The Odds Are Good, But the Goods Are Odd

Han Solo despised being told the chances. But this was quite a while ago…. Today’s sports lovers are continuously bombarded with data and information, even in a simple and simple sport like MMA. As any sport develops, the metrics that measure it and the numbers that report it evolve and progress. But there is one set of numbers which are omnipresent in the beginning of just about any game, from the back street to the big leagues: the betting odds.
In MMA, the Tale of the Tape outlines the simple physique of every fighter, while their recordings outline their performance history within the game. But it’s the gambling line that’s the most direct and immediate hint to what is about to happen when the cage door shuts on two fighters. So let’s take a better look at what the chances can tell us about MMA, matchmaking, and upsets. Hey Han Solo, «earmuffs.»
Putting to Extreme Sports In an academic sense, gambling lines are essentially the market cost for a certain event or outcome. These costs can proceed based on gambling activity leading up to the function. And when a UFC battle starts, that betting line is the public’s final figure at the probability of every fighter winning, with roughly half of bettors picking each side of this line. Many experts make daring and confident predictions about fights, and they’re all wrong a good portion of the time. But what about the chances? How can we tell if they are correct? And what can we learn from looking at them in aggregate?
The simple fact is that only a small section of fights are equally matched according to odds makers. So called»Pick’Em» fights composed just 12% of all matchups from the UFC since 2007, with the rest of fights having a clear preferred and»underdog.» UFC President Dana White cites these betting lines to help build the story around matchups, often to point out why a particular fighter may be a»live dog» White’s correct to play up that possibility, since upsets occur in roughly 30 percent of fights where there’s a definite favorite and underdog. So next time you take a look at a battle card expecting no surprises, just don’t forget that on average there will be three or two upsets on any given night.
What Do Chances Makers Know?
At a macro sense, cage fighting is inherently difficult to predict for many different reasons. The young game is competed by individuals, and there are no teammates at the cage to pick up slack or assist cover for mistakes. Individual competitors only fight only minutes per outing, also, if they’re lucky, only a few times per year. And let’s not overlook that the raw and primal forces at work at the cage, where one strike or mistake of position can finish the fight in seconds.
The volatility of the factors means there’s absolutely no such thing as a guaranteed win once you’re allowing one trained competitor unmitigated access to do violence on another. The game is completely dynamic, often extreme, and with just a few round fractures to reset the activity. These are the reasons we observe and love the sport: it is fast, angry, and anything could happen. It’s the polar opposite of this true statistician’s game, baseball.

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