 This is covering the spread here are your hosts Jim sawness and dr. Ed Fang What is going on everybody welcome on into covering the spread? That's right here on the fangirl podcast network in number fire commas day We are getting an introduction into sports betting optimal practices and some of the keys to look for trying to Fill out the best bets you can with Ed Miller He wrote a book with Matthew David out last year called the logic of sports betting We're talking to Ed about some of the keys to finding good bets ways to do so why parlays aren't as bad as their perception And a whole lot more my name is Jim sawness I am a senior writer and analyst for a number fire comm joined here as always by Ed Fang You can find his work at the power bank comm Ed. How you doing today? I'm doing great man. I've been watching a lot of soccer And just yeah enjoying enjoying the lot of sports. I'm sure you are as well I didn't watch soccer even though we had the wonderful alex hindered on last week He gave us good recommendations. He talked me through where to find good information. I still didn't watch But how how was the the boondest league action? I mean the boondest league is great I mean by our Munich went to Dortmund yesterday. I kind of forgot about it. So I Haven't actually I've watched about the first hour of it on tape delay, which I'm okay with like I mean, I know we talk about you know the outcome but not not from what I not I mean I do now because I had to go I had to go grab some data for some home field stuff I want to talk about a little bit later But I think that match Exemplifies like why I love soccer so much It's it's such a and especially German soccer like Dortmund is such a like a very fast lot of passing Really kind of the definition of the beauty they they play the beautiful game Right when when they call when we call the sport the beautiful game Like I think that's a really good example of it very skilled all across You know all all 11 players and then Bayern Munich is the more talented team You know, they're not gonna play as much as though the passing game But they just have superstars like Levin Dotsky and and their keeper manual Neuer is just has been a game-changer In terms of the way he plays like kind of the sweeper keeper So oftentimes, you know doorman at the very beginning had you know had a guy They they look like was was gonna get in for a breakaway and a shot on goal And and Neuer comes out and just you know pops it away. Just just perfect timing right perfecting since perfect timing So I think that game, you know, I think for some American sports fan It's hard to really convince them like why a 1-0 soccer game is so amazing But that game was was phenomenal And I think that it's kind of it's something we talked about with like American football too where you can have a good Low scoring football game as long as it's not low scoring because of sloppy offense And it sounds like with the with that game the the Dortmund game It sounds like that was a case where it was just really good Tactical defense that prevented a lower score. I think for me like I love a good high scoring game It always is my preference, but I can watch a lower scoring game if it's not lower scoring because of sloppiness I think that that's kind of the thing to me is it all comes down to sloppiness We're determining if it's a good game or not essentially Yeah, I mean, I think there's many aspects to that right like I I never liked it when people hated the Alabama 9 LSU 6 game right and that wasn't necessarily sloppy offense It was just the defenses were so good that they dominated the game And I think you can find a lot of beauty in that as well and just a lot of good offense and a game that really flows So was it weird with like the pumped-in crowd music because again Watched was it was it weird or what did you think of it? No, you know, it was actually kind of felt normal So so I think what's weird is the empty Stadium in which you hear like the echoing of like the three guys that are yelling on the side That is weird when you get when you get the pumping in of you know The the songs that the crowd usually sings that is kind of normal until you realize like wait That's not actual fans singing those songs So and you know you always kind of ask yourself about what it means for for home field advantage Dortmund was at home. They ended up losing 1-0. So it's not necessarily that the loudspeakers with the pseudo fans You know had any impact on that game obviously small sample size and all that but But yeah, no, I don't know I think it kind of felt normal it'd be interesting to see like what Stadiums tried that strategy and whether it works I think it's a little bit more natural at least from the kind of the TV audience to have some of that To have some of those pseudo fans in there I want I want to fully embrace the Korea baseball organization's mindset of we're gonna put Pokemon dolls in The seats instead because it looks hilarious It brings levity to a very weird moment and I'm like, you know what? I'm good with this if we're gonna have something be weird Let's lean into the weirdness and just put Pokemon dolls But like my mom of the actual Pokemon size right like dog like small dog type size. I think so I actually don't know what size pokey. They were Pokemon cards are banned at my like elementary Middle school, so I didn't get to learn. I never got my full education in Pokemon Because like you could get you could get like suspended if you brought one in because people were like Trading valuable. I don't know. It was weird. It was very strange Yeah, I I've seen a few Pokemon cartoons and they're like small dogs. They're like my dog I think that was they're about that size, but it just looks very strange and I want to embrace the weird Effectively so I need to be sold off on the crowd noise But selling me on Pokemon in the stands that part's not not hard at all as mentioned We're gonna have Ed Miller on he is the co-author of the logic of sports betting He wrote that book with Matthew David out last year. We're gonna have Matthew on but He just became a father. So congratulations to Matthew Congratulations to the entire family on that. We'll talk with Ed about the book about some of the keys They discussed in the book and Ed you had a chance to talk to them last year and you've read the book too It seems like a really fun read and a lot of good things just from a math perspective about how to be a smarter better Yeah, no, it's a absolutely. I would say like if you if you want to make money betting on sports it's an essential read because the perspective is very different and The information in terms of The different types of sports book out there in terms of market making books and I guess not market making books. I forget what you called That's really crucial to understand and then you know the stuff There's a whole section in the end where he talks about how to take advantage of sports book bonuses Which is awesome. And it's just something that you kind of never think about you You know, even me as a math guy just never think about how to take advantage of sports book bonuses But but there is a way I don't really remember the math But it's a reason to check out the book. Yeah for sure There's a reason that I mean there's a way to get positive EV from sports book bonuses essentially You just gotta be smart about it. And we were talking with Teddy Savransky before the college football championship about how Books will run additional promos and stuff like that are on big events So always a good time to kind of perk up, especially sports coming back. They're gonna be running promos So, uh, definitely believe me. They're gonna be running promos to lure people back They may not need to but they're gonna do it. So Just so you're aware, uh, I think they're gonna need to right? I mean you you're losing months of growth here, right? I mean, they're I think the the books are gonna try to Jump start months of growth But also engagement because people have just been checked out from sports for so long But you need to draw them back in what better way to draw them back in than with juicy juicy lines We'll also talk with Ed about his company with Matthew deck prism sports, which, uh Or delves into live betting Provides numbers to sports books and all that so it should be a fun conversation with Ed before we dive into that So we had to look back at last week. We had alex hindered on to preview the boondest league and talk about Some betting information around that alex had a couple plays We actually do have a cover in the past to discuss before move on to ed stuff later on covering the past Last week here on covering the spread we had alex hindered on to discuss the boondest league And a couple of things alex mentioned. Um, he wanted the doosledorff money line and that one wound up in a draw with Fc cologne. I don't actually know these teams very well. So if I say them wrong Apologies, uh, he thought that leverkusen was undervalued in their saturday match and He wanted to bet the draw Because of that. However leverkusen performed outperformed even alex's expectations They won that match outright three to one. So being in a leverkusen good Just the outcome, uh, not quite where he he wanted it The final one was match between Dortmund and wolfsburg alex wanted the draw there But dorkman pulled out a two to nothing victory. Uh, so So some tough ones there, but I think being high in leverkusen definitely good there for alex Make sure you check out alex's twitter account, which we discussed last week on the show Check out alex's show too because a lot of good general boondest league and knowledge talking about markets You can bet for soccer where you can find information and finding all that and ed sports wouldn't be back if it weren't for tough beats like My run in nascar ever since it came back in those three races It's been terrible like for the second darlington race. I clint boyer at 40 to one He won the opening two stages And then he wrecked Then sunday coca-cola 600 had alex bowman 12 to 1 stays out in two tires gets the lead maintains it leads 164 laps He wins the opening two stages two And then he falls down to 19th on the final restart So it's been a rough run and I feel like we didn't have sports betting fully back until the bad beats returned And we are fully back now, baby. Yeah Well, I mean, but when you're when you're betting guys To win that nascar's I mean, you can easily go three races without nailing one of those. So absolutely Yeah, so I wouldn't I wouldn't be too worried about that And I mean like I had harvick at seven to one to win the opening ones It's not like it's been like I'm not bleeding money, but it's like what could have been I still have that in my mind So, uh, we are fully back when that's there for sure. We can always dream on the possibilities at least So thanks alex hiner once again for coming on to discuss that before we get to ed miller Fandals sports book is now available in colorado. But what's a sports book with no sports? Well, it's fandal anything book fandals newest free game each day You will pick one free prop like the weather stocks or anything Pick it right to win five bucks inside credit and then play again tomorrow Play fandal anything book for free only on fandals sports book must be 21 plus max bonus 50 dollars Visit fandal.com slash audio for terms gambling problem call 1 800 5 2 2 4700 that is especially pertinent with the discussion. We just had around sports book promos Hey, you got one out there in colorado. So take advantage while you can't Let's talk now to ed miller. You can find ed on twitter at ed miller poker We're just gonna discuss his book with matthew davidow the logic of sports betting and also his company deck prison sports Let's make ourselves a little smarter as better smarter as betters with ed miller Covering the present Let's welcome ed miller into covering the spread ed. I want to thank you for taking the time for swinging by for today How are you doing? Hey, how y'all doing? I'm good Yeah, it's a weird time So I always feel weird asking how people are doing because it's you know, there could be a wide range of ants usually says Oh, yeah, I'm good. How are you? Yeah, exactly. Why would you ask me that question? What is wrong with you? But ed, you know, we're in the sports betting business. It's been kind of a weird couple of months You do a lot of poker stuff too. So have you been playing more poker to occupy time the past couple of months? What have you done to keep yourself busy? Yeah, no, well, so we have a startup business my partner matt and and me have a business called deck prism sports And so we've been You know, it's a sports betting business But you know, there's a lot of work that we have to do that, you know, whether there's sports on or not So we've been kind of plugging away at that What about you for like from to keep to get your fix in if you How have you been keeping yourself outside of work occupied? I mean because it's like are you betting on ping pong? What's going on here for you? No, I'm actually not. I mean I actually I mean it's toky, but I spent more time with the family Which is good, you know when you're you got to start up business sometimes you don't get enough family time So I've been spending time with my son and my wife and it's been good. All right. Well, that is perfect Well, the reason we wanted to have ed on today is because about a year ago He and Matthew David out wrote a book called the logic of sports betting. It's been just almost exactly a year now What's brought about the inspiration for you and Matthew to write that book? Yeah, sure. So, you know, we kind of um, so I I so I met Matt about five years ago and we started working on sports betting stuff building models that's kind of the main work that I do is model building and um And then when the supreme court thing happened and we kind of saw the direction everything was going in this country You know, we said well things are about to change, you know a lot and um That's kind of when we decided to start our company and at the same time We said, you know, it's funny like when we first started our company, you know, our company is our basically our company is that You know, we provide betting odds uh to sports book operators and You know, some of the early conversations we had with operators even before people launched in New Jersey People were like, what do we need good betting odds for? You know, people will bet anything It was kind of you know, what's honestly some industry people told me and I said I said well I don't think that's really true, but if that is true I feel like the american public might need a betting educational And that was really kind of what started the book as I said, you know, I don't I don't want to live in a country where You know, it's true that you know people are are just ignorant and will bet anything So, you know, and I didn't think it was true But like I was like, you know what if we write this book, it's for sure not going to be true You know, so that that was kind of the the original inspiration. I would say Awesome. Um, so the logic of sports betting is a great read. Uh, I've had a chance to get through all of it Give us some of the big concepts or things that you want a listener of this podcast to take away Um, yeah Yeah, sure. So, I mean the the book is I mean, you know So I kind of told you why we wrote the book and then kind of what's in the book kind of answers that question It really fills, you know, you in especially if you're it's it's an american focused sports betting book A lot of sports betting happened overseas in europe a lot of the stuff that's written about it is kind of You know written for europe everything's about soccer and tennis and you know and and we're american You know matt and i are american sports betters and modelers and you know, we said let's write kind of What the american sports better needs to know to get caught up? So we start with you know, how does the industry work? Where do the lines come from? You know when you open your you know sportsbook screen, you know your your app or your you know Whatever it is on the desktop or wherever you bet And you know, you see all those lines, you know, you see You know lines for nfl and you see half lines and quarter lines and player props and you know all that stuff And you see all these numbers and the question is well, where the heck do all these numbers come from? You know and you know and uh, we kind of answer that question in detail I think I think it's not I think it's an interesting answer And I also think that if you want to be a good better like You kind of have to know the answer to that to actually be a good better Right, so so that was kind of the first part of the book and then kind of the second part is we talk to you about You know, how do you go about trying to find some good bets? Yeah, absolutely and don't forget the don't forget the part about uh sportsbook bonuses at the very end Which is very entertaining Yeah You were talking about making good bets then I think that uh one of the topics discussed within that broader umbrella is looking for no-hold markets So people don't know what that term means. What is a no-hold market? And how can people find them within their various sportsbooks, right? So I I think there's some there's sort of like a almost like a little mystique around sportsbooks and how they make their money And you know, there's this sort of I call it like the vagus knows mystique, right? Like this is like a a meme almost on the internet where you know, they the total will be 193 and a half and it'll land 193 at the last second and you know, at people will say, oh my god, vagus knows How are they so good? You know and the answer is vase doesn't know, you know And the book sort of explains that that 193 and a half gets bet into place basically by betters The line gets moved around and and the books are making money because they have a big on the market So like if you have your like minus 110 on each side I mean the the books make money because that minus 110 is on each You know is on their side every time they take a bet, right? So, you know And that's the reason why most betters loses because they're betting into that minus 110, you know It's not that betters are like really smart or dumb or anything It's like a built-in advantage for the book So the whole concept of the no-hold market says well for any given book You're always going to be betting into you know minus 110 on each side But if you could take two books and you can get minus 10 on one side of the bet And plus 10 on the other side of the bet. So in other words, they have slightly different prices Well, what's it to you that that's a two different books? That's basically a no big market for you, right? That's that's exactly the same to you if you get it at two different books as if it was one book offering You minus 110 on the other side and plus 10 on the other side And you could bet into that all day long and you're not going to lose You know that so that's the idea is is if you can create those markets by matching up lines of two different books You know, you can That's the you're 90 of the way to making money sports betting if you do that Yeah, and I think that's the mathematics or the the basically the logic behind why you want to shop around for the best price, right? Yep For sure. I mean, you know people think of it like, you know Yeah, they think of it like like I think a lot of people's process is even when they think of shopping They think of well, let me think of a team. I want to bet on Right, like I want to bet on the Packers Right and let me and let me go shop for the best price I can find on the Packers. Well, that's fine I mean if you want to bet on the Packers great But if your focus is not I want to bet on the Packers, but I want to win money, right? Which is a different focus Then it might be that there is no good price on the Packers, right? Like and and and The way you can tell where there's markets that have good prices is by finding these no big markets, right? So, you know, you might look at those Packer prices and you know, you could get Minus 10, you know, minus 7 minus 10 and then you see minus 7 minus 0 5 And you might say, oh, that's the best price. Let me buy the Packers But you you don't have a no hold market there, right? You're still paying minus 0 5 Someone else has minus 10 on the other side. There's still a lot of hold there Whereas you might see a different game and you might be able to get the hold completely gone for that market And then you could basically flip a coin bet either side You won't lose money And if you're smart and have an insight then that's really how you start, you know, kind of finding better bets Yeah, absolutely And in the book you talk about how, you know, maybe it's a combination of a money line and a point spread that forms that no hold market And understanding the value of like a half point move here and there And things like that so And that's a lot of changes too. That's that's that's a good place to get an edge because that can change from year to year That relationship between, you know, okay Well, if if the if the spread is minus three then the, you know, the money line should be, you know 60 percent, you know minus 150 or whatever, you know That might have been true 10 years ago and maybe it's true today and maybe it's not true today It depends on how they play the game depends on the rules and that's, you know That's that's what getting an edge at sports betting is about is it's, you know Partly about understanding, you know, what's changed, you know, versus Absolutely through an impact And that's certainly part one of your points that you make in the book is like, yeah Sometimes you got to get your hands dirty find some data and look at these relationships, right and not Perhaps take what people thought it was 10 years ago And look more at what happened in the the last couple years, especially in sports like football, right, right Interesting Go ahead, Ed Yeah, so, uh, Jim, if you had something on that, you should you should go ahead. Absolutely Cool. So, um, we also want to talk a little bit about how the hold is pertinent to parlays as well The general perception is that they're they're bad bets, but You kind of pushed back on that idea in the book. Uh, can you tell us about that? Right. So I I think this is kind of a key point. Um, so let's just take let's just take a three team parlay just for Example here, right? So so the way a three team parlay typically works is, you know, you get Three let's just say you're taking three bets. They're all minus 110. They're all on the point spread or whatever You're taking three sides, right? Well, then that parlay is going to pay You know six to one Right And that's roughly the same math as that's almost exactly the same math as if you took Say 110 dollars Bet it on the first game If you win that game now, you got 210 you bet 210 at minus 110 on the second game You win that one and then you take whatever the cash out price was on that second ticket Bet it on the third game at minus 110 and you win that one. Well, guess what that pays six Basically six to one on your 110 dollar bet, right? So that's that's all a parlay is It's really just taking the win on the previous bet and rolling it over On to the next bet, right? So there's nothing inherently kind of like Vigged or bad about that. I mean, you're just making, you know Now now there are short pay parlays, which is a different story But you know, just your basic parlay is just making one bet rolling over the winnings on to the next bet Rolling it over on the next bet So it gets a bad rap because they say oh, well parlay is hold more like that three team parlay is going to hold 12 percent Well, it's holding 12 percent If you're taking 12 percent of the original 110 dollars bet But if you actually just break the parlay down into its actual bets, it's not a 110 dollar bet It's a hundred dollar 10 dollar bet plus sometimes another 210 dollar bet plus sometimes another 400 whatever Dollar bet, you know on top of that and if you kind of like average all that out The total amount bet tends to be more like 300 than 100 So what it really is the way we kind of talk about it in the book is no as well It's holding 12 percent on a hundred dollar bet It's actually holding 4 percent, which is the normal hold on a 300 dollar bet You're really just betting more money when you bet a parlay It's it rather than thinking of it like a you know and and and the reason why this is a key point is because You're only it's only holding more for the house if you're making bad bets in the first place You know if you're making good bets then You hold more right you're on the you're on the winning side of that calculation You know, which is which is the key point, you know a lot of people You know because I see like oh parlays or sucker bet parlays or you know, whatever and This it's just not true You know it all it is is yeah If you're making three bad bets in the first place well then parlay the mrs. Sucker bet But if you're making three good bets in the first place then it's it's anything but then that and that was the main point We wanted to make in the book All right, and it's it's a way to get down more money as well, right? You get down more money You could potentially take advantage of correlations if you can get some of those through you can Sometimes you can bypass, you know betting limits on You know certain markets, especially lower limit markets sometimes you can get You know a few extra dollars on a you know I'm sure that's come up for some people in the in this new world where there's Bella russian soccer and so-and-so ping-pong and whatever and you know, there's operators out there that are You know trying to trying to take you know trying to offer those markets, but they don't know what Once they're they're putting it out for you know a hundred dollar limit or something But you know, maybe you can if you got a real strong opinion about you know russian ping-pong or something Then then you can you can probably at some places get more down You know if you if you do a round robin or a parlay, so Yeah, it's really interesting and one thing you touched on there is correlations And I think that another way to look at this is talking about what you called Related markets within the book so if you had to explain related markets What are they and what are some ways we can use them to our advantage whether it be betting parlays or just looking for optimal bets in general right, so so there's the There's kind of like there's kind of two concepts here. So one is is a related Parlay like in its Basic sense is two bets on the same event, right? So if it's any time you're making two bets on the same sporting event Those bets are going to be related in some way in other words If you win the first bet that's going to have some some impact on whether you win the second bet or not You know now the let's say just a Dead obvious example is well I want to bet the packers to win in the first half and I want to bet them to win the game Well, obviously if the packers win the first half they're more likely than they were Your pregame to win the game, you know and vice versa if they lose then you know You lose your parlay, but you were probably going to lose both bets anyway, right? So that that's the basic idea of a correlated parlay now Sportsbooks know about this So nobody's going to let you bet, you know a first half team with a game You know at at the standard parlay pricing, right? Standard parlay pricing assumes you're betting on independent events. Now. I I actually saw something just Not to you know to plug fan duel a little bit fan duel has this like same game parlay Feature that I noticed for football and I thought was pretty cool where you can kind of Mix and match your same game bets build a parlay and then the the little Fan duel kind of reprises the parlay for you based on how correlated they are So I thought that was a cool. So that's kind of one way of getting around that But but so so that's the first thing I mean I mean I said no one's going to let you bet a first half with a game But there still are you know Correlated bets that some some sportsbooks will let you make they'll let you bet sides with totals sometimes Sometimes they'll let you bet I mean there you can make correlated bets and then sometimes in in products like fandom's product or I've seen them in parlay cards Or other sportsbooks, you know, they're they open it up and they say yeah, go ahead and make a correlated bet You know, we're gonna price it so that you don't beat us. Well, sometimes they screw up And you can beat that so you know, that's that's another you know But then then on top of that sometimes there's kind of correlated The easiest way to explain it is like a correlated angle like like let's say you think that You know There's a brand new Well, I think the example in the book we use is the korean baseball league which all of a sudden became a lot more relevant And you know and like weather in korea. I mean korea is a small country You know and i'm sure, you know, I I Never really followed korean baseball very closely, but i'm sure that the weather tends to be You know correlated, you know from one park to the next right so weather's a huge deal in baseball totals You know if it's hot this way over whatever right so Or like if you think that the there's something with the ball or there's something with anything that you think is systematic That's changed in a sport. Well, you can parlay those together. So let's say I mean, let's say you just think that that for some reason their Ball is different in korean baseball this year and they're just gonna hit more home runs You know, you know, nothing nefarious is going on. It's just a sensitive thing and you want to bet over well If you parlay all the overs Then if you're right You're like extra right if that makes sense It lets you get more leverage on that one concept by parlaying kind of the concept among different events so Excellent so You talked in the beginning beginning about your company deck prism sports, uh, you guys specialize in inplay betting With the company you guys provide services the sports books Give us a little bit of your opinion on you know, the advantages of betting versus pregame sure so so Pregame, you know, I mean so on one hand, it's all the same, right What it what is what is a betting line? It's basically the price of something happening given all the available information, right? So, you know the the the only difference is the pregame that information comes in kind of at a trickle Right, so they put those football lines up on, you know, sunday night or monday or whenever they're going to do it For the next week, you know, and then there's a little flurry of betting at the opener, right? So somebody somebody somewhere has to be the first one to say Minus six put it on the board, right, you know I mean somebody has to do that So somebody does that and then you know smart people with models basically sit there trying to vulture that number And you know and then they take a small limit and you know the smart people bang on it and move the number And you know and then it kind of kind of settles right all that flurry of activities over There's no one else who really wants to take a look at that number and and bet it and it just kind of sits there And you know it'll move a little bit But then you know and then then a little bit of news will come out Okay, wednesday so-and-so is questionable at practice or you know, whatever just a little trickle of news that comes in Might move a market, you know And then and then there's also more information as as bigger as the limits go up and bigger better start to participate You know that adds information to the mix, but it all happens slowly over a week, right Then you know sunday at 9 59 west coast right 9 59 a.m Right, they're about to start the games. That's kind of max pregame information those lines Are are you know pretty solid and pretty well incorporate all the available information That you know to that point and then the ball kicks off and and the information is like a fire All of a sudden it went from like a slow trickle all week long to just literally new information every second Right every time they run a play every time someone gets injured every time there's a score every time anything happens in any game It's a new piece of information and it's like a more important piece of information than like An entire week's worth of information at that point, right? So that's the problem with in-game betting is you have to that's the core problem for a sports book operator is How do we incorporate this fire hose of information and update our pricing on all these games? in real time and offer it to our betters and Like not suck at And it's a very hard problem and it's it's one that you know My partner matt and i have gotten good at over the years, you know kind of more from the better side You know we we it's the exact same problem, but on the better side We say you know, how do we how do we incorporate this fire hose of information and make good betting lines? you know You know to get good bets and we said what's the exact same problem on the operator side And you know and and it's hard. So that's that's you know, that's the problem We're trying to solve and and and frankly, you know the the betting operators You know, it's a mixed bag. How good a job they do of it to be honest with you, you know, it's it's You know, so sometimes it's not so hard. I mean, you know, there's a kickoff and and it's a touch back Well, guess what you don't have to move the line very much, you know and then and then you know And then they run it up the middle and they get a first down and then they punt And then the other team gets the ball and guess what that I mean, that's you know The right line there is is pretty easy, you know But then when games start going off the rails when weird things happen, you know Anytime later in the game, you know, it just becomes much much harder You know, I mean you got to come up with a price like that And and then you know, and they run a play and then it's time for a new play You know a new price and and it's just a hard problem And and you know the operators kind of do a a mixed job of it and that's where the betters could take advantage of it Yeah, I mean that kind of reminds me of the Super Bowl when Kansas City was struggling in the third quarter Look terrible I would bet that your odds for them to come back and win that game were probably a little bit better than some of the markets were Yeah, I mean we definitely we definitely had I mean, certainly we definitely had them coming back more than some of the models I was looking at did and and I'm I think you're right at you know about about where we were at on that particular game and um Yeah, I mean it's just you know, it's and the other thing is books all have different prices too I mean, there's no there's no one answer You know, there's there's different pricing feeds. This book gets it from company a this book gets it from company b this you know book, you know Rolls their own, you know, they got some guys in a room that put their own lines up Everybody's got different, you know, and there's no time at least not now. This is not the way the technology works There's no time for consensus to be built before everyone puts a line up They just throw up whatever they got right and they say come again Right and and you know and so different books will definitely have completely different lines So it's it's much easier to find no-hold markets to find markets where there's clear arbitrages where you could You could if you could get both down you could just bet both sides and lock in a profit Now I don't recommend that I recommend, you know, whenever that comes up try to figure out Usually one bet's good and one bet's bad It's usually better to use your brain and try to guess what the good one is rather than just bet them both like a robot, you know, but Well, if you can if you can figure it out in the amount of time And as you also talk about in the book if you can make sure that sportsbook's not going to reject your bet for Whatever insane reason they're going to do Right, right. Yeah. And that's that's the thing we're trying to you know That's another kind of kind of reason why we started deck prism Sports is because we know the in-play betting, you know, can be a frustrating experience for people too because You know, I mean for various reasons and I don't you know need to get into the nitty-gritty details But like operators reject a lot of those bets. They basically say no, thank you, you know, how about how about this worst bet? And they're not trying to do that I mean, I'm not saying they're trying to like, you know, give a bad experience It's more it's honestly more of a technical problem than anything But um, but that's the reality for the better Is if you try to make in-play bets at a lot of sportsbooks, you know, a lot of those bets are going to get rejected Well, I don't I don't think that's a very good experience. You know, nobody likes having their bets rejected Especially because guess which best gets rejected. It's the good It's the ones you find you're like, ah, that's a good one. And then they're like, no, thank you You know, so, you know, whereas when you fat finger, I mean every fat finger bet I've ever I tried to make it's gone right through, you know, so Yeah, I mean so so, you know, our goal is to kind of solve the technical problems that the sports book operators have So that they don't have to reject bets So that if you see a price if you see a bet you want that bet, you know, as long as it's live on your app or your, you know You know, web browser or whatever as long as you click on it and say, yes, I could bet you get that bet Right and that's the experience. I think, you know, we're kind of shooting for I think the industry should be shooting for and You know, our goal as a company is to build the technology that lets operators, you know, deliver that experience And it also helps like you and Matthew are better So like you kind of know what the pitfalls are and what the issues are with live betting And it seems like you've taken that into account in building out deck prism And so I think that's definitely helpful there But what was that process like because you have live models for multiple sports You had to build all those out and like you said, there are so many things Some of these different information to consider when building out those models So how long did that process take to actually build all that out for all the different sports that you offer? So, I mean, I've been working with math for about five years And you know, a big chunk of that time has been spent, you know, building and refining these models, you know Our focus like our kind of like philosophy behind it is is We want to automate as much as possible up to the point where you can't automate it, right And where the human is going to do better, right? That's that's our philosophy And so we kind of build all our models with that in mind We we build it with where where they're all designed to be kind of like It's kind of like a big ship, right? So the ship will kind of, you know, if the seas are smooth, you know As long as they're running up the middle for three yards You know, then the model kind of operates itself, right? It's all, you know, you don't really have to But if something happens, right? If there's an iceberg or there's a storm or something happening, right? Then then the whole goal of the model is to provide what the operator needs to You know steer out of the way to try to get that model on a better course And that that's kind of the best analogy I have for what we've built and what we're, you know, trying to deliver I I think it's I mean, you know, I've seen people say, oh, we're gonna just, you know Just just kind of Automate everything, right? You know where they're just like, you know, it's it's just the computer the model accounts for everything um And you know in real time and you know, there's people that try to do this from the bedding side where they just want to You know, they just want to, you know hit go and then and then, you know You know go out to uh, I guess not to a bar anymore They're gonna go sit in there in there in their man room or whatever Today, but you know, they kind of want to hit go and then and then kind of check to see how much they want in the morning and You know, I I think that approach can work I mean, I definitely think that that I think that that kind of like the bedding opportunities are good enough today That that purely automated approach can work, but I think the the kind of semi-automated There's always a person to kind of steer the ship um Approach I think it's better. You know now it's definitely the approach we've taken and and and hopefully we're right that it's the best approach for a while so yeah Alrighty that is Ed Miller. Make sure you check out the book he and Matthew David Oh, uh, wrote together called the logic of sports bedding There is a link to it up on the side on numberfire.com and I appreciate you swinging by and taking time to chat with us today Good luck with the business. Good luck with the bedding. Good luck with Everything weird that's going on in our our world right now. I appreciate it and hopefully we can talk to you again soon Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure having me on just appreciate it. Thank you Covering the future One final thank you to ed miller for swinging by and spreading his knowledge and talking about his book the logic of sports Bedding and ed it's always fun to talk to really smart people and ed miller. I think fully qualifies as being in that category Absolutely. I was talking to rufus a couple years at the Sloan sports analytics conference rufus p buddy And we were talking about what ed was doing and rufus is like, yeah He's a smart dude and yes, he really is a widely held opinion. Please give a follow on twitter Um pretty easy to find him. I really don't know why he has fewer followers than I do. He's way more active And a great follow and lots of great insights and and definitely check out the book as well Yeah, and ed does a lot of modeling stuff. What are you talking about? Which is applicable to as we were talking about last week COVID-19 stuff and ed was kind of the first person who really put on my radar that this was kind of a Legit situation so ed smart in a lot of realms and I think that that knowledge of modeling knowledge of math Valuable to make sure you follow ed on twitter at ed miller poker Uh, let's move into covering the future now and ed for this We're gonna move back to the boondisleaga because we were talking last week about home field advantage And how our sample on it was relatively small and knowing what the lack of crowds would do But each week that sample gets larger So what have you seen so far when it comes to home field within the boondisleaga specifically? Yeah, so i've been tracking this and uh, I got a chance to go Look back on a full season last year of what the home court Home sorry home field advantage was and it was a 0.4 goals So that gives us kind of a baseline for comparison I'm gonna grab a couple more years there to make that number a little bit better and kind of look how that compares to Other top european leagues as well, but haven't had a chance to quite do that yet last week I told you about how uh, the road teams that actually scored more goals 0.78 goals more Through the first weekend of the boondisleaga. We've had another weekend. We had a couple games yesterday My data said it only goes through yesterday's games Away teams are still scoring more goals at almost the exactly same rate. So 0.77 goals Obviously, there's still a pretty small sample size here when you do the standard error It's about about half a goal. Okay, so it's we're not, you know, we're not we can't be conclusive at all that I mean, I don't think there's going to be an away advantage when we look at this, but It it certainly looks like the there's not going to be as much of a whole Home advantage without the crowds talked a little bit about how they're pumping in some pseudo fan noise in the dorkman game I think these are going to be pretty even matches And we'll continue to follow this and let you guys know I'm very curious about your your priors on this when it comes to home field advantage specifically when it comes to Travel because when we're talking about the boondisleaga, we're talking about the kbo The area traveled is going to be smaller Your priors on that do you think that things will change as we get to sports where Away teams have to travel further. What is your baseline assumption going in when it comes to different leagues and The variations they may have as we get to those Yeah, that's a really good question because obviously we have a big country here where teams can go three time zones in order to play a game You know, I haven't really thought about that much. Yeah, to be honest something something I should look into more um I think when Nate silver was doing his nc double a Analysis he did find that the further a team traveled the the less while they performed um So yeah, that that could be an issue But but then again, you know, I mean with a lot, you know, some Your analysis might not even be that detailed, right? So and to I think at the first level You kind of want to get well Can we make some estimate? About the reduction in home advantage when there are no fans and that's the first thing to do And I think that that's important too because what you're doing with the boondest league analysis is comparing The same league like it's comparing like to like you're looking at the goals last year versus the goals Or in previous years versus the goals this year and the travel situation was the exact same then that it is now So I think that it's still applicable regardless of what our priors are about the role of travel So it'll be interesting to see how this tracks as the sample expands But uh, I'm glad that you are keeping tabs on it and I look forward to Further enhancements to this because it's just it's it's such a fascinating thing to finally get like a kind of semi-controlled experiment on the impact of crowds Yep Yeah, it's a great dataset All right, so let's move on here to my covering the future and I want to talk about baseball because then there's been a lot of weird stuff in the in the news recently about baseball We don't know if there's going to be a season I don't know if there's going to be a season. You don't know if there's going to be a season Who knows but what we do know is that if they do play It's going to be a shorter season than we'd have in a regular year The most likely scenario as of right now seems to be that they will play just 82 games Which is about half the usual mark and in 82 games when you're reducing that sample size so much Things can get pretty weird. You can see a lot more randomness in individual player an individual team performance as well So it feels like a good time to take some swings at long shots to win individual awards The biggest market where at least in my eyes where you would benefit from randomness is with the American League MVP award because Hitter stats are volatile to begin with over a full season But then you also put in the fact that there's Mike trout at plus 140 to win MVP and To me that's way too short given the circumstances But having him in the pool Is also going to inflate the number of everybody else potentially opening up some value within the al MVP odds and The biggest value to me is you on moncada at 75 to 1 Moncada is super super super super volatile as a player He strikes out too much. Uh, he can get into some terrible slumps But that volatility can work in his favor too and he can occasionally hit the high end of that range of outcomes And we saw that exactly that last year where he finished with 5.7 wins above replacement based on fangrass algorithm That ranked ninth in the american league and that was despite getting just 559 plate appearances Because he was on the injured list in august now We should bake in some regression for moncada for sure because the strikeout rate that he had is not in line with the batting Energy has he's going to regrets But even when you do bake in that regression projection six systems do still like him for a full season Dan Zaborski his zips projections at fangrass have moncada 15th in the american league and projected wins above replacement and everybody who has a better war projection than moncada Is 50 to 1 or shorter to win the american league MVP and again moncada is 75 to 1 He made really good strides defensively over at their base He trimmed his strikeout rate entering his age 25 season and Given how high the highs can be when he hits them I think 75 to 1 Is a really intriguing number, but just in general I think that it's a wise time right now to go through player award markets See which players and which markets may change due to the increased volatility of a shorter season It doesn't seem like the numbers at least the american league mvp ones are fully accounting for that as much as they should yet So I think it's a weird situation where we're getting to take advantage of volatility And maybe the books are not accounting for it as much as I would think that they would Allowing us to maybe bet some in like yoan moncada to win the american league mvp award and Randomness is tough to quantify and it's going to be interesting to see how this season plays out Sure What's your view of baseball because you can bet it You can bet like win percentages now at fandall sports book Would you be more inclined to go to those markets with a shorter season? Or are you kind of inclined to shy away From win percentage markets just because the sample is going to be like legitimately half of what it usually is Yeah, I mean i'm still at the point where i'm just praying that there's a season Something to talk about. I mean the idea that there's not going to be a season at all is a little horrifying Yeah, um, both for the kind of the health of baseball in general. I mean, you know I don't want to be robbed of a year of mike trout's prime. Like that's that's my motivation. Don't take that from me Yeah, I mean, and there's a lot of other exciting things going on in baseball as well. Um One of them not being the tigers, but but anyway, uh Yeah, I don't know what I I had you know, I haven't put a ton of thought into it yet. Um You know when you talk about maybe playing in july, that's still a month away. That gives me plenty of time to Uh to look at how projections are going to change and and the models that I do look at You know fan grass baseball perspective Prospectus uh clay Devon pour things that I've that I've kind of tracked over the years. So um Yeah, I need to put some more thought into it, but we we have some time I think it's really fun because you know, one thing ed was talking about was Weather and weather is huge in american baseball too Uh, except in a different sense because basically what you're getting is usually Like target field for example in minnesota Usually you're getting both like winter minnesota and and like summer minnesota But here you're just gonna get you're just gonna get straight summer Which means it's gonna be a lot warmer a lot more humid That's gonna change park factors, which is so interesting from like a run total perspective and totals Do a pretty good job of accounting for weather I'm not saying like you can just like hammer overs on all cold weather places But or generally cold weather places but like for fantasy like that changes the value of Different players it changes their value for daily fantasy. So I'm excited for that part too It's just gonna be it's gonna be very different and I just really hope we have a season very selfishly I just want to watch this play out at this point Yeah, absolutely All right, that is all we have for this week. Unless you have anything else you wanted to add in here. Are we all good? Yeah, we're all good. I was just gonna say like I I I'm still you know I I honestly read uh, you know sports websites more now than I ever have just because the whole concept of news is You know, I kind of see myself as kind of you know, I try to stay away from kind of the typical story lines but now it's like We need you know, there's a lot of news out there in terms of what we're gonna do and I you know We heard all this talk about the NBA going Disney world and perhaps having a season And I'm just really kind of hoping they do a single elimination tournament there I'm in just just see just see the well even like with hockey talking about their round robin tournament I know I'm from minnesota. So I should like hockey. I don't watch a lot of hockey But like if they were to do a round robin tournament or like Really short series for playoff hockey like that would get me in and I'm just like My level of interest is generally just not that high. So I think that like Viewership could be nuts for that but also the same thing for the NBA, which is a larger sport in general. So If the idea is to get people like me to tune in that would do it Yeah, and I did but I thought the NHL was going back to a pretty typical looking and playoff format As of doing 24 teams making the playoffs Um, I don't know what I didn't read fully on the format but like the way it works I think they wanted best of seven series like later on but like the early rounds People are gonna be skating their butts off. It's gonna be fun. I'm excited for that. Okay Let's get cows thoughts on this cows and NHL guys Maybe we can get we'll have cow on as a guest and he can break down the NHL for us at some point What do you got going on over the power rank and the football analytics show this weekend? Yeah, nothing much honestly, I'm working on some long-term projects with football right now Someone have to do with turnovers. So Hopefully have some news on that pretty All right, but you know, you can always follow myself at the power rank dot com And at the power rank on twitter as well. That is ed. I imagine son is j i m s a n n e s You can also follow the fan dual podcast network at fan dual podcast Make sure you are subscribed to covering the spread as we get these podcasts out Usually Wednesday afternoon, but the schedule can be a bit fluid there So make sure you are subscribed wherever you get your podcast so you can get these podcasts Right as they are posted big. Thank you to ed miller for swinging by and talking about his book the logic of sports betting Once again, if you want a link for that book It is on number fire dot com in the podcast post for this it links directly to amazon there The book that ed wrote with matthew davidow and as ed mentioned follow ed miller on twitter at ed miller poker Thank you to cow and theobald our video producer for running the video side of things here today and chopping up the clips For the fan dual twitter account and eventually bringing us nhl knowledge for the podcast as well Thank you cow and thank you to everyone for tuning in. Hopefully things are going well for you Hopefully you had a great memorial day weekend And hopefully you're having good luck with your sports betting as we progress into the the arena where sports are slowly And finally coming back into our lives. We'll talk to you again soon This has been covering the spread right here on the fan dual podcast network