⛹️‍♂️ Are There More March Madness Upsets To Expect?

After a week off for me (I'm sure you all were crushed to not see this email in your inbox), we're back on the probability grind with a lot to talk about!Today I'll share with you precisely what we have left to check off to get our product in your hands as well as what we WON'T HAVE in our first version. Then a look at a whole lot of sports betting events across March Madness, the WBC, the XFL, and more! Here's your Probly email for March 18th, 2023! - @ChrisSpags

• 🔓 Probly Beta updates - What's left to tackle, what won't be in V1

• 👑 The most probable bets from all of today's March Madness games, the WBC, XFL, NBA, and whatever else is floating around out there!

Informally, I'd given our team an April 1st deadline (prior to a tree falling on our CTO Edgar's house) to sh*t or get off the pot, so to speak, about getting the beta of this product out to you guys. Not just because, at a certain point, you as a leader have to tell your team "I need this all done and up to my approval by then." But also because everything depends on now getting this out, generating signups and revenue, sending it to investors old and new (which will be a delight after recent bank failures and panic amongst those communities!), and moving the ball forward.And, of course, me being the chaotic person I am, I thought it would be funny to have an April Fool's Day launch.I'm still trying to make our teams hit that deadline but, regardless, we are now down to a finite list of items to check off before I can comfortably give this to you guys with my full co-sign:

• Full integration of our OddsJam data feed as a comparison tool against Probly's proprietary true probabilities (which will determine the value of our live, legal sportsbook opportunities as well as similar functionalities on providers like Underdog and PrizePicks for folks who want to use our tool but are not served by traditional books in their state)

• A few UX things that I think look wonky, specifically on our Explore tool that will be a tremendous value add for power users to both take actionable bets as well as easily make bunches of their Probly Yes / Probly No predictions on our platform

• Some issues with sorting around our Most Probable/Least Probable events — it works in our backend, as you've seen from the Rest of the Sports World bets in these emails, but is not all the way there on the front-end. This functionality will power our ability to tell you that, yes, the Most Probable bet in the world is some Slovakian women's hoops team. But, more importantly, that function working correctly means it'll tell you that a live bet on the Rockets' 1st half moneyline on DraftKings is currently the Most Profitable bet you could find IN ANY SPORT IN THE WORLD

So that sounds doable in 13 days, right? I hope. Some key things that will not be in our first version: 1) I don't believe we'll be charging for any level of access initially, mostly because we won't have our Stripe integration done. Obviously we'll need to do that ASAP but it will give us the chance to get feedback and learn how you guys value the full breadth of the product. And hopefully that's a reasonable payback for you, the person who's been on the list, being a part of the foundation we have here.2) We will not initially attempt to earn any revenue from sportsbook signups. Our early focus is entirely on our users, not chasing the dragon of $100+ affiliate fees. It continues to gross me out how new products in the space focus their development around their faint chance to get those fees rather than, you know, actually making something that helps users be smarter and hopefully more profitable. Do I think our product will be better at acquiring new users for sportsbooks than others? Absolutely. But this allows us a singular focus — and, candidly, saves a ton of effort with marketing licensing — that aligns us with you, the end user, rather than fellating the sportsbooks we want you to be competitive with. One day we'll need to capture that revenue because that's business. For now, it makes sense to put out energies fully into our users.There are other things that will be in a V2/V3, like enhancemenets around user profiles, some UX-friendly clickthrough functionalities, and that maybe-just-a-bit important ability to earn money for our company through memberships (which is also going to be cheaper than anything else out there — I'm talking less than a Netflix sub for a single sport's markets while still less than an Xbox game for everything we have including live data — and you'll still get access to A LOT more than anywhere else as a free user). But we are DANGEROUSLY close to having the core functionalities of swiping through markets, transacting on live profitable betting opportunities (or just the best possible odds for ones you like the most), and engaging around it all with other users that I consider to be most important.The clock is ticking and I really am DYING to show you guys this thing and hoping very soon to see some sick screenshots of people making money with it:

As I mentioned above, the part I love most about Probly's data is being able to compare everything everywhere all at once, shout out to the only Oscar winner I watched and fell asleep to. And while there may be some mismatches in the NCAA tournament (though maybe not after another 16 seed-1 seed upset), it is once again an international Most Likely winner.A win for a team known as Pallacanestro Roseto in a game tomorrow leads the way with a 96.7% probability. Apparently Pallacanestro Roseto is not their real name though, only the way we label them for betting — they're actually the Roseto Sharks with this Clip Art-ass logo:

Kinda sick right?Either way though, you're not likely to find this Street Sharks-grad in your local sportsbook so instead we go to UAB, who seem primed to be an NIT big winner as a 4-seed. A UAB win over Morehead State comes with an 89.3% probability, perhaps the result of Morehead State sneaking past #1 seed Clemson in their bracket. A UAB moneyline (1st half) is also the 5th most probable bet with an 80.7% probability.⛹️‍♂️ For the rest of NCAA hoops' top five, a Florida Atlantic win over 16 seed Fairleigh Dickinson in tomorrow's NCAA tourney games is the #2 most probable with an 86.7% probability, then you get an Oklahoma State win in the NIT over Eastern WA at an 84% probability, and an Indiana State win today in the College Basketball Invitational over the USC Upstate Spartans is at #4 with an 82.5% probability.Across all the other tourney games today (in order of start time) a San Diego State win over Furman has a nice 69% probability, a Duke win over Tennessee has a 62% probability, a Kansas win over Arkansas has a 63.2% probability, a Missouri win over Princeton has a 71.4% probability, a Houston win over Auburn has a 68.2% probability, a Texas win over Penn State has a 68.8% probability, a UCLA win over Northwestern has a 73.9% probability, and a Bama win over Maryland has a Saturday-high 76.8% probability.🏈 The XFL has three more games this weekend that no one's going to watch with college basketball on but bless their hearts for trying. Their top five includes a Vegas Vipers win at a 72.8% probability, a Brahmas win at a 59.2% probability, and a Defenders win at a 54.1% probability. You also get Defenders-Battlehawks under 42.5 points at a 54% probability and Battlehawks +1.5 at a 51.3% probability. So if you're going to watch any game this weekend looking for fun, it seems like Defenders-Battlehawks is your best bet for a thriller.🏀 Tank season continues to dominate at least a portion of the NBA but we still love the teams that are trying. Today that includes the Raptors, who lead the way with a Raptors win at a 78.2% probability and a Raptors moneyline (1st half) at a 71.6% probability. You may assume by those markets, as I did, that they'd be playing the Rockets or Spurs but NOPE that's how far the Timberwolves have fallen. At #3 you have a Clippers win at a 69.6% probability, a Raptors moneyline (1st quarter) at a 67.6% probability, and a Sixers win over the Pacers at a 67% probability (which honestly feels low so perhaps Embiid is sitting).⚾️ Despite some tilted Mets fans out there, the World Baseball Classic continues to rage on and delight at least a portion of baseball fans. With only one game today, all the most probable lines seem to favor the USA being within striking distance of Venezuela. USA +2.5 leads the way at a 77.9% probability followed by USA +2 at a 76.1% probability, USA +1 at a 71% probability, USA +1.5 at a 70.2% probability, and then Venezuela +3 at a 69.5% probability. That USA +1.5 is inefficient so I'd take that one first and foremost (it should be between +1 and +2, not behind +1) but your better value is likely taking USA to win -1.5 given how frequently that hits in baseball and hockey and the markets saying USA should be in control.🥊 Kamaru Usman and Leon Edwards square off tonight in another fairly big UFC fight. An Usman win is tops for their fight at a 68.8% probability and the fight going the distance is favored with over 4.5 rounds at a 62.4% probability. On the rest of the card, a Muhammad Mokaev win is tops at a 86% probability, followed by a Jack Shore win at an 80.9% probability, a Jake Hadley win at an 80% probability, a Juliana Miller win at a 76.5% probability, and a Gunnar Nelson win at a 75.1% probability. Some heavy favorites for a card with that quality of a main event.

There it is, another week in the books. I jammed a whole lot into this email (and probably didn't include enough images to keep your eyes from glazing over) so I appreciate all of you brave souls who get to this part of the email!I hope this email gives you some actionable data to play around with (mix some of of our most probable into a parlay and let it ride is always fun, even if not fully +EV) for all the sports going on out there. Enjoy whatever you're watching or doing and I'll see you guys next week with hopefully some more real progress on our product! Good luck!