NFL Playoffs

Another short little post here, just wanted to touch base about betting on the NFL in the playoffs and maybe give a nugget or two.

First off, I hope you all cashed in on my correlated parlay nugget from my last post. The Bengals won that week 18 game I was talking about (but didn't cover -2.5 by a half point! Hence why I said to do the money line and why line shopping is so important) and the Chargers went from -4.5 to -7 and even -7.5 at some places after the Bengals win. So you could have rode naked on it and been happy, or middled it with Raiders +7 -105ish or +7.5 -115ish. Or you could have taken Raiders +4.5 at about +130 for a little bit for the nice scalp/arb. My initial bet was bigger than I wanted as I did plan on hedging at least a little bit and that is what I did. I took a little bit of Raiders +7, got a nibble at +7.5 and took a little bit +4.5 +130. I had way more exposure to the Chargers though who won and covered easily. The Raiders ALMOST pushed on +7 too which would have been sick.

This past weekend was a great one for Wong Teasers. Buffalo was in Wong range most of the week and somehow closed at -7.5 (there was a LOT of late money coming in on Denver for some reason). Draftkings actually put the Ravens at -8.5, who were 9/9.5 everywhere else, for a little while yesterday and I put them into a few teasers. 

I've mentioned it before, but DK's teaser odds are generally bad. -120 for two teamers, +160 for three teamers and +260 for four teamers. What you really want is -110 for two teamers, +180 for three teamers and +300 for 4 teamers (or better, obviously). You used to be able to find those odds (or even better sometimes) just about everywhere a few years ago. But the public slowly, very slowly seems to be finding out about these so we've seen the odds get worse and worst over time, very gradually. If you're paying the DK odds, or worse, and not playing Wong teasers absolutely perfectly, you're going to torch money. However, there are some spots that come up where they can be +EV. The example from the Ravens game yesterday is a good one. Generally, it's where DK has a team a half point or a full point off from market, putting them in Wong range. They actually have one up right now. They have the Bills at +1.5 -120 where most of the market is at a pk. Pinnacle is actually at +1 -109 now, so it isn't as great as when they were -1 +102 this morning, but still a good leg. It's the Sunday Night game too, so you can put it as the last leg in your teasers and then go for a nice chunky middle, scalp some or all of it out, or just let it ride. Either way, you should have some attractive options.

Speaking of Wong Teasers, every single NFL game with a line right now is Wongable if you look hard enough and have a little bit of creativity. Right off the bat we have a nice one tonight with the Rams being +2.5. I jumped on this one early last week when I found a +1.5 when everyone else was at pk or +1. But then the game got moved to Arizona due to the fires, so the line went to +2/2.5. I put this one in as the last leg in a lot of my teasers from last week, so I have a big position of LAR +8.5 and +7.5 tonight. I'm scalping out of some of it with Min -2.5, -4.5, -7.5, and a little bit of -9.5, but still exposed for a good chunk on LAR.

Next up is Washington/Detriot. This opened at Det -8.5 -105 and is currently Det -8.5 -113 on Pinnacle. Just about everyone else has -9 or -9.5. If you can find a -8.5, I highly suggest putting it in some Wong teasers. I whacked Draftkings on it pretty good this morning and they moved to -9.5 right after. (When that happens, I will usually take the other team at +10.5 for at least part of my hedge, buying through the 10 which is generally worth it at 10 cents per half point.) It's hard/impossible to predict NFL line moves, but I would imagine that this line will not go any lower than 8.5. So my plan is to get in at -2.5 with Wong teasers and take nibbles on Washington throughout the week at +9, +10.5, +7.5 reduced juice, and the money line. I think the best time to bet Washington though will be right before kickoff. I was listening to a good podcast this morning and they were talking about Washington this year and how 'lucky' they've been. They have run very hot on converting 3rd and 4th downs, and have scored an unsustainable chunk of their points on drives where they've converted a 4th down. Not something I'd exactly take to the bank but worth considering. With the high total, this is a spot where I'll take nibbles on +9 and +10.5 etc like I said above, but will probably bet Washington ML and +3 as my hedge instead of going for the big middle.

The Saturday night game is Hou at KC. KC is -7.5 and feels like a 'licking my chops' kind of teaser. The Chiefs are kings of winning-but-not-covering this year and this game has a nice low total (41.5). The expected/implied score is KC: 24.5 HOU: 17 which is both under their average points scored per game. Lower scoring generally means less variance, so I love the play of teasing KC down to -1.5 and hedging with Hou +7.5 or even better if this line moves to 8 or 9. This definitely one where I'm not waiting though and firing on them today. I cannot imagine this line goes down or crosses the 7. Another one where I think the best time to bet Hou will be close to game time.

Finally, we have Baltimore at Buffalo. I already went over this game above, but definitely look for any Bills +1.5 and consider Wonging them up to 7.5. The great thing about the playoffs in particular when it comes to Wongs is that all the games are on at different times. So this makes middling/arbing a lot easier and way more clear. 

I dusted off my NFL player prop models for a couple games yesterday and even though I lost a few units overall, I felt like I was finding a lot of decent spots on Draftkings. They have more than a few unique markets which seem exploitable. I'm going to dive into them right after I make this post and if I find a couple really good props I'll post them here. So check back later today if you're interested. No promises though.

That's it for today. I have two really big posts still cooking so make sure to check back soon if you're into that sort of thing. And don't forget to follow me on X for updates @POOGSblog. Bye for now!

BTC price: $92k

BTC marketcap: $1.82 Trillion 

BTC dominance: 57.4%

Total cryptos on coin marketcap: 2.4+ million 

Correlated Parlay Nugget

 Hello there. This isn't really a post post, more of a nice little nugget for any of my regular readers. If you don't know, there are often good sneaky correlated parlays that you can play in the NFL in the last week of the season. Games can be correlated when one team needs another to win or lose to get into the playoffs or change their seeding. The NFL seems to be aware of this and makes the schedule so that most of the correlated games go off at the same time which mostly nullifies the correlation (although I wonder if you can find spots with live betting?) However, there is one really good one this week and I'm going to give it out to you guys here.

Parlay: Bengals money line with LA Chargers -4.5, and/or Steelers money line with LV Raiders +4.5.

You dont HAVE to do money line and spread but I think all things being equal, that is the optimal play. It depends on what kind of numbers you can get though.

Interestingly, Draftkings will let you parlay Bengals and LAC but NOT Steelers and LV. I'm not entirely sure why they let you do one but not the other. The vast majority of PPH books will let you parlay them both though which is good. They also look super square to anyone who doesn't understand it so they're good bets for cover too.

That's it for now. Check back soon as I might have another one of these later on today or tomorrow and I still have a couple of big posts cooking. One checking in on the logarithmic regression for BTC and another one about money that I think you will like.

Bye for now!

Practical Advice For New Dads

Hello everyone. Something I'd like to start on here is to do a blog about a completely different subject than normal around Christmas time. So here goes! Don't worry, we'll return to our normal programming next time. But I think a lot of my readers are youngish men who are just starting families or might be on the cusp of it. So this post will hopefully help you with some real, practical advice from a newish Dad. If this interests you, read on! If not, check back soon as I have a big post cooking.

My wife and I had our first child (a daughter) almost two years ago now. So obviously I am not an old and wise grizzled father of five doling out advice. However, the first few weeks/months are particularly challenging and unique, and I feel like a lot of parents seem to sort of forget almost the whole first 6 months and how hard it can be. I've heard this is actually an evolutionary function for parents to incentivize us to have more kids, but I haven't been able to find any evidence of this. As the parent of one, one and a half year old, I know I am far from being a 'Dad expert'. But it's all fresh in my mind and before she was born, I looked and asked around everywhere for advice and found the vast majority of it to be severely lacking. ("Sleep when the baby sleeps?" Great idea, on paper). It's all so daunting, there's so much emphasis on the child and the mother so the Dad can get left behind a little bit. So perhaps this can help a future or new Dad. I know I could have used something like this.

First off, the pregnancy. This will really have very little to do with you. She will have lots of appointments, will need special food and vitamins. She might be cranky and/or emotional. Just be a good guy here. Really not a whole lot for you to do except be as good of a partner as possible and prepare yourselves for whats coming. Read some books. (You gotta have the baby room ready in advance, obviously. And the car seat, stroller, etc. Car seats are harder to install than you might think. Make sure you follow the instructions, there is more to them than it seems. You'll be getting tons and tons of random advice and people telling you their (sometimes horror) stories. Don't get psyched out or anything. Just prepare yourselves for the first month, really. You'll have plenty of time to get the stuff for the months afterwards and you won't really know exactly what you'll need anyway.)

Next: the birth. When your wife is a month or so out from being due, get a go bag ready. Clothes, books, laptop, maybe some food. Prepare for 4-7 days in the hospital where you will be woken up about every 2 hours. It'll all feel like an absolute blur, almost like a dream. No one is sleeping except the baby. The doctors and nurses don't give a FUCK about you in there, either. You'll be sleeping on the 'Dad bed" which is barely even a couch. Do NOT complain. Just help as much as you can and keep the room tidy. I went for a drive every day in the morning to get us breakfast/lunch and to just take a breather for an hour everyday, plus give your wife some alone time. And you can report back on the outside world when you get back to the hospital. It's hard to describe, but it can feel really weird being cooped up in there like that. So take a break when you can, but again, this part is obviously all about her and the baby so just be there for them. I've heard stories of guys playing video games while their wife gives birth and bitching to her about the lack of accommodations. For the love of god, don't be that guy. (Side note: research and have a plan about vaccines before you get to the hospital. Unfortunately, you really can't just trust the doctors anymore when it comes to vaccines. They'll want to inject your newborn with stuff literally the minute he or she is born. I read a great book called "The Vaccine Friendly Plan" by Dr. Paul which I highly recommend. Don't be afraid to tell the nurses no, either. They can be pushy and it's all pretty intimidating, but know what you're doing before you get there ((like, really know it)) and stick to it. Trust me, you'll thank yourself later. You can always get a vaccine later if you want but you can't undo one.)

Next up: going home and the first two weeks. Leaving the hospital the first time will be utterly surreal. You can't even believe they're just handing the baby off to you and off you go. This is where you have to shine and where you'll be needed. Your wife will be all banged up (even a C-section does quite a lot of damage), more tired than you, and her hormones will be all over the place. You have to be a rock. If you're overwhelmed or anything, don't show it to your wife. She needs you to be strong here. Make sure the house is clean and ready for you guys, make sure you have food and drinks and stuff like that.

The simplest and probably best advice I got around here was just make it to two months. Have that as a goal in your head. The first two months will be torture. Sorry to say but there's no getting around it. The baby will be waking up all throughout the night, every night, and you will be beyond sleep deprived. You'll have a long tough day, finally get yourself into bed, and then you'll get woken up two hours later. Its 24 hours, non-stop at first. Just be ready for it.

You also get nothing from the baby at this point. They can't even really see you. It's shocking how much of a blob they are at first and something I was not prepared for. Just tell yourself "get to two months", and "literal cavemen did this". The days will feel long and will all blur together. I felt a connection early on, but don't worry if you don't. You will at some point, I promise. After the first couple weeks, it'll slowly get better and better every day. But make no mistake about it; during the first month you will think to yourself at least a few times; "Now I understand why they use sleep depravation as a torture tactic". 

Couple practical things for the first couple months of night feedings: have a plan beforehand. My wife and I came up with a good system of simply every other. I'd do one feeding, then she'd do the next one, and so on. So many couples fight at this point about who should get up in the middle of the night. Another good piece of advice, don't both do it at the same time. The first couple of nights you probably both will, but once you get the hang of it, make sure only one of you are doing it while the other one sleeps/recovers. For the first few weeks, I felt guilty about sleeping while she fed, so I would get up with her and basically just stand there and watch her feed at like 2 AM. Get your rest while you can and if you're not helping, you're not helping.

A great resource we used for sleeping was the Ferber method. My doctor friend turned us on to it, but you may have heard of it from the movie "Meet The Parents." Some people still think it's a joke, but it's a great simple system of letting them cry for a little bit longer every night before you go in. Otherwise, you can start to train them that crying=parents rushing in as fast as possible. It'll be hard to let them cry at first but rushing in there is not doing them any favors. You can look up the Ferber method yourself for free. It's very simple. And I highly recommend using an actual timer and following it very strictly. You may think you can estimate 3 minutes, but I promise you that it's a lot harder than it seems, especially with your newborn scream crying in the middle of the night. (Side note: I remember reading somewhere that the ability for a newborn to 'self-soothe', aka put themselves back to sleep after waking up and crying, is one of the most important things for a baby at this stage and is an indicator of good life outcomes down the road. So do some research and have a solid plan around sleeping and stick to it). Have a solid routine for bedtime and stick to it every night. Our was: bath about every other night, PJ's and diaper, bottle on my lap in her room with the door shut and lights off, then a couple minutes of walking around with her lightly, burping her, then lay her down with her binky and wombat stuffed animal that she still loves. Good sleeping cues. Our routine is that I do the night time and my wife does the morning. You should help her in the mornings though and I do them at least once a week on the weekends. See what works for you).

After the first month, you should start to settle into it all. The baby should be sleeping better and you'll start to get some laughs and maybe even some eye contact. Baths in the sink can be fun. As stressful as it all is, don't forget to enjoy it. It'll go by fast and like I said, it'll all start to feel like a dream. But you're really starting to bond here and it will hit you that you are now DAD. Forever. It's heavy and you gotta give yourself a little bit of alone time here and there to just check in with yourself and clear your head. Lots of people will want to come over in the first month and while they all mean well, do not be afraid to tell them no sometimes. Protect your family at all costs here, and never forget about your wife. 

Once you get to two months, 3 max, the baby really should be sleeping a lot better. If not the entire night, no more than one or two wake ups where you only go in half the time or something. I've heard horror stories of couples with 6 or 7 month olds who are still waking up 4 or 5 times a night! (I also just heard of one couple in particular who is really struggling with sleep and that the mothers mother didn't get her children to sleep through the night for 3 years!! Always take any advice with a grain of salt and consider the source). If they're not sleeping through the night after 3 months, you're doing something wrong. Treat it like any other problem; identify it, do some research, and experiment. For us, the Ferber method was a life-saver. So start there. You might have to modify it slightly if it isn't working after a week or so, but it really should. One other couple I know had a brutal start until they found their baby was getting acid reflux, no thanks to their doctor. Another side note: doctors are not gods. Don't treat then like they are. A lot of them can be dismissive so don't be afraid to trust your gut and advocate for yourself and your family.

Once they start sleeping through the night, it will feel completely different. You and your wife will start to feel normal again, you'll start feeling like a 'real Dad', you'll start getting more and more out of the baby which will feel incredible. The first time they laugh at something you do is amazing. Personally, I didn't want to bombard her with too much shit at first. People will give you all kinds of toys and gizmos and whatnot. I felt it was good to get her used to silence as much as I could and not try to bludgeon her tiny brain with bells and whistles right out of the gate. Oh and get a good pediatrician, obviously. This is another tricky spot with vaccines. Some of them will tell you that you have to get every single CDC recommended shot or they won't even take you on. Do not let them bully you into shit like that. We found a great one that is super into healthy, natural stuff and didn't force any vaccines onto us. They are out there but you gotta look around.  Not to say we're 100% anti-vax and didn't get any, but nothing was forced on us. We basically followed the advice in the Vaccine Friendly book I mentioned. 

From 6 months to a year and a half, which is where I am now, is SO MUCH easier than the first 6 months. Once they start walking that's a whole other thing and you'll be chasing them around all over the place, and it can be draining, but it's a different kind of draining than not getting sleep. They start to develop a little personality and it really is fun. 

In closing; have a real, well thought out plan before any of it starts. Be flexible but not breakable. It is as hard as people say but it's not harder. And it is worth it. That's how worth it is...as brutal as it can be, the good does outweigh the bad. It's a huge, huge endeavor. To pluck a soul from the ether and thrust it into existence. Do not do it lightly but don't wait forever either. Make sure you are rock solid with your wife beforehand or else it'll all be so much harder than it needs to be. Give each other grace, too and remember that you're in it together. You'll both all over the place mentally. Talk about what kinds of parents you want to be and think about what kind of father you'll be. You will feel a lot different a couple months in. About yourself, your family, your place in the world. You literally become a different man and that is a good thing. Lean on support when you need to, but don't forget that you're a Man and a Dad now. You gotta be the rock that they come to, not the other way around. If that scares you, honestly it might not be for you. But if not, it's an awesome responsibility and if you do it, you jump in with both feet or you don't jump at all.

That's it for today I suppose. Bye for now!

Hi Draftkings...?

 Not really a post here but this was too funny/weird not to post.

So just now I got an email from Draftkings that I assume everyone else got. It says that they're "simplifying the way they confirm Sportsbook bonus offers! Going forward, if you claim a bonus offer that is awarded immediately-like a profit boost of bonus bet-you'll no longer receive a confirmation email. Instead, you can instantly check your claim status" and then goes on to show how you can see it in the app itself.

If you read my last post you might be thinking that that is quite the coincidence. If you didn't, read it now and see what you think.

It's noon on an NFL Sunday so I am quite busy right now but I do have a post cooking so check back soon.

Sports Betting. Crypto. A Big Look Around

Long time no speak again and lots to discuss so lets dive right in. 

First off: Sports Betting. 

It has been somewhat of a strange (couple of) years of betting for me, personally. Ever since I officially threw in the towel with props, I thought my days of betting were practically over. Props were like a good 75% or so of my total action. However, that really hasn't been the case. My volume is obviously a lot lower than it was when I was doing this full time, but very often in the world of advantage gambling and PPH accounts, when one door closes, another one opens. For me, it has been Wong teasers, off-market/alt lines, and team totals this year. I've always done these but not quite to the extent I am this season. It seems that I am FINALLY getting on the positive side of variance this year and have been doing quite well with Wong's and their hedges. I'm not sure how Wong teasers have 'officially' been doing this year, but I know that from my own sample I'm doing quite good. Lots of close games this year too it seems which is almost always a good thing for me. I've also really fine-tuned my approach where I'm doing a lot of three team Wong's which have slightly better odds than two teamers. (+170 on 3 teamers is better than -110 two teamers by a small amount. At +170, it's like having 3 bets at -255 odds. At -110, you have two bets at -262 odds.) I almost always include three teams that are playing in different time slots, so it's very easy to hedge/middle them. My main PPH guy stopped moving lines after I crushed him in the first few weeks of the season, but I'm still finding plenty of good spots.

I also opened up a Draftkings account for the first time this season. I used to use the brick and mortar kiosks to bet at DK when I was doing props, and ever since I stopped with props I haven't really felt the need to use DK. Their lines are pretty much on-market and heavily juiced and their two-teamer teasers are -120, three teamers +160, and four teamers +260. So that makes them completely unusable for teasers. However, I have found some stuff on there that is worth playing. For one, they offer a SHITLOAD of stuff. The amount of offerings they have for every game really is quite impressive. So there are some little nuggets to be found. They let you buy and sell as many points as you want and their alt-lines are sometimes off enough to be +EV. Plus, they offer a really impressive amount of rewards/promos. All kinds of small little free bets and odds boosters, plus a nice little deposit bonus. They are definitely a rec book and I imagine the freebies will dry up for me soon enough, but I highly recommend Draftkings for any sports bettor. (I mentioned it before, but I also own some DK stock and I think that's a good buy too. Maybe not right now as they've been pumping pretty good the past month or so, but something to keep an eye on at least.)

Actually, on the subject on Draftkings and sports betting in general, I do think that there could be some regulation coming for it down the line. I've started to see things on X a little bit. They're really pushing it with the non-stop commercials and the amount of e-mails and promotions I get are a lot. One ad I saw on TV was supposed to be 'the voice in your head telling you it's parlay time.' I can see in the future something like a guy loses his life savings betting, kills himself or worse, and a lawyer looks into it and sees all the deposits and the direct-to-him promotions, basically non-stop. I'm sure it's something that DK lawyers have thought of, but who knows. I was watching an interview on the Circles Off podcast with a young kid who became a tennis betting pro. He was talking about his start and depositing big sums onto a legal book for the first time, and subsequently losing it. He said he was instantly contacted by someone from the book and offered a big bonus on another big deposit. He said he never once heard from the book about being a possible 'problem gambler' and he was going through big sums at the start. I could totally see some politician glomming onto to some cause like that. It'll probably be a lot of talk and no real action though, so it could be a possible good time to buy DK stock.

Up next: Crypto.

Man oh man, huh. Bitcoin just casually sitting at $92k $93k 99k right now! It really is insane how much BTC has pumped in the last year or so. And I have to say, it is nice to be proven right so utterly convincingly. It is seared in my mind the stuff I heard about BTC when it went sub $20k at the end of 2022. Everyone thought it was dead, people panic sold and everything about it was so negative. From my own friends to the entire crypto-space online, no one called the bottom and it was nothing but doom and gloom. It really was a great lesson to live through. THAT is when you buy, and buy a lot. Looking back at some of my crypto posts around that time, one thing I said that I heard from my favorite you tube crypto guy, Ben Cowen, was that "it always comes back and we're all going to wish we bought more." How accurate was that? I have to say, as happy I am about it, I will always, probably for the rest of my life, regret not absolutely backing up the truck and getting to at least one full bitcoin during the bear market. That really was probably the single best investment opportunity that we'll ever see and I was all over it. Everything pretty much happened as I thought it would but I just didn't quite pounce hard enough. That's another good lesson. Have conviction, goddamnit! It's all so easy in hindsight and my total stocks and crypto ROI is over 100% currently, so I certainly can't complain. But I feel like everything I have right now should have one more zero at the end of it.

Speaking of Bitcoin, even though it feels over-heated right now, it really actually isn't. I don't have the link but google searches for 'bitcoin' aren't spiking at all. Ben Cowen's logarithmic regression model, which I did a post about a while ago, still has BTC somewhat calmly in the bottom half of the regression band. It's approaching the very top green band which has a fair value of $103k. Every single cycle has seen BTC touch the top of the regression band (the red lines if you can see it) before coming back down. Right now, the bottom red band is $218k, and if you push it out into February, it's at $240k. The top band, which it has hit in cycles 2 and 3, is $350k in February. So believe it or not, but 200 and even $300k is in reach this cycle. Isn't that unreal? BTC was at $15k less than two years ago. That is a plus 600% return, right now. It's insane to think where it could be 5 or 10 years from now. Every single person reading this should have at least SOME exposure to it. I've been beating this drum for years now and I won't go into it again, but buying and owning BTC is not nearly as complicated as you might think. The best time to buy BTC was during the bear market, but the second best time is right now. 

An interesting part of this cycle is the absolute dominance of Bitcoin compared to alt-coins. Bitcoin is about $20k $30k higher from it's previous all time high and yet Ethereum isn't anywhere close. Same with pretty much every other alt-coin. They all bleed against The King. That will probably change in the coming months, as alt-season typically occurs in the second half of bull markets. But either way, it is quite the statement and a really big feather in the cap of the Bitcoin Maxi's. I heard quite a lot of snickering and shit talking about Bitcoin being 'Boomer Coin' a couple years ago. Lots of Really Smart Guys all thought Bitcoin was too old, too slow and they all found their little shit coin to invest in. Look at Matic right now. It's at less than HALF of its all time high! Same with Chainlink. With alt-coins, you take on more risk and get less than half the reward of Bitcoin. I really do think a big motivator of a lot of these guys is that they just want to be the smartest guy in the room. I don't know how anyone could possibly justify having exposure to crypto yet having very little or no BTC. It's The King, always has been and probably always will be. Why fight it?

Now, having said that, I actually do think that BTC dominance has likely bottomed out. So I have started buying/DCA'ing into ETH and LINK, the only other coins I really dabble in. (I do have small amounts of Litecoin and Matic. Matic I got stuck with and am just waiting to dump whenever the price rebounds this cycle. Litecoin I take tiny nibbles when it crashes and sell tops aggressively. I own less than $1k of it). ETH/BTC is at about .035 which I think will bounce from. We're already seeing some big moves from ETH and LINK the last couple days. Normally I would trade some BTC for ETH but I'm just buying ETH instead. I'm not planning on selling much BTC until things start to feel really over-heated and it doesn't feel anywhere close right now. 

It's actually surprising how quiet this cycle feels. Bitcoin is just casually about to cross $100k. Its market cap is $1.9 TRILLION. Banks are falling over themselves to get ETF's going, including possible ETH ETF's. Michael Saylor has become the de-factor BTC spokesman. This is as bullish a feeling as I can remember, yet according to Ben Cowen's "social risk" indicators, it still looks like a bear market! He tracks new subscribers to big crypto youtube channels, new follows to Twitter accounts, including exchanges and analysts, among other things. It's a good sneaky little indicator and follows tops and bottoms pretty closely. And while it is definitely starting to trend up, it's still relatively low. It's at .4 with 1 being the top which it hit during the 2021 peak. Last time it went from .4 to .5, aside from a quick spike during the FTX saga, was late 2020 when it rallied from $10k to $65k.

I have somewhat altered my stance on investing in BTC/crypto this cycle. I've always considered myself more of a trader than an investor and that is how I approached crypto. I made tons of sells, always looking to come back in at a lower price. And that did work out fine, especially starting out, but now I have moved more towards 'investing' in my journey. I'm not looking to sell much of anything anymore, just keep adding. I've also spent a lot less time and energy analyzing charts and trying to predict price moves. Because the bottom line is that the number just goes up. It's swingy and volatile but all you ever have to do is zoom out. Bitcoin was at $10k at the end of 2020, it's the end of 2024 and we're looking straight down the barrel of $100k. I think we'll see a million dollar BTC in our lifetime. So why sell at all? It has more than proven itself and it's done the hard work. We have ETF's, it is discussed on all the mainstream news shows like it's been there all along. We're a couple months out from the halving, we have a new President who is very business friendly and it has officially settled into mainstream consciousness. Bud, get on board!

BTC price: $98k

BTC market cap: $1.93 T

BTC dominance: 58%

Total cryptos on coinmarketcap: 2.4+ Million (when I started this blog I remember it was 8k)

Anatomy Of An Arb

 One thing I have always talked about on here is Arbing. But I've never really gone into depth with exactly what they are and how to do them. So let's do a little bit of that today, plus some other stuff. First post in a while.

I have always felt that, in general, people are terrible at explaining things. They tend to assume you know more than you do. The person having something explained to them also seems to have a very clear bias to show that they understand and not really ask questions. I think it's that deep-seated thing in us to not want to be outcast from a group. You want to nod along and not look stupid, even if the explanation is bad. You want to be part of the group that knows whatever is being explained. And I think sometimes the explainer ends up just trying to show off what they know and impress people instead of accurately and effectively communicating an idea. My Dad was always a terrible explainer so maybe this is just a me thing but it's something I've become a lot more aware of as I get older. All of this is to say that I'm going to take a thousand foot up approach here (and with most things) and assume you have never even heard the word "arb" before. To any professional or semi-pro bettor, this will be elementary. But it is good to go back to basics once in a while and make sure your foundation is solid. 

So let's really look into Arbing, scalping, hedging and middling. All slightly different variations on the same theme.

"Arb" is short for arbitrage. Arbing refers to the practice of betting on both sides of an event and locking up profit, no matter what happens. You can do this in all different kinds of industries and in many different ways, but for today we'll keep it mostly confined to sports betting. Here's an example of a glaring arb. You're looking at various books' odds for an MLB game, Red Sox vs Yankees. One of your books has Red Sox -120, NYY +110. Another book has Red Sox -145, NYY +130. You can lock up money no matter what happens by betting on the Red Sox at the first book at -120 and the Yankees on the second book at +130. All you're looking for is for the plus number to be bigger than the minus number. That's it. Very simple.

However, it starts to get interesting when we start talking about exactly how much to bet on each side. Let's say each book has a $1000 limit. Let's say you bet 1200 to win 1000 on the Red Sox and 1000 to win 1300 on the Yankees. If the Sox win, you're even. If the Yankees win, you win $100. But what if you want to lock up the same amount of money, no matter who wins? You'd simply bet a little less on the Yankees. Something like 957 to win 1244. Now you win about $43, no matter who wins. (Notice in the first example there was $100 possible to win and the second one there is $86. Something to keep in mind). So far so good. This is easy stuff.

To me, arbing is when you take on no or very little risk. I would call both examples I just gave Arbs. You don't really care who wins. You have a clear position in the first example but you aren't risking anything in either.

Scalping, as I understand it anyway, is similar but you typically take on some risk. You semi-arb, or scalp, to get yourself better odds than just straight betting.

Let's use the same example above. Let's say you have an arb of BOS -120 and NYY +130. For any arb involving a game line, especially a major sport like MLB, one line is usually going to be off-market and the "+EV" line to bet. In this instance, let's say the +130 line is off market. If your roll justifies it and you don't mind the risk, the best play to make would be to max out the bad +130 line, suck up all the EV and move on. However, that isn't the case for everyone, all the time. If you don't really trust the market line, or if there isn't one, or it's far away from the game starting, or maybe you just need a win even. There's plenty of reasons to not simply just max out the bad line and do nothing else, even if your roll justifies it. However, if your roll does NOT justify a naked max bet, your choice is sort of made for you. Let's work through that real quick.

Let's say that with your bankroll, your max bet is $500. Let's use the same example above, a +130, -120 arb with a $1k limit on both sides. One option would be to simply bet $500 on the bad line and move on. So you'd have the Yankees risking $500 to win $650. This is what most people do. However, with just a little bit of creativity you can do even better. IF you only want to risk $500, the optimal thing to do here is max bet the bad +130 line. So you'd have $1000 to win $1300. You then 'scalp' out the amount you don't want to have at risk, in this case $500. So you bet $600 to win $500 on the Sox at -120. Now, if the Yankees win, you win 1300 and lose 600, for a net of 700. If the Sox win, you win 500 and lose 1000 for a net of 500. So your effective bet is NYY 500 to win 700, which is +140 odds. Isn't that a neat trick? So you're getting +140 (instead of +130) on something that should be +110. The more you scalp out, the better your effective odds are. However, the more you scalp out, the more EV you're leaving on the table, too. But this line of thinking sort of assumes that you can make enough bets like these to iron out the variance. And if you're a pro or even semi pro bettor with multiple years of sample, this will be true. But it isn't true for everyone. So don't be afraid to scalp. Remember, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. Sometimes it's fine to just take the free money, reduce your risk, and sleep easy.

A little digression here; I WISH I would have done that for the past decades worth of Super Bowls. The Super Bowl is a great example of an event where you'll find all kinds of arbs, often even on the game lines. And sure, over the long run of like 20 years, you'll definitely show a better profit if you just ride naked on all the bad lines. But man, I cannot tell you how many times I've spent the full two weeks setting up absolutely incredible middles instead of taking the free arb money that just never hit. I would have been better off if I had just clean arbed every +3.5, -1 middle I set up.

Speaking of middles, middles are exactly what they sound like. You can technically middle anything by buying/selling points or betting a favorite on the money line and the dog on the spread. When I or anyone talks about setting up a middle, they mean a 'profitable middle'. You can get really creative with middles with money lines, spreads, teasers, parlays, etc. But every single -EV bet you make costs you money, even in a middle. Great thing to remember when thinking about setting up a middle: No combination of bad bets can ever equal a good bet. Something to always keep in mind. 

To find a good middle, you almost always have to find an off market line. If not, then you need two slightly off market lines. I used to find juicy middles with team totals, full game and first half, all the time. Not so much anymore though. It seems to me that books finally caught on to the team total EV they were leaving lying around this year, by the way. But something like an NFL 21.5, -110 on the under and 20.5 -120 on the over is probably profitable. It's hard to know for sure to be honest. (Actually with a good database it wouldn't be that hard to figure out). But I always use pinnacles lines as a rough guess which is fine. Something I've done every Saturday for the probably the past two decades is pull up two books' college football lines, 1H and full game, and run down the team total lines for the entire day. You'll find plenty of middles on the 10 for the first half and 20-24 on the full game. And I usually do just clean middle them because how efficient is a first half team total market on some random college football game? It's hard to know which line is 'correct' because there probably isn't a 'correct' line. So you set up a middle or an arb and move on. That's something that absolutely every beginner bettor can and should do every week. 

Arbing and middling have become my main thing now the past few years or so. Every week I hunt for something mispriced and max it out. If the max is more than I want to have at risk, which it usually is, I then hunt the other side and look for the best possible number(s) to scalp. One of my books has a massive limit so if the off market bet is on there, I'll have multiple thousands of dollars worth of bets to scalp out of it. I usually do some combination of an arb and a middle. I used to always go for the big middle but like I've said on here before, I have run cartoonishly bad on them that now I cleanly arb out of most of it, and will set up a small middle. 

Here's an actual, real world example for TWO middles I actually hit last week (am I due this year!?) Last Sunday, looking over lines at the two PPH books I have right now, I noticed one of them put up -2.5 -110 for the Seahawks, who were playing the Patriots. The market line everywhere was an even -3 -110 (Pinnacle was -105 most of the day). So this is clearly a bet, and a really good at one that. So first thing I always do is refresh everything, make sure I'm not making a mistake. Sometimes, in some markets you have to be lightning fast to pick off arbs with things moving all over the place, quickly. This wasn't one of those times. This account does this sometimes. He'll move random games sometimes a full point or even more. This being the Pats home opener and me living in MA probably had something to do with it, but he moves random stuff all the time. Anyway, once I confirmed everyone was at -3, I maxed out Sea -2.5 -110. Now, believe it or not, but this account actually takes big bets. (I have never really quite figured this account out actually, to be honest. This is one of the very first accounts I ever got. It's from a dirty agent that I've worked with since the beginning on all different stuff. I slowly lost access to everything on this account except strictly straight bets. Props, team totals, futures, stock market bets, horse racing, video game bets, even live betting. I lost access to them each one by one over the years. But they let me bet straights and teasers, take big bets, and at least once a week, he'll move a number way into arb-able territory. I asked my agent why he did that and apparently it's because he wanted the lop-sided action because he had 'inside info' on these games. I was licking my chops when I heard that, however, I swear to God, after like three years of getting killed on these, I kind of think he actually does. I ran naked on these moves for so long and just got destroyed. Sometimes, by like, a lot. I know it doesn't make sense, how could this PPH guy possibly have inside information on an NBA or NFL game? But the numbers don't lie and this guy is really high up in the PPH ecosystem. After a good 2 or 3 years of getting killed on these moves, week after week, I mostly just arb or middle them out and take the free money. I know it sounds preposterous that this guy could be better than the market, but man, I don't know anymore. I cannot tell you how many times I've lied awake at night after a big loss on an absurd number I 'got in good' at, knowing I could have locked up money with an arb. Anyways, back to the example).

So I've got Sea -2.5 -110 for, let's say 10 units. And I really only want to be exposed for 2 units, 3 max. So I need to buy back about 7 units on the Patriots. It's important here to really line shop, you really need to get the best possible number on the scalp for this all to work. Access to Pinnacles lines is a must but I try to do even better than that. First, assess all your options, and understand you don't have to arb it out all at once place. If you want the clean arb, you can bet the Patriots at +2.5 at something like +123 at Pinnacle. You can lock up money on both sides or give yourself something like +140 odds using the example I gave above. Nothing wrong with that, but if you want a little action, a little spice, you can go for the middle or the semi-middle. You can bet the Patriots at +3 at the best price you can find, in my case it was -105, and hope Seattle wins by exactly 3. Your other option is a little counter intuitive but absolutely worth knowing. You can do a 'Polish middle' or 'heart-attack middle' where you would bet on something like the Patriots money-line at +140 as your hedge. Now you win both sides UNLESS Seattle wins by exactly 1 or 2. Then you lose both, hence the 'heart attack' moniker. It really all just depends on what you can get. If I found a good, off market number on the Pats money-line, that's what I would have done. Maybe not for all of it but certainly for some. Also, don't forget to look at alt spreads, especially at games that have moved a lot. You could hedge with something like Patriots -2.5 +160, even. What I call the 'holy grail' of middling or arbing is when you find +EV bets on both sides. That's the sweet spot.

What I did was bet the Patriots +3 -105 and accepted the middle and lo and behold, it actually hit. Seattle won with a walk-off field goal and my big Sea -2.5 won and my Pats +3 all pushed.

The other middle that I hit was Cin +7.5. Early in the week the line was moving around 6.5, 7, and pinnacle was at something like Cin +6.5 -105. The other book I had put up +7 even! I bought half a point for 10 cents (which is an exploit I heavily use at this book, the 10 cent half point buys off the 7) and got myself Cin +7.5 -110. I waited a couple days and hedged with Houston -6 -103 and Hou ended up winning by 6. It wasn't nearly as big as the Pats middle but two in one week! Maybe I am due for some positive variance. 

Another thing to consider with middling/scalping is WHEN to bet. Sometimes I'll find something off market early in the week and will wait days to scalp it out. That's risky as the market can move against you, and sometimes you can arb out a little bit and then wait a couple days to arb out the rest of how much you want. The more you do it, the more you will start to develop a little bit of a 'feel' for the market and how it moves. Look at books who cater to different bettors and see where they differ. I always look to see what Bovada is at versus Pinnacle. That's a good indicator of square/sharp sentiment and where the market might drift towards.

Another thing I like to do with scalping/middling is with Wong Teasers. Sometimes I'll find a game that I really want to "Wong Middle" into. Something like a game where the spread at Pinnacle is +1, my book has +1.5, and the total is in the 30's (there's actually a couple of those games this coming week). I'll put that team into as many teasers as possible with teams playing later or earlier in the day. Then you bet on their opponent, either the money line for the big middle, or an alt spread of -6.5 or something. Or, let's say a Sunday night game is -9 everywhere. I'll be looking all week for one of my books to drop to -8.5 and put it in as many teasers as possible. Depending on how the day goes, you'll end up with a big position of that team at -2.5. You can then hedge with the opponent at +9, or maybe you find a 9.5 and buy up to 10.5 (buying through the 10 at 10 cents each half point is usually worth it). Or you can go for the Polish middle and bet the opponent at big plus odds on the money line if you find a good number. Or you do some combination of all of them.

An important thing to remember here though is that every -EV bet costs you money. Sometimes you can get a big middle going and you end up giving away a ton of your EV buying it all back. You have to be making +EV bets in the first place for any of this to work.

The key thing here though is pretty much the same thing we always come back to, which is getting soft PPH accounts. That really is the whole name of the game and everything pretty much flows from that.

I listened to a really good interview the other day on the "Circles Off" podcast. Here is the youtube link. It's with a guy who bets on futures for a living. Definitely worth a listen if you're into this kind of stuff. That podcast in general is decent if you don't know about it.

That's it for today I suppose. Check back soon, I should have some BTC stuff up.

BTC price: $62.5

BTC marketcap: $1.235 T

BTC dominance: 56.8%

A Look At Political Odds Part 2

 My last post was a bit of a mess. This past week was extremely volatile in the markets, especially leading up to the 'big boy' NATO press conference last night. So let's check in now, the day after, and see where things have settled.

The main one, 'Who will win the election' on Predicit, Trump is still in the lead at about 60%, Kamala actually in second at 24%, and Biden third at 23%. It appears that, somehow, the press conference last night actually helped Biden a tiny bit. Right at the start of it there was a huge spike in volume that saw Biden go from 17 to 20% and Kamala go from 28 to 23%. I watched every second of that press conference and I guess it could have been worse but it was far, far from comforting if you're a Democrat. Biden is so clearly done for. It's just a matter of time at this point.

As for the the market 'Who will be the Democratic nominee", Kamala is in the lead now, by a decent margin too. She's at 46% and Biden is at 41%. 

Like I said before, I'm not going to get too into the election on here this year. Last time was completely different because I was able to bet on it, of course. And I know no one is here for my political takes solely. I like to have some kind of betting/investing angle to everything in here. I might make a few posts here and there when/if there are big moves in the markets but not much more than that.

One random nugget. I watched an incredible interview on youtube a couple weeks ago. It was with David Packouz who was the real guy behind the Miles Teller character in the movie War Dogs. He was a logistics guy who paired up with a real brutal scumbag kind of guy (the Jonah Hill character who they made WAY too nice in the movie) to get into government contracting work. They did all kinds of stuff but the main thing was arms. He told a super interesting story about how they middle manned an agreement between the US military and Kosovo/Albania. The short of it is that as the Bush administration was going out and Obama was coming in, the Bush people thought that the Democrats would pull out of Afghanistan immediately. So they wanted to arm the Afghans to the teeth before they left the White House (another example of short sighted and dumb forgien policy by the US). A few years earlier, this little weirdo eastern European country convinced itself that a full scale American invasion was coming any day. They were arming literally every single man, woman and child with whatever they could find. Well the invasion never came and they were left millions of tons of guns and ammo which they not only didn't need, but were required to get rid of due to something with NATO. So these two guys simply middle manned a deal between this Albania country and America. They bought all kinds of guns and ammo for super cheap and had it delivered to the US military. Pretty interesting way to make money. I suggest you watch the whole interview. One quick little thing I learned is that one grenade is equal to 10 high capacity bullets.

That's really it for now. Sorry for the lackluster couple of posts and the dearth of posts in general lately. Bit of a summer lull all around I suppose.

BTC price: $58k

BTC market cap: $1.15 Trillion 

BTC dominance: 53.4%

Total cryptos listed on coin market cap: 2.5 million. (When I first started this, I remember there was less than 10,000)

A Look At Political Betting Markets Plus Some Other Things *updated for July 11th*

I started this blog in 2020 basically to discuss the bets I had for the 2020 Presidential Election. You can go back and look if you want but I had an outstanding 'election cycle couple months', scooping up something like 40ish units if I remember correctly. I simply used Predictit as my Pinnacle, or the true line, and was betting on anything that was off-market with my PPH accounts. It was super fun, crazy profitable, and also really got me more into the news cycle. I was more on top of that election cycle than ever before, by a wide margin. And you might have noticed this year I haven't talked about it at all. The reason is simple, really, and is indicative of the biggest downside of PPH betting, which is that I ran out of places to play. Every account I had in 2020 that I used for politics is long gone, and the only one that I still have took down their political section entirely (along with props, team totals, stock market bets, horse racing, video game bets, etc. I can only play straights there). So even though I don't have any action personally, let's take a good look at the political landscape in general and see how the betting markets are looking, especially after the past couple weeks.

For starters, Predicit.org is still the go-to place for political betting. They have literally hundreds of millions of shares/dollars being traded on their site, 24/7. Super liquid, super efficient. Like I said, think of them like Pinnacle for politics, if not even better. So anytime I refer to the market or the true line, I'm usually talking about Predictit's prices. However, since 2020, a new competitor has emerged on the prediction market called Polymarket. From their site: "Polymarket is a decentralized information markets platform that lets people trade real-money markets on the outcomes of the most-highly debated current events, and follow the odds to garner accurate insights about the future. Users buy or sell Outcome Shares, which can be redeemed for $1 if the outcome is resolved as correct, and become worthless if it’s incorrect. Owners of outcome shares are never locked in and can sell their position at any time." Polymarket is essentially the same thing as Predictit with one important distinction. Polymarket uses crypto whereas Predictit uses dollars. This has a subtle but, I think, important point. Polymarket probably skews younger and definitely more tech-savy. Something to keep in mind. 

Polymarket is also bigger in general. For example, for the 2024 presidential election winner, $233.8 million has been wagered on Polymarket, whereas 20.4 million shares have been traded on Predictit. So Poly might be the more liquid market but Predictit is probably the more well-known. It'll be interesting to see where the two disagree.

Anyway, let's take a look at where things stand on both sites for some of the bigger markets and see how they changed over the past couple weeks with the debate and Bidens ABC interview in the rear view mirror.

As of today (July 8th), the odds on Predicit for the winner of the 2024 Presidential Election are: Trump in the lead at 58%, Biden and Kamala tied for second at 23%, and Newsom in fourth at 6%. On polymarket, Trump is even further ahead at 63%. Biden is second at 16% and Kamala is third at 12%. (Michelle Obama is fourth at 4%). On June 26th on Predictit, one day before the debate, Trump was 55%, Biden was 45%, and Kamala was 4%. The total volume bet was a tiny $51k. On June 27th, the day of the debate, Trump went up to 58%, Biden fell to 33% and Kamala got a bump up to 7%. The total volume bet was $542k, over ten times the day before. Now, here is where things get interesting. On June 29th, two days after the debate, Trump remained at 58% but Biden dropped even more, to 29%, whereas Kamala went all the way up to 14%. It seems to me that the prediction markets largely priced in that Joe Biden is essentially a walking corpse and the debate performance wasn't really news. However, what the markets didn't price in was the fact that the Democratic voter base didn't know that. Which I find shocking. Half the country seemed to have been aware that the president literally has dementia and the other half thought it was nothing more than a 'conspiracy theory' (or my new favorite phrase that everyone is pretending is a real thing: the videos were "cheap fakes." The phrase they're trying to use is 'deep fake', but since we're in complete clown world, KJP said 'cheap fake' and now everyone is just going with that?)

 July 3rd was another big day on Predictit which saw $507k in volume in this market. Trump remained at 58% but Biden dropped again down to 25% and Kamala got bet up to 21%. Since then, Kamala has risen a little bit to about 23%, and Biden has dropped to 22, 23%. 

On Polymarket, Trump was 60% going into the debate and has bounced around from 60 to 67% since. Biden was 34% going into the debate, dropped to 22% right after it, dropped all the way to 8% on July 3rd, and has since rebounded a little bit, climbing to 16, 17% currently as of July 8th. Kamala was 1% going into the debate, rose to 5% right after it, rose to 17% on July 3rd, got as high as 20%, and is currently about 12% as of July 8th.

One thing that stands out right away is the relatively big discrepancy in price between the sites. With hundreds of millions dollars in play, you'd think the prices would be essentially identical but we can clearly see that's not the case. I think it goes to show, among other things, how difficult it is to predict something like this. I think it also shows that younger crypto friendly guys support Trump over Biden which isn't surprising. The amount of discrepancy is somewhat surprising to me though. Predictit has Kamala at almost double the price as Polymarket (12% vs 23%). That's a pretty big difference. There's obviously some arbitrage opportunities between the two sites but I'll leave that up to you to decide if it's something you want to do. 

Now, about that "debate." I honestly thought it was one of the single most embarrassing moments in recent American history. With so much going on right now on the world stage. Russia vs Ukraine, World War 3 bubbling, Israel vs Hamas, China threatening Taiwan, inflation rampaging still, Sudan, Yemen, Houthi pirates, the collapse of respect and trust in all American institutions...I mean the list goes on. And to see our commander in chief is literally a guy you wouldn't trust to run a cash register at an ice cream shop is unnerving, to say the least. Would you let Joe Biden watch your kids around for an hour? Would you trust him to drive a car? Do you think he could do 9 times 7 in real time? Seriously. I'm not going to go on and on with my political takes. There's more than enough of that to go around and it's pretty clear where I stand. I just think it is such a bad look for our country and I think Jill Biden might be one of the most power hungry, evil people alive right now. It really is hard to comprehend everything going on right now at the top of the Dem ticket.

*UPDATE*

I started writing this post on July 8th. I usually crank these out in one shot but sometimes I let em marinate for a few days. Well now, today, July 11th, there have been some big, interesting moves. They're actually happening literally right now, about 2:00 PM EST. Kamala Harris is really getting bet up to be the nomination, as is "Will there be a woman president elected in 2024" and other related markets. So let's dive in real quick.

For the main market of "Who will win the 2024 US presidential election" on Predictit, Trump is still way in the lead at 59%. He's been fairly static there for the past month, rising slightly from 51% on June 11th to a high of 62% yesterday and down to 59% currently.

Biden has been steadily falling since the debate on June 27th. He was 45% on June 26th, and is now all the way down to 18%. He was JUST flipped by Kamala literally an hour ago. She is now 26% and rising and Biden is 18% and dropping. With high volume, too. 

For the market: "Who will win the Democratic nomination", Kamala is really steaming up right now, all the way to 47%. Biden has fallen all the way to 36%.

Polymarket has roughly the same movement going on. They have Kamala at 19% to win the election and Biden only at 10%! They also have Kamala at 43% to win the nomination and Biden at 37%.

Like I said up top, I don't have any action going this cycle which stinks. Biden is supposed to do a press conference tonight and I'm thinking that's when they'll announce it. We'll see. I'll probably have some kind of update soon, maybe even tomorrow. I wanted to write more about crypto and stocks and some books but I'm gonna get this out there now before even more stuff moves. Check back soon!

Another Inside Look At One Of Models

Last time I did this it was pretty fun. I know you guys liked it too because it's always in the top 10 of most viewed posts on here. And I really don't mind 'spilling any secrets' now because like I said in the last post, these models almost certainly aren't profitable as-is anymore. At this point a lot of the stuff in there is almost 10 years old. You're lucky if you get two or three full seasons out of any model without serious, constant tweaking. And finally, even if they are profitable, it would be for a tiny amount of EV, and quite frankly, I really don't give a shit either way. Try em out for yourself or don't. I'm very clearly not even remotely guaranteeing anything. All I can say is that any model I'll share on here absolutely worked for me for at least a few full seasons and I did make some real, actual money with them. And I used to LOVE reading about other people's models. Everyone seems to approach it in a completely unique way and I always learned something reading about anyones even attempt at modeling.

So here goes. Today I'll be going into my NHL expected shots on goal/goals/points model. The model I made last in my sports betting career and the one I'm probably most proud of. I have somewhat of a bizarre, almost intimate love-hate relationship with all my models, this one in particular. It's big, it takes a lot of work and time to use and I always felt like it was running bad. Like I should have been winning way more with it even though it was quite profitable for a while.

 I can still remember the early days of building it and the little light bulb moments along the way. When you're building a model, it's in your head quite literally 24/7. You make 2 steps forward and 1 step back. I was like a sponge, trying to absorb any and all information I possibly could about hockey analytics and modeling in general. I even paid someone I respected from a message board for a small piece of the model that I'll explain.

So let's get into it. This one will be a little different in that it will have more of a narrative structure to it. To explain this model I will have to explain the first NHL model I made that eventually became this one.

One of the first models I made was for NHL player vs player matchups, aka who would record the most points in a game. This is where the basic genesis for my later model came from. Basically, I used a players corsi instead of shots and then turned that number back into shots. (Corsi is simply all shots AT the net instead of ON the net, named after Jim Corsi, a goalie coach for the Buffalo Sabres who first started tracking it for his goalies.) Corsi, especially in smaller samples, is better than Shots because there's way more data points. People used to always say 'Corsi measures possession' without really knowing what that meant. It's true, it does a better job of measuring possession than shots, but only because it counts more events. I used to always think of this example: say a player gains possession of the puck in his own zone. He goes the length of the ice, dekes out all 5 guys, dekes the goalie out and wrings a shot off the post or misses a wide open net by half an inch. NONE of that gets recorded into the game log! Hitting the post doesn't count as a shot on goal. Does that seem accurate to you? Now with advanced analytics we could call it a good zone exit, a good zone entry and a Grade A shot attempt from a super high percentage spot on the ice. But when I was making this model, just counting up the shots AT the net was considered fairly ground breaking. And the reason, in my opinion, was not so much that it was super important to count up every shot attempt, but by counting shot attempts, you were really measuring where the puck was on the ice. The real skill, the real work being done on the hockey rink is getting the puck and the play into the opponents zone and keeping it out of yours. Whether or not the puck happens to bounce off someone and go in or not, or be on net or not, has a ton of noise and luck in it. The good teams play more in the offensive zone and convert that time into shots AT the net. Corsi did a good job of capturing that. You can't put a shot at the net if you're always in your own zone. (In the long term, shooting percentage and corsi percentage is pretty fluky and noisy and for the most part, any team giving up more shot attempts than taking them usually lost. Although I will say, some teams did seem better at suppressing shot quality. John Tortarella coached teams come to mind. His whole thing was everyone collapsing down in front of their own net and EVERYONE had to sell out to block shots. Another team that comes to mind is the Boston Bruins, especially when Chara was on the team. Great defenders not only suppress shot quantity, but suppress shot quality. However, by and large, any team giving up more shots than they took would eventually lose.)

My models always treated all shot attempts as equal which I know wasn't an accurate assessment. I should have made adjustments later on at least for High Danger, Mid Danger and Low Danger shots. One of those things that was always on my to-do list.

Anyway, getting back on track. I know I talked about this a little bit on here before, but in my first model I assumed that a players corsi per game for the current season was his true skill level. I would take either the last 3 years worth or his full careers worth of what I called 'corsi percentage' or the rate at which he turned 'Corsi's' into 'Goals'. It's the same exact thing as 'shooting percentage' but I just used Corsi instead of Shots. (I know it sounds funny saying 'corsi's' and most people nowadays call them Shots AT the net while just 'shots' is considered Shots ON the net. That's dumb and confusing though and I will never, EVER not call them Corsi.) So I would take a players Corsi per game, multiply it by his expected Corsi into Goals percentage, and now I have his raw expected Goals. Now you have to adjust for opponent. When I first started, I just divided his raw number by the average goals allowed per game and then multiplied that times the opponent goals given up per game, which is maybe a little bit clunky but really not that bad. Now I have his Expected goals. The next step is to get his expected assists. At first I did the same thing as goals; I took the players assists per game, divided by the average assist per game given up then multiplied by the opponent assists per game given up. So now I would have players expected goals and assists, add them up and you have their expected points. Do the same thing for whoever he's up against and you'll end up with something like Player A .875 and Player B .62. Which is great and all, but you still need to then turn those numbers into percentages, and then turn THAT into betting terms. For all that, all you need is a poisson calculator which are online for free. I'm not going to walk you through how to use Poisson but if you want to bet on props, you absolutely 100% need to learn it. It isn't that hard, I did it all by myself. So you end up with something like Player A will outscore Player B 65% of the time (I'm making that number up) and then you convert that into a betting line using an odds converter. 65% equals -186. So if the bet was, say, -170 or better, it would be a bet on Player A. If the line was, say +200 or better, it would be a bet on Player B.

This is a really simple model but believe it or not, it worked great for like 3 years straight. I think the linesmakers would simply take each players raw points per game and just use that as their line. Most of my bets would be unders on guys playing against top 5 defending teams, or overs on really bad defensive teams. You'd also sometimes catch guys running good or bad on getting their shot attempts through or not. 

Adjustments:

I made many adjustments along the way with this model. First, I changed the way I calculated assists. Assists in NHL game logs are counted two ways, primary and secondary assists. Primary assists are when you pass the puck to the goal scorer, secondary assists are when you pass the puck to someone who passes to the goal scorer. Primary assists are more stable, or more likely to result in more assists. So all I did was break my assist column into two columns, primary and secondary. For primary assists I would multiply by something like 1.2 and for secondary I would multiply by something like .8. (This will probably horrify certain people, but I just completely made those numbers up. I would monitor them closely and would change them slightly every now and then, but that was the basic idea. The big thing, in my eyes anyway, was to make sure I was taking away from secondary assists the same amount I was adding to primary assists). 

The other big change was that I changed the way I adjusted for opponent. It occurred to me that I should try to use the market game line and total in some way. I knew there was a way to extrapolate each teams expected goals using the game line and total, but I didn't know how exactly. First, I tried to reverse engineer through poisson each teams expected goals using their team totals, which wasn't a bad idea but didn't quite work since team total markets aren't exactly efficient. This is where I paid for a piece of this model. I reached out to TomG from the message boards, who was/is a true OG, one of the best old school DFS guys out there and I know is reading this right now (shoutout Tom, leave a comment!) For 50 bucks, he sold me his little Pythagorus theorem way of inputing the game line and total and it spits out each teams expected goals. This was huge. So now I had each teams expected goals for each individual matchup. I would simply use this number against their season long GF/60 number. For instance, say Team A is expected to score 3.25 goals tonight but for the season they average 2.9 goals per 60 minutes. So you know the team is expected to score more than average. (If their raw expected goals per game is .3, you divide that by their Teams GF/60 and then multiply that times their expected team total. So using the example above, you'd get .336). More goals equals more assists, too. For assists, I did some work and found that for the most part, teams get assists at a fairly constant rate with regards to how many goals they score. Something like 1.7 assists for each goal. So I changed my expected assists to match their expected goals. (At certain points I did this a little different too. I would add up each teams goals and assists and then divide them to get each teams "assists per goal ratio" and use that number. Good teams did actually get more assists per goals than bad teams. It depended where we were in the season).

Model Limitations and Problems:

Whenever you're making a model, you have to make a bunch of assumptions, some of which you know aren't great. And you have to constantly be attacking your own model, looking for flaws. For one, my model treated every single shot attempt as being equal. I had a really good idea that I never implemented which was to count corsi (all shot attempts), fenwick (all unblocked shot attempts), shots (all shots on net) and goals (shots that go in) as slightly different, weigh them all accordingly and then use that as my corsi number (any attempt at all is a corsi).

The second one, and probably the biggest issue with this model, was that I completely ignored special teams. I tried for a long time to incorporate power plays and penalty kills, but for this model I never did (I did eventually which I'll get into later). My reasoning was that if I just use "all situations", I was taking into account power play time/points anyway. The glaring issue here though is that you can't take into effect the fact that a team is playing an opponent that takes or draws a lot of penalties (or vice versa). And getting even more granular, certain individual players could draw penalties more than average. Sometimes a lot more than average. Incorporating that, as well as injuries, was another thing always on my to-do list.

Even with these problems, this model crushed. Eventually I completely ran out of books to take my action on this prop so I had to adjust. My main book at the time actually just took this entire bet off the board, but there was still places to bet on Shots on goal and individual player points over/under. 

Shots on goal seemed like a really easy prop to attack. I used the same logic as above but just used Shots where I had used Goals. That was easy and worked fine, but I wasn't beating 'will player A score a goal, yes or no'. I realized that my model was great for matchups but the numbers it was spitting out weren't all that accurate. They were accurate against each other, but not on their own. So this is where I basically started over and created my end boss NHL model.

The first thing I knew I needed to do was incorporate special teams. So for each matchup, I had 'over all PP time', 'PP TOI per game', 'penalties drawn and penalties taken'. Then you need the league wide average penalty time per penalty (which is slightly below 2 minutes because sometimes you get a penalty while on the power play. This was another place you could find slight edges. Some teams would run good or bad at turning their penalities drawn into actual PP time. For example, getting a penalty while on the PP or vice versa). So I would run their penalties drawn against the opponent penalties taken vs the average team and I would get each teams expected power play minutes. You then take each players power play share (the percent of the teams overall power play time that that player is on the ice for) and you have the expected time on ice on the power play for each player. (I also regressed this number to the mean a little bit).

Then I had three sections for each player: All situations, Power plays, and All situations minus Power Play time (which is a proxy for 5v5 plus penalty kill time). I would do each players Corsi into shots and then shots into goals per minute for all situations and PP. The difference would be all situations minus PP. You add up the outputs for PP plus all situations minus PP and I would get the players expected shots which you then can get expected goals.

 I was constantly changing and tweaking this model and there's plenty of stuff I didn't get into because it's pretty technical (and it was so long ago it's hard to remember exactly what I did and when). The end result though was that I would get each players expected corsi and shot on net per minute for PP time and All situations minus PP time. Multiply that by his average time on ice and you get their expected output for the game.

This model worked great for Shots but for some reason, never really did great on yes/no expected goals. I'm not really sure why. Goals are very fluky and since I wasn't super confident in it, I only tried it sparingly so it's entirely possible I just ran bad. But I'm not quite sure about that.

Anyway, that's about it. As you can see, it was a lot of work. For each game, I would have to put in all the team info and then go bet by bet, player vs player. TOI, corsi, shots, plus the last 4 years of corsi into goals or shots to get their corsi into goals/shots percentage. And that's just half the battle. Once you get the outputs and turn them into betting terms, now you have to actually place the bet which is a whole 'nother thing.

If anyone out there would like this model sent to them and have me walk them through how to use it, reach out to me and we can probably work something out. I'd probably charge less than a grand for a complete walk-through. Honestly though there's enough info here to at least get you on your way. But there are a few things I did leave out.

I know this was a little bit clunky. Looking back, it's crazy to me how long ago this was and how much time and effort went into it. I don't regret anything but man, it did take up a lot of my time. 

Check back soon, I have some crypto and politics stuff I want to get into. 

BTC price: $71k

BTC market cap: $1.4T

BTC dominance: 53%

A Look At Sportsbooks' Hold Percentages

It occurred to me recently that state run sports books have to disclose their hold percentages and this could be an interesting thing to look at. So in this post I will take a look around at a few different markets and sports books and check out their hold percentages and what that might be able to tell us, if anything, about the different sports books, their clientele and the entire betting market as a whole.

First, some explanations and some simple math. What is 'hold percentage', exactly? A sports books hold percentage is exactly what it sounds like. It's the percentage of money wagered by bettors which the sports book keeps. So if a book takes in, say, 10k in bets and pays out 9k in winngs, their hold percentage would be 10% (they keep 1k of the 10k wagered). Pretty simple. 

However, one thing to keep in mind here, and this is wildly misunderstood by just about everyone: a sports books hold percentage 'should' be 4.56%, NOT 10%. Everyone thinks that since they're betting at -110, the sports books edge is 10%. But that is incorrect. It's only 10% when you lose. And since you should win half your bets (betting straight markets at -110), the overall house edge on all bets should be 4.56%. In simple terms, if you bet straight bets at -110 in a perfectly efficient market close to game time, you will lose 4.6 dollars per every $100 you wager. (While we're at it, here's one more thing everyone gets wrong about sports betting lingo/math: a typical line with -110 both sides is a 20 cent market, NOT a 10 cent market. -110 both sides has 20 cents of juice in it because you have to go from -110 to 0, which is 10 cents, then 0 to the other -110. So 20 cents of juice total. A line of -120/even is the same amount of juice, 20 cents, just shifted 10 cents to one team. A true, balanced, 10 cent market would be -105 both sides).

Again, just to be perfectly clear; in the NFL regular season with both teams at -110 on the spread, if you threw 10 darts at a board every Sunday at 12:45 and picked teams that way, aka perfectly randomly, at the end of the year you should be down about 4.56% of the total amount you bet all year. That really should be, in theory, as BAD as you can do. With line shopping, bonuses and handicapping, you should be able to get that number down. Again, in theory. 

Let's look at hold percentages in Las Vegas brick and mortar sports books first. Now, when looking for this data, I have learned that it's a little noisy. Each sports book/state does their accounting a little differently and we're relying on them to self-report. That said, I did find a couple good articles that show that the hold percentages for old school Nevada sports books has historically been about 5%. Here's a quote I found from William Hill in Kansas from 2018, for example:

"While sports betting will help generate revenue for the state of Kansas, the reality is that sports betting is a low margin business. In Nevada, the average hold – the amount retained by the operator after paying winning customers – in recent years has been around 5%. That margin has been trending downward due to the increase in mobile wagering and InPlay wagering, which is wagering on an event after the event begins. Both mobile and InPlay are lower margin products."

Since sports betting has become legal in most states, however, hold percentages have increased. Here is the national trend: 

2019: 7.0%

2020: 7.2%

2021: 7.5%

2022: 8.1%

Using data from https://www.legalsportsreport.com/sports-betting/revenue/   we can look at each state for the past 6 years. You can check it out yourself, but the overall total is this: 

Total money wagered: $352,392,456,869

Revenue (money the sports book kept): $29,478,521,378

Total handle: 8.4%

Using a different site, it breaks it down month by month, state by state and the overall handle is a bit higher, into the 9s. This is WITH bonuses factored in too, which were pretty substantial in the early days of Draftkings and Fanduel.

So what does this tell us? Well, nothing really earth shattering at first glance I suppose, except if you really think about it. The average sports bettor is losing about 100% more than he would if he just picked straight bets completely randomly. So your typical NFL sports bettor who watches all the games, watches pre and post game shows, follows the league closely, can name most of the rosters of each team, might even be paying someone for picks, is getting beaten by a random number generator. And not by a little bit either. By 100%! TWICE as bad. Guys! That's abysmal! And I know what you're thinking right now. "Well sure the average sports bettor loses like that, but I'm not the average sports bettor!" Well let me tell you, unless you keep accurate records of your bets, you ARE the average sports bettor. Someone reading this blog is probably a tiny bit more sharp than average, and I know I hammer this point all the time, but if you aren't keeping track you really have no idea what's going on.

If I have any goal with this blog, besides the enjoyment I get from writing it, it would be to help the average sports bettor lose a little bit less. You gotta know what you're up against and where you stand and if you aren't keeping track, it's like trying to be a race car driver and not timing your laps. You just have no idea. So start there. If keeping track of your bets seems like too much work or too daunting of a task, I would ask that you really consider what you're getting out of sports betting and if it's really worth it to you. Maybe it is. But I think you owe it to yourself to find out exactly how much you're paying for that little dopamine hit a few times a week when you win a bet. Winning money long term from betting on sports is a lot of work. Like, a shitload of work. I'm not going to lie to you and tell you it's easy, just follow my advice and give me money and I'll make you a winner, which is what a lot of people do. I'm just here to tell you that there is no free lunch and you're probably losing more money betting than you realize. I mean, that number up above from 6 years of betting just on legal books is 30 billion dollars in the sports books pockets. $30 billion! 

Above is an overall trend line for the national average hold percentage. As you can clearly see, it's increasing, and not all that slowly either. Remember, a move from 4% to 8% is a 100% move, not a 4% move.

That's really it for today. Bit of a downer post, I know, but these numbers popped out to me. If there's anything actionable here, by the way, except for maybe taking a good hard look at your own betting habits, it would be to consider buying stock in the sports betting industry. I have stock in Draftkings at an average price of $18 per share which is pretty good with it being $45 per share currently. I can't say whether it's a good buy or not right now, but if brick and mortar sports books can operate profitably with 5% hold percentages, I would think an online sports book with hold percentages approaching double that figure (and rising) would be a good business to invest in. Of course, all this information is public and baked into the stock price, in theory anyway.

Lastly, a new little thing I'm going to do every post from now on is post the BTC price, market cap and market dominance. I think it'll be an interesting thing to look back on in the coming years. I plan on having this blog going basically forever so it'll be cool to look back at where we were at at various different times in the future.

BTC price: $65k

BTC market cap: $1.28 trillion

BTC dominance: 54.5%

Buy Bitcoin, store it yourself and have a good day! Bye for now!