Is MMA the hardest sport to bet?

[blaseblah]

I find mma easier to bet, the issue is I have to wait for the right fights. Find a hyped prospect with some flaws in previous performances where the casuals influence the odds in their favor and bet against them when they take that step up in competition.

 

[Ken Fresno]

Yeah... Canelo did look better than in the first fight and was dominant the first two rounds... as the fight went on it seemed like GGG's jab was doing more to drain Canelo's energy than Canelo's body shots were, contrary to standard boxing thinking... GGG ate some hard body shots early but if anything seemed to gain steam while Canelo looked gassed at times in the later rounds.

I had it 7-5 or 8-4 GGG and was kind of expecting a bullshit Canelo victory lol

Boxing... stay classy

Exactly how i saw it. 8-4 GGG by my scoring. Could see 7-5. Would have to give Canelo everything close to get to 6-6.

Listening to the HBO commentary you would think Canelo was sapping GGG with body work, and "telling the story of the fight" lol. But if you know what you're watching you could see how much more effect GGG's shots were having than Canelo's in the 2nd half. After about round 5, it seemed like Canelo wasn't landing anything that GGG didn't see coming and at least partially block. Meanwhile, GGG's shots were visibly hurting Canelo more than the first fight.

Didn't think I'd ever feel worse for someone than the guy in my AV. Middleweight goats cheated out of their destinies.

 

[SeattleFightFan]

MMA is one of the easier sports to bet. Easier than baseball anyway. Keep the parlays to 5 fights or less. I've had a bunch of 6+ teams parlays go to shit because of just one fight losing.

again, the actual numbers show that gamblers do better at baseball than any other sport.

i suddenly realized that maybe i'm answering a different question than everyone else.

i'm answering it from a macro level (e.g. if you give 10 sherdoggers $1000 each, 9 will lose money in a year), whereas i'm now thinking everyone else is answering it on a micro level (e.g. "if you're smart it's easy to do great!")

 

[TITS]

again, the actual numbers show that gamblers do better at baseball than any other sport.

i suddenly realized that maybe i'm answering a different question than everyone else.

i'm answering it from a macro level (e.g. if you give 10 sherdoggers $1000 each, 9 will lose money in a year), whereas i'm now thinking everyone else is answering it on a micro level (e.g. "if you're smart it's easy to do great!")

 

[PuertoRican]

WTA is tougher than MMA when it comes to betting the sport.

Top players lose all the time to players they shouldn't lose to. There's also 4 different surfaces that they play on throughout the year, so while the #1 player might be good on hard court and grass surfaces, she can be terrible on a slow surface like clay and lose to inferior opponents.

Then you have a ton of mental games that go on before and during the match, which MMA doesn't have to deal with nearly as much.

 

[onC]

again, the actual numbers show that gamblers do better at baseball than any other sport.

That's because in baseball (MLB) the payout percentage is 98-99%. So per every 100 dollars bet on a game, the bookie returns 98$+ to the gamblers. Compare that to MMAs 90-95%.

MMA is softer than any of the major US sports by a large margin.

 

[Sharkey]

In general you can tell who is going to win in other sports because most of the time bad teams or players compete against each other. You can also tell how they should be doing by analysing their latest performances.

However, in MMA, the fights are usually put together to match the point both fighters are in their careers, so their latest performaces should be somewhat equal. And you never see top ranked guys fighting people down the ranks like it happens in others.

Put that together with the fact that pretty much any fight can end/change with one punch the risk goes way up.

Then you have the judging and the reffing which is inconsistent as fuck.

I dont have much experience in sports betting so i may be talking out of my ass, but curious to know what you all think

Try playing the horses if you think MMA is difficult to bet on, and you'll quickly find out why 97-98% of the people who bet the horses with some regularity lose money over the long run.

 

[joenewbie]

I was so pissed to learn Woodley was the underdog vs Till just before i watched the fight. I still dont get how that was possible. I even told the friend i was watching it with who doesnt watch much mma that Woodley was the big favorite then UFC showed the odds and i felt embarrassed and confused. How dafuq did that betting line happen??

I'm pretty sure the oddsmakers had Woodley as the slight favorite. It was the fans that pushed Till into the favorite spot by fight time

 

[ClipYourDirtyWings]

MMA lines aren’t as sharp as NFL and NBA lines imo. There are way more opportunities to exploit inaccurate MMA lines than the main sports. I’d actually say if you follow it, MMA is the easiest sport to bet. But not many people follow it, comparatively.

 

[Gugabe]

MMA's piss easy. I'm sitting on an 18% ROI after 550-odd picks, and I'm not doing that much tapestudy/analysis.

 

[Ryan Kelly]

The sports that get the most action are the hardest to bet. I imagine oddsmakers are best at NFL. And that WNBA would probably be the easiest theoretically, but I think Vegas limits action as an implicit recognition that the oddsmakers aren’t as good bc it doesn’t justify their time.

 

[Gugabe]

The sports that get the most action are the hardest to bet. I imagine oddsmakers are best at NFL. And that WNBA would probably be the easiest theoretically, but I think Vegas limits action as an implicit recognition that the oddsmakers aren’t as good bc it doesn’t justify their time.

NBA's the most efficient due to the nature of the sport. Huuuuuge scoring sample sizes per-game, with the same guys playing huge amounts of minutes. NFL gets a high volume, but the sport itself is more volatile. NBA games tend to have 200ish shots on goal, which goes a long way towards beating variance on a per-game level.