Does it make sense to never bet substantial favourites?

[Preussen]

I have heard several times now that it's not advisable to bet on substantial favourites. LTProfits, for example, very recently posted "laying -150 or more on a regular basis is suicide".

I openly admit that I do not know much about baseball or handicapping in general. But just going on my common sense I don't understand this opinion. The way I see it, the only thing that matters is if the chance of a bet hitting is greater than the odds offered. If, for example, a correct analysis shows that the favourite team should win a certain game two out of three times (-> correct odds = -200) then if the actual line is -170 the correct play would always be to back the fav because it should make a nice profit in the long run.
Is there anything that I see wrong here?

Wholly another question, of course, is the fact that often the favourite will be the team that is overvalued because the bookies expect the recreational bettors to be on the fav, so that there usually should be more value plays on dogs than on favs. But I'm talking about the sentiment that backing substantial favourites is generally bad, and I (again, from my very limited knowledge) believe this is simply incorrect. What do you think?

[LT Profits]

Preussen,

Your second paragraph is closer to the point. A vast majority of the time, the oddmakers will artificially inflate the odds of the favorite, knowing that John Q. Public will usually back the chalk even at poor odds. Your first example of finding an edge with big favorites simply does not happen that often, as if you find something that is expected to win more than 2/3 of the time as you state, chances are that the angle you chose is commonly known and already factored into the line.

The ultimate proof of course would be to see how teams in certain odds ranges have performed over the years. If I get a chance later, I will see what I could whip up.

[moses millsap]

It all depends. I usually won't lay much vig, but I'll lay -500 if you give me the Phoenix Suns over some WNBA team as an extreme example.

[LT Profits]

OWNED,

Right and my point is you hardly ever get value that obvious with big favorites. Anyhow still trying to either find or build a result by odds chart. I will let you all know.

[Crayzee]

lets say there are 5 games
all are
favorite -200 dog +170

if you want to win/bet 100 on each of the 5 games
you have to lay 200 on th favorites
so your bettin a total 0f
1000 to win 500

if all win you make 500
if you go 4-1 you make 200
go 3-2 you are -100

at 2-3 you are - 400

1-4 = -700

at even -200 which is very low for a good baseball favorite
you have to go 4-1 consistently to make money

one thing i have done with good results sometimes is play the favorite in an if win or tie bet
pick your plays and then rank them from best to worst

you lay your money on your number one play and only if that game wins or ties you have a live bet on your second play and so forth for all your games
you can also play if-win only
which means your first game has to win to have a bet on subsequent games
depending on the book you can do this for 2 to probably 5 or mor games

[Crayzee]

one more strategy i have toyed with is what i like to call a long term parlay

suppose i like heavy favorite that is -300

instead betting a full $300 to win $100

i'll just bet say $100

to win $30

now tomorrow or the next day whenever i see my next "sure bet"
i will bet the originall $100 + the +30 i won on that game

and so forth
i've gotten these sometimes up to 5or 6 times the original amount but it takes awhile

[Preussen]

Crayzee - you wouldn't have to win 80% (4-1) but only 67% (not possible with just 5 games, of course) of the time to be profitable, that's quite a difference. And I'm assuming I'd only bet on -200 favs if I expect them to win more than 2/3rd of the time - that's what it's all about.

As to your betting systems - I didn't thoroughly analyse them but it seems they don't change the EV in any way.

[Crayzee]

actually in baseball -200 favorties are probably not that good of bets
more likely favorites are higher than that -220 and up to -300 or even as high as -340?
maybe i've seen up to -400

i think the dog wins more often than not at -200/+170

[LT Profits]

Here are the Money Line reults for all MLB Favorites vs. a progressive dime line over the last three full seasons. Notice the "suicide" cutoff during this period was at -140, which is where ROI starts to get significantly worse. Yes the ROI is abnormally low in the -180 to -199 range, but that simply looks like an anomely given the relatively small sample size.

MLB RESULTS BY MONEY LINE - 2004 to 2006 
[B]Fave Line	W	L	Pct	Units	ROI
[/B]
-106 to -119	768	709	52.0%	-26.01	-1.8%
-120 to -129	546	458	54.4%	-18.82	-1.9%
-130 to -139	540	417	56.4%	-15.21	-1.6%
-140 to -149	451	361	55.5%	-66.26	-8.2%
-150 to -159	343	254	57.5%	-48.51	-8.1%
-160 to -179	583	373	61.0%	-40.71	-4.3%
-180 to -199	260	143	64.5%	-6.04	-1.5%
-200 to -224	269	135	66.6%	-14.33	-3.5%
-225 to -249	121	57	68.0%	-13.04	-7.3%
-250 to -299	113	46	71.1%	-6.34	-4.0%
-300 to -399	57	23	71.3%	-17.98	-22.5%
-400+     	4	1	80.0%	-0.6	-12.0%
ALL Faves	4055	2977	57.7%	-273.85	-3.9%
					

-106 to -139	1854	1584	53.9%	-60.04	-1.7%
-140+     	2201	1393	61.2%	-213.81	-5.9%
ALL Faves	4055	2977	57.7%	-273.85	-3.9%

[Preussen]

Interesting stats, LT. However, I never doubted that betting favourites blindly is a huge mistake.

What this thread is about is the question whether big favourites should always be avoided. To quote you again: "I never lay more than -125 on anything". With that statement you seem to imply that there are never profitable situations with favourites of more than -125, and and it's this statement that I choose to doubt.

[LT Profits]

Preussen,

Fair enough.

But given the data above, it is significantly harder to find an edge on a favorite of -140 or more, as there has to be a lot of postive filters in place to overcome the -5.9% expected ROI of the entire population above -140. Conversely, it should not be that hard to find filters good enough to offset the -1.7% ROI for smaller faves.

[Preussen]

But given the data above, it is significantly harder to find an edge on a favorite of -140 or more, as there has to be a lot of postive filters in place to overcome the -5.9% expected ROI of the entire population above -140. Conversely, it should not be that hard to find filters good enough to offset the -1.7% ROI for smaller faves.

Agreed.

[bradleysnyder]

i use high baseball favorites -200 or more for juice on parlays only......if i take the twins for example at -110 i sometimes add a huge moneyline like dodgers-230 and make it a 2 team parlay.it is very dumb to lay juice on plays -200 or more in anysport.

[Preussen]

i use high baseball favorites -200 or more for juice on parlays only......if i take the twins for example at -110 i sometimes add a huge moneyline like dodgers-230 and make it a 2 team parlay.it is very dumb to lay juice on plays -200 or more in anysport.

How does using big favs in parlays increase the overall EV compared to betting them straight up?

[moses millsap]

How does using big favs in parlays increase the overall EV compared to betting them straight up?

I would only bet correlated parlays.

[The HG]

Interesting thread, I would like to add 2 notes.

1) Taking a big fave as part of an uncorrelated parlay is no wiser (or less wise) than taking a big fave on its own, from an EV perspective. It might seem that way, because if you parlay 3 or 4 huge faves, all of a sudden you have a big underdog bet involving only huge faves, but you're not actually getting any added value from making it a parlay. All you're doing is limiting the amount you can lose in exchange for increasing the chances that you'll lose. Which can of course sometimes be something you would want to do, but it would be from a risk perspective, not an EV perspective.

Uncorrelated parlays do have value in that they allow you to leverage your action. To use a hypothetical extreme example, let's say you had 3 bets at +100 odds that had a 100% likelihood of winning. Then, you'd obviously want to bet them as a parlay even though they're uncorrelated, because betting them individually you'd double your bankroll, but parlaying them you'd multiply your banroll by 8. But if you're just using parlays because you want to take a big fave but don't want to lay big odds, taking a parlay doesn't achieve that, it only feels as though it does.

2) Looking back at line histories and results is interesting, and of course can shed light on general tendencies of people's betting and oddsmaking. But always remember, it's not predictive.

You need look no further than this year's NCAA tournament for a clear example of that. A lot of people jumped in heavy with the "blindly bet dogs in the first 2 rounds of the NCAA tourney" theory and got burned. The market did in fact adjust a bit. The opening dog lines were of a lesser magnitude than they had been previously, and the lines didn't move as much as they did in past seasons. So you always want to be guided by fundamentals, and not by the idea that market trends, even if they are statistically significant, will continue forever.

Still, having said that, it is of course, very enlightening and useful to look at past market trends. For many reasons, not the least of which is that mistakes that people in general tend to make are also probably mistakes that you tend to make.

The dog/fave ROI discrepancy of the past few years in baseball MLs is I think pretty easily explained. In large part, I'm sure it has to do with the idea that most bettors, even experienced ones, eyeball their edge. And people tend to overestimate their edge on faves and underestimate their edge on dogs, because it's easy to confuse what they are eyeballing. It's easy to fall into eyeballing your chances of winning, and to forget that what you should be eyeballing is the difference between your chances of winning and what the odds state your chances of winning are. And that's a common mistake that does get reflected in line performance, and one you should be aware of is something many people make, and make sure you aren't making it too. If your fundamental analysis is sound, and the trend continues, you will naturally wind up taking more dogs anyway. But it will be because your fundamentals are sound, not because you are chasing market trends, which can sometimes turn out to be fool's gold. If your fundamentals are sound, you'll be on the right side of market trends anyway, without trying to identify and follow them.

[Ganchrow]

Taking a big fave as part of an uncorrelated parlay is no wiser (or less wise) than taking a big fave on its own, from an EV perspective. It might seem that way, because if you parlay 3 or 4 huge faves, all of a sudden you have a big underdog bet involving only huge faves, but you're not actually getting any added value from making it a parlay. All you're doing is limiting the amount you can lose in exchange for increasing the chances that you'll lose. Which can of course sometimes be something you would want to do, but it would be from a risk perspective, not an EV perspective.

What my usually astute and always hirsute colleague meant to say (and I know he meant to say it because he just asked me to clarify it for him) was that if you were betting with neither edge no juice, then it wouldn't matter from a pure EV perspective whether you were betting singles or parlays. If, however, you live in the real world and you are paying juice, then your expected value from parlays will be lower than your expected value from making the same bets as singles. Similarly, if you're with an edge then you expect to do better by playing parlays. (See my primers on Parlays and Correlated Parlays).

Note, however that this is only prescriptive insofar as one's preferences are risk neutral. As such, these pure EV considerations will only approach sole relevance when betting with very low limits.

[moses millsap]

The favorites are going to go 15-0 today it looks like.

[RickySteve]

Since this thread has veered off into general parlay theory, I'll add that parlays are a valuable tool for circumventing limits.

[RickySteve]

Blindly betting MLB ML favorites has returned 3.6% this season.

[LT Profits]

RickySteve,

Yes and about 3.5% of that came in the last two weeks.

But seriously, we are only about six weeks in, so the dogs should turn things around soon. If not, the books will be crying like they were in the 2005 NFL season, the Year of the Square.

[Checkerboard]

Here are the Money Line reults for all MLB Favorites vs. a progressive dime line over the last three full seasons. Notice the "suicide" cutoff during this period was at -140, which is where ROI starts to get significantly worse. Yes the ROI is abnormally low in the -180 to -199 range, but that simply looks like an anomely given the relatively small sample size.

MLB RESULTS BY MONEY LINE - 2004 to 2006 
[B]Fave Line	W	L	Pct	Units	ROI
[/B]
-106 to -119	768	709	52.0%	-26.01	-1.8%
-120 to -129	546	458	54.4%	-18.82	-1.9%
-130 to -139	540	417	56.4%	-15.21	-1.6%
-140 to -149	451	361	55.5%	-66.26	-8.2%
-150 to -159	343	254	57.5%	-48.51	-8.1%
-160 to -179	583	373	61.0%	-40.71	-4.3%
-180 to -199	260	143	64.5%	-6.04	-1.5%
-200 to -224	269	135	66.6%	-14.33	-3.5%
-225 to -249	121	57	68.0%	-13.04	-7.3%
-250 to -299	113	46	71.1%	-6.34	-4.0%
-300 to -399	57	23	71.3%	-17.98	-22.5%
-400+     	4	1	80.0%	-0.6	-12.0%
ALL Faves	4055	2977	57.7%	-273.85	-3.9%
					

-106 to -139	1854	1584	53.9%	-60.04	-1.7%
-140+     	2201	1393	61.2%	-213.81	-5.9%
ALL Faves	4055	2977	57.7%	-273.85	-3.9%

LTProfits, I didn't know this technically, thanks. I've just always and instinctively shyed away from favs over the 140 threshold. Nice to have stats to reinforce this general rule of thumb I've been going by, thanks.