A good sports betting column should be backed by a profitable gambler with a proven track record. It should offer picks generated by a sophisticated and conceptually sound model. Most importantly, it should treat the subject with the seriousness it warrants.

This is not that column.

Instead, this will be an off-beat look at the sports betting industry-- why Vegas keeps winning, why gambling advice is almost certainly not worth the money, and the structural reasons why even if a bettor were profitable, anything they wrote would be unlikely to make their readers net profitable, too.

While we're at it, we'll discuss ways to minimize Vegas' edge and make recreational betting more fun, explain how to gain an advantage in your office pick pools, preview games through an offbeat lens (with picks guaranteed to be no worse than chance), and tackle various other Odds and Ends along the way.

Tracking the Unders

In 2022 and 2023, mass-betting the unders was incredibly profitable over the first 6 weeks and essentially just broke even after that. I hypothesized this year that maybe all we needed to do to make a killing was to start our "mass-bet the unders" strategy earlier in the season. Unders finished 6-7-1 last week, cooling to 33-28-1 since we started tracking.

That's still technically a profitable winning percentage. If you put $10 on the under in every game (and you saw the exact same lines I saw and got all action at -110), you'd have lost $15.45 last week, but you'd be up an even $20 for the season. (Once again, briefly consider quitting while you're still ahead.)

I should amend myself: it's a profitable winning percentage as long as you're using a decent bankroll management strategy. If you were instead using the "snowball" approach-- starting with $160, rolling over all wins and losses, and devoting an equal percentage of your remaining bankroll to each bet-- last week wiped out the last of your gains. (Technically, it would have left you with a $0.42 loss, sitting at $159.58.)

Last week, we talked about the importance of bet-sizing and how overcommitting-- even to a profitable bet-- could turn long-run gains into losses. It's cool to see that playing out in real time. (Unless you were actually following that strategy, in which case it's probably less cool.)

Lines And Unders Are Not All The Action There Is.

Most gambling content on the internet and most action taken by sportsbooks revolves around point spreads, where the books assign a handicap to a team, and if their final score (plus or minus the handicap) is higher than their opponent's, the bet pays out. For instance, if the Eagles play the Giants and the "line" is Philadelphia -5.5, then if the Eagles win by 6 or more, they "cover the spread" (because 6 points is big enough that you can subtract 5.5, the handicap, and the Eagles are still ahead), while if they win by 5 or less (or lose outright), then the handicap is greater than the margin and a bet on the Eagles against the spread will lose.

Point spreads are conceptually pretty cool. The sportsbooks are essentially telling us, "We think this team is X points better than that team (given the location of the game-- there's always a 'home field advantage' cooked into the line, too)." And that's great content; power rankings are some of the most popular articles on football, and betting lines are essentially just power rankings with millions of dollars at stake.

They're also a decent entry point into the world of sports betting because the risk and reward are fairly balanced. For the most part, if you bet $100 on a point spread, you stand to gain $100 if you win and lose $100 if you lose. (More or less; we discussed in Week 1 how the book can shade bets to slightly favor one side of the line or the other, and of course, books take a vigorish-- or percentage of everything that gets bet-- for their services.)

But point spreads are not the only way to bet on NFL outcomes. You can also bet something called the "moneyline", where you just pick which team will win the game (regardless of final score).

Why Care About Moneylines?

Moneylines have a lot of points in their favor. They're much easier to understand and explain, for one, and they greatly simplify rooting interests at the end of the game. We've seen plenty of examples of teams changing their behavior late in lopsided games-- whether it's kneeling the ball rather than going for a score or switching to a prevent defense and giving up a touchdown to bleed down the clock.

When you bet on spreads, this can lead to moments that feel pretty terrible. Perhaps the team you bet on was in control all game before giving up a meaningless score as time expired and as a result, your bet loses. In betting parlance, this is called a "backdoor cover"-- a situation where the losing team gets enough easy points to cover the spread simply because the winning team has guaranteed their victory and no longer cares about the remaining plays. Perhaps they've pulled their starters, perhaps they're playing in a prevent defense, or perhaps they're simply no longer contesting plays as vigorously since the win is already assured.

Spread bettors hate backdoor covers (when they've picked the favorite, at least; every winning bet that becomes a loser because of a backdoor cover corresponds to a losing bet that becomes a winner, but you don't hear as much complaining from those who snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.) But there's no such thing as a "backdoor cover" when you're betting moneylines. Points only matter if they matter, and any scoring that doesn't impact the outcome of the game is superfluous.

The drawback of moneylines is that the amount you stand to lose and the amount you stand to gain are no longer in balance, and your odds of winning are no longer roughly 50/50. Moneylines work the same way that sportsbooks shade odds on point spreads: they'll list a favorite as "-XXX" and the underdog as "+XXX", where the "-" signifies that you must wager that much in order to win $100 while the "+" signifies if you wager $100, you stand to win that much. But while these values tend to range from +100 to -120 for spreads (representing bets that are close to 50/50 affairs), they can vary by much more for moneylines

A typical 5.5 point spread might translate to moneylines of -260 for the favorite and +200 for the underdog, which means if you wager $260 on the Eagles, you stand to win $100 more, and if you wager $100 on the Giants, you stand to win $200 more.

Decoding The Odds

If you find the way the "+" and "-" operate in betting odds a bit confusing, I sometimes find it helpful to convert everything to "amount paid out on a $100 bet". The "+" numbers are already in this format, and the "-" numbers can be converted by dividing them into $100. In this case, -260 odds pays out 100/260 or $38.50 on a $100 bet. Books could easily list the Giants' hypothetical odds at +200 and the Eagles' hypothetical odds at +38.50, which would be easier to understand, but the potential for confusion is generally a feature for sportsbooks, not a bug.

Each point spread and moneyline implies a certain percentage chance of winning. For instance, a spread of +5.5 and a moneyline split of +200 / -260 implies the favorite has about a 69% chance of winning while the underdog has about a 31% chance. If the sportsbooks take $100 on the Eagles and $100 on the Giants, that means there's a 69% chance that they pay out $138.50 (because the Eagles win) and a 31% chance they pay out $300 (because the Giants win-- remember, when you win you get your initial $100 back in addition to your winnings).

The book's expected payout on that bet is about $188.56 (69% * $138.50 + 31% * $300). Notice that the books take in $200 but expect to pay out $188.56, which means their expected vig in this hypothetical is around 6% of the amount bet. That's the fee they're taking for the service of providing the bet.

Now, maybe you think all of this is confusing or complicated. And you're right. That's the point. Vegas wants to make the vig invisible so you forget you're paying it. People are more likely to buy something when they don't understand what it really costs.

(This is why so many services create their own fake currency with weird conversion rates. Arcades and carnivals are especially notorious for this. A prize might cost 120 tickets, you might average 20 tickets per play on a game that costs 4.4 credits, and you might buy 36 credits for $20. All of the weird values and layered conversions are there to prevent you from doing the mental math and realizing that you just spent nearly $15 to "win" some novelty rubber dog poo. Sports betting is kind of like that but with fewer flashing lights and ringing bells, and also, the rubber dog poo is more of a metaphor.)

The important thing to remember is that over a large enough sample, Vegas always wins, but it usually always wins about the same amount. Assume that over time, you're going to lose 5-10% of the money you wager, consider that the "price" of the entertainment you are purchasing, and then feel free to bet whichever you enjoy more between spreads or totals or moneylines, knowing that none is inherently superior to the others.

Lines I'm Seeing

Last week was a good one for us as we correctly identified the hungrier team in both of our Motivation Differential picks of the week. Remember, betting is 50% skill and 50% luck. When we win, that's all skill. When we lose, that's just bad luck.

Washington (+6.5) at Baltimore

Remember that stuff earlier this year about how Cleveland was Tired Of Losing and Ready to Do Something About It? I thought at the time that I was wrong about that, but it turns out the analysis was sound, I just applied it to the wrong team. It's not the Browns who have Had It Up To Here With Losing, it's the Commanders. And this week they'll carry that chip on their shoulder into Baltimore, where they'll walk out with a victory. Or maybe just a smaller-than-expected loss, which is still a Moral Victory.

New England (+6.5) vs. Houston

Teams are never quite as dangerous as they are when it's Time To Make a Change. Sure, that usually means they've been pretty awful. But it also means they've been Backed Into a Corner and it's now Them Against the World.

Drake Maye may not have been able to beat out Jacoby Brissett for the QB job to start the season, and New England's offense may rank 31st in both points scored and yards gained to this point, but There's Nowhere To Go From Here But Up.

The Other Side of the Pillow Lock of the Week

Long-time followers know by now that the Other Side of the Pillow Lock of the Week is literally undefeated; last week, the Chiefs tacked another win onto its winning streak (bringing its winning streak to one).

Jacksonville (+1.5) at Chicago

It seems like just last week that Jacksonville was the last winless team left in the league, and now the pseudorandom number generator is picking them as the best bet of the week. The Jaguars have certainly come a long way. There's reasons to be skeptical of Chicago's 3-2 start-- not least among them the fact that what was functionally a dice roll happened to go against them. Is that the sort of thing that would happen by chance alone? Of course not; we'll take the Jaguars and the points.