Gz anyone who won. Rough night for me. 2-6 in bets, -3.7u, -46% ROI.

That brings the overall to 21-16, +12.8u, +34% ROI.

thanks guys for the nudge in the hunt direction, I think we all knew how solid he was with infamous striking, referencing his record was to show that even in his recent loses, like JDS rd3, stripe r5, Allister rd3, it is IMPRESSIVE to go deep vs these guys. The worth of that coupled with known quality and quantity of hunt, if he was getting blown out in r1 by top guys then we have an issue betting him, mma math stuff you build up, Hunts chin hugely impressed me only recently.

thanks every one for the hunt nudge direction, I was a bit of a sleepy head about it,

Glad you got on Hunt in the end Balla. Never a lock but he was always the favourite, Lewis was head hunting, but Lewis came to fight Hunt's fight and at the end of the day Lewis is just not that technically skilled, he's a strong, hulking beast of a man but he lacks the technique against guys where athleticism and power just isn't enough. It's a spot where I can fully understand why the model says Lewis should win hence the steam just in practice with their fight styles that's just not how it works, Hunt is exactly the wrong fighter for Lewis to be fighting. He actually has a better chance against Overeem than Hunt as ridiculous as that sounds on paper due to Reem's weaker chin and Lewis's ability to eat a shot to give one. Hunt only gets finished by NCAA guys who can take him down at will (eg what Cain would do if they fought) or via accumulation of damage though and that's just not really Lewis's skillset

The fight went basically as I expected it to, although I thought Hunt would land clean on Lewis's chin in the first 2 rounds and put him out cold with a walk-off style KO. Lewis's chin is better than I expected and he didn't quite until his cardio gave out and Hunt struggled to land clean bombs due to the reach disadvantage until Lewis was out of gas, but was still able to walk Lewis down and connect with the better shots for most of the fight then take over when Lewis got tired/hurt.

I hope he doesn't retire though i'd enjoy seeing him beat up more random mid level Russians and stuff and he's been very active and entertaining over the past year or two

This would have been a perfect fight for Hunt to go out on top on, but at the same time he's making something like 700k a fight, if the UFC's happy to match him up with 6-10 ranked guys instead of the elite killers of the division I don't see why he shouldn't fight a couple more times and set himself up for life now that he's making the big money.

I'd be down for Hunt vs the winner of Volkov/Struve and that would make sense rankings wise etc. or the winner of Arlovski vs Tybura would make sense too to headline a random fight night or it could be a solid PPV main card fight either way.

I would love to watch Hunt knock out Travis Browne if he beats Oleinik somehow, the winner of that fight would make sense too as Hunt's likely to KTFO Browne or if he fights Oleinik he'll either win or get submitted so they're unlikely to destroy his chin the way it might if he was matched up with someone like Stipe again.

The winner of one of those 3 fights makes sense as they're basically the 8-15 guys of the division and one of them will be coming off a win and the'd all be competitive interesting fights (except Browne if he stays coached by Edmund, lol)

On to the next card

I need to watch some tape on Tybura to figure out how good he actually is. Arlovski still has excellent standup technique, he's just not durable any more and that's a problem at HW.

Holm vs Correia seems boring and unbettable in general, Holm will almost certainly win, but her price is absurd so whatever. Bethe's +450 not quite good enough to fire despite Holm's ability to give fights away simply because she doesn't have a realistic gameplan to victory other than 'random MMA thing happens'.

DHK should be able to handle Covington, even though again Covington is the one who is an up and coming prospect, DHK has been underrated for years and i'm hoping this one is close to a pickem so I can get some value on DHK. DHK will also have the hometown judging/crowd support despite the fight happening in Singapore I assume because he's the Asian fighter. I should probably rewatch the Barbarena fight to get a better feel for how Covington's improving, but it's a big step up for him he's never faced a legit top 15 fighter like DHK. Not going to go too big since the value is usually on the prospect over the veteran but likely to be value on DHK I think.

RDA vs Saffiedine is interesting; I lean towards RDA still even though he seems to be exiting his prime and is moving up in weight just due to him being a more well rounded MMA fighter and Saff being more of a pure striker. Will take RDA if it's close to a pickem or Saff if he's a +250 or bigger dog.

Justin Scoggins and Alex Caceres should both win if either are at a bettable price, but I doubt it

I'm down to fade Gomi if Tuck is a reasonable underdog which is pretty likely. Gomi's been past his prime for a long time and while Tuck isn't a world beater, Gomi shouldn't really be the favourite against UFC caliber fighters any more.

Walt Harris isn't that good but might beat Asker through just being a better athlete? No idea where the odds will be on that need to do more research.

No idea about the randoms on the prelims that i've never heard of. If anyone thinks any of them are legit prospects/value, i'm in to tail.

At first glance and before we have odds, i'm interested in Scoggins/DHK/RDA/Tuck/Caceres mostly if any of them have better opening lines than I expect

I have backed Holm at 1.22 already for next week.
Style wise its the perfect fight for her. A slow plodding striker with bad mechanics.

Holm should be able to strike from distance and use her footwork to win a wide decision. I really think she wins this fight 85-90% of the time. Given that Correia hasn't shown one punch KO power in any of her fights I don't see many avenues she wins this fight.

He already beat Camozzi a few months ago.

So did Jacare prior to their 'rematch'

lol I actually completely forgot about that fight though.

Sheldon Westcott rematch from their TUF season maybe? Seems like neither guy is doing anything more important and gives Westcott a chance to get a win over a higher ranked guy and Kelly a chance to avenge a loss

I just started watching some of Saffeidine's fights so this is all very preliminary, but it looks to me like Saffeidine has problems when guys bull rush him (he drops his head and turtles instead of looking to counter strke), and RDA is very good at bull rushing guys as we saw in the Cerrone fight. RDA was clearly a steroid abuser IMO and is now moving up in weight in a post USADA world so there are definitely question marks, but stylistically this looks like a very good matchup for him.

Colby Covington vs Dong Hyun Kim is going to be a really interesting fight. Colby's hands looked pretty fluid against Bryan Barbarena, he has real good wrestling obviously and an outstanding gas tank, but DHK has always been underrated, is a very good grappler, and is the more dangerous striker IMO. DHK has also fought much tougher competition, although Covington trains at American Top Team so has good training partners, but DHK has a unique skill set that is very tough for training partners to emulate. I think DHK should be the favorite, but need to do a little more homework. Has DHK fought any NCAA Division 1 wrestlers before?

KOed by Woodley

Why not take Holm dec, it's going to end in dec like over 90% anyway and odds should be way better.

He was in the middle of his fighting for fotn phase though and threw a ridiculous spinning elbow which he doesn't do anymore

Lots of unknowns but I'll take dhk if it's a pickem.

Been doing some research (motivated by losing, obviously), and I thought perhaps some of this was interesting to you guys. I was implementing a way to retrieve historical pinnacle odds (and comparing them to results), and ran some tests with the first batch I scraped.

For this I used only UFC PPVs from 142 to 210. No contest results were removed (this data didn't tell me who actually won the night of the event), and refundable results, i.e. no winner or draw declared, were ignored. A handful of results didn't return properly due to alternate spellings of names, and were also dropped. The line data was the closing line on pinnacle as listed on BestFightOdds.

What I found was that the "pinny line" predicted the winner roughly 64% of the time (comparing the no vig / impled line to the result), while the "average" line is set at 67/33.

The worst predictions in the data were Holm/Rousey, Rockhold/Bisping, and Elkins/Bektic. The best predictions were Cejudo/Camus, Aldo/Jung, and Garbrandt/Briones (turns out good predictions are way less interesting than bad ones).

Over the sample, if you bet one unit on every dog (ignoring pure 50/50 lines), you would lose only 4 units total.

My takeaway from this is somewhat optimistic at least. The pinnacle line is seemingly not THAT sharp, and favorites do seem to be overpriced (in general, but keep in mind this is likely driven by a few extreme cases).

Do you have the data for how often the favourite steams compared to the dog for opening vs closing lines?

Seems like the favourites have hugely oversteamed over the past year or so especially but don't have the data to back that up, curious what your numbers say

Yeah, forgot about that. That fight didn't really have any take down attempts though, just some standing grappling against the cage until Woodley KO'd him.

I'm just curious if anyone has really looked to take DHK down using single and double legs, just to see if there's any tape on how the wrestling / judo dynamic played out, since that's what Covington looks to do.

How do you determine who the best predictions are? Just by measuring the movement in the lines relative to their prior fights? That seems like it would be a difficult thing to measure. Thanks for sharing this btw.

No, I don't have this yet. I will try to get it, but right now it was a lot easier just to get the closing.

I use a scoring criteria which rewards confidence when you're right, and punishes it when you are wrong. So, if you say "I'm sure Aldo is going to beat Edgar", and he does, you score well. Iif you say "I'm sure Aldo is going to beat Max", you would be punished. If instead you said "I'm not confident, but I think Aldo will take it against Max", you would get a less punishing score.

This is what I judge my model on in general (the average of these scores), as (over large samples) accuracy (i.e. predicting 60% for events with a real probability around ~60%) is rewarded. This places the idea of getting the right price right there in the evaluation of the model, which is very convenient.

Is DHK actually +230 at Bovada like bestfightodds says? I can't access Bovada as an Aussie, anyone got an account there? Seems like insane value unless BFO is wrong and the line isn't there

I like the +160 even. Saffiedine is tempting at +260, I lean RDA but I think that's too steep. Kinda surprised Tuck is a solid fav, now i'm tempted by Gomi even though he's washed up. Scoggins and Caceres a bit steeper than i'd hoped to bet on either of them.

Romero -167 Whittaker +140 opener at my local book. About what I expected.

I like Whittaker at that price but going to wait for all the major books to open.

Definitely going to get on DHK as a dog but going to wait and see if that Bovada price is real, I think their site's down

Site is "down for maintenance". A bit off on the DHK line too although not as far.

Will surely correct when they come back up. That's big middle shot with just about any other book.

covington has had 7 fights in UFC and no one has ever tried a takedown against him

whatsup with that

I was wrong. It is back up and DHK is still (+230) as I'm typing.

They must really want action on Kim. Appears every book across the globe would be getting a bargain taking that action.

Bets:

Holly Holm at -500 (made this one a while ago, line has since moved)
Tybrua wins by KO / TKO at +110
John Tuck at -250
DHK at +180

Tybura bet is based on Arlovski being 38 years old, having fought 40 times, and having been knocked out in 25% of those fights, including 3 of his last 4 and in the very first round of his last one. It's time for him to retire IMO.

I think Tuck matches up really well against Gomi and is fighting for his UFC career so will be super motivated. Gomi is washed up and needs to retire - MMA is a young man's game.

DHK is a tough matchup for Covington even though I'm really high on Covington in general. Covington could definitely wear him down by setting a really fast pace since DHK is prone to grassing, but DHK has dangerous standup, very good judo and is a very good grappler. Covington has decent strikes but fundamentally he's a GnP guy and that's going to be tough to do against DHK.

I think RDA is more of a 2-1 favorite, -280 is pretty steep. Saffiedine might be worth taking a flyer on, but I think Saffiedine is going to have problems since IMO he has some bad habits that play into RDA's style and I just have a tough time seeing him winning even though RDA has some red flags with USADA and moving up in weight. I think I'm going to just sit this one out even though intellectually I feel like Saffiedine might be a +EV bet.

Just my two cents, I'm pretty new at UFC betting so take my analysis for what it's worth.

Tuck is the only one I feel confident in with the line

Hope somebody here got that +230 as it's gone now

I really like the +191 on Kim, I think the fight is a coinflip and that's an excellent price, it will come down to how much Covington has improved and a unique stylistic matchup that he hasn't faced before with Kim's judo-based wrestling offense as opposed to a more traditional NCAA based wrestling offense, plus Kim is a reasonably good striker, although probably not elite.

At the end of the day it should come down to who can get top position in any grappling exchanges and that's an unknown as both tend to get top position more often than not against similar caliber opponents and who has the better striking, with both having serviceable striking but it not being their specialty as lower end top 15 fighters.

I'd pretty happily take either guy at +150 so Kim at +191 seems excellent, but the price has been rising so far so i've held off for the time being, if I get +200 or better i'll be very happy with that and if it starts moving back in i'm still happy to hit it at +180 or whatever.

I liked Saffiedine at +260 against RDA because I tend to agree that RDA is about a 2 to 1 fav depending how the move up in weight goes, I expected the line to open at more like -180 but the current line seems reasonable.

Gomi up to +231 and while he's washed up he still has better striking than Tuck narrowly doesn't he? His defense will probably let him down. I'm kinda shocked at this line and expected to be on Tuck in a pick'em. Going to leave it alone for now but if Gomi gets up to +300 I may have to fire just because Tuck shouldn't really be that big a favourite against any UFC level fighter if Gomi has anything left.

Scoggins -3.5 pts could be a bet if the line is bettable as he's basically not going to lose any part of this fight, will have to wait and see but I doubt it.

Frank Camacho might be tempting at +350, Li is only really lower UFC level and he did lose to Nakamura who Camacho decisioned not that long ago. I haven't watched any tape on Camacho though to determine whether he's live stylistically and I think it's short notice too. I read a post by him on /r/mma on Reddit a while back about getting the callup for the fight. He's got a reasonably good record, he's 1-1 against guys i've heard of and 20-4 overall on the regional circuit but it's impossible to know how many of the guys he's fought have been total cans. Li's basically proven that he's a lower level UFC guy but does belong in the UFC, price just seems a bit steep for a non-elite fighter on Li.

No plays yet although i'm definitely betting DHK, other than that just a few maybes so far.

Long time lurker here. Just wanna say thanks to all the prolific posters in this thread, swoop, jimgunn, balla etc. REally love reading your analysis and has helped me make the right picks from time to time