Rapture 2022 Gambling Recap

It’s a very exciting time of year for professional baseball.  The MLB season is FINALLY coming to a close and that means it is LIDOM time.  That stands for the Liga de Beisbol Profesional de la Republica Dominicana for the one or two of you out there that didn’t already know.  Anyway, last Friday I was calling my favorite Caribbean sportsbook manager, Luis, with my picks for opening weekend and I decided to check in to see how they fared with the big upset in the Rapture 2022.  Hopefully, they didn’t take it on the chin too hard.

Luis said that the betting “action” was way down this year.  Something about missing not one, but two Big JW’s in this year’s event.  There was a big wave of money when the Old Man House was announced, but that was the only action of the week that caused any moves.

Overall, the sportsbook did quite well.  I was somewhat surprised as it looked like they had the Orange team winning 11 – 5.  Since there was very little betting on the event and they may not continue to do odds on the event in the future, Luis let me in on some secrets regarding how the odds were set and why the house almost always wins.

1.       All of the matches where one side was a -110 and the other side was +100 were 50/50 matches in the eyes of the sportsbook.  A small favorite is designated to help generate interest, but ultimately they are coin flip matches.  Either side should win about 50% of the time.  So how did the sportsbook pick a favorite for the 10 of the 16 matches that were designated -110/+100?  They flipped a coin.

2.       That left 6 matches that the sportsbook did not consider coin flip matches.   From most lopsided odds to least lopsided odds, those matches were:

a.       Ho / Geoff: +150

             Faz / Reid: -150

b.       Chandler / Geoff: -130

Casey / Gary: +120

c.       Ho: +120

Casey: -130

d.       Dave: -130

Danny: +110

e.       Ho / Darren: +110

Tall Mike / Troy: -120

f.        Darren / Brendan: -120

Gorecki / Danny: +110

              Before the event, I did notice one thing and pointed it out on the blog.  Ho was considered an underdog in every match despite having the lowest handicap in the league.  I didn’t realize one thing going into the Rapture that I later found interesting:  Geoff, Casey and Darren were all favored heavily in a match but also considered heavy underdogs in another match.  I brought this up with Luis.  He wouldn’t give me the exact methodology used, but the sportsbook created a Player Value Index (“PVI”) for each player.  The only times that the odds differed from a 50/50 match is when there was a statistically significant difference in the individual PVI or combined PVI for the teams.  Just about anyone could infer this from looking at the odds, but Luis confirmed that the two lowest PVI’s belonged to Ho and Danny.  5 of the 6 non-coin flip matches had them as underdogs. 

              The matchup of Chandler / Geoff -130 versus Casey / Gary +120, then jumped out at me because it did not involve the lower end of the PVI.  However, it did have Geoff going from a huge underdog in Day 1 to a statistically significant favorite in Day 2.  It also had Casey as a big underdog, whereas Casey was a going to be a huge favorite in Day 3.  Once again, Luis wouldn’t go into too much detail, but he mentioned something about going from a low PVI partner to a high PVI partner and also that an individual player’s PVI will change based on the format being played.  I guess what he was telling me is that they think Geoff is better in the Four Ball format than he is in Chapman and that having Chandler as a partner is much better than being paired with Ho, at least for this year’s Rapture. 

              Maybe this all seems obvious now, but is worth noting that the favorite won all six of these matches.  In events like this, people like to bet on the underdog because they think they are getting better value.  After all, if the handicap system was not flawed, then you would expect each team to have a 50% chance of winning.  If each team in these six matches did in fact have a 50/50 chance of winning, then the odds that the sportsbook would have gotten all six matches correct is roughly 1.56%.

              One thing I have noticed in the team golf events that I’ve played in is the winner and loser is often determined by the bottom half of the draft, not the top.  Everyone now knows that Dave picking Ho over Gorecki was a huge mistake and it is interesting that the very last pick in the draft seemed to have the biggest impact.  I know that captains often spend a lot of time fretting over who they are going to pick first, especially in a snake draft.  I don’t know if enough time is spent trying to determine who should be picks 5 through 7.