🏈 NFL Preseason + WE ARE SO CLOSE TO LAUNCH

It’s Friday PM and, because I’m on baby duty this weekend with the wife on a Bachelorette party, that means it’s time for an early weekly check-in to the world of Probly and probabilities! A wild week in the betting industry ONLY GETS WILDER with this slight and inconvenient change in email timing!

We’ve continued to shore up some of the items I’ve mentioned to you guys over the last few weeks and, because of some changes to our CTO’s schedule, should be pounding the pavement very hard to get this out to you with some breathing room before NFL season starts. But more on that to come! Here’s your Probly email for August 11th/12th, 2023! - @ChrisSpags

• 👑 The most probable bets from the MLB, UFC, , and whatever else seems interesting!

• 🔓 Probly Beta updates — A Video Preview And More Fixes

Last week, our girl Tatiana Suarez brought the pain as the week’s Most Likely winner with a 2nd round submission win. Oklahoma in their college football season opener remains the true Most Likely winner — as it was in our college football odds first look — so we’ll have to find someone else to crown.

And that someone is the Los Angeles Dodgers! A Dodgers win at home against Colorado is at a 73.1% probability, one of the biggest favorites we’ve seen in MLB so far this year. The Rockies pulled out a hero cover in one of our top PROBLY Score bets yesterday (Rockies +1.5 at hilariously favorable +154 odds because that’s how bad they are) so I’m still a fan even if the Dodgers seem likely to smoke em.

⚾️ The MLB top five overall is even more of a mess than usual because of games currently going on as I write this…so let’s skip it.

Some +EV bets though include: Padres -1 has a 41.2% true probability with +175 odds in many books with early alternate game lines, good for a 13.3 PROBLY Score. Bets like these where we flip the MLB underdog to a favorite of -1 or -1.5 at positive odds have been a major part of my portfolio lately from our PROBLY Score tools and they have a lot of statistical merit in the volatile game-to-game world of baseball.

🥊 The UFC’s top five overall remains a mix of future fights with nothing on tonight’s card. You get a Max Holloway win on 8/26 at an 86.4% probability, a Jon Jones win in November at a 75.4% probability, an Islam Makhachev win in October at the same 75.4% probability, a Gregory Rodrigues win at a 75.1% probability, and a Natalia Silva win next week at a 75.1% probability.

The most +EV bet is a Mike Breeden win at a 30.3% probability and the +255 odds you can get on Betfred and Wynnbet, good for a 7.7 PROBLY Score. It’s only at +215 odds on DraftKings but I’m willing to take the ride even though that obviously shaves away at some of the expected value.

🏈 The NFL top five is also thrown off by ongoing games as I write this but there are three top favorites: A Broncos win is at a 70.4% probability against a Cardinals team that will likely be bad in the preseason and beyond. A Ravens win is #2 among non-live markets with a 65.5% probability. And the Niners close out our non-currently live games with a Niners win at a 62.4% probability. In non-top-five odds, a Colts win on the back of Probly’s favorite QB Anthony Richardson comes with a 61.1% probability despite playing the Super Bowl contending Bills! I’m sharing this for myself as much as you.

The juice can get squeezed out of NFL lines pretty quickly but currently a Panthers win looks good with a 55% probability and an 18.2 PROBLY Score on the inefficient sportsbooks with +115 odds (good books have moved it to minus money). A Bears win also looks good with a 61.3% probability and 12.4 PROBLY Score on books where there are -120 odds. A Raiders win on Sunday has a lower 39.9% probability and a similarly lower 3.7 PROBLY Score on +160 odds. Even though I mock a team like the Cardinals (whom I think will be an NFL basement dweller this year) and the Raiders may also be mediocre ot bad, getting a +EV bet on a preseason moneyline with plus odds seems worth a spin.

⚽️ All the WNBA games are going on as I write this so let’s take a shot at some Women’s World Cup. The top five most probable: Colombia & England over 0.5 points at an 86.5% probability, England +0.25 (1st half) at an 84.5% probability, England 0.0 at an 83.7% probability (which is basically a moneyline bet since they can’t draw), Colombia & England under 3.5 pts at an 80.8% probability, and Colombia +2 at a 79.7% probability.

With the lack of games and bet types, there aren’t many interesting +EV bets. In the Premier League though, you can take Arsenal and Nottingham Forest under 1.5 goals at a low 26.1% probability but a big potential payout of a 72.3 PROBLY Score if you can find +560 odds. Newcastle United and Aston Villa under 0.5 (1st half goals) at a 31.6% probability and 2.6 PROBLY Score if you can get +225 odds. I hit both these on DraftKings as two of the most interesting “low probability/big win” options.

A caveat I’m going to start to insert here regularly: I select a few bets to include here with favorable expected value data that still seem to have live opportunities, usually ones I’ve taken amidst my smattering of bet slips. The options you’ll get with all of our live markets on the app is a much better experience to give a better shot at positive results, much to my consternation whenever we don’t emerge from this email with home run results.

I shared a very informal live video preview of some of Probly’s core functionalities on the latest stream I did on my and Pete Overzet’s fantasy football podcast/YouTube channel Splash Play so check that out if you want to see things in video form with no editing or sleight of hand necessary.

Besides the modal functionality and improvements I discussed there and in last week’s email, we’ve also started to knock out some key items that needed work. Specifically, league filtering is now functional as you can see above in the right side of the screenshot. It’s important because if you scrolled through, say, our Football category, you would have a hard time finding a single college football bet because those lines are moving less frequently currently while all the NFL preseason ones are constantly changing. Now you can get as granular as you want from the top down at a sport level, then a league level.

You can also see on the left side of the screenshot a feature I love. Basically, our search functionality makes it so you can find your favorite team and go through everything in their event with a real functional accuracy. Even better, the part we’re still tightening up is the search functionality on the View All Bets tab. When that’s good to go (likely some point this weekend), we can do the expected searches of “Yankees” or “Philadelphia” but also search by player names, bet types, whatever is in the keyword structure.

Even better, within that search you can still sort by the league or sport filters, our Most Probable or Least Probable filters, by events that are currently Live, or, most importantly, our Most Profitable or Least Profitable filtering. I don’t think there’s a tool like this that exists with this level of functional specificity, let alone on your cell phone, and it is the kind of thing I really hope that users will love.

I’ve gained a lot of confidence in our data processing and a user’s ability to transact bets at a good PROBLY Score/expected value without the odds quickly going stale as they do on some other platforms. It’s no exaggeration when I tell you I am literally funding the majority of $1,500 worth of best ball entries on DraftKings with my winnings on DraftKings Sportsbook (lots of MLB and WNBA bets, specifically. A little soccer and tennis sprinkled in). But with this level of customization and exploration, I feel really good about the day one product we’ll have for you without many obvious gaps.

Besides tightening some of these functionalities up (and aligning them with our Stripe user payment profiles since we need to be able to afford everything), there are some other items we’re currently toying with based on my personal user experience that should be really fun for you guys to play around with.

I know I’ve said it 1,000 times with varying degrees of confidence but it’s truer than ever: We are so close to getting this out to you and it’s even better than I thought it could be. I’m not here to BS or pull wool over your eyes, especially since this is a product I hope protects consumers from the rapidly growing and accelerating sports betting industry. I really believe Probly is built to level the playing field for users while also providing sportsbooks an opportunity to treat them more like a customer than a mark at a carnival and I am DYING to show you and the world that.

Another one in the books and thanks, as always, to everyone who reads all the way down here (especially going out late on a Friday night). I’m excited, I’m anxious, I’m ready to take the next step forward of this product. It reminds me of many moons ago when I wanted to be an actor and the butterflies I’d feel before the curtain pulled or I had to start a scene. And, much like that scenario, the preparation is the thing. This has been a deliberate process, one where no stone was left unturned. I hope that shines through the second you get your hands on Probly.

That’s all for now. The big drop is coming soon. Go Anthony Richardson go and I’ll see you guys next week!