Super Bowl

February 8th, 2010

I am writing this post just before the biggest event of the year in sports and sports betting: the Super Bowl.

The 2009-2010 NFL season will culminate with the Superbowl XLIV opposing the Indianapolis Colts to the New Orleans Saints, the two best teams of the regular season. This is the 44th Superbowl which will start in one hour at Dolphin Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida.

And as far as betting is concerned, this is quite close. Both teams are very strong, and the difference will come from their defenses, which are both not that strong. The Colts had a fantastic season, with the best record in the NFL odds (14-2) and one of the best NFL player in the name of Peyton Manning. The Saints have a very good offense as well as this year they were the best offense in the league.

And you know what happened?

I was in the middle of writing this post, but then I was invited to a great steak house, and I had a fantastic meal with a lot of wine. Oh, and they were playing the Super Bowl on TV at the bar, so I saw some of it. Then I came back home, and saw the last 2 minutes of the match, if you can call it the last two minutes, as the match was over. Then I collapsed in bed. Now it is today, and obviously I am not going to discuss the betting odds anymore, as the match is over.

So now we all now that the Saints won their first Super Bowl by defeating the Indianapolis Colts 31 to 17. The bookmakers were giving the Colts as winners with a slight advantage, but it was close. So I hope you saw the great show and next time I will try publishing a little faster, not to spoil the surprise.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in NFL | No Comments »

Happy New Year 2010

January 2nd, 2010

Happy New Year to All Sports Betting Fans.

May the Sports God of Luck Be with You.

Thank you to all of you who have been reading my blog regularly. There was a lot of action last year, and there will be even more sports betting action this year 2010. I will be more active in posting interesting stories than last year, so please keep on coming back, and you will find great content about football, basketball, baseball, soccer, Tour de France, Olympic Games, and all the sports where betting takes place.

There is a lot of debate taking place in Congress about legalizing online gambling and it seems the wind is now blowing in favor of liberalizing the rules related to making online bets about the outcome of sporting events. Online gambling includes three main categories, online poker, online casino and online sports betting.

One important element in allowing this type of betting is related to the question of skill versus luck. Pure luck based games involving money are frowned upon, unless they are State owned. This is the irony of the so-called moral laws, if the State itself governs a game and gets the income from a luck game such as lotto, it is ok. But if not, then these games are the work of the devil and whoever runs them should go to jail.

Skill games are in luck, no pun intended, as such games are considered less morally disturbing. So the game of poker for instance is now getting more and more considered like a skill game by American judges all over the country. In other words it is getting closer to be approved, and there is a good chance that Congress will repel the infamous UIGEA, a law intended to ban all forms of online gambling. It was already postponed for 6 months.

The point here is that sports betting is also a skill based type of game. The most successful bettors are the ones who study the sports, the history, the odds and the players in great depth, in order to uncover when odds mispricings occur. Only counting on luck in sports betting will not cut it.

So logically we should also see some sort of legalization of sports betting to some extent in the not so distant future. Let us see.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in general | No Comments »

New Orleans Saints vs. New England Patriots on November 30th

November 30th, 2009

At the time of writing, the Saints are the favorites by three points at +120 juice for week 12 match against the Patriots.

The consensus reports show a split of about 55/45 in favor of New England - not quite enough to move the spread off the magic number of three. This is the biggest total the Patriots have seen in the past 25 years. The Saints got up to 56.5 a couple of times, most recently in 2004 against Kansas City, but never higher.

Historically the New England Patriots lead the all-time series at 8-3 and have won the past three games between the two teams. But the Saints enter week 12 of the NFL regular season with an impeccable 10-0 record versus 7-3 for the Patriots.

Today the New England Patriots come to the Crescent City to play against the New Orleans Saints who will have the best defense and home field advantage. But the Saints defense has had numerous injuries and the Patriots offense should take advantage of that.

With respect to the statistics for this match, the Football Outsiders’ advanced efficiency numbers rank the New England Patriots first in offense while the New Orleans Saints are third. Another measure shows the Saints on top of the league with 420.5 yards per game marginally better than the Patriots at 416.1 yards. New Orleans put quite a few more points on the board at 36.9 per game, easily the most in the NFL and about eight more than 29 per game for the Patriots in the fourth-place.

The Patriots will rely on quarterback Tom Brady who has surpassed the 300 yard passing mark in the past five weeks. For the Saints, their captain Drew Brees have also passed the 300 mark five times this season.

Let’s watch this great encounter on ESPN tonite.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in NFL | 1 Comment »

The sports betting revolution

October 29th, 2009

The Internet has revolutionized our way of life in so many aspects. Amazingly this also includes sports betting.

Indeed the Web has enabled sports information including odds to be displayed and transacted in real-time among a large number of bettors. This has provided a much larger pool of liquidity in bets compared to the more traditional compartmented bookmaker market. This is turn has enabled the largest online sports betting company to enlarge and refine their offerings, providing a wide range of sports and events on which to bet at reasonable cost.

Nowadays sports betting is possible and popular on football, baseball, basketball, golf, hockey, tennis, soccer, boxing, mixed martial arts, motor sports, horse racing, rugby, cricket, even darts and snooker.

The biggest markets for sports betting are usually the biggest markets for the sports themselves, because the people who make bets are first of all fans of the sports who are so into the games that they put their money where their mouth is. So in the United States, billions are wagered on football, baseball and basketball events. While in Europe the popular sports are soccer and rugby and this is where the most bets usually take place.

In addition the Internet provides the ability to open accounts, fund them, obtain real time quotes, place bets, withdraw your winnings, even discuss your betting interest with fellow betting aficionados in sports betting forum, etc. All this without picking up the phone and within the comfort of your home thanks to your web connection.

The Internet is reshaping the way sports betting is conducted and national borders are getting erased. But you must be very aware of the laws of the country where you reside before engaging in sports betting.

Each country is different and we cannot give legal advice regarding that matter. The only thing we want to point out is that with offshore sports betting, Governments cannot regulate betting taking place outside their jurisdictions. This is another advantage of the Web, but it must not be abused.

The explosion of online sports betting is great news for all people who like us love to place bets on their favorite events. Remember to do your homework when you choose a sports book to place your bets. We will post in the near future about our recommendations for the safest venues to place your bets. Meanwhile, may luck be with you.

Tags: , ,
Posted in general | 2 Comments »

The origin of parimutuel

August 23rd, 2009

A very popular form of sports betting is the so-called parimutuel format, from the French expression “pari mutuel” which means a common bet.

Unlike other sports venues where the bookmaker is in charge of offering odds for various types of bets, hedging his risk with a spread called the “vigorish” (vig in short), parimutuel does not involve a bookmaker.

And unlike fixed-odds betting where you know exactly how much you will make if you win your bet, as this was determined when you placed the bet with the bookmaker, in parimutuel it is only after all bets are closed that the odds are known. As the bets are pooled together and after taxes and a house vig are deducted, the relative amounts bets on each outcome determine the payouts.

Parimutuel was invented in France in 1867 by Joseph Oller.  Initially considered illegal gambling by the French Government, it is only in 1891 that parimutuel became the official form of horse race betting in France, rapidly spreading to numerous horse racing venues all over the world. As it was thought that without a bookmaker able to manipulate the odds, the system was fairer.

The bookmaker Joseph Oller was a very inventive man and even though he has not benefited from his creation in sports betting, he was forced to seek other business ventures in which he became very successful: impresario. Oller opened numerous auditoriums and venues in Paris, of which the most famous are the music-hall Paris Olympia and the famous Moulin Rouge.

Parimutuel is the state-regulated form of  sports betting in many countries such as France, and it is interesting to see how the legal system has found a way to collect taxes by authorizing one form of sports betting and banning another.

The French have invented many things and another one is the more recent form of parimutuel, where the betting consists in finding the first 3, 4 or more horses crossing the finish line.

The tiercé was created in 1954 by André Carrus, who was the directeur of PMU, Pari Mutuel Urbain, the company managing the French horse race betting. The goal was to find the three fastest horses (tierce stands for three) in the right order or in disorder. Later came out the Quarté for four horses and the Quinté + for five.

Tiercé took France by storm and to this day there is no village in the hexagone where the elders do not talk about their bets on Sunday morning at the village café. This also spread out all over the world.

To me, people who are trying to ban sports betting are idiots who do not understand that people like to make bets. Regulate it, do not make it a crime.

Tags: , ,
Posted in horse racing | 2 Comments »

Will Lance Armstrong create the surprise in the Tour de France 2009?

July 18th, 2009

Lance Armstrong was an extraordinary cyclist, winning the Tour de France seven years in a row from 1999 to 2005. This prowess surpassed anyone else before him.

But is Lance Armstrong still an extraordinary racer, or rather an even more extraordinary racer than previously thought?

Traditionally there is always a cyclist who dominates the rest, like in most sports such as tennis or golf. But in the Tour de France the best cyclists in history could never exceed five victories: Jacques Anquetil (1957-1964), Eddy Merckx (1969-1974), Bernard Hinault (1978-1985) and Miguel Induran (1991-1995) are the only bicycle racers who won the Tour five times.

The Tour de France is a traditional event celebrated all over France each month of July since 1903. It is the most famous bicycle race in the World. It lasts about 3 weeks and encompasses racing more than 2,000 miles over France and neighboring countries. Amazingly this most prestigious bike race of all was started at the beginning of the twentieth Century as a promotional event for the French car industry.

Before Greg LeMond’s victory in 1986, no non-European biker had ever won the Tour de France. But since 1986, the Americans have won ten times (three times for Greg LeMond and seven times for Lance Amstrong), nearly fifty percent of the time.

Let us just say that the Europeans and in particular the French (dominating the Tour historically with 36 victories) do not find this funny. At all.

So now after a 3 years break, Lance got tired of promoting anti-fatigue pills and he is back in the race at 37 years old, almost 38 (as he is born in September). Just for the record, he oldest winner so far was Firmin Lambot who won at 36 years of age in 1922.

The Tour de France 2009 has started and for now Lance Armstrong is doing impressively well, at 8 seconds only behind the leader. It is still early but could the impossible occur? Let us remember that Lance had cancer a few years ago, by the way.

If you do not believe in miracles, this is going to be as close as you get.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in cycling | 2 Comments »

Hello world, here I am

May 1st, 2009

Sports-betting-systems-tips is born today May 1st, 2009.

The name of this blog makes it easy to know what it is all about: sports betting, i.e. making bets on sports. Systems, so what I will be talking about is any systematic way to make such bets.

This blog is not about gambling. I have not interest in discussing purely random events. If I have no control over the outcome of my actions, there is no fun. By analyzing systems and systems applied to sports betting, we are looking for patterns in the data, for pockets of structure. For some organisation in how things work.

In the United States, the sports used for betting are basketball, baseball and football primarily. Golf, soccer, tennis, etc are also interesting playgrounds for sports betting activities. Horse racing is also a very exciting entertainment and there exist systems for that too.

As I have a Ph.D. in Statistics from a Ivy League School, I feel well qualified to study some of the systems available in the market and determine if they have merit or not.

One system which I will review more in details in another post is sports betting champ. Developed by another Ivy League (Cornell U.) Statistics Ph.D. named John Morrison, this system has produced extraordinary results so far.

Posted in general | 7 Comments »