Originally posted on 07/28/2013:

Thoughts.

Lordkai - Your subjective analysis and knowledge of the game is very good as you've demonstrated in your thread. In saying that, I have to (constructively) criticize your choice of words in your above post.

"Tigers ML is very risky". This is completely meaningless to a sports investor focused on the long term.

A much better way to say it is say "Tigers ML is a very high variance bet".

That is true, and its the nature of the game. Does it mean its a bad bet? No. In fact historically speaking, its a very, very good bet.

Does it mean you may have to wait several seasons for the variance (i.e luck) to even out and for you to show a profit? Yes.

"It would take a miracle such as half of manly getting injured for Tigers to win this". Well, I don't agree with that. I'll say it will take one or more of several slightly-unlikely possible scenarios for Tigers to win. Sure, a bunch of Manly players getting injured could be it, but lets take it one step further - how about a couple of 50/50 calls go the Tigers way? How about the Tigers just play super well and Manly have an off day? How about the crowd really gets behind Benji and he really puts in, in turn lifting the rest of the team? How about some of the players look at the scoreboard and see they're up 10-0, and they start thinking, "Shit, we can win this"? How about a couple of lucky bounces go Tigers way? How about any combination of the above scenarios?

Ill repeat what I said in Sandos' thread the other day. Rugby League is a game of 13 (not very bright) humans running at each other with a funny shaped ball bouncing around. The amount of luck in rugby league is unfathomable.

Betting on large underdogs is character building to say the least, and Angelo is spot on when he said its not for everyone. It takes impeccable bankroll, and mental management to be able to stomach putting on sizeable bets on teams that "logic" says have almost no chance of winning. You need to put all gut feelings aside, put all your natural biases aside, and realize that despite the fact these bets are *extremely* counter-intuitive, they are profitable in the long term.

Angelo - I'm very glad to hear that you've been sticking to the model, I hope it has been profitable for you! If it hasn't yet, I'm sure it will be in the future! The beauty of backing big underdogs is that you only need a handful of winners per season to at least break even, the Dragons last weekend being a good example. I've been chatting with Benrama a bit via email the last few days and have further refined the NRL model to have an ROI of over 25% over a 10 year sample (with NO subjective analysis). Very excited about developing it further and also applying it to other sports.

Money where my mouth is - Yes, I have bet on Tigers M/L ($5.23 @ Pinny).

I also believe as TGM and Angelo said above, the Tigers ATS is a much lower variance and still very +EV Bet, although not as +EV as the M/L. Sure, the M/L is super high variance, but I rest easy knowing that in a vacuum I only need the Tigers to win the game 20% of the time to make it profitable.

Thanks guys, hope you all had a great weekend. Bet wisely, and BOL to your MNF picks!