The Timberwolves Experiment

I am hoping that people who are more serious and more seasoned gamblers that I will read this entry and offer their comments and advice after doing so. 

This whole thing started a couple of weeks back when my buddy Dan said to me, Hey, if you take a team like the Pittsburgh Pirates, who everyone knows is going to stink, and will struggle to avoid losing 100 games in 2021, if you bet on them to lose every game on the Money Line, will you end up winning money over the course of 162 games?

Seems simple, yet something that seems so simple is probably too good to be true, so I thought I would give it a test.  I would take the team with the worst record in the NBA at the time, the Minnesota Timberwolves, and I would bet $1 on them to lose (actually, you are betting on their opponents to win, but the get the idea) each of their next ten games.  This was the result, and yes, I know that ten games is a ridiculously small sample size.

	T’Wolves Opponent	Bet	Won	Lost	Net
1/31	Cleveland	1.00	0	1.00	(1.00)
2/1	Cleveland	1.00	1.47	0	0.47
2/3	San Antonio	1.00	1.30	0	0.30
2/5	OKC	1.00	0	1.00	(1.00)
2/6	OKC	1.00	1.86	0	0.86
2/8	Dallas	1.00	1.25	0	0.25
2/10	LAC	1.00	1.50	0	0.50
2/12	Charlotte	1.00	1.57	0	0.57
2/14	Toronto	1.00	0	1.00	(1.00)
2/16	LAL	1.00	1.31	0	0.31
10 Game Totals		10.00	10.26	3	0.26

As you can see, the T'Wolves went 3-7 in that stretch, and I actually DID make money: $.26, or 2.6% of the amount invested.  Of the seven games that their opponents won, the yield totaled $10.26, or an average of $.47 per win.  To answer Dan's question, and using the same math just for arguments sake, the answer is NO, you can't make money in the way that he proposed over the course of a long season.

Let's say that the Pirates will go 62-100 this coming season, and you bet $1 (or $5 or $10 or $100) on every game, you have invested $162.  Take off $62 for the games that the Pirates will win.  If the average yield for each Pirate loss nets you $.47 (as it did in the T'Wolves grid), you will have collected a total of $147 from your bookmaker, and will have lost a total of $15 (162-146) over the course of the season.

Where you can make money is if you  manipulate your bets, and bet more on games where the yield (i.e., the odds) is greater.  The biggest yields above were games when Minnesota played poorer teams, more comparable to themselves, $.86 against OKC, $.57 against Charlotte. Had you bet $1.50 on those games the yields would have been $1.29 and $.80 , respectively.  In the Pirates example, that would be when they played teams like the Rockies or the Giants.  That takes a little more of an investment of time on your part, and then there's the risk.  You will notice, that the biggest payoff for the T'wolves was $.86 against the Thunder, and you will also notice that the T'Wolves actually defeated OKC in the other game they played against them.  And you will have to say the course.  Even teams like the Pirates will have a streak where they might win six of eight or eight of eleven games.  That's baseball, that's why they call it gambling.

So, it turns out that Dan's initial proposal - making the same bet on every single game - was flawed, but it also showed that with a little work and effort, you can - probably - make some dough by betting against a lousy team over the course of a season.

As for me, I am going to continue The Timberwolves Experiment for ten more games, and maybe try to work it a little better, upping some bets, perhaps lowering others, just to see where it takes me.