Understanding the Money Line

A brief overview

A Moneyline is a fixed-odds betting system that allows you to win by predicting the straight-up winner of the match-up. If the team you picked wins the match-up, you win your bet. If your team loses, you lose your bet.

Moneyline's are dependent on two factors - the favorite, and the underdog. The favorite is shown as the team with a negative number value (-120), whereas the underdog is shown as the team with a positive number value (+120). When you bet on the moneyline, the amount of money you can win is determined by the line value. The larger the favorite, the more money you need to put down in order to win. The larger the underdog, the less money you need to put down in order to win. Here is an example:

Example One: Florida Gators (-160) over the Tennessee Volunteers (+130)

In this example match-up the bookmaker has set the moneyline for Florida at -160. As the favorite, in order to win $100 dollars you need to wager $160 dollars. If you bet on Tennessee (the underdog), which is set at (+130), you only need to wager $100 dollars in order to win $130 dollars. Don't quite understand? Here's a quick formula:

• Favorite: The moneyline value is the base dollar amount you need to wager in order to win $100 dollars.
• Underdog: The moneyline value is the base dollar amount you will win if you wager $100 dollars.

Make sense now? So, before you go run out and find your favorite Vegas casino and start making bets, let's look at some historical factors on what it normally takes to break even, depending on the moneyline and the chance that team has to win the game.

As you can see from the graph above, in order to break even for a (-400) favorite, you would need to win 80% of the time for the entire season. If you bet on a (+200) underdog 3 times in a season, you would only need to win approximately 33% of the time in order to break even. This means that successfully picking an underdog will give you the greatest return for your wager.

Why not pick every underdog then?

Are you certain you can pick every underdog successfully? If you can't do it 100% of the time, what percentage do you think you can hit every week during the season? 50%, 60%, 65%, 70%? Well, our head-2-head virtual match-up system has a historical return of close to 70% for the entire season on every match-up we predict. How good is that compared to other moneyline prediction systems and what do they charge? We know some like to charge up to $2,999 dollars and many of these systems we've successfully beaten 3 years in a row! Accu-Who?

Why Statistics are important and why we are the best in the business using our TSRS model

The main advantage of football statistics are that they contain continuous data. How accurate is the data? Is the data inflated by weak opposition? Did one team have a tremendous week against a much weaker opponent that was without 3 or 4 key starters in the opposition category? How many systems account for this type of inflation? We do.

Our TSRS (True Statistical Rating of Strength) assigns every team into groupings or scopes based on their continuous data, and assigns a float value which serves as an initial strength rating for the statistical category.

We offset these base values using mitigation factors through standard deviation to accurately create a discrete strength rating for each team in each category based on the competition they play. If a team has played 10 different opponents for the year, there are 10 different opposition strength ratings. As a brief example, if one team is averaging over 500 yards passing in a game, and they played 6 different opponents out of the 10 that were allowing over 400 yards passing due to poor pass defense, how inflated is the first team's data? The basic understanding here is that teams that have over-inflated values will find their strength less than the measured continuous data on paper if they play weaker teams in the opposition category, and likewise, teams that have deflated values in one category will receive an increase if they are playing very difficult teams in the opposition category. Don't understand? Here's a brief example:

Team A is averaging 530 yards and has a strength rating of 194.3762 in Passing Offense. The teams they faced as a whole have an opposition strength rating in Passing Defense of 82.4889. After offsetting for the weaker opposition, Team A may see their strength rating go from 194 down to 148! Likewise, Team B has a 64.9113 rating in Rushing Offense. However, the combined Rushing Defense ratings of the teams they faced is an astounding 168.2188! This means that they have been facing very strong rushing defenses so they may see their strength rating go from 64 up to 85.

Our Head-2-Head VM uses approx. 45 to 48% of TSRS to calculate a team's ability to win a game. The other factors are too numerous to describe, from factoring in turnover margin, to key scoring areas like red zone offense/defense, and key down sequences. However, Head-2-Head VM has been reliable over the last several years and has found considerable success. The #1 TSRS rated team has been crowned the BCS champion 3 years in a row! More than 90% of the TSRS rated teams in the top 25 are in the AP top 20. When predicting a winner over 81%, we are undefeated in the last 3 years and have not lost a game!

We feel our statistics model and VM can do even better in Pro football. Let us help you predict the winners. No more guesswork on your part. Let real accountable data do the work for you. Leave it to us!