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.