Not Being a Sucker, Hubris and my Worst Bet Ever
I was a sucker, I was full of hubris, and Brian Ebersole was not a lock.
I was out last week and missed just about the entire fight card. It doesn’t look like I missed much, but I am excited that people are annoyed at Ciryl Gane for having a boring win. Hope he fights again soon so we can hopefully get him priced at a discount. I absolutely love betting “boring” fighters.
There’s nothing boring about this week, though. I’m more excited for UFC 259 than I have been for any card in a long time. The title fights are obviously great, but it’s also not often we get such a deep card.
But it’s not just having big-names and skilled fighters that’s fun about it for me.
Tons of UFC experience means tons of fighters with big UFC career sample-sizes to draw stats from.
I’m sure you’re getting all the UFC 259 content you can handle at this point, though. Like always, I’ll wade into some UFC 259 territory, but I’m also going to bounce around all over the place in this week’s newsletter.
“Suckers try to win arguments, nonsuckers try to win.”
- Nassim Taleb, Antifragile
I’ve just about always got a Nassim Taleb book on the go. He’s one of my favorite modern thinkers, and in particular a ton of his work (he specializes in risk and uncertainty) can be applied to the sports betting/fantasy sports world.
The surface message is obvious — focus on making good bets, not convincing people on Twitter that your bets are good. It goes deeper than this, however. It’s not just a waste of time to argue, but it’s an active detriment.
The big concern is that in arguing, you’re trying to convince yourself. Once you get your ego involved by turning your bet into an argument, you’re not going to be doing good analysis. You’re going to be filled with confirmation bias, looking for reasons to back yourself up. You’re going to get overconfident.
Every single bet is going to be arguable. Even a solid bet still has an edge of just a few percentage points. If someone responds to your bet with “Aren’t you worried about the opponent’s wrestling?” it’s fine if your answer is “yes.” Do not spend time trying to convince the question-asker (and really, yourself) that the wrestling isn’t a concern. Plenty of times it absolutely will be a concern, but the bet will still be a good value. If you’ve convinced yourself there aren’t any concerns, you’ve got your ego in the way.
Jan Blachowicz by Decision …
… is +700, if you’re into long-shot prop bets.
A Reminder on Hubris
Remember what I said last week about being especially cautious when it looks like the betting markets are giving you a gift?
I saw a prime example of this on Twitter. I’m never going to call people out by name in this newsletter, because I’m not trying to shame anyone or say I know better than them. Plus if I follow someone on Twitter it’s usually because I think they’re smart and have worthwhile opinions to start with. But it just clicked so perfectly with what I wrote about last week that I want to touch on it here.
They basically suggested Thiago Moises didn’t have a viable/likely path to victory against Alexander Hernandez. Moises was just a +180 underdog, though. Moises winning (or whether you think the decision was the right one) aside, if you have that thought you should pause and reconsider.
If you see a +180 underdog and your takeaway is “there is no realistic way he wins this fight,” you’re missing something. Especially on a fight like Moises/Hernandez (i.e. not a McGregor fight where your obnoxious cousin who doesn’t want MMA is betting on McGregor to beat ‘Porrer’). Betting markets will be wrong, that’s how bettors are able to make money. But very rarely will they be egregiously, comically wrong like a fighter being priced at +180 who should be in the +400 or +500 “no-way-they-win” range. If you cap someone in that range while they are at +180, chances are you are wrong.
Parlays Aren’t Magic (and Neither is Brian Ebersole)
There may not be anything more widely misunderstood in online MMA betting communities than parlay bets. And this is not because they are even remotely complicated. In fact, the simplicity seems to be what trips people up, as everyone wants to have their own guidelines for what is and isn’t a parlay-worthy bet.
In essence, any profitable bet is a profitable parlay bet, and any unprofitable bet is an unprofitable parlay bet.
These things aren’t magic. You’re not getting special odds. You’re not getting bad odds. They’re not any safer or any less safe than the odds you’re getting on them.
The only thing they’re doing is increasing the amount you’re betting on each subsequent leg.
One common idea is that heavy favorites are good parlay bets (i.e. Amanda Nunes -1200). (For now let’s ignore that another relatively common idea is that you shouldn’t put huge favorites in parlays). But if you’re not willing to place a straight bet on Nunes -1200, there’s absolutely nothing about a parlay that should have you willing to bet that line.
Let’s say you parlay Nunes -1200 with Drew Dober +275, since you don’t wanna bet that Nunes moneyline on its own. If Dober wins, you’re essentially just placing an even bigger bet on the Nunes moneyline, because you’re now risking your winnings from the Dober bet.
Ask yourself, “if these fights were two weeks apart, would I make the second bet on its own?” If not, you’re not getting any value of betting it in a parlay.
So how does Brian Ebersole fit into this?
I have first-hand experience on the folly of including a “lock” in a parlay.
Do you remember Brian Ebersole? He won four straight fights in 2011/2012 to start his UFC career, and he was a big favorite (I wanna say -350 or -400) against James Head at UFC 149.
Being new to betting at this stage and thinking I was good (I was on a hot streak, but in reality I was terrible and was just gambling more than anything). I was full of confidence and liked Ebersole for whatever reason.
Rather than deal with getting some piddling returns on a bet on his moneyline, I parlayed that with everything. All my MLB bets for the week were parlayed with Ebersole. I parlayed future bets with Ebersole. As I was clicking away I was literally in the mindset that I was basically just getting free money by “improving” my odds on the other bets in the parlays.
This proved to be one of the worst bets of my gambling career. Ebersole lost a boring split decision and I was left tilting my face off. I wasn’t willing to bet $10 on the Ebersole moneyline, but in reality I ended up wagering well over $100 (a lot for a young student loan-burdened Jason) on him instead. Woops.
When Traditional Stats are Misleading
Looking at the stats the UFC makes available for striking pace, Israel Adesanya lands 4.1 significant strikes per minute with a 50% accuracy rate (so attempts about 8.2). Jan Blachowicz lands 3.5 with 48% accuracy (so attempts about 7.29). Safe to say that Adesanya looks like the higher-paced striker, right?
Things are very different if we just look at distance strikes per minute spent at distance. There, Blachowicz lands 4.4 per minute with 43% accuracy (10.2 attempts) and Adesanya lands 4.0 at 48% accuracy (8.5 attempts).
This isn’t me arguing that Blachowicz is the superior striker or anything, but just a note on how frustratingly misleading the UFC’s stats are. But since they don’t seem interested in providing people with useful data, I will …
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As always, thank you so much to everyone for reading — and especially to everyone who has reached out with feedback and suggestions! Please continue to reply if you ever have any questions/thoughts/feedback/topic ideas.
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Thank you, and enjoy this weeks fights!