[dynamite140]

Hey guys. I noticed that for hockey unlike MLB, the puckline for the team laying 1.5 goals is very good as oppose to MLB. OF course the reason is because in hockey, goals are scored 1 at a time whereas in baseball, one can score 3-4 runs at once.

I was very curious about this. Say team A the favorite is -177 on the ML and team b the underdog is +166 on the ML. If you want to take the favorite -1.5 Puckline, you would get around +160 on it and thus have to win by at least 2 goals. Of course once you go to overtime, you cannot win the bet.

I know the odds of winning on the puckline is small. Covers shows its about 32.6 percent for the favorite to win by the puckline. Can someone translate the odds of this to me? I know +200 is 33.3 percent.

But if you like a favorite to cover the puckline, wouldn't taking them on the ML parlayed with the OVER be a better bet? The 1st thing i noticed is the payout for the -177 team on the ML and -112 juice on the over 5.5 comes out to +190 and that is 30 cents higher than PL.

I'm thinking this. If your team wins by at least 2, it has a great chance of going over 5.5 right? In order for you PL bet to win, you can win 2-0, 3-0, 4-0, 5-0, 6-0, 3-1, 4-2, 5-3 etc. But the thing is the odds of the other team scoring 0 goals for the entire games is going to be pretty low. If they score 1 goal which is rare as well, you need at least 3 goals. And if the other team scores 2 goals, you need minimum 4 goals. But if the other team scores 2 goals, the over 5.5 is going to hit no matter what if your favorite team wins by the PL.

By parlaying the favorite and the Over, isn't it a better bet than the PL? I have to assume the average score of hockey games is usually 3-2 or 4-2 correct? But by doing this parlay as oppose to the Puckline, you are risking the chance of the favorite winning 2-0, 3-0, 3-1, 4-0, 4-1, 5-0 where you would win by the puckline but lose to parlaying the favorite/over.

But isn't this risk WORTH IT? Of course if your team loses straight up, it won't matter whether you played the PL for +160 or parlayed the ML/Over for +190 since both loses. I see tons of games where a favorite would win 3-2 or go to overtime and win 4-3 and thus the parlay favorite/over wins as oppose to the Puckline.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Also, wouldn't you guys say parlaying a favorite and the under is a bad idea? My assumption is when you need to win this game, you are hoping for your team to win but then hoping the other team score very little. Because at most the other team can score is 2 goals. Thus the range is pretty low. If your team scores 3, the most other team can score is 2 and i know 0 and 1 goals is rare. I feel llike if you ever parlay a hockey game, its better to take the OVER because there is a ton of room for error because some games can have 8 goals, 9 goals etc. With unders, i feel like the window is pretty small.

[odog11]

You are talking about covariance: "A measure of the degree to which returns on two risky assets move in tandem. A positive covariance means that asset returns move together. A negative covariance means returns move inversely."(Google it for more info and go to the Answers link, Wiki is very technical) The theory being that favorites are more likely to win when a game goes over, and which would also mean that an underdog is more likely to win when a game goes under. I have gone with this theory before, but doing it as an if bet when I really like the odds on the if part of the bet and feel that if it happens the then will become more likely. Example tonight(that I should have played) was if over in Bruins/Sens then Bruins to win. Instead I played separately the over and Bruins on the PL, so in this case would have worked out either way. I prefer the if bet to the parlay myself, I hate having a play I really like hitting and then losing it all because the 2nd part of the parley did not come through.

[awesomeness]

interesting thoughts...

[LUSabres]

Puckline and total. 32(under and won by 2) - 29(over and won by 2) so far in February. There's really no edge here.