Looking for sharp sports betting action this weekend? Your curated list of tips, analytics and humor, every Saturday at 10am Eastern.
The Masters – After two rounds, Xander Schauffele is tied for 17th at the Masters (-2). However, Ryan Noonan of Betsperts Golf likes the fundamentals of his play.
Over two rounds, Schauffele is 5th in strokes gained on the approach to the green, including gaining 3.89 strokes in the second round on Friday. On the podcast this week, Ryan noted that strokes gained on approach is one of the most predictive golf metrics.
Schauffele is down on the leaderboard because he lost 1.46 strokes on the green the first two rounds. However, he is one of the best putters in the world, and some positive regression would imply a strong weekend for Schauffele.
Ryan likes Xander Schauffele to finish top 10 at the Masters, and you can grab a price of +125 on FanDuel (ties get paid in full, good to +115). Ryan talked more about why he likes Schauffele as well as his quantitative golf tools in an awesome episode of The Football Analytics Show.
NFL draft bet – NFL expert Matt Freedman makes it really simple for Cleveland: quarterback is the most important position in football, and Cleveland needs a quarterback.
Matt has been one of the most accurate mock drafters over the past six years, and he has Cleveland taking QB Shadeur Sanders with the 2nd pick in the draft. Part of his reasoning is that defensive stud Myles Garrett says he knows who will be the Brown’s QB next season, and he’s excited. A quarterback room with Deshaun Watson and Joe Flacco is not exciting.
Matt likes Shadeur Sanders to go 2nd in the NFL draft. At a payout of +1700 on FanDuel, this is a nice ticket to hold as the markets inevitably move before the NFL Draft starts on Thursday, April 24th (less than two weeks away).
Aversion to loss in golf – The human mind works in strange ways. In the book Thinking, Fast and Slow, renown economist Daniel Kahneman writes about loss aversion, or how humans driven more to avoid losses than to achieve gains.
This has implications in golf. To study this, a 2011 paper looked at over 2.5 million putts on the PGA tour. A successful putt for par avoids a loss, while a successful putt for birdie provides a gain.
Loss aversion means that golfers should perform better on par than birdie putts. The study found that professional golfers were about two percent better on par than birdie putts. This effect was less in later rounds of the tournament when the overall leaderboard dictates gains versus losses.
The future of college football – On April 15, 1989, ninety-six Liverpool fans were killed at a match due to severe overcrowding and negligent policing. Among other responses to this disaster, clubs were forced to make huge renovations to their stadiums.
Huge renovations cost money. Three years later, the Premier League was created by the top clubs in England like Arsenal and Tottenham to fund these changes.
In 2025, the House settlement will land on college athletics. Part of the deal is past and future payments to athletes. This will cost money.
There is a rumor that top college football executives like SEC commissioner Greg Sankey have read the book The Club – How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports. After reading the first four chapters of the book, I now understand why.
Basketball humor – Skip this if you’re a Houston fan, but the Spanish language call of the final play of Monday night’s championship game is incredible. Listen to all :31 of this.
Smarter sports betting in less than 5 minutes
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