All-Star Cameos

July was a poor month for betting MLB favourites this year. It's always a disjointed month with the flow of the season interrupted by the All-Star break, (I keep records for pre and post break periods) but since the reverse favourite-longshot bias evaporated in the 2012 season, July 2016 was the worst month for favourites at 1.5 or shorter.

One trend that did hold true again this season was that of favourites doing well in their first games after the break. The rationale for this is that although the better teams are likely to be better represented at the All-Star game, many of those will only put in a less than exhausting cameo performance, while the majority of their players enjoy the break and get some rest which apparently benefits better teams more than worse teams.

These once a year trends are of limited value of course - come next year and 99% of people reading this will have forgotten about it. One idea with season long potential was triggered by a conversation with baseball expert Fizzer on the topic of matches with high run totals. 

A little more research on this shows that in games where the run total is set high, underdogs perform well. 

Our results showed that as totals increased, underdogs performed increasingly well for bettors. Essentially, high totals equate to more scoring and more unpredictability and this volatility was disproportionately beneficial to the team receiving plus money.

I took out the no-hoper underdogs, and so far this season the ROI is 12.9% from 79 selections. In 2015, ROI was 5.8% from 48 matches, but was a losing play in 2012, 2013 and 2014 so no champagne celebrations yet.

Hopefully some of you took the Under 41.5 at 2.0 on tonight's opening NFL game as recommended here earlier this week. The price right now is 1.84 / 1.85 on Betfair, trading as low as 1.80, and a good call if I do say so myself.