THE BETTING FOOL
By a Man Who Should Know Better
The Betting Fool is back. Same thousand dollars, same laptop with the sticky B key, and a model I tore down to the studs over the summer. Ten seasons went into it this time instead of one. What came out the other end was not what I wanted to hear.
Across 2,367 games my side picks hit 50.1 percent. Fifty point one. That is a coin with a nice haircut, and it made no difference how loudly the number disagreed with the market — the disagreement predicted nothing. So the model cannot pick sides. It can do exactly one thing: outdoor games with the wind at 10 miles an hour or better go under about 57 percent of the time. Vegas knows wind is worth something and shades those totals from roughly 45.2 down to 43.9. It just doesn't shade far enough. That gap is my entire living now.
Which means this column changes shape. Mostly unders in bad weather. A card that caps at five plays instead of demanding five, so a three-play week is the system working, not me hiding. And exactly one side a week, which I will tell you every single time is a coin flip, because a football column prints a side. Opening weekend went 1-2: $73.90 at risk, $25.58 gone, and the year opens at $974.42. The one that came in was the wind bet. Make of that what you like.
Here is the coin flip, announced as such. My sheet has Philadelphia by 8.7 against a board sitting on 8.5, which is two-tenths of a point and a 50.5 percent cover probability — call it a rumor of an edge. Dallas is down Perrion Winfrey up front and the only name on the Philadelphia report is the backup quarterback, so nothing on the injury sheet moves this. I am laying it because Thursday night needs a side, not because I know anything.
Indoors, no wind, so the one thing my model is genuinely good at doesn't get a vote and the raw number has to carry it. That number is 44.5 against a market total of 43.5, and it already has Houston arriving without Christian Kirk and Braxton Berrios folded in — the model docks the Texans for the missing receivers and still lands a point above the board. I'll take 52.1 percent where I find it.
Ten miles an hour off the lake, and this is the whole new thesis in a single bet. The market has already trimmed this to 47.5, my number says 46.9, and a decade of games says totals in that kind of air go under a lot more often than a coin flip is comfortable with. Cleveland is thin inside with Mike Hall Jr. out, which argues the other direction, and I am taking the weather regardless.
“Bet less than you brag, learn more than you lose, and never trust a tout who smiles too much.”
— The Betting Fool
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