Your weekly dose of sports betting tips, analytics and humor, every Saturday at 10am Eastern.
French Open – Carlos Alcaraz is the favorite to win at Roland Garros, but he faces a tough Round 4 challenge on Sunday. Lorenzo Musetti burst onto the scene in 2022 by winning at Hamburg on clay, taking down Alcaraz in the final as a +675 underdog.
Sharp quantitative bettor Drew Dinsick notes that Musetti has the tools and unique shotmaking to play with the best in the world and pull off another upset. Drew likes a small exposure on Musetti to beat Alcaraz (+450 at FanDuel).
However, Drew notes two factors that make him like another bet more:
- the narrow margin between these two players
- their general lack of experience in the best of five format
Drew likes over 33.5 games (-110 at DraftKings) as he thinks this match goes four if not five sets.
Follow Drew Dinsick for all of his NFL, NBA and tennis insights. You can also find him on the Bet the Edge podcast.
Player prop, Miami at Denver – Gabe Vincent went undrafted out of UC Santa Barbara, but he has worked his into the NBA. In 2023, he has started all 18 playoff games for Miami in which he has played (Vincent missed Game 5 against Boston due to an injury).
Vincent has averaged 13.4 points in the playoffs, but this high average has benefitted from 40% shooting from three. He should regress to his career average of 34%, which suggests value in under 12.5 points.
This regression stuff is the same reasoning I used to go under 13.5 points for Caleb Martin in last week’s 5-Nuggets. That bet lost by halftime.
However, regression finally hit Martin, as the Miami player had 3 points in game 1 against Denver. In addition, he didn’t play down the stretch, which shows that Eric Spoelstra has a quick hook for role players. This could lead to fewer minutes for Vincent in game 2, and I like under 12.5 points (-110 DraftKings).
Market perspective on NBA Finals – Chris Andrews is the book maker at South Point sports book, one of the few remaining outlets that welcomes sharp action.
Before the start of Game 1 of the Finals, Chris tweeted that he opened Denver -8.5 before moving to -9. He was still seeing a lot of action on the favorite before tip.
For Game 2, Denver -8.5 is the consensus as of Saturday morning. This move towards Miami might be the result of the Zig Zag theory that suggests betting the spread on the team that lost the previous game.
Follow Chris Andrews for all of his insights from behind the counter. You can also check out his hilarious book on book making or his new novel about fixing a football game.
Home advantage in sports – Michael Lopez, a Ph.D. in Biostatistics that now works for the NFL, was the lead author in a study that looked at home advantage across a number of major sports.
They applied Bayesian methods to market data to estimate team strength and home advantage for each team. There are two conclusions to highlight:
- The Denver Nuggets had the largest home advantage across all sports by probability to beat an equal caliber opponent at home. The path to an NBA championship will be difficult for Miami. Altitude is most likely a factor, as the Utah Jazz have the second highest home advantage.
- The home advantage is relatively uniform for NFL teams. In addition, the home advantage for all NFL teams are lower than every NBA team but higher than all NHL and MLB teams.
Follow Michael Lopez for all kinds of data driven insights and information on NFL data bowl contests.
Humor – Even evolution gets is wrong. A doctor becomes a front runner for a Darwin Award by dying in a crash of a hand built airplane.
Unfortunately, the doctor probably used his own sperm in fertility treatments of women. You can’t make this stuff up. (Thanks to Josh Hermsmeyer for putting this in my feed.)
Smarter sports betting in less than 5 minutes
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