It was great having football back. The 49ers and Chiefs continue to dominate, the Raiders, Jets, and Donkeys continue to disappoint.
I only made two picks last week. The Raiders money line was a dud, but my parlay of the Steelers money line with the under was a big hit. Unfortunately, freebitcoin hasn't put any NFL games up, yet. Hopefully they get around to it at some point.
I really like this type of parlay. The house treats outcomes as though they're independent, but I don't think that makes sense. In the event of a Steelers' win, the under was far more likely than the over, because their offense stinks and the game was likely a defensive slog.
In line with that thinking, I made two parlays this week:
  1. Raiders money line with the under (7:1): yes, I'm going back to the Raiders. They're probably going to lose, but if they win, it will be because of awesome defense.
  2. Bengals money line with the over (4.5:1): Maybe Joe Burrow stinks this season, but maybe the Bengals had been looking ahead to KC. The Chiefs offense is phenomenal again, so the Bengals are only likely to win if this turns into a shootout.
Are there any odds you're excited about (doesn't have to be football)?
I was disappointed that freebitco.in didn't have week 1 games. Hopefully at some point this season.
I am fiddling with this fan duel account I signed up for because they essentially gave me $50 for free as they had a promotion for a prop bet on Mahomes getting 1+ plus completion Thursday. Was free money unless he got hurt on the first series like Rodgers did last year. Anyways, they do these promotional parlays and profit boosts and all this crazy stuff to try to get you addicted. I am trying to extract every penny I can from those rat bastards this season by only playing their promotions, odds boosts and freebies etc. I will let you know by end of season how I am doing. Currently I have turned my $50 deposit into $135.
Whatever profit I have at the end of the season I will sweep into Bitcoin. I am going to be the Microstrategy of degen sports gambling.
reply
You also inspired me to join. I deposited $30 and have won ~$500 using the $200 in bonus bets. Got lucky with some parlays on the PHI GB matchup.
This is my first experience on one of these apps so I’m still learning a lot
Edit: to clarify, I only wagered $5 of my own money to get the bonus bets, then withdrew the rest. I’ve withdrawn my original deposit and am playing with house money only now
reply
That's amazing!
I also withdrew my original deposit at freebitcoin and am now playing with house money. It's a nice spot to be in.
reply
Wow you won quite a bit.
reply
Yea I am shocked lol
reply
Apparently you are the MSTR of degen sports gambling and I am a knock off like Metaplanet. I was feeling good about my 85 dollars profit in five days and you are sitting at $470.
reply
Don’t worry, my hot streak won’t last, perhaps already ended. Many small wagers lost on Sunday
reply
100 sats \ 1 reply \ @grayruby 10 Sep
I am going to try to be very shrewd about what I am betting. I want to exploit as much of the free stuff, boosts etc they give me.
reply
Me too, that’s my goal. Make the most out of the opportunity with no financial cost to me. It also just makes more games more interesting, which is neat
I vaguely recall that freebitcoin didn't have NFL games right away last year either.
It's crazy that them and Nitro are basically the best we've got (cc: @ek).
reply
It's too bad that other lightning project doesn't seem to be going anywhere. That looked promising. Maybe @ek should take over that project. How much do you need sir?
reply
71 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 10 Sep
All I need is time and focus, unfortunately not buyable with sats yet 👀
reply
87 sats \ 3 replies \ @ek 10 Sep
These NFL games you're talking about, would that basically just be "Will team X win game Y?"? So I could just create a market on delphi.market, and people can bet on yes or no with the price determined by an automated market maker? Asking, because that's what I am getting close to. I've added charts to markets recently.
reply
That's the place to start, but there's no limit to how many outcomes degenerates will want to wager on.
reply
76 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 10 Sep
Fortunately LMSR scales to infinite outcomes
reply
It amazes me to see the options on platforms like FanDuel and DraftKings. So many things to wager on.
reply
90 sats \ 1 reply \ @siggy47 11 Sep
I like your plan. I'm steering clear of fan duel, because I tend to get obsessive and I want to keep paying the electric bill. If you're more in control of yourself, you can do well with all of their promotions, according to a friend of mine. (Although I think he's a closet degen)
reply
I can definitely see how easily they get people hooked they are always offering you some new promotion or some free spin to encourage you to go into the app every day.
reply
In Texas you can only play daily fantasy. Sleeper app is actually one of the best for parlay betting on player stats. Between that and playing some Best ball on draft kings / drafters it’s fun to throw around $20 cuck bucks a week
reply
92 sats \ 10 replies \ @ken 10 Sep
I'm working on a machine learning model to forecast the win probability of NFL games. These are my predictions for this week. This is totally a work in progress and should NOT be used to make bets!
Team 1Team 1, Model OddsTeam 2Team 2, Model Odds
Buffalo Bills-117Miami Dolphins+117
Los Angeles Chargers-257Carolina Panthers+257
Dallas Cowboys-270New Orleans Saints+270
Detroit Lions-300Tampa Bay Buccaneers+300
Green Bay Packers-113Indianapolis Colts+113
Cleveland Browns-163Jacksonville Jaguars+163
San Francisco 49ers-426Minnesota Vikings+426
Seattle Seahawks-355New England Patriots+355
New York Jets-122Tennessee Titans+122
Baltimore Ravens-355Las Vegas Raiders+355
New York Giants-150Washington Commanders+150
Los Angeles Rams-426Arizona Cardinals+426
Pittsburgh Steelers-194Denver Broncos+194
Cincinnati Bengals-100Kansas City Chiefs+100
Houston Texans-194Chicago Bears+194
Philadelphia Eagles-233Atlanta Falcons+233
reply
Interesting. You do have a few divergences from the odds.
reply
87 sats \ 3 replies \ @ken 10 Sep
I will mention that I'm using 2023 end-of-season statistics to generate the odds (until I have at least a few weeks of 2024 data). So if the team went through significant change, the odds could be way off.
reply
Are you familiar with the Elo model 538 used to use? The way they handled that is by moving each team partway back towards the mean from where they ended the previous season.
reply
48 sats \ 1 reply \ @ken 11 Sep
Elo model
Thanks, I've never heard of this! That's an interesting approach.
reply
I know they added a bunch of bells and whistles to it over the years, but I liked the simplicity of the initial model. The problem with simplicity is that it performs really poorly around major personnel changes.
reply
What are your inputs for the model?
reply
51 sats \ 3 replies \ @ken 10 Sep
Most of the inputs come from Pro Football Reference. I basically use a bunch of general performance indicators (win/loss ratio, total points scored, etc) along with offensive/defensive performance data (passing, rushing, penalities, etc) and do a binary classification.
I trained the model using statistics from every game since 2004.
reply
Neat. I've been wanting to do something similar to this for basketball (and eventually baseball, hockey, soccer, etc.).
Was the data fairly accessible?
I didn't get very far in looking into it, but it seemed like the gamelogs were behind a paywall.
reply
38 sats \ 1 reply \ @ken 11 Sep
I've built a similar model for NCAA basketball, and it looks like professional basketball data is available:
The basic data can be scraped from the tables for free. Deeper information might be behind a paywall, but I think you could create a basic model from the data that is freely available.
reply
Thanks. I only actually need the game logs and I'll eventually want to integrate college and international into the model.
reply
I don't know how fantasy points are scored but clearly they should be scored by PFF grades.
reply
🤣🤣 you might wanna work that out for week 2. I enjoyed watching the head to head between you and @Undisciplined it seemed quite back and forth for a while before UD started to pull ahead.
reply
It was a fun first round. I was fortunate that SF's running game was so dominant and they didn't need Purdy to pass a ton.
reply
Or CMC to be in it shakes fist 🤣
reply
Short week. I wouldn't be surprised if they give CMC another week off since they have a road division game in week 3. Although I am not sure you can count LA as a road game since half the stadium is 49ers fans when they play there.
reply
And the other half are chargers fans 😜
Yeah I can see them resting him again. Mason filled in more than adequately, I wouldn't be in any rush to bring CMC back.
reply
Yeah. They are thinking long term. They don't want to lose him for a large portion of the season. We will see. I think even if he does come back he might split snaps with Mason or even some two back sets where CMC might be a decoy or get used in the pass game while Mason takes on the power running and blocking duties.
reply
Yeah, what reliable metric wouldn't have Sam Darnold over Patrick Mahomes?
It's a poor craftsman who blames his tools.
reply
Darnold was pretty good this week but it is funny to see. We will see what our friend Sam can do this week when @Public_N_M_E's Vikings play a real team.
reply
Slinging Sammy Darnold! Let's gooooo!
He looked good, calm, poised and confident. I think he makes a really serviceable bridge QB for this year and I hope he continues to perform at a decent level and get paid somewhere.
reply
He didn't play much as a backup with the 49ers last year but he was pretty good when he did play. I think the time in SF working with Brian Griese and the 49ers system was probably good for him. Not sure he is a viable #1 QB long term but a decent fill in. Let's see what he is made of this week.
reply
Yeah I think he's benefited from the 9ers coaching staff. And I think KOC is also a really good coach who's able to scheme to his QBs strengths and being out the best in them. I think Sam will have a fine season, but I'm not convinced he's the long term solution.
reply
Oh PFF, their grading is so... Pinch of salt comes to mind.
reply
Great keep updating us
reply