Silver Linings

Since Jimmy Carter's win in 1976, only one underdog going into Election Day has won the Presidency, and last night the favourite won again. 

Here are the prices on previous elections courtesy of the Sports Odds History site: 

The "French Trump Whale" called it correctly, put his money where his mouth was and made millions while I, once again, managed to lose money betting on politics. 

However, the financial markets appear to be reacting positively to the result, so I shall pretend that my bet on Harris was a hedge, and focus on the silver lining of my Bitcoin holding hitting a new all-time high. Hopefully Tesla will also benefit from Elon Musk's role with the Trump campaign, and the US futures look green across the board, especially the Russell 2000 which is comprised of smaller companies who will benefit from Trump's promised tariffs. 

While it wasn't a market of quite so much significance to the world, we did have a winner in the NHL last night, a qualifier in two systems, and after a slow start the season has picked up with an overall ROI slightly above 25%.

In the NBA, the 'Overs on High Totals' system has started the new season positively too, with an 8-4 record to date and two more selections tonight, but the new 'Unders' system is 0-2 so far. 

Next Stop - White House or Prison?

Following up on my last post "Record Breaking" and one of my subscribers sent me an email containing some interesting data. Martin wrote:

I enjoyed your blog post 'Record Breaking' and was having a poke around myself so thought I would share my spreadsheet of Betfair ticks.

It doesn't look like much of that £1.4m @ 1.8 traded in the morning or afternoon, but £6m traded between 7 and 8pm, including £3.6m at 19:25-19:26.

Obviously Betfair is counting back and laid stakes so is double counting really, but that's still huge. I noticed the spike on their crappy charts on Sunday.

That's a lot of money and the backer is in a good position right now with Trump down to 1.59 / 1.6 at the time of writing.

Bogdan R left a comment on the same post asking:

How low did Trump trade in 2020? I remember something around 1.25. I'm not overly confident on Harris @2.30-2.40, but I'm tempted to leave a few lay orders on Trump, something like 1.40/1.30/1.20.

I looked back at my posts from four years ago, and in one of them I wrote: 

Trump's defeat is made all the sweeter given that on Tuesday night, with his odds as short as 1.24, he almost certainly thought he had won. 

Bogdan has a good memory.

Some of you may have heard about the trader known as "French Trump Whale" who had, at the time of this interview, bet $45MM on Trump to win the election.  

It promises to be an interesting night as the results start to come in.  Fireworks expected...

Record Breaking

I believe I'm right in saying that the largest market in Betfair's history to date is currently 2020's "Next President" market, in which around £125MM was traded up to and including Election Day before another £75MM was added during the period leading up to the Electoral College meeting in mid-December.

The total for the 2024 "Election Winner" market is currently at £154MM, and it's unlikely to be closed any time soon if Trump is the losing candidate.

This market will be settled once both the projected winner is announced by the Associated Press and the losing candidate concedes. If the losing candidate does not concede, or if there is any uncertainty around the result (for instance, caused by recounts and/or potential legal challenges), then the market will be settled on the winner decided by Congress, on the date on which the Electoral College votes are counted in a joint session of Congress.

Earlier today (Sunday) there was a large amount looking to back Trump, a sum that I can't recall ever seeing before. The market moved to 1.8 / 1.81 but whether that huge amount was mostly matched or cancelled isn't clear but over £7MM has now traded at 1.8, far more than the amount traded at either 1.79 or 1.81. 

That Trump is favourite at all is surprising to me, although I'm trying to learn my lesson after misreading the 2016 Brexit and US Presidential Elections. I've layed Trump at various prices over the past few weeks, and this may not age well, but my gut feeling is that Kamala Harris will ultimately win fairly comfortably.

Neither Trump or his campaign are sounding confident, he looks physically exhausted and flat, and the latest polls are generally good for Harris. I could cash out for a nice profit, but I'm going to let this run. It could be running for a while though as Trump ramps up his "stolen election" claims and provokes civil unrest. Interesting times.  

The Buzz Around Killer Sports

Following on from the last post, we are indebted to Hkibuzz for providing more details about the upcoming changes at Killer Sports. He comments:

Hi Cassini. The free access to KS will be limited to 10 searches per sport per day. While it should theoretically be enough most of the time, it is still not enough on the days when you will want to do further research. I believe I will be a basic member, and hopefully it will mean the site will keep going for a long time. https://killersports.com/plans-premium

The linked page shows the following tiers and confirms what Hkibuzz stated:

As he says, the 10 searches per sport per day included in the Free tier should suffice for me on most days to identify what selections there might be for previously identified edges, but for researching new ideas the Basic tier might be required. Even though I am now retired, I think I can justify $19 a month if it becomes necessary.

One of the purposes of the manuscript is to trigger ideas for subscribers to carry out their own research, and it's gratifying to hear that at least some people are doing this. Hopefully the changes at Killer Sports won't prove to be show-stoppers for anyone. Tiers, not tears.

Thank you to Hkibuzz for your research and taking the time to comment. 

Killer Sports Pro Time

Weirimdi left a comment on the blog:

Hi there it is me again. What is your opinion on the new paid structure of Killer Sports? i don't want you to be positive or negative about it, but rather like to know if this will have an effect on the user structure and use cases of this great tool. I used the Db to experiment and to research. It was fun for me, but now i think a lot of silent researchers will leave the ship and this might lead to a decrease in researchers.

Killer Sports sent an email to registered users a few days ago, which included this paragraph:

Included in our tiered membership structure is a free access to the ability to run a limited number of queries / Simple Searches and some saved systems to satisfy our most casual users. The paid tiers expand from there to accommodate our avid users who want to frequently search the database and/or take advantage of our expanding number of valuable tools.

As I do not use the feature which allows you to 'save' systems, I'm hoping I will stay under the radar and be considered on of the 'casual users', but if the 'limited number of queries' is set too low, then I may be in the Pro tier, but at $39 a month, I would consider this to be excellent value. As my account is now showing Pro, I suspect I'm enrolled in the 30 day free trial.



As I wrote on the blog at the time, a little over three years ago that it looked like Killer Sports would be shutting down which would have been terrible, but fortunately the site was saved with more sports being added. It's not perfect as I have mentioned before. The data isn't 100% accurate but it's a wonderful resource nonetheless.

For the time being the site remains free to use but should that change I'll update you all here.

One subscriber asked me if a strategy of betting the Moneyline rather than Against the Spread (ATS) would be profitable. It certainly should be since the odds are aligned, but the beauty of ATS is that the ride is a lot smoother.

A few years ago I came up with a table showing the approximate 'true' Moneyline odds based on historical results from the spreads for American Football (F) and Basketball (B).

Like Killer Sports, it's not perfect, but I find it helpful and thought I'd share it here.

And no, that isn't a typo for favourites giving a point in Football.

Billions, Drama and Fading in the NHL

Tesla had a rather good finish to the week with the stock up 26% since Wednesday after their Q3 earnings report was released.  

Elon Musk made about $35billion on the day, so his net-worth spreadsheet updates last night would have been an enjoyable task. I assume I'm not the only one who tracks these things almost daily... 

My gains were a little less than those of Musk, and not enough to pull October into the green, but it at least made a dent in the red. 

The World Series got off to a dramatic start last night, with the game going to extra innings, the New York Yankees taking a one run lead in the 10th before the Los Angeles Dodgers hit a grand slam home run with two outs for a walk-off win.

It's unlikely that tonight's Game 2, or any game for that matter, will match that one for drama, but in sport you just never know.  

I mentioned the idea of fading popular teams recently, and Thomas suggested that in the NHL:

The popular team fading works the best for the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Overall, for the past ten seasons, backing the Leafs straight up or on the Puck Line in every game gives the third worst outcome of the 33 teams - Utah are new this season and have just six matches to their name so far. 

As Thomas added, when they are playing against a losing team they are top of the list with an official ROI of -12.7%. 

It's impossible to get a definitive answer on which team in the NHL is the most popular, in Canada but the most popular team there appears to be either the Leafs of the Montreal Canadiens who rank ninth worst in both scenarios. 

Sports Equinox Starring New York

While the NBA season is about to begin, for the women the 2024 WNBA season is now over with New York Liberty dramatically beating Minnesota Lynx in overtime in Game Five of a best-of-five series for their first ever Championship. 

The WNBA systems finished the season with a 58.7% winning record ATS, a 17.8% ROI and a profit of 11.24 units from 63 selections. Since records began in 2011, the results are:

A similar set of results for the NBA season which starts tomorrow (Tuesday) would be most gratefully received. 

The World Series for baseball will be between the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers after the Dodgers clinched the National League title last night against the New York Mets. It'll be the 12th time the two franchises have met in the World Series although the first seven were when the Dodgers played in Brooklyn. The Dodgers have home advantage in the best-of-seven series with the first two games in Los Angeles and games 3,4 and 5 (if needed) in New York, before returning to Los Angeles for games 6 and 7 (again, if needed). 

October is always a busy month with all four major US sports active and there will be another sports equinox next Monday, 28th with an NFL game (Pittsburgh Steelers v New York Giants), Game 3 of the World Series in New York, 10 NBA games (including New York Knicks), and 5 NHL games (but sadly no New York team, so no single-city equinox to match Phoenix's achievement in 2001). New York City FC do have an MLS play-off game that day though, so not a bad effort by the Big Apple. 

After a slow start, the NHL systems are picking up with five wins from the last six selections:

As for American Football, it's not been the best of seasons so far. The less-followed CFL is slightly in the red with a record of 21-25-0, while the College Football systems are up a little with a 123-109-0 record. There are two NFL games tonight.

Betting With the Heart

The NBA season is almost here, and a subscriber mentioned to me that:

Along the same lines I also avoid betting on the Lakers as this is probably the most hyped up team in the history of sport..

There's logic to this argument, and it's one I used in baseball one summer about 25 years ago when I was between contracts and would oppose the four most popular teams - Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers and Cubs. 

The system didn't last long as another job came along, and it was with small stakes for entertainment rather than a serious effort to "bash the bookies", but my thinking was that casual bettors would back these teams and in theory there should be value on the other side. 

A few minutes after I saw the comment about the Lakers, ESPN published an article today on the topic of sports betting in New York  written by David Purdum.

The final paragraph reads:

"When the Yankees are going well, we'll most likely need their opponent every night," [Johnny] Avello, a New York native and longtime Las Vegas bookmaker, said. "They say, 'Don't bet with your heart,' but we all do."

Maybe not "all" of us, - at least not when it's sports betting (personally, politics is another matter) - but I took a look at the lines for the Yankees since the state of  New York legalised online gambling in January 2022, and backing them isn't as terrible an idea as I thought it might be. Of course it helps that they are a good team, winning 56% of their games, but the lines should reflect that over 500 games.

Blindly backing the Yankees would have lost you 3.1% of your bank, but when backed as a Road Underdog, you would have made 13%, the fifth highest return of five teams in double figures in this category. The markets tend towards a Home bias and a Favourite bias, which appears to hold true even if the away team is the Yankees.

Looking at the Lakers, and avoiding them does have merit, with a negative ROI of 11.2% since COVID, and a negative one as Road 'Dogs too in case you were curious.  In the playoffs it's a profitable strategy to back them, but as I seem to keep saying, the sample size is very small. 

A winning start with Thomas' two NHL selections both winning last night, but a losing start to the American Football with the Thursday Night game not following the script.