Take the Football Betting Quiz

[Willie Bee]

C'mon, guys and gals. Surely y'all can do better than my lame 50% score.

Football Betting Quiz

[cartay]

My head hurts

[Cabo]

50% here as well, too many numbers too crunch.

[slacker00]

I got 50%. I thought I knew this stuff. I gotta go back and read the explanations. I did it quickly without crunching the numbers, though. I'd advise using a calculator to take this quiz.

[daveov2]

Boy I suck

[pico]

seriously, you guys made it way too hard. you should make a fun quiz rather than one that piss people off.

[slacker00]

Pico, write one up.

It would be cool if there was a beginner's quiz, intermediate & advanced quiz, give everyone a chance. I dunno. Some of those questions could only be answered by some salty dog veterans, if anyone.

[LLXC]

At least I learned a lot...

[rugbybdyb]

Wow I need to stop betting

[whitesoxrock33]

50% its tough

[atakdog]

I got 14 of 20, and I will freely admit that I can't handicap for squat -- I'm just a curious newbie at this point. I think it's safe to say that results on the quiz are not well correlated with practical knowledge.

A suggestion for whoever put it together -- as everyone says, there's a lot to learn from the explanations. There should be an easy way to see all 20 explanations -- I had to go back and purposely miss all the questions in order to see them (and several of the explanations of questions I got right were interesting and valuable).

[jenrob11]

HAHAHA....I guess I don't know anything...it told me to stop all betting ASAP.

[milwaukee mike]

14/20 here.
fun quiz imho.

[Skidcom]

A lot to learn over here.thank you for the education

[DOGEDON]

Thanks 4 The Test,now I Know Why I Have A Day Job

[imgv94]

16 out of 20

You're somewhat sharp
16 out of 20 correct answers.
If a player makes 100 normal bets of $50 each during a football season, what is his "average" result for the season?Correct Answer: Lose $250
Your Answer: Break Even

Explanation:
Assume he wins 50 wagers, and loses 50. On a normal bet, a player risks $55 to win $50. During the season, he won $2500 and lost $2750, for a net loss of $250. The juice - or "betting at -110" is how sportsbooks make their money.
A player bets on a 2-team 6-point NFL teaser at even money. How often must he win a given teaser leg to break even?Correct Answer: 70.7%
Your Answer: 75.3%

Explanation:
To win the wager, he must win two legs. At even money, a wager breaks even if it wins as much as it loses (50%). If P is the chance he wins a leg, then P * P is the chance he wins the bet. Since P * P = 0.50 (50%), P = 0.707, or 70.7%.
Which of these parlays is favorably correlated?Correct Answer: FLA Int'l + 38 and FLA Int'l/PSU UNDER 51
Your Answer: Indianapolis wins Super Bowl and Cowboys win NFC East

Explanation:
Correlated parlays are the "holy grail" of betting. On a normal 2-team parlay, it pays 2.6 to 1. This is pretty close to making a bet on the first team, taking your winnings and betting it all on the second team (even down to paying juice twice).

Players make money when the two events are not independent. Imagine this bet: Buffalo +49 and UNDER 49. You either win both, or lose both. But you get paid 2.6 to 1 instead of laying -110! In NCAA football, the spread is highly correlated to the total if the spread is more than half the total. In those cases, players parlay the dog with the under, and the favorite with the over. Sportsbooks don't like this.
You are studying several handicappers, trying to decide which record is most meaningful. If all bets were at even money, which record is most meaningful?Correct Answer: They are all equally meaningful.
Your Answer: 152-104

Explanation:
When looking at handicappers, one useful tool is "how many standard deviations is that player above average?" For picks at or near even money, this is fairly easy. One deviation is simply (sqrt (n) ) / 2. A "z-score" is how measurement of how many deviations above (or below) a result is compared to average.

The standard deviation on 9 games is (sqrt(9))/2 = 1.5 A capper that went 9-0 (with an expectation of 4.5 is +3 standard deviations (or has a "Z" score of +3). At 14-2, the player is at +3. 44-20 results in +3. At 152-104, it is also +3.

All 4 of these records are equally meaningful. What surprises a lot of people is that a record with a lower winning percentage is often more meaningful if the sample is larger

[THE HITMAN]

O got halfway through, but it was too long. I was always pretty good at math, so I thought I would do pretty good.

[cooljw]

I think all the test does is make people feel bad about how little they know about betting.

[azgrande18]

I need to close my accounts.

[Skidcom]

Is any work being done on a "Rookie" exam? This one was a bit tough..gotta start learning somewhere. Hate starting with the final exam