On the Props

Was spending part of today considering all of these Super Bowl prop bets. I was put in the mood to do so after having posted a discussion with Rich Ryan over on PokerNews the focus of which was Super Bowl betting -- this week’s “Inside Gaming” column.

As mentioned there, last year the Nevada sports books took in more wagers than ever before, besting the previous year’s record by a lot. They also profited considerably thanks in part to heavy action on favorite Denver and Seattle ending up crushing, earning more percentage-wise in nearly a decade.

Super Bowl prop bets are significant for the sports books, with many of them longshots and thus great opportunities for the books to win. The lines can be a bit skewy on them, too, which perhaps opens up some opportunities for savvy bettors. But on the whole they’re hard to read (at least for an amateur like me).

Among the items I read today was USA Today’s “19 craziest prop bets for Super Bowl XLIX.” Like a lot of folks this week, they look to Bovada -- the site we online poker players know better as the-one-that-used-to-be-Bodog -- as their source of props. Bovada has more than 500 prop bets listed, with practically every detail regarding what might happen in Arizona on Sunday covered.

These “19 craziest” ones include many with nothing to do with the actual game itself. Those include bets on Katy Perry’s wardrobe during her halftime performance as well as how many times she will be mentioned during the first half, whether or not Idina Menzel will forget a word of the national anthem, Bill Belichick’s hoodie color and type, which team owner (Robert Kraft or Paul Allen) will be shown more often during the game, the number of times Gisele Bundchen (Tom Brady’s wife) will be shown, the number of times deflated balls will be mentioned, the number of viewers, who the Super Bowl MVP will first mention after the game, whether Marshawn Lynch will grab his crotch after scoring a TD, and whether Bill Belichick will smile. Of these I most like the one about whether or not Al Michaels will make any gambling references during the telecast (i.e., to the point spread, over/under, game odds, prop bets).

Even the game-related ones have to do with extracurriculars, like the parlay pairing whether or not Punxsatawney Phil sees his showdow and the game’s outcome, or the one comparing the length of the Silva-Diaz UFC fight and LeGarrette Blount’s rushing attempts. In fact among these “crazy” bets are only four football-only ones -- whether or not Tom Brady will throw a TD or interception first, whether or not one of the kickers will win MVP, which Seattle player will catch their first pass, and how many field goals Seattle will make.

Every one of these feels like a sucker bet, as do many of the other props even if one might legitimately have an edge betting a particular side of them. Heck even the game itself -- which Rich tells me the Football Outsiders guys are describing as historically remarkable in terms of how mathematically even the two teams are talent-wise -- feels especially hard to predict.

Who do you think will win on Sunday? Other than the sports books, that is.

Super Bowl XLVIII and Passive Tilt

I mentioned when I signed off on the last of my travel reports from Deauville how I was eyeing a long travel day on Sunday with a schedule getting me home about an hour before Super Bowl XLVIII was set to kickoff. It’s about a 45-minute drive from the airport to the farm, and so if all went as planned I’d make it home just in time to watch the sucker get started.

There were a number of odd little moments and weird delays going from Deauville to Paris to Philadelphia to Charlotte to the farm, plus one fun coincidence running into fellow tourney reporter Mo Nuwwarah in the Philly airport (also on his way home from a reporting gig, his being at the Borgata). But I ran well enough to stay mostly on pace and only a lengthy wait on the tarmac at CLT for an open gate made me late getting home. I walked in the door about halfway through the first quarter, glad to reunite with Vera and our cats and horses, and after 18-plus hours of traveling was almost giddy just to plop down on the couch and tune in.

I’d listened to the start on the radio, and so knew about the safety and how things had begun less than ideally for Denver. It was 5-0 when I turned it on, then 8-0, then quickly 15-0 and 22-0, and I just had to laugh about having wanted to get home in a hurry to watch such a stinker.

Had been so busy during the week I hadn’t really thought too much about how the game might go, but I can’t imagine any thought process that would have led me to suspect an outcome such as the one that occurred.

Easy in retrospect to point back to the last time a top-rated offense clashed with a top-rated defense in Super Bowl XXXVII, to note how the defensive power (Tampa Bay) crushed the offensive one (Oakland) by 27 (forcing five turnovers along the way), and perhaps to use that to support a thesis that Seattle might do something similar, thereby proving the maxim about defense winning championships, regardless of the sport.

But I doubt I’d have gotten around to that idea on my own, and I know most didn’t. Indeed, it sounds like the sportsbooks did well as the majority of bettors leaned Denver’s way -- two of every three, according to the Las Vegas Sun.

I was vaguely rooting for Denver, although was reminded by my mother over the last week how as a kid I was a Seahawks fan, mostly because they were new, had cool colors and a menacing logo I could draw in my notebooks, and a quarterback whose first name started with a “Z” (Jim Zorn). Also, no one else liked them. But since the Panthers arrived that’s where my allegiance has been, and so wasn’t all that committed either way last night.

And, of course, not too long after I got home, there wasn’t much to root about once the game had gotten out of hand. Was a little like watching a poker player take a hit early in a session and then start making bad play after bad play in a tilty effort to right the ship. Although John Fox’s conservative tendencies -- something that we Panthers fans well remember and which came up last year in that AFC Championship game versus the Ravens -- made Denver seem less like a player betting too much when he shouldn’t, but rather one who had tightened up too much after losing early.

I like John Fox and was sorry to see him leave Carolina. And while coaching hardly decided yesterday’s game (as Bill Barnwell notes at the start of the “Thank You For Not Coaching” section of his column today), it definitely felt like Denver’s lack of readiness to take any risks at all yesterday made it essentially impossible for them to put up any sort of fight after getting knocked down early.

Any doubt about the outcome was erased once Seattle returned the kickoff for a TD to start the second half and go up 29-0. But then Denver got the ball back, marched to the Seattle 38-yard-line, and on 3rd-and-10 called a draw. I flashed back to Fox’s Panthers days, when the 3rd-and-long draws routinely drove us insane. Then after losing a yard they punted down four scores, which definitely seemed the equivalent of a beaten-down poker player folding again, clearly not able anymore to give himself a chance even to get lucky.

I liked Fox at Carolina and still pull for him, but talk about “passive tilt”...!

Speaking of “passive tilt,” one of the great thinkers about tilt, Tommy Angelo, has a new contribution over a Learn.PokerNews today, another installment in his “Tilt for Beginners” series, this one titled “Writhing Over Rules” -- check it out.

When the Saints Go Marching (All) In

“It was an all-in move.”

That’s what the fellow on the local sports radio station said yesterday regarding New Orleans Saints’ coach Sean Payton’s decision to go for the onside kick to open the second half of Sunday’s Super Bowl XLIV.

A truly remarkable play it was, never tried before in the history of the Super Bowl. That is to say, no team had ever attempted an onside kick prior to the fourth quarter before in the previous 43 title games. And it wasn’t as though the Saints were down by three scores -- it was only 10-6!

By calling it “an all-in move,” the sports radio guy wanted to suggest that the decision to try the play represented a “do-or-die” choice. In other words, had the play failed, he was saying that would’ve been like putting all of one’s chips in the middle and then losing the hand, thereby getting knocked out of the tourney. Meanwhile, a successful onside kick -- like going all in and surviving -- would not have guaranteed ultimate victory, but would have at least kept one alive and with a better chance of winning than if the play had not have been attempted in the first place.

I heard some other commentators yesterday debating the merits of the decision to try the onside kick, as well whether or not it truly represented an “all-in move.” Some noted how onside kicks generally only work around 20% of the time, although most are attempted with the opposing team fully expecting it. One would have to imagine surprise onside kicks work more often, but I heard no percentages for those situations. However one measures it, the Saints went with what we might call a vulnerable hand there -- like shoving with pocket deuces or something, knowing at very best you're not going to be much better than 50-50 to succeed.

Had it failed, the Colts would have started their opening second-half drive on the Saints’ 40-yard line or thereabouts -- a short field. And four passes or so later it likely would have been a 17-6 ball game. As we had already been reminded Sunday, no team has ever come back from more than 10 points to win a Super Bowl before (a record the Saints tied with their win).

Of course, the Saints defense might’ve stiffened up and held Indy to a field goal (or less), so it is hard to say what would have happened next. As in a poker tournament, when considering a particular hand and what would have happened had a different set of community cards come and the hand gone differently than it did, it is hard to say how subsequent hands would have been affected.

As I think about the play -- motivated in large part out of respect for (or fear of) Colts quarterback Peyton Manning -- I can’t help but think of that play from Week 10 near the end of that New England-Indianapolis game. You remember, when the Patriots, up 34-28, decided to go for a fourth-and-two on their own 28-yard-line with 2:08 left in the game (and no timeouts). New England failed to convert, and Manning swiftly led a short drive to give the Colts the winning score with 13 seconds left.

Now that was clearly an “all-in move,” one which New England coach Bill Belichick was derided for loudly afterwards. However, you might say that in that case the decision to go “all in” was made by the chip leader, not the short stack. It was as though the Pats had a small lead -- say 55% of the chips in play -- and shoved with a marginal hand hoping to win the tourney right there. But it didn’t work out and suddenly they were crippled, almost sure to lose.

I’m recalling at the time reading a lot of analyses of Belichick’s decision that tried to suggest it was in fact correct, analyses that resembled the sort of thing you might find in Harrington on Hold’em with regard to judging whether or not it is time to shove or fold. For instance, this guy.

The Saints’ onside kick also made me think of how the Jets opted to take a more conservative route when they grabbed a surprising lead on the Colts two weeks ago in the AFC Championship game, e.g., with a 14-6 lead deciding to run the ball and kick a field goal late in the first half rather than go down the field and build a bigger lead before halftime. New York most certainly chose not to go “all in” there or even be aggressive with the lead, and Indy took advantage.

Perhaps the onside kick wasn’t truly an “all-in move” gamble, as Grange95 persuasively suggests, an example of “calculated aggression.” However one describes it, it was a lot of fun to watch, one of many plays and decisions from Sunday’s game that showed the Saints -- realizing they were up against an especially talented foe -- were more than willing to take risks in order to reap rewards, thus playing to win rather than not to lose.