Pitching Matchup: Vance Worley (3-2, 3.00 ERA) vs. Drew Hutchinson (5-3, 4.66 ERA)
LV Money Line Open: TOR -125
LV Over / Under Open: 9.0
Sometimes I can't escape thinking about the Ludic Fallacy when I'm deciding the best play on a game. The term, coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book The Black Swan, is the idea that using mathematical models to predict future events - except in very specific scenarios like casino games - is largely fallacious. His argument hinges on three things: 1) it is impossible to possess all the information impacting the outcome 2) unknown variations within the data can have large impact on the outcome 3) models based on empirical data are flawed since they do not account for outcomes that have never happened (so-called "Black Swan" events). The first and second ideas are certainly true and exceptionally important in the sports betting realm, especially since Cantor Gaming has more, better information than everyone else and understands it more completely. The third idea is not entirely relevant to baseball though, since baseball is basically a Markov chain where the individual probabilistic elements can be fairly well calculated. Certainly serious disasters would not be part of the any baseball simulation model*, but they're much less relevant than say trying to empirically model how an asteroid impact would affect the stock market.
If sports betting was about the individual better versus Cantor Gaming, I would completely agree that the idea of any individual beating the system over any extended length of time is extremely improbable. As I said, CG has the best information and some of the smartest people in the business, I wouldn't even bet on myself to beat them consistently. But it isn't all about beating Vegas, since once the opening line is set it is the public (market) who moves the line. So the win consistently, you don't have to be smarter than CG, you have to be smarter than the market. That too is a difficult proposition, as sports betting markets are reasonably efficient, and through aggregate account for far more information than Midas can. But markets aren't always efficient, and they can be affected by perception whereas models are not. Sometimes perception informs reality, but sometimes not. If you read me frequently, I like to talk about how perception and bias are being priced in the market, and how I feel that gives me an opportunity to exploit that inefficiency.
If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm referring to what happened last night. Now basing any opinion on an N of 1 is terribly bad policy, but many of the effects I've been discussing were in play last night. Joe Blanton was stringing together bad game after bad game and Scott Diamond was looking like a left handed Maddux-lite in 2012. But as I said in the post yesterday, that small sample was largely ignored by the simulator, whereas the market seemed to be pricing that recent history into the line. I should have taken advantage of the opportunity to agree with the simulator's assertion that the Phils were a strong play, but I didn't. Hopefully next time I will.
If you're disappointed I haven't spent any time addressing tonight's game, it's because the simulator doesn't see a bet on either team as a good proposition. It has PHI +117 as barely a 1% expected return, which is not nearly what I'm looking for when deciding to recommend a game. Enjoy staying out of this one.
Go Phils!
*I'm sure Game 3 of the 1989 World Series comes to mind when I make this statement, but the game was temporarily suspended and then resumed 5 days later. I'm not sure whether it had any impact on the outcome of Game 3 - or the series - as the Athletics won every game in that series by at least 3 runs. Some may argue that the Giants were adversely affected by the quake, but in fact the Giants scored as many runs in Game 3 as they did in the other three games combined
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