[dlowilly]

For example South Carolina pre tourney was from what I'm seeing an avg. of about 200-1

Well what if you bet $1 and parlayed it all the way to the Championship?

The ML odds on S Carolina tourney games so far and the projected ML for the next 2 games (shopping the major books for the best line):

vs. Marquette +100

vs. Duke +300

vs. Baylor +145

vs. Florida +135

vs. Gonzaga +260

vs. UNC +250/vs. Oregon +135

So if they beat UNC in the final $1 * 2.00 * 4.00 * 2.45 * 2.35 * 3.60 * 3.50 = $580

If they beat Oregon $1 * 2.00 * 4.00 * 2.45 * 2.35 * 3.60 * 2.35 = $390

As you can see, the difference is significant, plus hedging would be much simpler because you could just pocket some money towards the end juice free.

Instead of winning $200 from $1 with a futures bet you could have won $579 (190% more) if they beat UNC or $389 (95% more) if they beat Oregon. I would say the odds encountered on the way to the finals were about average this year, and if anything below average as they could have faced some tougher opponents and been bigger underdogs on the way to the finals.

If you wanted to bet a more sizeable amount like $100 is you shouldn't have any problem getting down the kind of money you would need to as the tourney progressed.

Basically we are giving up a ton of extra juice betting futures because we don't think we could bring ourselves to put that kind of money in play parlaying every game. I will never bet a future instead of parlaying again for sudden death tourneys like the NCAA tourney, BCS championship, or any pro sport playoff where you can bet a series.

However, this only works with long shots or semi long shots. Betting #1 seeds for example you couldn't overcome the heavily juiced lines for the first and maybe second round games. In these cases parlaying every game would actually pay less than a futures bet

[ChuckyTheGoat]

DLow, this is a great post. Gets mentioned on forums occasionally.

The Futures mkt is USUALLY a sucker-bet. If u sum up the probabilities, the pool is > 140% minimum. Sometimes, it goes north of 200%.

One reason why it might NOT be a sucket bet = variance in Future Lines. IE, u can line-shop it and get some decent #s.

[ChuckyTheGoat]

But your point is a good one. USUALLY, u can get better value on game-to-game PARLAYS opposed to Future bet.

One counter-argument. IF you manage to win it all, sometimes that's b/c the bracket broke open via upsets. In that case, the Future line may be short of the game-to-game Parlays.

For example, the LEFT side of the Bracket (East + West) was very close to blowing up:
* Wisc almost beat Fla
* WeVA almost beat Gonz

Xav + SoCarolina overachieved. One semifinal really could have been something like Wisc vs Xavier. Ergo, one team (like Wisconsin) wouldn't have had to spring that many upsets.

[dlowilly]

But your point is a good one. USUALLY, u can get better value on game-to-game PARLAYS opposed to Future bet.

One counter-argument. IF you manage to win it all, sometimes that's b/c the bracket broke open via upsets. In that case, the Future line may be short of the game-to-game Parlays.

For example, the LEFT side of the Bracket (East + West) was very close to blowing up:
* Wisc almost beat Fla
* WeVA almost beat Gonz

Xav + SoCarolina overachieved. One semifinal really could have been something like Wisc vs Xavier. Ergo, one team (like Wisconsin) wouldn't have had to spring that many upsets.

Agreed, it is heavily dependent on the path they take, but on average (and I would say S Carolina's path hasn't been abnormally easy or hard, just avg.) it is better to parlay game by game a longshot. With the unknown, the long run (or avg.) is the best we can do after all.

[chico2663]

For example South Carolina pre tourney was from what I'm seeing an avg. of about 200-1

Well what if you bet $1 and parlayed it all the way to the Championship?

The ML odds on S Carolina tourney games so far and the projected ML for the next 2 games (shopping the major books for the best line):

vs. Marquette +100

vs. Duke +300

vs. Baylor +145

vs. Florida +135

vs. Gonzaga +260

vs. UNC +250/vs. Oregon +135

So if they beat UNC in the final $1 * 2.00 * 4.00 * 2.45 * 2.35 * 3.60 * 3.50 = $580

If they beat Oregon $1 * 2.00 * 4.00 * 2.45 * 2.35 * 3.60 * 2.35 = $390

As you can see, the difference is significant, plus hedging would be much simpler because you could just pocket some money towards the end juice free.

Instead of winning $200 from $1 with a futures bet you could have won $579 (190% more) if they beat UNC or $389 (95% more) if they beat Oregon. I would say the odds encountered on the way to the finals were about average this year, and if anything below average as they could have faced some tougher opponents and been bigger underdogs on the way to the finals.

If you wanted to bet a more sizeable amount like $100 is you shouldn't have any problem getting down the kind of money you would need to as the tourney progressed.

Basically we are giving up a ton of extra juice betting futures because we don't think we could bring ourselves to put that kind of money in play parlaying every game. I will never bet a future instead of parlaying again for sudden death tourneys like the NCAA tourney, BCS championship, or any pro sport playoff where you can bet a series.

However, this only works with long shots or semi long shots. Betting #1 seeds for example you couldn't overcome the heavily juiced lines for the first and maybe second round games. In these cases parlaying every game would actually pay less than a futures bet

i would of lost the money on the off day. I blew my wad before ncaa's got greedy. I lost on cleveland ml when that center broke his leg. I took what i had left trying to run something up and to htn coogs ml. Another loser. Only thing left is 50 to win at 9-1. Was gonna bet duke early in the year and undy talked me on nc.