🏀 Nuggets Primed For A Gentleman's Sweep And +EV Bets

It’s Saturday morning and I have to try to sneak this email in while the baby hopefully naps since I am on the joyous journey of solo parenting this weekend while the wife goes to see Hamilton in NYC. Obviously there is no better scene to talk about probabilities and +EV bets than this one before my sanity fully erodes.

We’ve also got some updates on our release, including the last six or so things we have to fix before we have the confidence to push this live. And of course we’ll go around the world of probabilities as well as taking a look for some +EV bets you can ACTUALLY TAKE AT LEGAL SPORTSBOOKS! Here's your Probly email for June 10th, 2023! - @ChrisSpags

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

• 🔓 Probly Beta updates — Our Last Remaining Fixes

Once again (and quite weirdly), the global most probable winner is an Australian hoops team with a South West Metro Pirates win leading everything in the world at a 95.1% probability. What would a Metro Pirate constitute? Like a very street style pirate or a pirate that only pillages within large metropolitan areas? You decide!

But unfortunately the Aussie hoops selections are not quite so plentiful on your DraftKings and FanDuels. So we head to the NBA Finals where the Nuggets have the Heat on the ropes with a 3-1 lead (and shout them out for covering a -7.5 alternate spread last night, something that was in our +EV bets during the week). And it looks like, despite the Heat’s many Lazarus acts this postseason, they may be finally tapped out.

A Nuggets win in Game 5 on Monday leads all probabilities in major sports with a 76.9% probability. Last time we had the Nuggets looking like a lock, they did lose their lone game in the series. But that speaks more to the low probability analytics hurdles the Heat have overcome than anything about the Nuggets (or even the Celtics with what they did blowing last series).

🏀 The rest of the Game 5 top five: Nuggets moneyline (1st half) at a 70% probability, Nuggets moneyline (1st quarter) at a 65.2% probability, Nuggets moneyline (2nd quarter) at a 62.1% probability, and under 55.5 points (2nd quarter) at a 60.8% probability.

The most +EV bets according to PROBLY Score (and again, these may not all individually be winners…this is about taking mathematical advantage of odds over the course of time with +EV positions on every bet you take to give you a sustained profit over time. Individual bets can underperform): Over 105.5 1st half points on bet365 is the highest EV currently with a 54.8% probability and a 2.5 PROBLY Score at -115 odds. Jamal Murray under 8.5 assists also looks good at a bunch of books including Barstool, BetRivers, and Unibet with a 54.3% probability and a 2.4 PROBLY Score at -121 odds. The third best is Gabe Vincent over 9.5 points at a 52.6% probability and a 2.2 PROBLY SCORE if you can get -118 odds on somewhere like FanDuel.

⚾️ The MLB top five: Rangers and Rays over 4.5 runs at an 82.1% probability, Astros and Guardians over 4.5 runs at a 81.4% probability, Rangers +3 at an 80.9% probability, Royals and Orioles under 13.5 runs at an 80.1% probability, and Marlins and White Sox under 12.5 runs at a 79.9% probability.

The most +EV bet available on a bunch of sportsbooks including Barstool, Hard Rock, TwinSpires, and a lot more, looks like Tigers -1.5 at a 35.9% probability and an 11.2 PROBLY Score if you can get it at +215 odds. Tigers +1.5 also looks like a good bet with more safety to it; it has a 64.1% probability and a 5.5 PROBLY Score if you can get -145 odds. Those two also go hand in hand with another low probability but +EV bet of a Spencer Torkelson over 0.5 home runs with an 18.6% probability and a 4.3 PROBLY Score if you can find +460 odds. Big day for the Tigers.

🏒 I don’t have the most likely bets for NHL available but I made a nice chunk of change betting a Jonathan Marchessault any-time goal scorer bet in the last Stanley Cup game so here’s our best +EV bets for the NHL:

Brandon Howden over 0.5 goals has a low 18% probability but a 17 PROBLY Score at +600 odds on Fanduel. The aforementioned Jonathan Marchessault over 0.5 goals is also looking good again with a 38.1% probability and a 9.8 PROBLY Score at +158 odds. Anton Lundell over 0.5 goals also looks solid at a low 19.7% probability but a 4.3 PROBLY Score on +440 odds. Those two are also available on Fanduel and perhaps your local sportsbook.

🥊 The UFC’s top five most likely bets is a hodgepodge of their next few cards: An Arman Tsarukyan win next week leads everything at an 86.7% probability, then Miranda Maverick & Jasmine Jasudavicius over 2.5 rounds tonight at a 76% probability, an Amanda Nunes win at a 73.6% probability, an Ilia Topuria win in two weeks at a 72.6% probability,. and Maria Oliveira & Diana Belbita over 2.5 rounds tonight at a 72.1% probability.

The most +EV bet for tonight looks like the Jasmine Jasudavicius moneyline at a 2.4 PROBLY Score if you can get +225 odds at your local book, though it is a lowish 31% probability. A Maria Oliveira win is #2 with a higher 51.1% probability but a lower 2.3 PROBLY Score if you can find -105 odds.

🏉 In the USFL’s top five: A Birmingham Stallions win leads the way again with a 60.7% probability followed by a Philadelphia Stars win at a 55.8% probability. Then you’ll get a Pittsburgh Maulers win at a 54.4% probability, Stars & Generals under 44 points at a 53.3% probability, and a Memphis Showboats win at a 53% probability. I can feel you yawning from here but dammit it’s still Spring football.

There are no +EV USFL bets but if you want to hit the CFL, an Ottawa Redblacks win looks good at Circa with a 5.2 PROBLY Score at +120 odds. The Redblacks over 9.5 points (1st half) als olooks good at Betrivers and Barstool with a 50% probability and a 4 PROBLY Score at +108 odds.

If you've missed the previous core 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.

So we finally took a big step forward yesterday of getting both our UX and back-end development branches merged onto the same Github after waiting, candidly, a while longer than we would have liked from our front-end development team to sync things up the way we need. But things are working now and their part is done so it’s now on our CTO to fix these few things before we can launch.

Once again, I share this with you so you understand every bit of effort we’re putting in to ensure a seamless experience and one that, most importantly to me, that everything is as simple to understand and hopefully create profitable bets off as possible.

1 - Fix an issue with three-way bets: We have the correct math to determine the true probabilities and expected value of these bets but, because of something on an API level, certain three-way bets (in particular, first inning moneylines which have each team’s potential win AND a draw) have been not filed correctly and result in overly high PROBLY Scores as a result. Once we fix this, we should also be decently proofed for adding futures markets as well.

2 - Remove duplicate sportsbooks and markets: We currently have every state’s individual sportsbooks in here so, as a result, there are like 20 different versions of Pointsbet and BetRivers and whatever in here despite them all having the same odds. So we need to clean those up for some database savings and ease of use.

We also currently have an issue where a particular bet may have multiple Probly Stories for each sportsbook instead of just having one story with the best available odds. It’s one of those things that doesn’t matter completely but does undercut the value of what I view Probly as, which is swiping through endlessly to see every single market in a game, sport, or the world. So that’s something I’d like changed before you guys play with the product.

3 - Some disambiguation in a couple different areas: The core functionality of everything on Probly is a simple swipe right to take the bet being featured or a swipe left to bet against it with a link to the sportsbook the best odds are at. Because not every sportsbook provides a deeplink URL, we have to put in language that tells you the sportsbook, the odds you should be getting (since obviously these can update very quickly), and the URL you’re supposed to head to.

We also have to provide similar disambiguation on our Explore page, which is in the above screenshot on the top right. This is a way for power users to browse but, because of the way our data is laid out, you would currently see “Over 2.5 runs” for something but not know which game it is. It’s not an issue on the Stories page but, again, I can’t have anything here that would make someone be confused or taking an incorrect bet before we go live.

4 - Setting up billing profiles with Stripe: The core Probly product will still be free, as we’ve discussed all along. You can always swipe through bets and take our highest EV bet by swiping right in favor of the bet or swiping left against it as well as comment, vote on whether you think a bet will win or not, and more to come.

But we will hope to quickly have paid accounts up for our PROBLY Scores and access to live in-game data to start to balance out the immense costs that have gone into this thing, as I highlighted last week in our struggles with AWS’ treatment of bootstrapped startups.

We will still charge an industry low $9.99 for a single sport, $19.99 for all sports , and $49.99/month for all sports with live in-game data (the best pathway to quickly make your money spent back). We’re going to need to hit the ground HARD with paid user accounts to make up some of the costs going into this stuff but, as you can hopefully tell from the last 9ish months of emails that we will go above and beyond to make sure this product is worth every cent charged your way and every second of attention you give it.

Another one in the books and I’m really hoping our Probly MVP release gets in the books sooner than not as well. I’m really praying this doesn’t extend into July but it’s in our CTO’s hands now. I’m hopeful he can find some quick fixes to what we have to cross off the list.

Otherwise, we’ll keep grinding and will give you guys more updates soon. Good luck if you tail our bets as well as any of your own that you may take and I’ll see you guys again soon!