🏈 NFL Week 1 Early Look And The XFL Championship Game!

It's a dreary Saturday here in the suburbs of Philly that could only be accentuated by me hacking up a lung hopped up on cold meds as I strap in to take care of our 14-month old so my wife Alex can go see her beloved Taylor Swift perform for tens of thousands of similarly demographic'd drooling, overdressed women. So obviously: The vibes are immaculate to write up an email about probabilities.This weekend has the XFL's first championship game (of this new V3 iteration) so we'll see if those odds have moved at all since our last email. And of course we'll run through the NBA, MLB, and whatever else seems interesting out there — including some really interesting early NFL Week 1 lines! Before I die in a puddle of my own mucus (yum), let's get it going with your Probly email for May 13th, 2023! - @ChrisSpags

• 👑 The most probable bets from the NBA playoffs, MLB, Spring football, and even some UNGODLY EARLY NFL Week 1 lines!

• 🔓 Probly Beta updates

Once again, the true "Most Likely" winner lies abroad with Croatian hopes team KK Split. A KK Split win over a team called "Bosco", whom I can only presume is named after George Costanza's bank password, tops everything in the world with a 95.7% probability.But, of course, you're more likely to see M. Night Shyamalan's only semi-recent good movie Split before you see a line for KK Split at your local sportsbook. So we turn back to the States for our most probable and it is a shocker. NFL Week 1 lines are out (somehow DraftKings has EVERY line for the year out, despite how impossible it is to project such things...aka don't read too much into what they're doing as they try to drum up casual bettors) and our true probability sources tell an interesting tale of Baltimore dominance. A Ravens win in Week 1 is the most probable line across the major sports with a 78.4% probability that they take out the new-look Texans and their DeMeco Ryans-helmed, 49ers alum-filled coaching staff. With big money to Lamar Jackson in his new deal and finally a competent offensive coordinator in Todd Monken — the mastermind behind Georgia's dominant offense in college — taking over for the woeful Greg Roman as well as a hopefully healthy JK Dobbins, it seems like the Ravens could make a leap back to dominance.🏈 The rest of the NFL top five, all Week 1 games: A Vikings win over a potentially bad Tampa Bay team comes in at #2 with a 72.8% probability, then a Chiefs win over fantasy favorite Detroit at a 72.5% probability, a Commanders win at a 70.1% probability when they face a potential basement dweller in the Cardinals, and the top five closes out with an Eagles win at New England that's good for a 66.9% probability (which honestly feels kind of low — unclear if that's an expected early back slide for Philly after they lost some key coaches or if New England will be more competent with an actual offensive coordinator in Bill O'Brien).

❌ The XFL Championship Game will go off tonight and I may actually give it a watch in my cold meds-induced haze after the baby goes to sleep. It doesn't look like much has changed since last week but here are your updates for this battle between the Defenders and Renegades: A Defenders win leads the way at a 69.7% probability that is flat with last week, followed by Renegades +6.5 which is up to a 50.4% probability from an even 50% probability. The over/under moved up a point and a half with over 48 now at a 50% probability after the market line was previously under 46.5 points at a 50.7% probability (so the odds of a fun shootout have likely increased more than those lines may seem; keep in mind how much sharp action is required to move al ine and probability that much). Then we get the under 48 points at the same 50% probability and Defenders -6.5 at a 49.6% probability, which is down from a 50% probability. So the net-net: The XFL Championship Game seems more likely to be fun and competitive than it seemed from the initial markets, albeit still with a likely DC Defenders title win. I wouldn't be shocked to see the game pick up some social media steam if things remain competitive late with points on the board since there's nothing else major to compete with tonight (i.e. no NBA playoffs until Game 7 of Sixers-Celtics tomorrow).🏉 We may as well hit the USFL top five while we're in football town, even if I care A LOT more about NFL Week 1 lines than I do the silver medalist of Spring football. For the first time this season, the Stallions have been displaced from the top spot with a New Orleans Breakers win up top at a 72.9% probability as they face the bad Memphis Showboats. A New Jersey Generals win comes in at #2 with a 71% probability followed by the aforementioned Birmingham Stallions at a 65.2% probability. Then a Michigan Panthers win at a 61.3% probability and a line reflecting the potential of a Breakers beatdown with Breakers -7 juiced to a 53.5% probability.🏀 The top five most probable for the NBA is now a blend of that close-out semifinals game with Sixers-Celtics and the Western Conference finals between the Lakers and Nuggets. A Celtics win in Game 7 leads the way with a 69.8% probability followed by Celtics moneyline (1st half) at a 63.8% probability. Those are both probably bad signs for Philly. A Nuggets win to open the series against the Lakers is in third with a 63.5% probability, then Nuggets +1 (1st quarter) at a 63% probability and Celtics +1 (2nd quarter) at a 62.5% probability. There's definitely a noteworthy market lean towards the Nuggets and Celtics controlling the games.⚾️ The MLB top five continues to be weird compared to these other win-focused lines but there's still likely some information to decipher from them (from what I've been tracking, over 4.5 run lines = higher likelihood of scoring while an under of a high run-line tends to indicate a lower likelihood of an offensive explosion): Angels-Guardians over 4.5 runs leads the way at an 83.2% probability followed by Reds-Marlins under 11.5 runs at an 82.2% probability, Giants-Diamondbacks over 4.5 runs at an 81.5% probability, Marlins +1 (1st half) at an 81.4% probability, and Cubs-Twins under 11.5 runs at an 80.6% probability. The most likely winner today is Miami in that game vs the Reds with a 68.2% probability of a Miami win. Makes sense with the big park downgrade for the Reds. 🥊 UFC's top five most probable is again a blend of the next two weeks of cards, led by a Natalia Silva win next week at an 80.5% probability as the lone representation from that card. Tonight, you get a Jailton Almeida win at #2 with an 80% probability, a Karl Williams win at a 77.8% probability, a Carlos Ulberg win at a 77.7% probability, and Ji Yeon Kim & Mandy Bohm over 2.5 rounds at a 75% probability.

If you've missed the previous weeks of 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.There's not much more to report yet as we wait to see if our external development firm will hit their promised May 17th deadline in the hopes we get our Probly Beta out to you guys in next week's email or shortly thereafter. We've had to tend to some backend issues this week, specifically an upgrade to our serverless infrastructure (moving from SST1 to SST2 if anyone out there is nerdy enough to care) and we'll look to tackle a few more optimizations in parallel. Right now it takes our databases roughly three minutes to grab literally every bet in the world as well as the available ones from all the US legal sportsbooks to calculate our proprietary Expected Value metric, our PROBLY Scores, so we feel good about that performance for launch while we continue to do some creative things to optimize further.Our CTO and I feel good about where we are with our side of things. But it'll all be subject to QAing our front end UX as it relates to this backend process that's as buttoned up as it can be currently. So now...we wait.

There it is, another one in the books! The NFL Week 1 lines were a fun unexpected treat for me after we really nailed some game takes thanks to them during these emails last season. I'll likely dig in on those more in the weeks to come, particularly once we lose NBA basketball as a regular feature.As always, I appreciate each and every one of you who click open on this email, let alone read all the way down to here. We're as close as we've ever been to a Probly Beta release after what feels like months of banging my head against the wall so things are looking up, my warm weather illnesses aside. Hope you guys have a great weekend and I'll see you again soon!