Stop Trying to Win; When 45 does not equal 45; UFC 262

After a hiatus last week, I’m back and as long-winded as ever.

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My cat jumped on my keyboard and typed that line above. Because I suck at writing intros, I figured it was as good as anything I’d have put there.

Let’s get to it.

When Worrying About Winning Hurts Your Profit

To start, let me introduce a game. I know it as “Mount Olympus,” though I’m sure it goes by plenty of names. I think it’s best played in a forest, but again, I’m sure it gets played elsewhere too.

The person who is “it” is Zeus. They’re guarding the gods’ fire (a pile of small rocks) on Mount Olympus. The other players are Prometheuses (Prometheii?), trying to steal fire from the gods, as in the Greek myth.

The Prometheii start in their home base which is set up a fair distance from Mount Olympus. The goal is to steal the fire without being seen by Zeus.

Zeus closes their eyes and counts down, loudly, generally from somewhere like 7 to 15 seconds. During this time, the Prometheii move in and try to get to the fire. At 0, Zeus opens their eyes. They look around, and anyone they can see is caught, and must return to home base. If they have fire in their hands, they must return it.

So as a Prometheus, each round you’re trying to get closer to Mount Olympus and then also hide before Zeus opens their eyes. Generally it takes three or four rounds (or more if you’re extra cautious) to reach the fire, and another couple rounds to return it.

At the beginning of the game, it’s a crap shoot. You don’t know the best approach, but the game moves quickly and you don’t have time to sit and plan. You run off and make up an approach as you go.

Maybe (probably) you get caught.

So now you try another approach, slightly more informed than that first one.

You get caught again.

It happens a third time.

Now you have a pretty good lay of the land. This unfamiliar piece of forest is starting to come together, and almost instinctively you start to run through a better path. You get fire!

There are still six more rocks to recover, but now you know you have a path that works. You stick to it and continue to collect rocks.

This approach is great — you found something that works, you know you won’t get caught, and you keep going back to the well. Each success reinforces that you’re on the right path.

The game obviously isn’t very high-stakes, but the adrenaline of rushing and hiding and trying to win makes it feel that way in the moment. And without noticing it, your instincts have you taking a very animalistic approach.

It’s no accident that wild animals tend to follow predictable paths and trails, which even get established over generations. They have found a path that gets them where they need to go, while also keeping them relatively safe from predators.

We can go even further from humans and see a similar approach. If an ant colony is set up with two food sources equal distances from their nest,  it highlights this approach. At first, they all scatter looking for food. One food source is found, and those ands leave a chemical trail to signal others. Even if both food sources are found, more ants will notice and follow one chemical trail, which strengthens the trail, and more follow. Soon they’re all following the path that they know for sure is going to get them fed.

For ants seeking food and wild animals avoiding predators, this is a life-or-death situation, and this survival method has proven incredibly effective at keeping their species alive over the years. It makes sense to stick to it.

If ‘Mount Olympus’ were life-or-death, the approach would make sense as well. You’d want to optimize for survival.        

But what if we tweaked the rules? Let’s say the game went on for a few hours, and whoever retrieved the most rocks won a significant prize.

In this situation, there’s no way you’d want to just follow the first path that works. Just doing decently won’t get you anything, you want to be as efficient as possible.

So even after you get your first rock, you’re going to want to test another route to see if you can get there even more quickly. Your first path got you a rock in 8 turns. Your second path took you 10. You know that one’s no good, so you try a new one.

This one took 7, you’re improving. You could stick with this one, but you feel like there’s probably a better approach out there. Your next path gets you caught. Your next one takes you 11 turns. You’re starting to think that you should maybe go back to the 7-turn path at this point, but you experiment again. You found a path that gets you there in 6 turns and in which you feel you’re better hidden than the 7-turn.

If the game were short, saving two turns per rock compared to your first successful path probably wouldn’t be worth it. But you’re playing for hours. You’re now getting 4 rocks in the number of turns it originally took you to get 3. Over time, this advantage builds up and more than makes up for all of those “wasted” attempts.

Sports betting is a game with a very long time horizon. If you settle on the 8-turn route, you’re going to be leaving a lot of money on the table over time.

But it’s easy to see how you’d fall into the exact same pattern, betting as if it’s a life-or-death game.

Like everyone, you start out as a losing better. You grind away, learning and improving as much as you can. You try different betting strategies, different research methods, listen to different sources of advice. Then you have a few winning events in a row. You feel like you’re starting to get the hang of this, so you continue with your approach. More success.

Six months later, you feel like you’re consistently a winning better at this point. Six more months pass, and you’re pretty darn sure of it. You’re grinding out a 3% profit — not a huge margin, but considering the vast majority of sports bettors are long-term losers, you’re crushing. So you stick with what’s working.

But what if there’s an approach out there that gives you a 5% edge? And one that gives you a 10% edge?

It would feel like shit to go from being certain you’re a winning bettor to suddenly losing while you experiment with changing your approach. You know you’re better than the results are showing, and it’s frustrating to lose.

But if you find that 5% approach, it can more than make up for those losses. And a 10% approach will really have made all of that struggle worth it.

Of course, you do need to survive if you want to keep betting (which is why bankroll management is important), but you’re not an ant. You want to do more than simply not lose your bankroll. So branch out and get creative. Take L’s. They’re worth it.

When Identical Numbers Aren’t the Same

Andrea Lee has a 45% distance striking accuracy rate. That’s the exact same as her UFC 262 opponent Antonina Shevchenko.

But a slightly deeper look reveals that Shevchenko has a much more impressive accuracy.

23.9% of Lee’s distance strike attempts have been leg kicks. For Shevchenko, that rate is just 10.0%.

In the UFC unified rules era (dating back to UFC 28), significant leg strikes have had an average accuracy rate of 79.7%. Removing leg kicks, distance strikes have had an average accuracy rate of 32.2%.

Lee does land more accurately than average on both types of strikes: leg kicks (85.7%), and non-leg kick distance strikes (37.5%). Shevchenko, however, is actually more accurate than Lee on both leg kicks (100%!) and on non-leg kick distance strikes (40.5%).

The only reason Lee doesn’t trail Shevchenko in accuracy rate is because leg kicks make up a higher share of her total attempts.

Who Owns the Win

One of the biggest questions facing us at UFC 262 is what was the primary cause of how one-sided Oliveira vs Ferguson was. Was it Oliveira truly taking a step forward as an elite fighter? Or was it Ferguson’s age and injuries finally catching up with him?

Obviously it’s not going to be 100% in either direction, but figuring out the main cause is going to be the key to betting both Ferguson vs Dariush and Oliveira vs Chandler.

If you think it was Ferguson being washed up, then Dariush is obviously an interesting play. In that situation, Chandler becomes an interesting play too, however. Oliveira is getting a ton of credit for how impressive that win was, but if Ferguson’s decline played a big role in that, he’s probably being a little overrated at this point.

On the flip side, if Oliveira is now the elite fighter he looked like in that one, he’s probably a good bet against Chandler. And if that is the case, Ferguson, whose betting line seems to reflect the assumption that he’s washed up, would probably also be underrated.

My hunch is that it’s the former — being 37 years old and having dealt with a ton of serious injuries throughout his career could finally be catching up with Ferguson. It’s still just a hunch, however, and barring quick first-round finishes in either fight, UFC 262 should give us some real insight into what the future holds for both of them.

Yours in stealing fire from the gods,

Jason