‘Logic of Sports Betting’ authors offer some tips

Ed Miller and Matthew Davidow, the co-founders of the startup Deck Prism Sports, released a book last year called “The Logic of Sports Betting,” which tries to help bettors gain a clearer understanding of the industry, the market and what it takes to win.

Here are a few lessons from the book:

Use the whole “attack surface”

It’s difficult for sportsbooks to accurately price and manage the hundreds of bets that are available every day.

“The most important advantage of the player is that you have a whole menu of things that you can bet on at any one time,” Davidow said.

One common edge for bettors would be to look at a game in which the spread or total has moved and see if the players props or other derivatives (first-quarter, first-half bets) for that game have moved along with it.

“If you can identify where that information applies to a different bet that didn’t move, you can 100 percent make a profit,” Miller said.

Bet angles, not trends

Trends are a hallmark of many handicappers, especially those who sell picks.

An example might be: “Southeastern Conference teams favored by 14 or more points that are coming off a nonconference loss are 22-9 against the spread.”

That doesn’t really tell you anything useful, Miller said. A betting angle is something that is predictable, quantifiable and unaccounted for in the line. In other words, you have to be able to plausibly explain why one thing leads to the other.

Betting against teams that had to travel a long distance was once a useful angle before it became widely known, Miller said.

Most of the explanations for trends are “gobbledygook,” he said.

“They found the trend first and then they made up a story to fit it,” Miller said.

Limit live betting mostly to timeouts

Sportsbooks already delay the approval of most in-game wagers for several seconds. If a bettor is watching a broadcast that is delayed by a few more seconds, they are at an even bigger disadvantage.

Deck Prism offers play-by-play odds throughout games, but bettors should be aware that they might not have all the information a sportsbook has from its data feed about a game when a new live line goes up.

“Certainly the safest thing is always to wait for a timeout,” Miller said.

Some parlays are OK (but beware)

Some quasi-knowledgeable bettors will advise people to never bet parlays. But they can be a powerful tool, Miller said — provided that you can make good bets in the first place.

Standard two- and three-team parlays pay roughly what their odds imply, and even some other off-the-board parlays have fair payouts, Miller said.

The key caveat: If you are making losing bets, you will lose your money much faster by betting parlays.

“If you make good bets, then betting more makes you more money,” Miller said. “If you make bad bets, then betting more loses you more money. That’s really all it is.”

Contact Jim Barnes at jbarnes@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0277. Follow @JimBarnesLV on Twitter.