NFL Sports Betting Contest/Exhibition : 2013

The Game Room
1

Ok, let’s do it. By popular demand, here’s your SDMB NFL Sports Betting Extravaganza for 2013!

This is going to be an extremely open and flexible competition. Bettors will be able to wager their money in pretty much any way they could wish.
Quickstart Rules:

  1. Risk $0-$2000 each week. Minimum wager is $100, otherwise structure your bets however you wish. The amount of money you list as your wager is the amount of money at risk (i.e. how much you stand to lose, not how much you stand to win).

  2. Basically, any NFL wager you can find offered at Pinnacle Sports, you can make. (** Be sure to select “American Odds” in the top left corner! **) You have to include the odds of the bet (so not just Chiefs -3.5, but “Chiefs -3.5 -107).” Use whatever the odds on the site are at the time you post your bets – we’re on the honor system.

  3. In Week 1, everyone has an additional $3000 allowance for making futures bets (win totals, division winners, etc.). You can still make futures bets after Week 1, but they’ll be drawn from your regular $2000 weekly limit.

  4. You can bet **teasers **using the odds from this chart.

  5. You can bet **parlays **using the odds from this chart.
    Additional Detail:

– Late entrants to the competition are welcome, if you miss a week here or there it’s no big deal, etc. That said, this will be more fun the more active people are. To be eligible for the official title, an entrant must wager a total of at least $10,000 over the course of the season.

– All bets are final: once you can no longer edit your post, you can no longer edit any bet contained therein.

– You don’t have to make all your bets at one time. Any time you post a second set of wagers for the week, please label the post as Bet Sheet #2 (or #3, #4, etc.). It’s helpful but not required to copy and paste your previous bets from that week onto your most recent Bet Sheet.

– Self-reporting your weekly results is also helpful but not required, but please only do so if you’re confident you can tabulate the results accurately (it can tricky, especially when you’re dealing with teasers and such). Especially helpful would be listing the $Won/Lost for each individual bet (so that any mistakes can be more easily spotted).

– Pinnacle does offer live odds during games, but, at least for now, please no wagers on any game once the kickoff has occurred.

– Standings will be updated approximately whenever the hell I feel like it. :slight_smile: No, no, that’s not quite true. I’ll try to post updated standings every week, but part of the appeal of structuring the contest so loosely is that the administrator has less work to do, so I’m sure I’ll fall behind once every so often.

– Suggestions for minor rules tweaks/improvements are welcome, though mostly this is the structure we’ll be using.

– Please don’t hesitate to ask questions if you’re unsure about anything. I’m sure I’ve missed a thing or two here. Would anyone like an explanation of teasers/parlays? Or really anything else?
Good Luck!

2

Thanks for starting this, it slipped my mind.

I’m a little unclear. Do you get a new fresh $2000 every week? Do you keep the rolling bankroll you’ve got going all season, or is every week a new $2000 contest?

I was thinking just start with a fixed sum and keep betting with it over the course of the season. IF you do well, great, if not, well, it’s probably realistic and a lesson to be able to watch it dwindle all season long. A $2000 per week system encourages wild bets in an attempt to get ahead of the competition by hitting a big parlay or something, I was thinking more along the lines of people putting themselves to the test for a season with a fixed amount to start.

Not that it’s a big deal - I mean, you can just compare your results at the end of the year to the $35000 (16x2000+3000 futures) you’ve got to work with over the course of the season.

3

The pinnacle betting lines are like

PIT -7 2.060
TEN +7 1.855

That’s a simple multiplier for the payout, right? If you put $100 on pit, you’d win $206, if you bet $100 on TEN you’d win $185.5, both including the original wager, right? That’s much simpler than the normal -110 moneyline odds, I wonder why more places aren’t using them.

I recommend making everyone grade their own bets, or it can become a lot of busywork for you over the season. Just have them submit totals and you can enter them into the spreadsheet, that way the busy work gets spread around.

Something I just thought of - it might be interesting if we had separate tracks for straight bets, parlays, teasers, and futures. That way people can see how their results break down by bet type. So then people could grade themselves and say “+206 on straight, -100 on parlay, +452 on teasers” and of course futures would be calculated at the end of the year. And then the spreadsheet would reflect running totals for straight/parlay/teasers. Depending on how much data we’re interested in, you could even split it up into against the spread, straight moneyline win, and over/under bets.

So it would be something like



SenorBeef Week 1 Week 2            Running totals
Spread       +102 -200                   98
Moneyline   0      +155               155
O/U         -100   0                   -100
Parlays     -150    +455                 +305
Teasers      0        0                    0
Overall      148    410                   558
4

It’s a fresh $2,000 cap on wagers each individual week. Basically, I wanted there to be some incentive for people keep checking in, instead of going “Oh right I gotta go make those picks … ah, fuck it, I’ll just bet a little more money next week.” I also wanted the winner to be someone who’d been reasonably active in the competition, instead of someone potentially who just showed up for Week 17 and bet his whole bankroll on a 3-1 underdog and hit.

The one change I almost made was to give everyone some fixed amount of “mad money” that they could dip into to exceed their limit on a given week. So, for instance, if everyone got a $5000 allowance of mad money for the season, then in Week 2 you really like some of the lines and wager a total of $3000, you’d have $4000 in mad money to play with the rest of the year. I didn’t include it just for simplicity’s sake, but if everyone really likes the idea maybe we could add it.

I’m pretty sure decimal odds are used in Europe (and most other places, maybe). To be honest I’ve never bothered to acquaint myself with decimal odds, which is why I suggested everyone use the American-style odds (top left). You’re right that it’s easier to grade, though I imagine most everyone here will still be more familiar with the American odds, so I’ll accept wagers in either format.

Yeah, I figured I would be doing this, one way or another.

5

Ah, right, missed the part where you could switch odds types. But actually decimal odds seem a lot more intuitive and quick to calculate, I suggest people use them.

Alright, so if we win a gazillion dollars on a 19 teamer parlay in week 1, that effectively gets banked in our overall score for the year, but come the next week, we have a fresh $2000. Right?

Now… if you bet $500, and win a 2:1 bet so that you net $500, do you have $2500 total? Is that scored as +500 for the week, or +2500? Basically I mean do you have to wager the money for it to exist? There’s no reason not to bet the whole $2000?

6

No reason except sports betting is inherently very tough to beat, and the more money one risks the more money one is likely to lose. I suspect that most people will do better to wager more at times when they’re most confident, instead of simply wagering the max every week. Could be wrong.

But yeah, it’s just a measure of how much money is won or lost. There’s no bankroll; everyone starts at $0, then goes up or down.

7

Regular Season Wins
$500 Arizona Over 5.5 -160
$400 Dallas Under 8.5 +107
$200 Jacksonville Over 5 -109
$300 Miami Under 8 -133
$400 St. Louis Under 7.5 +110
$300 Washington Over 8 -120
$200 Carolina Over 7 -194

Division Champions
$400 Carolina +422
$400 Tampa Bay +522
$200 Arizona +1615

Week 1
$300 Mia/Cle u41 -109
$300 Carolina +3.5 -114
$500 New England -10 +106
$300 Minnesota +195
$300 Arizona +201
In case it’s not clear, those last two are money line bets (Min and Ari to win straight up).

I wagered as much as I could this week, though I don’t anticipate doing so all that often.

8

I’d suggest allowing the $3000 futures thing to last at least through the week since we got a late start on this.

I’m going to end up using decimal notation because it’s just easier.

Futures
$200 Panthers under 7 wins 2.64
$400 Falcons over 10 wins 2.62
$700 Browns over 6 wins 1.493
$300 Chiefs under 7.5 wins 2.45
$200 Chargers Under 7.50 wins 1.667
$200 Seahawks under 10.5 wins 2.21

$300 Falcons to win NFC South 2.57
$100 Falcons to win NFC Championship 8.98
$200 Colts to win AFC South 3.5

$2600. I’m saving $400 for a second betting card, and I’ll do my weekly picks later.

Everyone is betting against Atlanta heavily and I’m sure why. I think Carolina is in for a regression without Chud, New Orleans will be resurgent, but Atlanta is still strong. So while I’m not totally confident in Atlanta, I feel like the bets are solid given the odds.

Everyone is betting the Browns over 6, it’s a bad betting line I think, 6.5 would’ve been obvious there.

9

Yeah, that’s probably fine.

I think it’s mainly the perception that Atlanta wasn’t actually all that good last year, combined with a brutal schedule this year (27th hardest schedule last year per DVOA, projected to have the hardest schedule this year; that alone is worth a few wins).

10

I could not have less of an idea what I’m doing, but this sounds fun, so I’m in. I have a feeling I’ll fall insurmountably behind within five weeks and slowly make it respectable as I learn what I’m doing.

FUTURES
$200 Arizona under 5.5 +136
$300 Kansas City under 7.5 +145
$500 Houston over 10.5 +127
$500 Green Bay over 10.5 +116
$750 Philadelphia under 7.5 -122
$750 Oakland under 5.5 -216

$3000

Week 1:
$500 Indianapolis -10.5 +100
$500 Washington -3.5 +102
$250 New England -10 +107
$250 Pittsburgh -7 +111

$100 - 3 team parlay (6/1)
New England -10
Indianapolis -10.5
Washington -3.5

$200 Atl @ NO over 55.5 -109
$200 NYG @ Dal over 50 -107

$2000

11

Futures card #2

Can I make one silly bet? There’s no AFC North futures on pinnacle, so I grabbed the line from sportsbook.com

$100 Browns to win AFC North 7.0
$300 Steelers Under 9 wins 1.87

Week 1
$400 Browns -1 1.877
$200 TEN +6 1.943
$200 ATL +3.5 1.885
$200 SEA -3 1.962
$100 MIN ML 2.86

Parlays
$100 CLE-1; MIA/CLE OVER 40.5; TEN+6 7.0
$100 CIN+3; CIN/CHI OVER 42; OAK+11 7.0

Teaser
5 point 6 team teaser. CLE +5, MIA/CLE OVER 34.5, TEN +12, OAK+17, SEA+3, NE -3.5

Will put a couple more down before gametime if I can.

12

I want to use this league to make more fun long shot parlays and teasers but I hate betting week 1. Too many unknowns. I’ll do a bigger betting sheet next week.

13

Parlays are suckers bets, and I know that, even from my short time living in Vegas. But I always get fooled into thinking I’ve got a good one, and somehow, despite how impossible they seem to fail, they always do. I’ve still never won a single one, I think I’m 0-30 or so. Still, they’re fun, so I’ll keep throwing token money at them.

14

Parlays calculated from fair odds can have the same expected value as their constituent bets. It jacks up the variance on the payoff, but they’re often not sucker bets in the sense that you’re getting less expected value back. They can actually even have better expected value than some of the straight bets because they often get updated less frequently than the straight bets, or assume all bets are of equal value even after the money line has shifted for less payoff with some of the bets.

15

+$275 – $300 Mia/Cle u41 -109

-$300 – $300 Carolina +3.5 -114
-$500 – $500 New England -10 +106

-$300 – $300 Minnesota +195
-$300 – $300 Arizona +201

-$1,125
And we’re off to an awesome start. :smack:

16

Oh, and I’m just going to round all of my results to the nearest dollar this year. Others can feel free to calculate things to the nearest cent, or not, as you wish.

17

Week 1:
-$500** // $500 Indianapolis -10.5 +100
-$500 // $500 Washington -3.5 +102
-$250 // $250 New England -10 +107
-$250 // **$250 Pittsburgh -7 +111

-$100** // **$100 - 3 team parlay (6/1)
New England -10
Indianapolis -10.5
Washington -3.5

-$200** // $200 Atl @ NO over 55.5 -109
+$187 // **$200 NYG @ Dal over 50 -107

-$1613

INCREDIBLY BAD! (And not at all unpredictable)

18

$200 Chargers +289
$100 Buffalo +124
$200 San Fran +125

$200 St. Louis +7 -119

$300 Jets/Pats o43.5 +100
$300 Skins/Packers o49.5 -105
And I think I’ll add a couple more Over/Unders once we get closer to game time and I see what the weather’s gonna be like.

19

This is very interesting, never having been much of a bettor. Varloz, why is there no line listed for your first 3 bets this week?

20

They’re money line bets, meaning he’s betting the team to win straight up without any point spread. Betting an underdog in that way gets a bigger payoff.