bet or not. To determine if it's a good bet, you need to figure the expected value of the bet. In the Lakers example, you are betting $280 to win $100. The ticket will be worth $380 if the Lakers win. You estimated that this will happen 75% of the time. $380 x .75 = $285, which is the expected value of the ticket. $285 is $5 more than the original bet of $280, so you are expecting to win $5 on your investment of $280. You take the winnings divided by the investment to compute the return on investment. 5/280 = 0.01786, which is 1.79% A 1.79% ROI is not very good - you want at least 5%, if not higher. Therefore, if you think the Lakers have a 75% chance of winning, -280 is not a good bet.

I've been reading Sharp Sports Betting by Stanford Wong and I thought I'd blog about some of the information in the book. How do you know if a given money line is a good bet or a bad bet? Let's take the upcoming game 1 of the NBA finals as an example. The Lakers are at -280 and Orlando is at +220. If you want to bet on that game, which bet makes the most sense? You first have to come up with your own money lines. This actually isn't as difficult as it sounds. There's a formula you can apply based on your expectations. You come up with a percentage of time you think the favorite will win the game. Let's say that if the Lakers and Orlando played an infinite number of games in this same situation (game 1 of the finals, at Los Angeles, etc) that LA would win 75% of the time. To compute what the money line would be in that situation, here's the formula for the favorite (for "x", use 75, because of our 75% estimation): -100 * x / (100 - x) That's -7...

I was talking with a friend about sports betting. We were trying to figure out the break even point when betting sports (the percentage you need to get right in order to gain back the casino's vig). Here's the math: Let's say that "a" is the number of games you win and "b" is the number of games you lose. To be able to easily compute percentages, let's say that a+b=100. That's one formula. The second is the break even point. Let's say you bet $110 to win $100 all the time (you're betting lines and totals - money lines is another matter). For each game you win, you gain $100 into your bank roll (you get your bet of $110 back and win $100). For each game you lose, you lose $110 from your bank roll. The break even point is when 100a - 110b = 0. Let's do some math. 100a-110b=0 means that 100a=110b, which means that b=0.90909a But a+b=100, so b is also equal to 100-a, so 100-a=0.90909a (we're now down to one variable). Adding "a...

In the NCAA College World Series regionals, Texas beat Boston College 3-2 in 25 innings. The previously longest game in NCAA history was 23 innings. A pitcher for Texas pitched 13 innings in relief , including 12 1/3 of no-hit ball. Two players for Texas batted 12 times each, setting a record for most at-bats in a game. Texas wins longest game in history