🏈 Are There ANY +EV Bets For The Super Bowl?

It’s SUPER BOWL Weekend, one of the biggest weekends in terms of sportsbook spend with a record $23 billion expected to be wagered this weekend. And I’ve got bad news for you: Almost every single one of those Super Bowl bets is likely to be -EV.

Why? Because of so much action on Super Bowl weekend — as well as additional promos and marketing to lure people in — every single sportsbook, even the lowest rung of them, has infinitely more data points at their disposal to tell them how to properly price bets to maximize their profits, minimize their risk, and cause you to hemmorhage vig on their Cheesecake Factory menu full of bets.

The NFL is already the most efficient market in sports betting because of the volume it receives in-season. For a Super Bowl — with only a single game’s worth of outcomes — that edge is infinitely magnified.

Does this mean you shouldn’t bet on the Super Bowl? Well…probably, if we’re strictly focused on living a positive expected value life. But if you wager for fun with amounts you can afford to lose, it’s not much different than any other day other than we have less mathematically sound opportunities to show you.

For us though, as a product that aspires to keep it real with you on what betting is as well as the math it takes to be a winning bettor, I want to say the quiet part out loud. If you are a paying customer who goes to Probly, searches NFL and filters for Most Profitable…you are going to see nothing load because there it is unlikely there will be any bets who fit our criteria for profitability vis a vis probability.

And that is a feature, not a bug. Bet for fun! But you’re likely to do a lot better taking college basketball or tennis bets this weekend in terms of the mathematical profitability of it all.

That said, we still have the Most Probable markets for the Super Bowl to discuss and attempt to read tea leaves on. And, since we had a tidy profit in last week’s email, I’ll give you a few NBA freebies to make up for the lack of NFL +EV bets. So let’s get into that — plus product updates and OUR FIRST giveaway of a FREE MONTH of PROBLY — with your Probly Email for February 9th, 2024! - @ChrisSpags

• 🔮 The Most Probable events of the Super Bowl (and some +EV NBA bets)

• 🔓 Probly Updates: Product Changes, App Store reviews, and a Giveaway!

There’s only one NFL game left so this is perhaps not the most impressive Most Likely winner. If you’ve paid any attention to odds this week, you know the deal.

A Niners win is once again our Most Likely winner at a 55% probability. The last time we saw the Niners here, they attempted to allow the good people of Detroit to have a magical Super Bowl moment only to rip it out of their clutches at the last minute. Will we see a similar tale this time, outright domination, or an actual “upset” by the defending champs?

Let’s look at our Most Probable markets to attempt to find out! As always, you can see all the events under a game yourself at Probly.com/search, just filter by NFL and you’ll see the game and the currently available markets.

San Francisco (-2) at Kansas City (47.5 O/U)
Top TEN most probable for a very special game:

1. Chris Conley under 0.5 TDs at a 93% probability

2. Chiefs +4.5 at a 63% probability

3. Chiefs +4 at a 61% probability

4. Niners +2.5 (1st half) at a 60% probability

5. Over 44.5 at a 60% probability

6. Under 25.5 (1st half) at a 60% probability

7. Chiefs +3.5 at a 60% probability

8. Over 21 (1st half) at a 59% probability

9. Niners +1.5 (1st half) at a 59% probability

10. Chiefs +0.5 (1st quarter) at a 59% probability

What this means:

There’s obviously an expectation of a close game with a 2-point spread favoring the Niners. But these markets do illustrate a lot more hedging on the Chiefs’ ability to cover those two points with multiple Chiefs lines worse than the market spread. That’s not a great sign for Kansas City.

There should be a reasonable expectation of a competitive first half, something that could provide value in betting Niners’ win outcomes if the game is tied or the Niners slightly trail in the first half. I’d watch that aggressively for live betting.

We get overs for the 1st half line and a hedge on the market’s 47.5-point over/under with Over 44.5. That seems like there’s an expectation of some safety in production but maybe not a great shot at a shootout (as we always say here: A high-bar over/under that is higher than the market total has more ability to positively predict a shootout).

Either way, there is a heavy market lean for the Niners and that’s not a surprise. I think the Chiefs offer a slight value in betting as a result — though they will be overplayed on DraftKings this weekend.

As promised, here’s some of the current top NBA bets too (as of 3:30 PM on Friday 2/9)

First of all…The giveaway. If you want to win a FREE MONTH of Probly+ or Probly+ Live, I’ll be giving one away every other week in this email. All you have to do: Leave us FIVE STARS AND A REVIEW on the App Store with some way that I can know who you are. As long as we get more than one review in these time periods, I’ll announce the (randomly selected) winner weekly in this email and all you’ll have to do is email me to collect your bounty.

Of course, if you want to pay and get in now, you can still get a 7-day free trial through the App Store OR save 50% with promo code FIRST on any monthly OR yearly package at Probly.com/subscribe.

Back to the App Store giveaway: Why am I doing this?

We really need to get in positive reviews for two reasons:
#1 - It helps us surface more in organic searches, allowing us to reach new people, increase downloads, and hopefully increase conversions.
#2 - Because we are reaching entirely new people organically — candidly — some of them are not the sharpest. And that can kill our launch with early ill-informed reviews one week in.

One in particular gave us a 1 star review because they thought we were charging $500 to use the app when that’s a discounted price for a YEAR of our Probly+ Live product, which is normally $49.99/month. And that obviously doesn’t account for all the discounts we offer, let alone having a cheaper version for $19.99/month.

So it’s a pain in the ass that we need to get ahead of and can only do that with your help and support.

Besides that, we’ve made a ton of improvements on the app this week. In particular:

-You can now see ALL of the necessary info for a bet on the slide. This should make it even faster to find +EV bets you want to take, particularly if you are a paid customer who gets that Most Profitable sorting.

-We added the same additional Best Bet details on our bet tiles on the Explore page as well, though for now you still have to click those to see the Last Updated time. We also have to re-size these for our sanity some time soon.

-We moved the Probly Yes/Probly No vote to a button on the Market slides so you can still track your predictions, We felt the Last Updated time on the slide was more important for users at this time.

-We addressed an issue with the app logging users out too frequently. It now should keep you logged in perpetually, barring a cache clear or user logout.

-We decreased our usage of decimal points on the front end to make it visually easier for users to process.

With those items cleaned up, we have some exciting things we’re working on now that I am hoping we’ll have pushed sooner than later. In particular, we’re going to offer advanced filtering options for Profitability, Probability, Last Updated — allowing you to select a range of multiple selections, i.e. PROBLY Score above 10 with Probability above 50% updated within the last hour, all at once — as well as an additional tweak we’ll be very excited to share once it’s working fully.

Besides that, my appearance on the Betting Startups Podcast went live this week if you have a half hour to give it a listen. I talked a lot about our journey at Probly, what we hope to achieve, and why we’re different. I don’t often get to talk shop about this stuff besides in this email but I think I acquitted myself well (and didn’t even bash anyone)! You tell me!

If you guys encounter any issues not covered here or want to provide feedback, you can email me [email protected].

That should cover it for this week. As you can hopefully tell checking out the app and these emails, we continue to work hard each day to improve this product in a way that actually aligns with the way you guys use it. We’ve got a lot of exciting additions to come and we’re hoping it leads to a critical mass of you all signing up sooner than later.

As always, thanks to all of you who read all the way down here. Get your free seven-day trial of Probly+ on the App Store or use promo code FIRST to get 50% off at Probly.com/subscribe to start winning bets using the best data you can get on a phone! Good luck, enjoy the Super Bowl, and I’ll see you again soon!