⚾️ Blue Jays Lead The Way And A +EV Bet In London

Saturday morning is upon us and it’s a chaotic one in this house before we ditch the baby and head to a wedding in NYC tonight. What gift do you give the couple who has everything? A slate full of probabilities and +EV bets in a weekly email, of course.

I’m still on the waiting game for our final version of our Probly MVP from our CTO and it seems like there’s a decent chance (that I won’t put a probability on) that we may be able to get that out to you guys before I head to Puerto Rico on a family vacation next week. No better timing for vacation with the wife’s fam and our first flight with the baby but, at this point, I’ll take it however we can get it. So here's your Probly email for June 24th, 2023! - @ChrisSpags

• 👑 The most probable bets from the MLB, UFC, USFL, WNBA, and even soccer!

• 🔓 Probly Beta updates — Community in Sports Betting

As is always the case, our true Most Likely winner lies abroad as a France win in international hoops narrowly tops the Ho Chi Minh City Wings with a 95.5% probability to beat China. Good for France and all with this and Victor Wembanyama bringing French hoops to the limelight with his #1 pick in the NBA Draft status. That said — hard to argue that Ho Chi Minh City Wings don’t sound infinitely more delicious.

But of course, neither of these bets are necessarily the most available or +EV at your local sportsbook. So instead we turn to MLB, where a baseball game is the top probability in town with no big favorites in UFC on tonight’s card and the USFL in their I’m sure much-awaited playoff season.

Today, the Most Likely honor goes to the Toronto Blue Jays! A Blue Jays win at home leads all major sport probabilities with a 70.1% probability as they face off against the rudderless Oakland A’s.

⚾️ The MLB top five overall: Diamondbacks & Giants over 4.5 runs at an 83.2% probability, Pirates & Marlins over 4.5 runs at an 82.9% probability, Twins & Tigers over 4.5 runs at an 82.3% probability, Mets & Phillies under 13.5 runs at an 82% probability, and Brewers & Guardians over 4.5 runs at an 81.8% probability. The only one that really stands out is the Mets & Phillies under 13.5 runs line; as we’ll recall from football season, a high bar alternate line like that reflects as much on the inverse probability as it does the 82% likelihood of going under. So it wouldn’t be completely outlandish to see outlier scoring for that game.

Thankfully, the Tigers aren’t involved to blow this week’s most +EV bets. So we turn to ol’ Londontown where Cardinals -1.5 looks like the most +EV bet you can find today on books like DraftKings and Hard Rock with a 38.4% probability and a 20.1 PROBLY Score if you can find +200 or better odds. I was actually able to sneak this one in at +215 on DraftKings so hopefully the fish and chips and warm beers do magic for Nolan Arenado and the boys.

🏈 I can only assume we’ve all been waiting with baited breath to not watch the USFL playoffs but we have two games filling out this week’s top five as they determine a Champion once again: A Birmingham Stallions win is most likely versus the New Orleans Breakers with a 59.9% probability followed by a Maulers win at a 58.9% probability, Stallions -3 at a 51.6% probability, Maulers -3 at a 51.2% probability, and Panthers & Mailers under 38 points at a 50.9% probability. It doesn’t sound like the most fun based on the lack of high total over/unders but it does seem likely you’ll see two competitive games based upon the low moneyline win rates and -3 lines in the top five.

There are never +EV bets for the USFL but there are a few in the CFL! A Saskatchewan Roughriders win has a 47.5% probability but a decent 2.5 PROBLY Score if you can find the +132 odds at a book like Barstool or BetRivers. I also got a bet down earlier in the week on the Calgary Stampeders 1st half moneyline at a 58.5% probability; it’s now at a 1.9 PROBLY Score if you can get -145 odds (I got it at -125 earlier in the week, which speaks to the importance of snapping these lines up the second you see them on the Probly app when we get that in your hands).

🥊 The UFC’s top five once again consists of fights across a bunch of cards since tonight seems to be a fairly evenly matched event: A Yazmin Jauregui win leads the way at a 78.2% probability on the 7/8 card followed by a Guram Kutateladze win at a 77.5% probability next week, an Alexander Volkanovski win at a 77.2% probability and a Robert Whitaker win at a 75.4% probability on 7/8, then our lone fight for tonight with an Ilia Topuria win at a 74.6% probability.

One bet I hit this week for tonight’s card is a Sedrique Dumas win at a 38.6% probability and a 3.5 PROBLY Score if you can get +168 odds. If you’re on WynnBet, a Kleydson Rodrigues win also looks like a decent payout at a 32.1% probability and a 5.9 PROBLY Score at +252 odds. The best +EV bets you’ll find are ones closer to a 50/50 probability while still having + odds. But if you’re willing to sustain some losses, these kind of 1/3rd probability bets with high payouts can really pay out to build a bankroll when they do hit.

⚽️ There were a lot of favorable MLS lines earlier in the week that seemingly dried up so the best one (which is shockingly readily available on most books) is in the Japan - J1 League where a Yokohama FC -0.25 Asian Handicap has a 40% probability and a 38 PROBLY Score if you can find +245 odds. Yokohama FC +0.25 also looks good at a 60.3% probability with a 37.5 PROBLY Score at +128 odds.

The 0.25 line, for those who missed when I discussed Asian Handicaps a while ago, means you win if the team wins but only get a half-loss if the team draws at -0.25 and a half-win if the team draws at +0.25. It can be a confusing bet for American bettors but offers some real opportunity with American books having a tough time matching international bookmakers’ probabilities on these lines.

🏀 With the WNBA the only basketball game in town, here’s a fun far-fetched one with a decent payout if you can find it: An Indiana Fever win tonight looks good at a SUPER low 10% probability but a 14.1 PROBLY Score at +1040 odds. You usually don’t see odds THAT long as having a +EV score to this extent and it looks like that line is still available on FanDuel. Again - Knowing the probability is the key here since this bet on the Fever WILL lose nine out of ten times. But at that payout, when it hits it can make up for a lot of other mathematically profitable situations that missed their mark.

If you've missed the previous core write-ups as we get to our product release home stretch, check our our previous emails on 1) the core functionalities on our Stories page 2) Our Explore page with power users, myself included, in mind 3) How the concept of Mathematical Probability powers everything we do at Probly (and should be how you approach everything in betting and fantasy sports) and 4) What makes our Probly product/aspirational company different than others in the space.

I’m still waiting for our CTO to give me the finished product with this list of fixes but the timelines seem close. Regardless of whatever issues I may come across, we’re likely to push this version out to you guys with caveats about things that may not fully function the way we want so stay tuned there; I am really hoping to get this out to you guys before I head to Puerto Rico next weekend.

So quickly let’s hit on a topic I’m passionate about: Community. I’m still thinking through how to attack this one since, frankly, if any of you have spent time on sports betting social media, you know how toxic, ill-informed, or misguided it can be.

I’ve been very lucky, with the help of my Splash Play podcast partner Pete Overzet, to cultivate a very great community of people who watch my fantasy football content and digest it with a level of sophistication that results in more of “disagreement = debate” rather than the alternative “I’m right, you’re wrong!” type of thing you get a lot in any content world that people can win or lose money on. Our community there is either aware of best practices or working hard to figure them out so the conversation isn’t as basic as “DRAFT THIS GUY OR LOSE!” It’s been a treat as someone who’s seen the other sides of things across my internet career.

With betting, and our hope to create a mainstream betting product with Probly, I know expecting that positive discourse is going to be an uphill battle. I talked about my desires for honest marketing in last week’s Probly email but even with all the caveats I can throw in here, the attempts to educate on probabilities and the concept of “mathematical profitability”, I know we’re going to run into people who take bets like that Indiana Fever one I mentioned above as an isolated one and then want to stab me with pitchforks when it loses.

Especially in an app that will have a commenting feature, I am really hoping we can find people in our audience who is willing to “embrace debate” so to speak while still understanding the one rule of betting or any sports analysis: Until that game horn sounds, anyone’s take is as valid as anyone else’s. You always try to lead with your best foot forward and the best data (which is all Probly is — these aren’t my or our picks, it's what the math tells us based upon leading markets’ real-time pricing of event probabilities), but ultimately someone can actually have their “eye ball test” of watching games win in an isolated situation while a positive expected value bet sinks.

There’s a HIGH risk of toxicity coming your way even if you’re creating the best products in betting or spitting out the most accurate takes. This is all just about trying to be right more often than not, using the tools you have at your disposal. But it’s another one of those things that I’ll throw out in the ether now that we’re going to try really hard to be mindful of. Educating about the process, hoping people follow the lead, and trying really hard to not succumb to the bad parts of things that can come when people are risking their own money.

From the people I’ve heard from so far — and those of you who read this email — I’m hopeful we’ll be on the right track to have engage with you guys both on the Probly platform and off in a positive and productive way. I’d like to believe you get out of any process what you put into it and you can rest assured we will do our best to ensure that the community we build with Probly will aspire to that ethos first and foremost.

Another one in the books and I appreciate any and all of you who read it! I’m really thinking through some of the overall approach as we get (what I’m hoping) is on the precipice of a launch where we can finally put this Probly product into people’s hands. It has been a labor of love for 14 months now, I’ve put my savings and more into it, and now I’m ready to see what you and the world thinks about what we’ve done.

I’m really hoping the community stuff rings true as well. We’ll need everyone who learns to love this product to help evangelize it and share it with people in the hopes of making them have some weapon in their arsenal to fight off the sportsbooks’ quest to rip money from them. I want this to be a gamechanger for the participation in and understanding of sports betting while also just being fun and delightful and a good way to spend ten minutes on a shitter. We’re closer than we’ve ever been.

Pray for us! See you guys next time!