Top Sportsbooks
BASEBALL BETTING 2014
Baseball is here! Baseball may well be the king of all sports from a betting standpoint. There are more betting opportunities over the course of a baseball season than in any other sport people bet on. There is also a wealth of information available to bettors from which to base their opinions. Baseball is a statistical handicappers heaven.
Baseball is also probably the most profitable sport for the astute bettor. Yet, most people lose when trying to bet baseball. Why is that?
There are tons of baseball FANatics out there. Men, Women, Children. They know their baseball. They can quote batting averages from 50 years ago. They can manage a Game as good as Joe Torre. They know everything about the Game. But when they try and apply their knowledge to making profits betting the Game, it doesn’t work.
The average guy will look at a Game and break it down comparing pitchers, comparing offense, maybe even going through a Game position by position to see which team is better and more likely to win a Game. But guess what? All of this work puts this bettor on the favorite 9 out of 10 times. You see, the oddsmakers have already handicapped this Game using the same general principles as the avid baseball fan. You will never beat baseball betting all favorites.
As a rule, you should probably never lay more than -135 on ANY baseball proposition. your wagers should include favorites priced below -135 and more importantly, an abundance of underdogs as well as totals.
You need to be able to establish your own price on a baseball Game. When you see a baseball price of -150, that number suggests that if this particular Game were played 100 times, or 1000 times, the favorite would win 60% of the time. your job as a handicapper is to determine if the math is correct. If you conclude that the favorite would only win this Game around 55% of the time, then the correct price on the Game would be -125. In this scenario you would bet the underdog and over the LONG haul, would grind out a profit.
The big mystery is how the hell do you make your own price??? There is not enough space in one article alone to discuss all of the ways to make your own line on a baseball Game. But I will leave you with some food for thought.
The most successful baseball betting group/syndicate that ever existed, beat the hell out of baseball using their own in house baseball simulation program. Baseball simulations are not new. They have been around a gazillion years and started in the form of table top Games.
There is an entire sub culture that exits out there, that has nothing to do with betting baseball. Rather, they are into simulations, and playing imaginary Games between great teams of the past against great teams of the present to see who would win. They also have leagues where each participant manages a certain team and calls all the shots. The Games themselves are played out using fairly complex equations which are incredibly accurate. They will match a pitcher against each guy in the opposing teams line up and have the computer program perform these complex equations. The end result is the probability of that particular batter getting a single, double, triple or home run against that pitcher.
Simulating one Game means very little. However, being able to simulate thousands of the same Game and then converting the results into a price on the Game and betting accordingly is the key. This is how the infamous “poker players” did it and in my opinion, is the way to approach baseball betting.
If you aren’t familiar with Bill James, do a Google search on him. That will point you in the right direction.
I’m certainly not saying that is the only way to beat baseball. There are some old pros around that make their own lines in other ways and are very successful baseball bettors. But for today’s pc power user, exploring the simulation method is worth a shot. Plus, you can have some fun along the way.