🏀 NBA Playoffs Have Some CLEAR Favorites

It's Saturday and once again that means it's time to wade into the intriguing world of probabilities here in your Probly email. I apologize for the massive loss of quality Saturday content last weekend; candidly between some of the issues going on with the day job and some sluggishness on the development side, I was really lacking the mental ability to get something out last week since I just want this to be out so we can focus on promoting an actual product.But that won't stop me now! Today we've got a look at the concept of "mathematical profitability" which drives our Probly Beta, a look around the world of the NBA playoffs, MLB, and the rest of the sports world (so much Spring football!) and the usual waxing poetic in between. So let's just get going with your Probly email for April 15th, 2023! - @ChrisSpags

• 🔓 Probly Beta updates - The concept of mathematical profitability

• 👑 The most probable bets from the NBA playoffs, MLB, Spring football, and whatever else is floating around out there!

In previous weeks, I've explained the core functionalities on our Stories page as well as a look at our Explore page designed to make power users capable of browsing everything in the world in the quest to win bets. Today: Let's talk about the engine underneath, a concept called Mathematical Profitability.Let's use a real life example. As of right now, Apple stock is priced at $165 per share. So for you to buy a share, that's around the range of the price you'd have to hit anywhere to own it. But if there were a new stockbroker app that allowed you to buy that same share at $130, you would immediately be able to see that you've made a $35 profit simply because of that initial pricing differential between the primary markets and where you transacted.Bets are going to be a similar concept. At most sportsbooks, a Nikola Jokic rebound prop may be priced at hypothetically 9.5 rebounds at -110. But because each sportsbook prices dynamically (besides the lower-tier ones using backend syndicates), sometimes this market-agreed upon price isn't moved. Sometimes a teammate of Jokic's can get ruled out that would affect his likelihood of beating that line and the sportsbook doesn't shift the pricing immediately or take the originally priced bet off the board. Sometimes they can be completely mispriced and have that same bet of 9.5 rebounds at +110 instead of -110 or have the line at 8.5 rebounds instead of 9.5.That is the concept of mathematical profitability. When you know something has a 70% chance of hitting but it's priced to be something around 50%. You will NOT win everytime because it's not the same thing as the far-less-prevalent "abritrage bet" where you're guaranteed to win. But if you continue to stack mathematically profitable bets upon each other, you're going to win over the course of time because that's how taking advantage of the daily hundreds of misprices across all legal US sportsbooks works.You could theoretically do this for yourself, let's say going to DraftKings, BetMGM, and FanDuel to eyeball odds to strike on the one that stands out as inefficient. What we do is a higher level version of that, culling a proprietary true probability for every prop, moneyline, spread, and everything in between from our backtested, most successful sources and then pricing every available legal betting opportunity thanks to our live feeds our partners at OddsJam. And you can see the expected ROI for each bet on our platform with our PROBLY Score, not just the name of the company but also an acronym that stands for "Probability Ranked Order By Live Yield". Basically, the higher the PROBLY Score, the more money you are likely to make over the course of time from an opportunity like the one you see.This concent of mathematical profitability is similar to any expected value calculation but it's more direct than, say, valuing a fantasy football running back as a 2nd rounder while the industry drafts him in the 5th round. That can still go wrong since there is a parlay of 17 weeks you need that bet to prove correct and you're swimming upstream against market data. With our process, you are picking off less efficient lines using the most accurate true probabilities to determine fair pricing for everything.And, as a I've mentioned in the past, that is something we will provide to every user for every single bet, even if the user is using the platform for free. We will give you the most mathematically profitable bet for anything you choose based on a swipe right or left in support of or against the probability we provide you. Paying customers will be able to see our PROBLY Score data but, even if you don't, you can still get in the best bet you can for the bets you want to take, whether we recommend them or not.This is the app for "getting it in good" with any bet, whether it's sports you know or sports you don't. Our ongoing efforts to tighten up the backend data integrations with our shift to OddsJam is our primary holdup to release right now, which is paining me to have to keep tapdancing around. But hopefully that explains some of the complicated things we're exponentially simplifying that unfortunately have taken longer than I'd want them to be for both our company's sake as well as you guys on this email list.

As is almost always the case, the true Most Likely champion lies abroad with Turkish hoops team Yalova Belediyespor (ACS Sepsi Sic must be off this weekend). A Yalova Belediyespor win comes with a world-high 96.6% probability, truly a tough state of affairs for their opponent Gemlik. Is it possible the Yalova gang is just playing a Pokemon from one of the newer games? A win is a win, I suppose.But of course, you're not likely to get the latest antics of Meowth's new best friend Gemlik on your local sportsbook. So we head to the world of the NBA playoffs for a somewhat surprising one. The Celtics lead the traditional sports with a Celtics win tonight over the play-in winner Hawks at a 77.8% probability.🏀 The rest of the NBA's top probabilities show that the Bucks are not far off their rival Boston. A Milwaukee win tomorrow is #2 with a 77.2% probability against an underperforming Miami team, then a Sixers win against the Nets comes with a 76.3% probability, a Suns win over the Clippers comes with a somewhat surprisingly high 71.6% probability, and a Nuggets win over the Wolves comes with a 71.1% probability. None of these series are thought to be particularly live for an upset but, I guess if I had to choose, I'd favor a Clippers Game 1 upset.❌ XFL season soldiers on, no longer the only Spring football league in town with the USFL. In the top five, a DC Defenders win is most probable versus Arlington with a 76.1% probability followed by a Roughnecks win at a 71.6% probability, a Brahmas win at a much lower 55.4% probability, Arlington-DC over 41 points at a 54.6% probability, and Brahmas -2 at a 53.7% probability.🏉 In the USFL's return, the defending champion Birmingham Stallions lead the way with a Stallions win at a 66.4% probability, then a New Orleans Breakers win at a 63.7% probability, a Philadelphia Stars win at a 59.2% probability, Breakers -4 at a 53% probability, and Panthers-Gamblers under 38.5 points at a 52.6% probability. Impossibly low scoring totals in the less talented Spring football league? Strap in if you plan to watch these games, friends.⚾️ I still struggle on how to present MLB data because the top probability markets, once again, are littered with over 4.5 runs bets. So here's some interesting items overall:

• With 15 games playing on Saturday, there's a 52.6% probability that all the games combine for over 139.5 runs scored with a true 50% probability that the Away teams score more runs than the Home teams and, obviously, vice versa.

• Rays-Blue Jays seems to have the best shot at being a barn burner for hitting with it being the only game today with an under 13.5 runs bet making their top five probabilities at a 74.6% probability. As you may recall from football season, this still means the market expects the game to score under that lofty 13.5 runs but the high bar total (most other games have "under 12.5 runs" as a top probability bet) can portend potential fireworks.

• The most probable winner overall is the Mariners with a Seattle win at a 69.1% probability. The night-to-night ebbs and flows of a baseball season, particularly with starting pitchers' occasional blowups and the volatility of bullpens, result in much lower probabilities for win rates than some of our other sports. This game also includes an "under 11.5 runs bet", which says this could be a pitching duel or, more likely, impotent offensive showing from the Rockies on the road without Coors Field giving them their usual boost.

There we go, another week in the books as we continue the adjustment to our new world where MLB has the most betting options in town. We're working on a new backend display for me of everything to use in these emails that will include some more specific items like strikeout and home run props so stay tuned there.That's all from me for now though. Again — I appreciate you guys riding with us on this email because I just want to get this product out and, as you can tell, have grown weary with the delays on our tech side. But it's all for the sake of getting this right and the launch of this little engine that could will be upon us soon. Enjoy your weekends and I'll see you guys again soon!