College Bowl Betting Picks 2013: The Sharp Vs. The Monkey

Betting on bowl games will always be a bit of a crapshoot. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying through their teeth or just doesn’t understand randomness and probability.

Let’s examine why.

(FYI, if you want to see who our computer models are picking to cover the spread in every bowl game, you can check out our 2013 bowl spread picks page — subscription required though.)

Good Bowl Picks Are An SSS (Small Sample Size)

In a 35-game bowl season, especially given that the Vegas sports books have plenty of time to research bowl betting odds and react to early bowl betting action, it stands to reason that there will only be an edge available to bettors on some games.

You may be familiar with this phrase, often used to describe poker tables or business negotiations: “Look around the room and try to find the sucker. If you can’t find the sucker, then you’re the sucker.”

Well, if you look at the point spreads for 35 bowl games and think that Vegas got it wrong on 30 of them, chances are you are the sucker.

With a total of 70 possible bowl point spread and over/under plays to make (considering full game bets only, not first half/second half bets, etc.), how many games offer bowl game bettors the chance to make picks with a high expected value?

Who knows. The number will certainly vary from year to year; maybe it’s 15 one bowl season, and 25 the next. The main point is that there almost certainly aren’t going to be 50 or 60 soft bowl game lines out there to be exploited.

The Sharp Vs. The Monkey

This brings into play an unavoidable reality: Only making 20 plays or so every bowl season means that luck can play a big factor in how well or how poorly you do.

Here are a few probabilities for your enjoyment, based on making a total of 18 picks during the 2013 bowl season:

  • 36% — Odds that a sharp bettor with a 57% chance to win every bowl pick has a losing bowl season
  • 41% — Odds that a clueless bettor with a 50% chance to win every bowl pick has a winning bowl season

To summarize, a complete neophyte college bowl bettor with no edge whatsoever in his bets — actually, with a negative edge since you need to win 52.4% of your bowl bets at typical -110 payout odds to make a profit — still has a 4 in 10 chance of making money over 18 bowl season bets. You can think of this bettor as the proverbial monkey throwing darts.

In the meantime, a world-class college bowl bettor with a big edge by sports betting standards (57%) has basically the same chance to have a losing bowl season.

Match up this sharp bettor head to head with the monkey, and there is roughly a 14% chance that the monkey makes money during bowl season while the successful professional bettor loses money.

In the long term, of course, the sharp bettor will kick the monkey’s butt, but a sample size of 18 bets is a whole different story.

TR’s College Football Bowl Betting Picks For 2013

So why am I bringing all this up about bowl betting? Two reasons. First, to help our readers understand that someone telling you how they went 10-5 on their bowl bets last year and 9-6 the year before means very little. There’s a good chance that person is a clueless bettor that just got lucky, so don’t fall for a pitch like that.

The reverse logic is also true…the guy who went 5-10 last year could easily be the next Billy Walters.

Second, if you are looking for a systematic, objective, long term approach to bowl betting picks, we have one. Our math models have made college bowl betting picks since 2005-6, and have been profitable overall on both spreads and totals over a span of over 250 bowl games picked.

The most successful area for our models has been over/under picks for bowl games, where our playable rated (2- and 3-star) bowl totals picks have compiled a winning percentage of over 55% across nearly 150 picks spanning nearly a decade.

That’s still not a ton of picks by a statistician’s standards, but it’s a lot longer of a track record than most people have to show. Any monkey can get hot for 20 games, but being profitable over a larger sample size of picks means that it’s less likely luck was the reason — and more likely that skill is the reason.

If you’re interested in our betting picks for all of the 2013-2014 college football bowl games (spread picks, totals picks, and money line value picks), you can sign up at the link below.

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