Basketball Teasers - Massively -EV
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If books aren't getting any action on basketball teasers then it is too bad someone doesn't have the balls to come up with a better teaser for the player. Say 5.5 point two-team teasers at -110 in the NBA (assuming that is still positive EV for the book). I imagine an offshore book could have gotten some new business with those odds.
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I did some rudimentary research and it seems like BBall teasers are so massively -EV that someone really should look into offering more points. They can then tout that they have the best basketball teasers anywhere, bringing in all kinds of suckers who don't realize how bad these bets are.
I looked at data from Massey's computer ranking site. The rankings he shows to the public now are useless as far as betting goes (because someone apparantely pays him for exclusive access to his margin of victory determined power ratings/predictions). He also no longer shows a calculated home court advantage, so the data is a little old, but it should still be instructive.
NBA (year/# of games/calculated worth of home court advantage in pts/winning pct of home team/average total score)
2005 1314 3.17 pts 60.244% 194.37
2004 1273 3.89 pts 62.156% 186.16
2003 1277 3.77 pts 62.866% 190.29
2002 1260 3.17 pts 63.840% 190.82
2001 1260 2.91 pts 59.683% 189.49
WNBA
2004 240 3.28 pts 61.667% 133.37
2003 256 4.23 pts 62.891% 136.31
2002 273 2.96 pts 60.806% 135.68
2001 274 2.82 pts 60.079% 131.11
2000 272 3.81 pts 60.294% 137.70
NCAA (~330 teams were tracked for each of these years)
2005 4778 4.07 pts 67.252% 137.40
2004 4674 4.09 pts 66.285% 138.01
2003 4722 4.20 pts 66.950% 139.56
2002 4850 4.46 pts 66.682% 141.78
2001 4724 4.56 pts 67.057% 142.07
2000 4707 4.20 pts 66.611% 140.34
Let's take the case where you are teasing teams down from 4 pt favs to pick 'em. In NCAA games, it looks like that 4 pts should give you abut a 67% winning pct (we are assuming the line is efficient). The chance of winning both games would be about 45%. At even money payout, you can see how -EV this is. Two things strike me as odd. Number one, most books don't even pay even money, but payout at -110! Secondly, you are getting an even worse deal if you tease an NBA or WBNA game.
Obviously, I have ignored the key numbers theory completely. Key numbers are not nearly as important in BBall as in football, so I don't think it would change much anyway.
Also, it could still possibly be +EV to tease NCAA games where the total is very low (say less than 110), but I doubt it.
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