Joffe’s Lessons from Bet Labs: SUCK IT LOSERS MY THEORY WORKS

Growing up, baseball was my least favorite sport. It's just too slow compared to hockey, my first love. So when I interned for NBC Sports one summer I found myself in a tough spot because that’s literally all there was.

Our job was to log baseball games so that the editor and producer could use our notes to put together the highlights. Well, being in L.A., the Dodgers were the most important team to log and having a big mouth, I eagerly raised my hand to log the game on the first day. I’m watching the game and getting all kinds of excited and when asked how it was going I proclaimed, “It’s great! There’s so many home runs!”

Cut to 10:30 and I get called in to the editing bay and the producer says, “Lauren, you say there’s all these home runs but we aren’t seeing them?” So they played the tape and I said, “There! There’s one!” The producer and editor looked down and shook their heads and said, “Lauren, he came home and scored a run, that’s not a home run.” And THAT was the last day I logged a Dodgers game that summer.

Thankfully I’ve come a long way since. I’m still not a baseball expert, but I think my betting is getting better thanks to my newest obsession: Bet Labs.

A Profitable WNBA System with Two Weekend Matches

Read now

One thing I’m learning as a bettor is that logic is nice but it won’t necessarily win you money. I’m having a hard time coming to terms with this, but the more I dig into BetLabs, the more apparent it’s becoming.

If I said, “There is a game coming up where both starting pitchers are not good (ERA 4.0 or worse) and both teams average more than four runs per game," logic tells you that game has a pretty good chance to go over 8 runs. I would take the over 100/100 times.

Well, thanks to BetLabs I’ve discovered that actually, the game is more likely to go under. This makes no sense to me, but it’s true. The data supports it. When I tell you this has kept me up at nights, I mean it.

One of the great benefits of working for The Action Network is having access to a huge amount of data. And when you have loads of data, you can test any theory with four clicks of a button.

I’m the queen of big dog bets, right? My theory being “it only takes one win to make it worth it." (Thank you, Howard University football — helmets pictured above.) Well folks, I now have the data to BACK THAT UP. Sorta. Starting in 2006, if you bet $100 on every +5000 dog or worse in college football, you’d be up a whopping $9,250. Seriously. And that's with a 4-169 straight-up record. I HAVE THE PROOF. Now mind you, you’d need the bankroll to commit to it — and also patience, because if you started this theory in 2006 your first win wouldn’t have come until 2015.

I mean … look at this graph:

So yeah, you’d really have to do as the Sixers do — or don’t do if we're talkin' Bryan Colangelo — and Trust The Process. I should point out that lowering the odds to anything +1000 or worse, you’d be down $21,703. So when it comes to college football dogs, go big or go home.

I tried this with NFL, and unsurprisingly, the results are nowhere near as pleasing to me. Turns out if you bet the dog in every game where they were +300 or worse you’d be down $8,885. If you faded this system you’d ONLY be down $634. So clearly my brilliant theory doesn’t hold for NFL or I’d imagine, any pro league, but at least now I know.

I’m actually obsessed with Bet Labs now so if I go dark, that’s where I am … trying to see the correlation between NBA games on the weekends going under because the players were out partying the night before and are hungover.

If anyone out there has some crazy theory that they are convinced is legit, tweet it to me and maybe I'll try out a couple just for shits and giggles.