I'm not much of a gambler, and here's why: the thrill of the idea that I could win money is completely overshadowed by the knowledge that I will lose money. I don't like pissing away money. Pissing away money for something as pointless as a card game or whatever makes me feel fucking awful, like I want to throw up. And these games are designed to take your money. If that weren't a true fact, then casinos wouldn't exist.
I guess sports betting is a little different? But even then, I don't like the idea of losing money, and being from Philadelphia, I have been raised to believe that every team I ever want to win will in fact lose. It hurts enough when the Phillies lose, so I'd rather not double down my misery by losing money over it too.
The only time I would ever bet BIG is if, ya know, I fucking knew I was going to win. Unless I'm planning on participating in some Black Sox-esque scheme in which I have insider knowledge on a team taking a dive or some devious shit like that, such a situation is not going to happen too often. We love sports because anything can happen at any time.
And plus, sports betting is designed so that the more likely it is that the favorite will win, the more paltry your winnings will be. I'm typing this before the AFC Championship game, so let's look to that Bills vs. Chiefs match-up for examples on how the betting odds set typically. Okay, so the Chiefs are the favorite, and the Bills are the underdog. It's not a complete mismatch—it's the championship game after all—but the Chiefs, as the defending champions, do have a slight upper hand, and the betting odds reflect that. The money line is:
Bills: +150
Chiefs: -175
To put simply, if you put $100 on the Bills and they win, you net a profit of $150 (so $250 total). That's what a plus sign means. The minus sign works in the opposite direction—if you put down $175 on the Chiefs and they win, you net a profit of $100 (so $275 total). You win more money by betting on the Bills because there is less of a chance of the Bills winning. Pretty simple. (Also simplified in this blog post by the fact that we are ignoring "points against the spread," which is a different thing—look, if you're really interested in learning about sports betting, there are better places to go than Puke on Your Birthday.)
Now, those odds are not simply determined by the strengths/weaknesses of each team. They are also affected by previous bets made on the game. The odds change over time because of this. Say that the Chiefs were -175 at the beginning of the week, but for five days, betters placed nothing but bets on the Bills, because, I dunno, people love the Bills maybe? So anyway, the more bets placed on the underdog Bills, the more level the odds might become. Maybe the Chiefs drop to -150 or -125. Bookies adjust the odds to maximize their own profits. If everyone is betting on the Bills, and the Bills win, then the bookie is out of luck. So they make betting on the Chiefs more alluring. I'm sure there is a whole mathematical science behind calculating the odds, but again, you're reading Puke on Your Birthday. C'mon. (I should also say at this point that I don't know if I'm using terms like "odds" and "bookie" and so on correctly here, but you get what you pay for here on this blog.)
But my point in bringing this up is that there could theoretically be a lopsided match-up whose odds swing from out of control to practically evenly matched simply because of the bets already made on the match. Here's a made-up example of a money line for a hypothetical random Week 13 football match between a great team and a terrible team:
Team A: -8000
Team B: +2000
Okay, what we know is that betting $8000 on Team A nets you a pathetic $100, and betting $100 on Team B would win you a wild $2000. These are odds for a match-up that is so unbalanced that it might as well not even happen. But so think about the position a bookie is in. How do you get people to still put money on the game? You know that there are a ton of people who are absolutely willing to put like $10 on even an incredible longshot, if the payoff is gonna be 20x the amount put down. Say ten suckers bet $20 on Team B. That's $400 directly into the bookies pocket, because TEAM B IS NOT GOING TO WIN.
And what of the people betting on Team A? Don't they get their money? Well, yes, theoretically. However, the odds are set so that you have to be in a very unique position to want to put down money in the first place. Imagine putting $8000 of your own money down just to win $100 from the deal. The bookie is imagining that no one is going to be betting on Team A with that money line. If the bets were a little less extreme, then who knows, maybe people are gonna start putting large amounts of money down for smaller but nevertheless ASSURED wins.
One final piece to this before we bring the theoretical into the real world (and explain to you why I'm even typing all of this). Now say that, instead of ten suckers, there are a thousand suckers who dropped $100 each on Team B. That's a lot of money in the bookie's pocket now, and maybe he's getting a little nervous, like, what if Team B does the impossible and actually wins this?! Then he's fucked. So at this point, the odds are starting to get adjusted. Maybe for a little bit, Team A is gonna be set at -500, and a bunch of people take him up on those odds now that they are a little closer to earth. Sure, that's more money being paid out when Team A does eventually win, but he already got so much money from the people who bet on the losing Team B that it's not too much of a hit. And, if the miraculous happens, and Team B wins, then at least he took some money from people betting on the choke artist Team A while he could to even it out.
It's this betting on the favorites, the Team As of the world, that intrigues me these days. Imagine know without a shadow of a doubt that a particular team or athlete is going to win—it happens!—and placing a large amount of money on that sure-fire win to earn what, yes, amounts to pocket change, but still is something that you didn't have prior to the match. Even with those -8000 odds, imagine having $8 million and placing it on Team A. You'd still win $100,000! That's meager compared to the money you clearly already have in your bank account, but you're still printing money.
However, this is forgetting about the fact that the odds change over time, approaching zero based on the other bets being made. Depending on the context of the match-up, there are always going to be a certain amount of idiots placing money on a sure loss—think about how many people buy Powerball tickets every week, with odds that are skewed past the point of infinity—and so those idiots are going to be affecting the money line. So the person with $8 million in his pocket might be wise to wait a few days or weeks or whatever, wait till the money line becomes more reasonable, and then place the sure-fire bet. Maximize your profits and all that.
Yeesh, sorry. I've never been skillful at getting right to the point while blogging. Finally, we arrive—my point is that there is currently a sure-fire bet out there, and it might be time to put my money where my blog mouth is, and place a large amount of money on it to win a small amount of money, since the real-world odds of an upset are so incredibly unlikely that I'd be comfortable placing my money on it. Yes, I am talking about this stupid fucking boxing match involving a YouTube star and Floyd Mayweather.
I don't even know why I know about this, it's not like I follow boxing or anything like that. I probably read about it on AVClub since Logan Paul is the jabroni offering himself up to Mayweather in an exhibition match, and Paul's influence, unfortunately, reaches past the sports world and into the pop culture entertainment world. But anyway, Paul has lost the only boxing match he's ever been in, and Mayweather is 50-0 all time, so even a stupid boxing-ignorant motherfucker like myself can tell you that Mayweather will win. The chances of Paul winning are so close to zero that they basically don't exist.
But there are people willing to bet on such a match, and so, bookies have to set the odds. I looked it up a month or so ago to check what the odds were, and it was something like -5000 for Mayweather, and +775 for Paul, something like that. Just ridiculous odds. Odds not worth betting on—I might be able to scrounge up $5000, but it's not worth it to win $100 for my efforts.
Let's think back to the last sure-fire bet in the boxing world. Puke on Your Birthday actually wrote about it, surprisingly—it was in the context of Joe's New Summer—and I'm talking about Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor. Looking at archival odds, it appears that the money line opened at -2500 for Mayweather, which is still ridiculous, though closer than -5000. But here's the thing—a lot of fucking morons bet on McGregor, to the point that odds on Mayweather were down to like -375 right before the match. Which is fucking absurd in its own right—absurd because there was a 100% CHANCE THAT MAYWEATHER WOULD WIN. Why not bet on him at that point? $2500 bets for $100 might not be worth it, but $375 bets for $100? Absolutely.
In my opinion, anyway, and that's what I've been mulling over for the past month or so, about how and when to put money on Mayweather for his upcoming bout against one of the most noxious YouTube bros on the internet. It doesn't matter that I'm not making huge sums of money, because no matter how much I put down, I'm winning some money. I'm not saying that Floyd Mayweather is going to win because "I know in my gut" or whatever fucking logic a typical degenerate sports gambler uses to justify bets in their own minds, I'm saying it because there is literally no chance that Floyd Mayweather is going to lose. There is no universe in which he loses. Just fucking none. You might not be able to find another high-profile sports event in the history of modern civilization as fail-safe as this one to bet on.
I mean, the only question is when, right? Because like I said, it's not like I have tens of thousands of dollars lying around. I could scrape together a few thousand, maybe five (depending on whether we decide to take the plunge on a minivan in the meantime), so I want to maximize how much I'm getting back. Almost as sure as I am about Mayweather's victory, I'm sure of the fact that there are thousands of young white bozo males who worship Logan Paul and will put money on him, dropping that money line to a respectable level. If the line started at -5000, I'm hoping that at some point it can drop to -500 or so, and I can rake in about $1000 in winnings—and again, these winnings are assured.
So of course I type all this bullshit up and perform a Google search to check the latest odds, see if they changed since I last checked a month ago, and... the match has been postponed. Jesus christ. I mean, I couldn't care less about Logan goddamn Paul and Floyd domestic abuser Mayweather, but I just want my money.
Why was it postponed? Speculation is that there was a lack of interest in the event. Which... makes sense. I mean, if we allow ourselves to see the forest around the tree for a moment here: Why would anyone actually want to pay to see this sporting event on PPV? Like I said at the very top, we watch sports because there's an understanding that, no matter the odds, pretty much anything can happen. And if the whole idea of this match existing and there being no chance of one of the participants winning, then that kind of defeats the purpose of the match in the first place.
I suppose this whole exercise was me putting faith in the sheer stupidity of boxing fans and Logan Paul fans. I was assuming that people that watch boxing and people that care about Logan Paul(?!) were going to ignore the fact that this match-up is unwinnable for one side, and I was planning on taking advantage of their willful ignorance. I have underestimated them, it seems.
So it looks like I won't be able to make any easy money on February 20th. The event has so far not been rescheduled, and honestly, it probably won't happen at all. But if it does, and if Mayweather's line dips below like -750 before the match-up, then I will be there with a few grand, hoping to cash in on the biggest mismatch in sports history.
And if and when it finally does happen, I'm sure that by writing all this and making all these assurances and jinxing the fuck out of it, I have guaranteed the fact Mayweather is being pressed by the mob and will take a dive in the sixth round and I'll lose my life savings over a goddamn boxing match, but WE'LL SEE!!!
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