⚾️ A Potential Braves Smash Spot And Other +EV Bets

Saturday morning is upon us and that’s time for your weekly quick jaunt through the world of probabilities and plus EV bets right here in the comfort of your inbox. We’re down a few sports with the NBA Finals and NHL Stanley Cup behind us but there’s still some fun things to jump around between and discuss!

While I wait for our CTO to clean up the remaining issues before we release (talked about at some length last week), we’ll also dive into some of my thoughts on how we plan to market Probly, along with an honest discussion about the pros and cons of marketing any betting-based product, and whatever else comes up along the way. So here's your Probly email for June 17th, 2023! - @ChrisSpags

• 👑 The most probable bets from the MLB, UFC, USFL, and even soccer!

• 🔓 Probly Beta updates — How Do You Market a (Hopefully Process Changing) Betting Product Earnestly?

As is always the case, our true Most Likely winner lies abroad as Japan plays Denmark in a FIBA women’s game where a Japan win is tops in the world at a 95.8% probability. For whatever this format is, Japan and Denmark have played twice within the last few days and beat them by 24 points and 72 points, respectively. Let’s just say it doesn’t seem like it’s in the Japan women’s bag to blow a 3-0 sweep in this particular scenario.

But the Japan ladies may not have much of a discount in your local sportsbook, if they’re even available. So we turn to the world of baseball where, as we’ve discussed in the past, there tend to not be these monumental favorites that we’ve seen since launching this email last Fall.

That’s not the case today as a Braves win gets this week’s Most Likely award versus Colorado at home with a 71.8% probability. There’s some rain risk in this one but it should be hot and humid if it goes with the ball likely to fly off of those Atlanta bats, making it a decent spot to target for home run bets as well.

⚾️ The MLB top five overall: White Sox & Mariners over 3.5 runs at an 84.3% probability, Reds & Astros over 4.5 runs at an 82.9% probability, Rays & Padres over 4.5 runs at an 82.6% probability, Orioles & Cubs over 4.5 runs at an 81.3% probability, and Braves +1 (1st half) at an 80.2% probability. Interesting to note the last one as it relates to baseball probabilities overall; even with the Braves being one of the biggest favorites we’ve seen in these weekly emails this year in MLB, there’s still a 1 in 5 chance they don’t lead after the first 4.5 innings. There tends to be a lot of theoretical value in these MLB underdogs despite their uphill battle, as we’ve seen in some of our +EV bets.

Similarly, I’m seeing a lot of Tigers once again here after they disappointed in last week’s email. They’re on the road at the Twins as a +1.5 underdog but the value seems to be on Tigers -1 at a 35.1% probability and a very lofty 21.2 PROBLY Score (meaning this bet wins you 21.2% more money than it loses you if the game were played infinitely) as long as you can get +245 odds. The safer bet would Tigers +1 at a much higher 58.8% probability; if you can find +117 odds on a site like Unibet, Barstool or betPARX, you’ll be in good position with a 27.6 PROBLY Score.

Hard Rock also seems to have soft Home Run odds for one player in particular with an Anthony Santander home run at a 19.7% probability but a 28.3 PROBLY Score if you can get their +550 odds. Santander is a +370 on DraftKings, as a comparison, so that speaks to the pricing discrepancy there (though DraftKings I tend to find always really rips you off on Home Run odds).

🥊 The UFC’s top five most likely bets is once again a hodgepodge of their next few cards: An Arman Tsarukyan win tonight has increased from last week to an 87.8% probability (which means, yes, he is the true Most Likely winner but I wanted to give it to an MLB team today and dammit I did) making him the lockiest of the week. Next week, a Tatsuro Taira win comes in 2nd at a 74.1% probability followed by an Ilia Topuria win on that same card at a 73.5% probability. Then we get an Alessandro Costa win tonight at a 70.6% probability and Ronnie Lawrence & Daniel Argueta over 2.5 rounds at a 70.4% probability.

I heard from a few folks who crushed with the Jasudavicious moneyline +EV bet last week but there’s unfortunately nothing that stands out as cleanly as that one. A Joaquim Silva win versus HEAVY favorite Arman Tsarukyan does come up as slightly +EV on Fanduel with a 12% probability and a 2.3 PROBLY Score at their +560 odds. These bets can be tough for new bettors because, well, you lose 88% of the time. But the massive payout when they hit can prop up an entire bankroll, especially if you go on a run. So, if you’re not risk averse, this is a decent one to fade tonight’s UFC chalk.

⚽️ I can’t will myself to do a full soccer, let alone MLS, top five but it does seem like there are some +EV bets. St Louis SC +0.25 in an Asian handicap bet has a 61.7% probability and a 72.6 PROBLY Score if you can find it at some VERY inefficient +185 odds that lurk on the shared data between Unibet, betPARX, and Barstool.  Real Salt Lake -0.25 also looks good at those books at a lower 38.6% probability but a 69.6 PROBLY Score and +335 odds. These are incredibly high PROBLY Scores to see if you have comfort betting on a sport you don’t know/follow — and I can say as someone who has been crushing WNBA bets lately (unfortunately no games available currently), sometimes those are the most advantageous spots.

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.

Last week we talked at length about what I’m waiting for our CTO to fix prior to pushing this out so that’ll be the big update you all opening this email are waiting for (right alongside me). This week though, I’m going to talk honestly about a particular challenge I see for us to successfully market this product — as well as a challenge to what some of the industry is overall.

You likely know by now with how I approach this email that this is not a “BET THIS LOCK NOW!” type of business. Everything in betting, and really life, is a game of probabilities. Just because a particular outcome occurs doesn’t mean it was the more likely one and just because one doesn’t occur doesn’t mean you were incorrect with the position you took.

Betting is all about trying to take advantageous positions every single time you take action. I’d swear the most by using market-driven probabilities to evaluate those oppourtunities — obviously, that’s why we’re doing this whole company thing based around that — but it can be your personal analysis that drives a read on a +EV bet, knowledge accumulated from a content provider, whatever the case may be. Ultimately though, it’s all about the concept of “This sportsbook’s pricing is inefficient because of X”. That’s how you sustain profitability over time, the macro process rather than isolating individual results of a single bet.

So with that established as a baseline: How do you market anything in this space? Particularly if you view this ethically and understand that nothing is a lock but it’s an industry where casual consumers want to treat things like a certainty. And even more so when you account for how sharp bettors drive line movements that can make these bets inefficient the second the content has been distributed, even if the initial read was correct and profitable.

At some point soon after we release the MVP, I’ll start whoring myself out for more video content to help with user acquisition and I have genuine concerns that I’ll shoot and edit a video only for the theoretically great bets and lines we put out there to be rendered moot by the time it’s able to be viewed. And if people were to potentially take bad bets because that content became outdated just because of the general lifecycle, how can I try to safeguard them from that error of misunderstanding or miscommunication?

So that’s why I try to be as open and candid about the process here. I believe with our true probabilities and our partnership with OddsJam for live sportsbook feeds, we have the tools here to sustain a betting process across every available sport that will help you win over the course of a calendar year and any sport, whether you know about it fully or not. But when you view any individual bet in isolation, anyone telling you “These picks WILL WIN” is a liar…despite the fact that’s 90% of content within this industry right now. Hell, I’m up $500 on DraftKings in the last week and down $40 on FanDuel just because of how our +EV bets work; if someone tailed the same DraftKings bets I took this week, they’d be stoked and maybe become a lifetime customer. If they followed the same FanDuel ones I played, they’d think this process doesn’t work and possibly write it off. That is a complicated sales pitch for casual users with attention spans that diminish further by the month.

Can you be honest with people about betting and what is is every single day, across every sport, and still create a viable, profitable company? Can you drive people to a better process and a product built around live data with YouTube or TikTok content that inherently cannot be consumed and acted upon in true real time? Can you make that impact upon users’ process even when you end up on the wrong side of a probability equation in the micro?

These are things we are going to find out the answers to very soon. The fact I’m talking about it and we’re thinking about it means, hopefully, that you and I both are treating this the right way. The fact that you can use our product and never take a single PROBLY Score from us but still find best available bets based upon how you view a situation is another one that I believe provides Probly utility for any consumer’s process beyond “TAKE THIS BET NOW!”

But this is one of the things I wrestle with, even as I send these emails out to you guys. I want you to get the best possibility opportunities and information and, in reality, a well-run product will do that better than any content can. As a content creator and someone marketing my life’s work, it’s a real challenge that I will always promise to err on the side of over-explanation and candor on.

Another one in the books and I hope this was an interesting read. We’re closer than we’ve been at any point to having this product out to you guys and I’m really trying to think through everything on both the user experience front as well as our overall approach in how to talk about this all. I want the best for our users as well as the people who may see a single bet on social media, tail it, and go “Well fuck this is stupid” if it doesn’t hit. And it’ll be a constant battle to ensure that we’re educating people properly while still doing enough to sell the product and keep things moving.

Hopefully we’ll figure it out as we go but, if nothing else, I appreciate each and every one of you who understand what we’re trying to do to be a truly good citizen in a sports betting space that is lacking in them. So, as always, good luck if you tail our bets — or any of your own that you may take — and I’ll see you guys again soon!