Thursday 3 September 2020

Easy Unders and Trump at Evens?

The Unders in Games 7 opportunity I mentioned on Monday has given us two winners this week.


On Tuesday night, we had a very comfortable winner with the Denver Nuggets and Utah Jazz combining for a total of 158 points, the lowest total in a Game 7 since 2012, and 60 points under the 218 Total line.

This win extended the sequence for Unders to six but not for long as the sequence was extended to seven last night.

The Game 7 between the Houston Rockets and Oklahoma City Thunder, a series which had seen the previous two games both go Under, was another winner and no doubt many of you had your houses on this one. Maybe not, but hopefully some of you made a little money.

Overtime was a slight concern, but the Rockets won in regulation by two. 

The US Next President market appears to be somewhat inefficient right now with the two candidates tied on Betfair for a while yesterday.
Since then Biden shortened, presumably in response to a number of key state polls which were all favourable to him, but at the time of writing the race has tightened again.

Biden leads 51% to 43% across the country, but the Electoral College (EC) system means many votes are wasted, e,g, in California. Trump won in 2016 by the narrowest of margins.

He won Michigan by 0.3% (47.6% - 47.3%), Wisconsin by 1% (47.9% - 46.9%), Pennsylvania by 1.2% (48.8%- 47.6%). Those three states combined for 46 EC votes, which was enough to win.

Latest polls from these three states all have Joe Biden ahead by 48% - 44%, 52% - 42% and 49% - 45% respectively.

In addition, Florida and its 29 EC votes also looks good for Biden by 50% - 43% after going for Trump by 1.2% in 2016.

It makes no sense to me that the odds for the win are so out of line with these polling numbers and the individual state markets on Betfair, although liquidity there leaves something to be desired. 
With Biden out to 2.06 at one point, I've added to my position on him winning.

1 comment:

G said...

Polling is surely the most useless and overrated metric these days and should be mostly ignored - IMHO.
Given recent election/referenda results [2016 election, Brexit, Scottish Indy] where all polling leading up to the voting was wildly wrong.

I think Trump wins in November - IMHO