gsp -287 on pinny now?

Oh wow, that's def interesting. Is there some new news that anyone's aware of that would cause that type of movement?

That is very interesting. Big and sudden change.

This fight i'll be looking to bet on this fight to go the distance. Stout is a decision machine, and Makdessi isn't exactly a killer. I think that line will open at like -150, it should be closer to -250.
Good write ups overall though, thanks Swoop.

Pretty basic writeup since i've only seen a few fights of some of the undercard fighters

Stout has gone to decision a lot vs upper-mid level guys, but lower-mid level guys like Yves Edwards he's put to sleep. I wouldn't take any worse than say -120 on the fight to go to decision

I'd guess a fair line would be something like -145 decision +125 inside distance maybe? I just have a feeling Stout is going to win this one impressively for some reason but a UD wouldn't shock me at all.

On first glance i'm liking Stout, Kampmann, GSP and Siler if the lines are what I expect them to be (Stout opening at say -180 and Siler at +200ish). There might be value on a bunch of other fights too if the lines don't open where I expect them to.

Actually come to think of it probably leaning more towards Diabate than Griggs now, initial analysis may have been off. Griggs just isn't known for explosive takedowns etc.

I hope one of them wins impressively so I can bet against them at a future card

Fighters I'll be keeping an eye on the lines for are dos Anjos, Damm, Gashimov and Siler. I might also bet Sakara or Diabate with enough provocation. No 2+ star plays again unfortunately.

Yet you mean, prelim odds aren't out - i've seen ridiculous line opens before (Tuck and Caceres for example at the last card compared to closing prices)

Glad we like the same sides for the most part - any info on Azamat Gashimov or just what your spreadsheet is telling you?

Diabate should beat Griggs up without too much trouble, I would expect.

Just saw the fights now, seemed like a meh card. Also Lee was hardly getting dominated and this ain't the upset of the year. I like how he fought the first round, didnt throw many flashy kicks at all and seemed to pace himself for the later rounds.

It's also funny how some of you call Lee's KO a fluke and don't take into account that Lee has been a fighter for his whole life whereas Franklin started way later and that just bc someone seems to be throwing more that the other guy isn't measuring him up, timing his shots. Franklin hasn't beaten any good standup guy(Wand is past his prime and liddell's chin is as shot as it gets) to warrant him being a top notch standup.

i don't think the KO was a fluke, but Lee did look very tenitave and while 2min isn't much to judge off of. Franklin was hitting some decent combos and seemed like he had a dcecent game plan together.

Lee may have timed that punch nicely, but if that shot would have landed a little different, or Franklin moved out of the way just a bit and didn't get Ko'd. im not confident that Lee would have landed a shot like that in Rd 2+ with franklin landing those combos repeatedly

.

lol @ insinuating that Franklin's standup is not good. Cung Le got finished by Scott Smith and a miles past his prime Wand FFS (whom Franklin also happened to dominate), but his standup is godly I take it because he's "been a fighter his whole life?" What the hell kind of logic is that anyway, what's that even supposed to mean? Chris Weidman has presumably only been training in standup and sub grappling for a few years and he's out there wrecking people. Talent is talent, regardless of when you start.

And nobody is "acting like he seemed to be throwing more." He WAS throwing more and he WAS landing more, there's no acting needed.

Lee was blocking most of those punches, unlike Rich, he actually had his guard up properly. Lee started very late with MMA and it's very impressive to see someone his age do so well. He has very good timing and vs people who fight him like Rich did, they do themselves no favor. Like Machine said, Lee does not do very good vs people who rush him and have explosive hands aka Wanderlai. Some guys are good matchup against some guys but terrible vs others.

Weidman wrecking people? He wrecked Munoz, first tired him out on the ground and then in the standup when Munoz was fatigued(and Munoz isn't by any means an elite striker, he lost first round to Maia in the standup ffs).
Franklin isn't talented in anyway to that degree, he's a mediocre fighter in all aspects of the game with very good work ethics.
Even someone like Jon jones, he's succesful in the standup and overall because of his ground game, but he has the talent to become one of the best in standup as well, he is showing a lot of progress there.

Eh, 11 of Stout's 13 UFC fights have gone to decision, and one of those two was a submission loss to Florian. Makdessi has never been knocked out. Neither fighter has a sub background. -250 may have been overstating it, but if it opens near evens I'll be dropping 3-4 units on it, and I think there's value all the way up to -190.

Nothing will become a 2-star play on the basis of odds. I can't tell if lines are way out.

Gashimov it's just that I will bet younger less experienced fighters over the old guard (Tuck v Zhang, Prado v Davis etc) unless I have reasons not to. I don't know anything about Gashimov beyond the basics.

Gashimov is just some guy who has fought in random comps in Russia and Menjivar is a veteran with several UFC victories and is probably not washed-up at only 30 years of age. So I'm guessing there's a good chance Gashimov is priced at like +300 or more. If that's the case I won't bet him since when prices get to that level it's just pricing up the chance of some sort of fluke and people tend to overestimate how likely that is. I don't bet guys without an actual legitimate chance of winning.

Come on man.

This

Le was his first loss to a non champ/former champ and thats not even true if you count strikeforce since Le held that title

I would snap take Franklin over Le in a rematch at evens and probably even at -200

Hopefully Rich gets an upper mid level guy and is undervalued in his next fight. He's old but i'm not convinced he's done. I'd take him against Belcher, Palhares, Lombard Boetsch and Munoz for sure at evens, the only guys at MW I wouldn't snap bet him at evens against are Weidman (who I think he could beat but would be competitive), Bisping (same, could go either way), Belfort (bad MU and we've seen it already) and Anderson obviously, plus probably Sonnen if he dropped back to MW.

Didn't realise it was that many, for some reason I thought Stout had a couple more TKOs. I guess the Edwards fight sticks in my mind for some reason even though i've probably seen 7 or so of his fights in the UFC.

How does this work? Like i'd assume if your model has both guys with a roughly even chance of winning and then one guy who is supposed to open at -110 opens at +220 for some reason, wouldn't that be a 3 star play? Or similarly if a guy is supposed to win 75% of the time in your model opens at evens?

I dunno if I can back Rich any more. Fighters do eventually hit a point where their chins can't take the hits any more and we could be there with him. Nothing makes me more nervous than backing a fighter whose chin I don't trust.

And ya Stout has always been the decision king, his nickname is like a running joke.

Have been through that a few times ITT - I don't model chance of winning, I predict market error.

Best analogy would be back like 5-10 years ago in the NFL, you could simply blindly bet on home underdogs and make a profit, because the market would systematically price them too long. But if you asked someone who bet on home underdogs how he thought a particular home dog would be priced before the lines came out, he wouldn't necessarily know. He'd just know whatever number the market ended coming up with would be too long.

Simple betting strategies like that don't work in NFL anymore because the market is too sharp, but the market in MMA is not sharp, to put it mildly. Last card Tuck opened at 2.25 and closed at like 1.30, that right there is not a sharp market. If the MMA market does adjust then a) I am screwed and b) I won't even know until I notice profit start to trail off or can do some analysis showing that the type of fighters I bet are being priced shorter, which is why I'm pretty circumspect about exactly what I am betting on.

Actually modelling MMA would be a tough undertaking and it might be impossible to judge fighter skill better than humans can do it. Even if it could be done it would be so difficult to do that the amount of work wouldn't be worth it given the betting limits. It would also be useless on relatively new fighters there isn't enough data on.

Interestingly the majority of the lines I like tend to shorten from opening, which suggests that the people setting opening lines are less sharp than the public (which is maybe not surprising in a sport that is hard to model). There is (on average) still value left when the lines close, in fact lines shortening is in itself a predictor of value in the closing lines. I've been wondering if this is an example of anchoring where people aren't really sure where a lot of the lines should be and revise their guesses based on opening lines, but that's speculation.

I've found that was well with both MMA and SC2 (the other niche market I bet) i'm almost always on the same side as the steam when I bet early - some of the lines like Tuck and Caceres were always going to move it felt like.

That Tuck line had to be priced by someone who doesn't actually watch MMA. Tuck 2.25 is how you'd price it if you'd never seen Zhang fight. You'd look at their records and be like "OK this Zhang guy has fought in UFC a bit before, he doesn't look very good but he's kept getting UFC fights so he can't be AWFUL, and he's got experience. Whereas this Tuck guy is completely unproven, has never fought in a serious MMA comp before. But he must be OK to have jumped straight to UFC. So I guess I'll price him as a small dog." It makes sense on a shallow level.

Whereas the market looked at that and went "Tiequan Zhang as a favourite, hahahaohwow".

Another one was Kid Yamamoto vs Darren Ueyonama - Kid was clearly on the decline and Darren was an unproven prospect, so they opened the line at Kid -450 or something ridiculous - I think that bet on Ueyonamama (sp?) is among the most profitable i've ever made when he should have been a small to moderate fav. Evans/Davis at close to evens was another really weird line open that got corrected eventually to some degree