Betting the Process with Jeff Ma

Okay, I know that many of you may be asking, "Who is Jeff Ma?"  Some background.

If you have not read the 2003 book by Ben Mizrich called "Bringing Down The House", you should.  It tells the story of six MIT math students who formed a "blackjack team"and then proceeded to, well, bring down the house at various Las Vegas casinos using an expert knowledge of mathematical probabilities and an ability to count cards to their advantage.  What they did was not illegal, but the casinos didn't like it, and all six have been barred from ever entering those casinos again.  It's a great book.  One of those six students was Jeff Ma.

Ma now co-hosts a podcast called "Bet the Process" and for the last several years, he has been a weekly guest on the Tony Kornheiser Podcast where he picks five games each week with the point spreads.  Tony always likes to say that "if you're betting with Jeff Ma, your'e making money."  This season, I decided to test that theory.

I would listen to Jeff make his selections each week, and I would then bet one unit on each game.  Okay, a "unit" in my particular case is $1.  I'm not crazy.  The season is now ten weeks old and Jeff has made fifty such bets, a fair sample size, for the TK listeners.  How has it worked out?

Through three weeks of the season, if you bet with Jeff Ma, you were up 14%, 19.2% through four weeks, and 18.5% through five weeks.  Jeff then hit a rough patch and four of the next five weeks his picks posted losing records.

Through ten weeks, Ma's record is 25-23-2, and you are in a virtual break even position, but six tenths of one percent in the red nonetheless.

What does this prove?  Does it prove that analytical analysis isn't all that much better than just flipping a coin or going with the team with the coolest uniform colors when you decide what teams you're going to wager on any given weekend?  Probably not, but who knows?  In my own football wagering this year, I am 24-28-1 on NFL games and 33-26 on college games, 57-54-1 overall.

I will continue betting with Jeff Ma through the remainder of the season.  If it does prove to be profitable, maybe next year I'll go nuts and bet two or maybe even three bucks on his games.