About Us

Like many of you reading this, my brother and co-founder of AgainstTheOdds and I were avid NBA and NFL fans growing up. Naturally, our interest in basketball and football led us to playing fantasy football with our friends. Our competitive nature and analytical minds gave us our first taste of gathering information to make predictive forecasts of potential outcomes. One I may say we were naturally better at than most — winning six times between us (three each) in nine years of fantasy football with our friends.

While we loved football and basketball, it wasn't until sports betting became legal throughout the country in the last few years that we began to try our hand at actual sports betting. Like most people, we began to think our success in fantasy sports would directly transfer to the sports betting world — that we would be able to consistently predict performances of individual players, whether they would perform better than anticipated and take their Over, or worse, and take their Under.

Unfortunately, as we would soon find out, that line of thinking led us to the occasional profit, followed by a loss of slightly greater magnitude, leaving us net behind when the dust settled. What we could not see then, but clearly can see now, was because:

• What we perceived as a long-term sustainable advantage in regards to betting did not exist.
• Because that advantage did not exist, we came out net negative because an attempt to scale our initial wins led to larger losses due to more money wagered.

Naturally, the moment a person would realize the fallacy in their process, human psychology would determine they began to change course immediately. Kidding, of course. Human psychology is built to preserve our initial hypothesis and gather as much external evidence as possible to support our initial claims, and refute all other information that goes against that.

Even though our own anecdotal experience clearly showed our initial system was not going to be profitable long term — based on our win rate and declining bankroll — it was hard to swallow. We came to the conclusion, after some time, that becoming a profitable sports bettor long term was nearly impossible, and that the work required to achieve some sort of advantage was too much effort mixed with a tremendous amount of luck. Surely, the endeavor was not worth our time and effort.

The Spark

It wasn't until over a year later of not betting on sports that my interest in sports betting became piqued again, when I came across a startling statistic: that the largest sports betting company in the United States not only had the majority of their sports betting revenue derived from same-game parlays and player props, but had higher profit margins from these bet types as opposed to the lesser revenue and lower-margin straight bets on game spreads.

This intrigued me in two ways:

• Clearly, there was a better bet type to make in regards to having a chance at making money as opposed to player props and parlays related to them.
• The majority of people either haven't realized this too, or they have realized they have had better success in placing straight bets on game spreads — but the allure of making a large sum of money via a short wager amount from a parlay was too enticing.

Regardless, we needed to investigate how and why this discrepancy exists, and perhaps put our hat back in the ring of the sports betting world.

Applying Inversion

Borrowing the framework of thinking — the process of inversion — from legendary investor Charlie Munger, which both my brother and I apply in the investing world when we purchase securities, I began to think about "what could possibly be the worst bet?" Naturally, the opposite characteristics of that would be considered "the best bet."

Well, if I had to think of a bet worth avoiding, I would want to avoid a bet where:

• The duration of my desired outcome was shorter than other bet opportunities.
• There was heavy reliance on other factors external to research performed.
• It was an efficient market on the line of the bet due to perceived advantages being obvious and mispricings being eroded quickly.

Well, if the above are the characteristics of the worst type of bet to avoid, below — being the inverse — would be a bet with characteristics worth pursuing:

• The duration of the desired outcome had more time to become true as opposed to other bet opportunities.
• There was less reliance on external factors than the research performed for the bet.
• A market on the line of the bet that is less efficient than others because the advantages that affect the outcome of the bet are not easily perceived, with mispricings existing until game time or being eroded slower after new information is released.

After thinking about this, it became glaringly obvious why straight bets on game spreads seemed to provide a better opportunity for the bettor to win money as compared to player props or same-game parlays on player props — just like the profit margin of the online sportsbook showed (the lower their profit margin is, the better chance the bettor has).

The Flaws in Player Props

When you bet on the performance of a player, you run the risk of the player getting injured and leaving the game early. Well, if you placed a wager on the Under for the player, this could be a huge benefit to you. But if you placed a bet on the Over, this would negatively affect you. Versus placing a wager on the spread of a game, where the game will be played to completion regardless if an individual player gets hurt or not (the rare caveat being a player injury so severe that the rest of the game is canceled — Bills vs. Bengals — but a large number, if not all, sportsbooks canceled outstanding wagers on that game anyway).

When you place a wager on a player prop, you rely on external factors that may be out of the scope of your research, and same-game props may have correlations that do not seem obvious or intuitive that affect you adversely. However, when looked at closely, for all these particular events to occur, the true odds are far smaller than the prospective payout. In simple English, the bettor is not being fairly compensated reward-wise for the risk they are undertaking. Thus, long term, the bettor will be unprofitable.

For example, think of a game where you have an amazing receiver such as Vikings' star wide receiver Justin Jefferson, play a team with an average secondary on their best day, and that average secondary's best CB is out for the game. Naturally, an elite wide receiver like Justin Jefferson would have a huge advantage, and the natural intuitive wager to place would be on Jefferson's yards Over. But what if there are more variables that are not being considered? What if the Vikings' best offensive lineman is out for the game, and two other linemen are playing through severe injuries? And while the opposing defense's secondary is in shambles, what if they have an elite pass rusher playing without any major injuries?

Jefferson is arguably the best wide receiver in the game and has a favorable matchup. But it doesn't matter who you have at quarterback — if the offensive line is in shambles and up against tough competition, it's going to be hard for Jefferson to exploit his favorable matchup because the quarterback is struggling to have time to get him the ball.

Now let's say Jefferson's performance prevails despite this disadvantage his quarterback faces, and he performs exceedingly well — scoring not only once but twice extremely quickly. But simultaneously, you placed a parlay on the opposing team's running back to cover their yards Over because you realize the Vikings' run defense is below average, and this running back is above average in skill and yards per game league-wide.

It doesn't matter how good they are now, or how favorable their matchup is — if a team is down two touchdowns early, the majority of teams will slowly begin to abandon their run game, limiting the opportunity that elite running back had to exploit their matchup like Jefferson did.

So what all seemed favorable at first glance from a matchup perspective not only has risks that do not seem apparent — such as the quarterback's limited time to throw the ball with a shaky line and an opposing team having an elite pass rusher — but there's also the risk of events being correlated.

The scenario where both Jefferson and the opposing team's running back perform well exists, but because their performances can impact each other's opportunities, the stated payout does not compensate you for the increased risk (lower odds of both performing well).

Market Efficiency

This is a perfect segue to our third point.

The information on Jefferson's matchup advantage is consumed quickly by people, thus influencing his line in the betting markets, pushing it up. So not only has the true odds for Jefferson's performance not actually been reflected (remember, in this example, his quarterback is in an adverse position due to offensive line issues and tough defensive line competition), but the bettor is now paying for the most optimal scenario for Jefferson.

A keen observer at this point would say, "Well, how is this player prop market an efficient market then? If bettors are only looking at the matchup Jefferson has and ignoring the trouble the QB faces, now at a higher line for Jefferson, we can take the under!"

And the reality is, that observer is correct. It is not a completely efficient market for Jefferson in this example — the new line is based on the perceived advantage (it's far easier for casual fans and bettors to focus on Jefferson's advantage because he's a star WR with a large real-life and social media following, and pundits talking about it on podcasts and sports shows, as opposed to the situation the quarterback faces due to the offensive line).

At the end of the day, just how the fair value for a security is not a number to the third decimal place after discounting all future cash flows from now until judgment day at an appropriate interest rate, but instead a range. Wagers placed on events to occur based on the offered line have a fair range too. And while you can consider that in the above example, now Jefferson may be moving away from that range, and you can take the Under on his yards as that seems more enticing.

You can, however, do something better — you can weigh the importance of all factors that correlate to scoring and create an approximation of the predicted scoring range for both teams. See how they differ from the spread offered, and when the time comes, if there is a large disparity in the spread offered compared to the fair ranges of scoring, you can place a wager that you know you have an edge with.

A Practical Example

For example, let's say you decide to bypass betting on the individual player prop of Jefferson, and instead consider all factors that relate to scoring. You see that conservatively, from worst to best, the Vikings should score 13–17 points against the Bears, and similarly the Bears should score 14–20 points against the Vikings. The line offered is +7.5 Vikings.

You know that after making calculations with conservative estimates of performances of both offenses (you don't predict either to have career days in yards, scoring, etc.), and you do the same for the defenses, the worst case for the Vikings in the majority of scenarios is to lose by seven points. It may be in your advantage to place a wager on them because in your fair-value spectrum of predicted results, you have them winning the game by three (17–14) if their offense and defense play optimally, and at worst losing 20–13 if both perform poorly. Well, now the spread offered at +7.5 seems like a bargain!

How We Built Our System

Now you may agree that the above example and the action needed in that scenario seem logical. But the next logical questions are: how do you determine the range the team would score? The range of points they would allow? And what is considered a good bet to take among all games?

These are the fundamental questions behind betting on game spreads.

The reality is, every aspect has some weight toward winning and losing, and determining the weight of each aspect and counting it as such is key to valuation. Some aspects have very little weight in regard to winning — to the point they are practically negligible (for example, the color of cleats worn or the conference the opponent belongs to). Others have extremely heavy weights, such as players available at certain positions, their skill level, their health level, etc.

Valuing each aspect is a lot like valuing the pieces in a game of chess — some aspects are worth the weight of a pawn (1 point), and some are the weight of a queen (9 points).

After a tremendous amount of backtesting and testing large amounts of data to correlations to scoring and allowing points, we believe we have a pretty decent system that allows us to come out ahead at most standard game spreads and lines (-105 to -115 — that is, bet $105 to $115 to win $100), not only in the NFL but for the NBA as well.

Our record to date in the NFL, at the time of this writing, is 30–13, a win rate of nearly 70% with the average wager coming at -110. Our win rate in the NBA last year was slightly above 60% as well.

Our Philosophy

Our belief is that sports betting isn't just a science but an art — that temperament and swinging when the odds are in your favor play dramatic roles in your outcome as a bettor.

While there are AI betting algorithms out there, many of which claim alpha as well, we are skeptical of that approach. We believe AI is a tool that aids in processing large amounts of data quickly — but garbage in is just garbage out, in larger volumes and faster.

We don't believe in automated systems that can forecast the future better than the market because context matters, and there are far too many variables today that there isn't enough data on to consistently factor into training these systems.

For example, how can any system that collects large amounts of data and predicts outcomes for games recommend a point spread accurately when an NBA team playing has a star player out for the year and only five games left in the season? The reality is, plenty of NBA franchises play lineups that are less than optimal to win games to reduce their wins on the year and give themselves better odds in the NBA lottery.

The reality is, modeling that we perform — and that any automated process performs — is just a simulation that shows us one of many potential future realities. It does not show us exactly what is going to happen. It is our job to take all the context in the situation at hand and make decisions.

We do believe the day will come when there is an automated process that can account for unique scenarios like this and a handful of others that lack enough data to train it. It will probably come sooner than we hope — and later than those who lust after such a tool.

Where We Stand

In the meanwhile, my brother and I will be here — collecting our data, performing objective analysis, and keeping context in mind. Picking opportunities that we believe are mispriced and possess real value.

We hate modern-day handicappers — most of them are just cappers. While we don't have a plethora of pictures of winning bet slips on our social media page, or a rented chain or private jet pics, we do have a chart with our bets and winners.

Most bets fall in the spectrum of fair value. We don't really have an edge on those wagers, and personally, we don't place bets in those scenarios. We believe in placing large (in relation to starting capital) concentrated bets on our handful of best opportunities.

We count our record by our best bets, which we label. We refrain from providing guidance on bankroll management because, at the end of the day, people vary in risk tolerance. Some will place equal wagers across all predicted games, some only across our strongest convictions, and others will do something completely different.

We understand that — we just want our picks on record because we stand behind them and want them documented.

Closing Thoughts

The entire point of betting to become profitable is to have a system that is both profitable and repeatable — one that allows winnings to be compounded and scaled over time. Anybody online can post a winning bet slip while hiding a loser of the same or greater value to create the illusion of profitability.

In the past, we made bet sizes based on confidence, just like we did with securities. But we began keeping our wager sizes consistent this season — even when we believed a game opportunity was slightly better than others. We figured that with our win rate, we'd still make money — and that it would hurt more to have a single large loss eat into profits than it would feel good to make slightly more on a bigger win.

We hope you enjoy our platform as a tool to aid you in your journey, and ultimately, do your own due diligence before making your own decisions.