Looking for sports betting action this weekend? Your curated list of tips, analytics and humor, every Saturday at 10am Eastern.
Kentucky Derby – On A Numbers Game with Gill Alexander, horse racing handicapper Mike Somich makes the case for Fierceness to win the 150th Run for the Roses.
Detractors may say that Fierceness has drawn the 17 post out of which no horse has ever won the Derby. However, Somich notes that only 43 of the previous 149 runnings of the Kentucky Derby have even had a horse in the 17 gate. Of those 43, only two have been favored, and we haven’t seen shorter odds than 25 to 1 for the others.
With early speed and an outside position that should lend itself to a clean start, Fierceness is well equipped to become the first horse from the 17 gate to win the Derby. Mike likes Fierceness +250 to win the Kentucky Derby, as FanDuel Racing moved the favorite from +300 this morning.
MLB home runs bet – Dan Szymborski created the ZiPS projection system for baseball. It uses historical data to set a baseline expectation for a player, and then compare a player with similar players to see how the prediction changes with age.
One interesting forecast for the 2024 MLB season is Atlanta outfielder Ronald Acuna Jr. While the star only hit his second home run of the season last night against the Dodgers, Dan expects much more for the remainder of the season.
ZiPS gives a 7% chance for Acuna to lead the majors in home runs this season, which implies value at 65-1 on FanDuel. Follow Dan Szymborski for all of his baseball projections.
NBA player projections – Drew Dinkmeyer leads the NBA quantitative team at Establish the Run (ETR). On a recent episode of the Unabated Podcast, he said two interesting things about player props.
First, a ton of human effort goes on top of the ETR calculations to make NBA player predictions. For example, one member of the team watches every NBA head coach press conference.
Second, Drew thinks the player prop markets are beatable. There are no market making books, as sharp books like Circa do not post player props until very late with small limits ($500). The modern mega sports book resorts to limiting sharps instead of moving on the action.
The craft of sports betting professionals – As a sports bettor, you’re always looking to improve your process. Instead of picks from those oh so honest touts, you want to learn from the professionals, the best of the best.
Or maybe you have this voyeuristic need to see how the best operate. You want to know what it takes to climb the mountain of sports betting success (hint: it’s a lot of work).
Football humor – Listen to at least 30 second of this video as Jim Harbaugh explains what makes you feel like a dad more than any other task.
Smarter sports betting in less than 5 minutes
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