The Best MMA Analysis (Video)

Many of you will already be aware of these videos but I wanted to bring people’s attention to Inside The Octagon with Dan Hardy and John Gooden. They provide excellent in depth analysis for the major fights in the UFC. They will bring up things you haven’t noticed even if you’ve studied hours of tape for a fight and whilst the two of them work really well together, Hardy especially is very elloquent and concise.

My word of caution though; they are UFC employees and are therefore obliged to put both sides of the story forward when analysing a fight. They may therefore place undue weight on one guy’s strengths to make it look like he has more of a chance than he really does, to sell the fight. Even so, if you are dead set on picking one fighter in a particular fight, their analysis will usually pick up on the other fighter’s strengths and give you pause for thought.

Here’s their analysis of Werdum vs Miocic. They also state that they’ll have a breakdown of the co-main (Jacare vs Belfort) and Anderson Silva vs Uriah Hall coming soon, so subscribe to the UFC’s channel if you haven’t already and wade through the promo stuff to find these little gems.

How to make money betting UFC in play – Guide

First off, I’ll state that I’m not a high stakes gambler. My current betting bankroll is just over £1200 ($1700US) off initial deposits of £650, about 6 months ago. I didn’t really bet at all before I set up this site. However, since starting handicapping (and doing well at it), I have started to take betting on MMA seriously. I’d say slightly less than half the money I’ve made so far has been on in-play, so whilst you obviously can’t handicap that aspect of betting, I can try and explain what I try to do.

The most important thing is multi-tabbing. You can totally make money betting UFC in play if you just have one bookmaker but you’re ignoring a goldmine if you do. Several bookies offer in play betting on the UFC (Unibet, Ladbrokes, Boyles, Bet365 and probably plenty of others) and the lines offered are frequently massively different. Just on UFC 196, there were 3 fights where I managed to get guaranteed profits as different bookies had a different underdog at the same time.

I don’t view that as a particularly great way to make money, as profits are minimal. Also, you can get screwed over if one bookmaker suspends the market and you only get half the bet on in time. That happened to me with a 7 unit bet 🙂 So if you do wanna bet two bookies for a guaranteed profit, I’ld suggest doing so only in the first couple of rounds and even better, between rounds (when the odds don’t change so much). Most of the bookies also have a delay of about 8 seconds before your bet is placed and if the odds change, it might ask you to re-confirm, so make sure the bet has actually gone through!

Anyway, forget that sneaky business, the best way to make money in play (at least for me, so far), has been doing a bit of scouting beforehand to understand the basic fundamentals of a fighter’s game and then bet accordingly, preferably an underdog who is outperforming their odds. That might sound obvious but the key is to get on the bet before everyone else catches on… and to do that, a little knowledge goes a long way, especially on a card full of live dogs.

So going in to UFC 196 I had my eye on several guys as live dogs, should a particular set of circumstances play out, primarily Darren Elkins. Although I couldn’t handicap any of this, I did send out a mass mail to my followers on BetMMA with notes on all the fights I scouted and what to watch out for. Regarding Skelly vs Elkins I wrote.

Having scouted Chas Skelly before, I don’t particularly rate him and he has a bad gas tank…. bla bla bla a bit of fight analysis…. However, if you have access to in play betting and it’s a close R1, even if Elkins just about loses the round, I’d get on him in play. If you can get something like +450 after losing the first, it’s worth a shot because I think he should take over the later part of the fight. If he wins the first round and the price is anything acceptable, get on it.

The key point regarding this fight was the fighters’ respective gas tanks. That’s the number one value maker when two guys are evenly matched…. One guy goes balls to the wall early, ends up as a heavy in play favourite, you get on the opponent with a better gas tank at some tasty price like +300 and he takes over the fight to win a decision. In this instance the first round was really tight and with Chas being the favourite, money came in on him. At the end of round 1, Darren Elkins was available at +300, 4.0, 3/1 with Ladbrokes. He’d actually WON the first round with two of the judges. He did indeed take over the fight and won 30-26, 30-27, 29-27. Happy days.

On the other side of things, in play lets you avoid making value bets that turn out to be bad judgement calls. Guimaraes was another guy I scouted pretty heavily pre-event. I thought he was under-valued at +250 and the line should have been a little closer. However, it really wasn’t worth a pre-event bet, as I did think he’d probably end up losing. Instead, I wanted to see if he could land a takedown and keep Miranda on the mat. He couldn’t, so I didn’t bet him. In the end I actually bet “someone to win by TKO” near the end of R1 at +200, as Guimaraes started to really look gassed after a failed takedown attempt.

The only place I know which offers the specific props like that is Unibet. The odds there tend to be by far the most accurate to what’s going on and therefore trickiest to make money on straight fight bets, but there are obviously still plenty of opportunities.

With regards those props, I am also partial to some incremental returns from stuff that’s never going to happen in a million years, even if it’s only a 5-10% return. “Nobody wins by sub” or “Nobody wins in R1”, when there’s 1 min 30 left in the round and nothing’s happened between two pillow fisted, granite chinned fighters. It all adds up, if you can be bothered! Again though, it’s all about prior knowledge because you can’t afford to get any wrong at those sort of odds.

Going back to straight up fight betting, one other key thing to do is keep an eye on both the Twitter hashtag for the UFC event and at least one play by play writeup. I personally keep an eye on Sherdog. At the end of each round, have a look at who people think won the round on Twitter and the PBP and if the odds are the wrong way around, get on it. Taleb was an example of that at UFC 196. He was still a decent underdog at the end of R1 (something like +225) but most people on twitter and all 3 people on Sherdog thought Taleb won R1. Combine that with the fact that Taleb was looking better than evenr and Silva has questionable cardio and it was a bit of a no-brainer. The KO was just a really nice bonus.

A lot of that covers when to bet on the dogs but should you bother betting on favourites in play? Obviously it’s riskier as the odds will be shortening from an already pretty weak return, so in general don’t just bet anyone who you think is winning. People come back from adversity all the time. However, sometimes it’s just clear that once a certain incident happens, one guy’s pretty screwed, or at the very least, is in big, big trouble. Again, it comes down to a little bit of knowledge. Saggo vs Salas at UFC 196 is a perfect example. Before the fight I didn’t know whether Saggo would get the fight to the mat, where he has a massive advantage. Salas ended up taking the fight to the mat, got refersed straight away and that was the cue for a decent sized in play bet on Saggo at around 1.25 / -400.

Finally, the last remaining point is cashing out your bets. I cash out all the time on things I don’t think will come off. However, don’t think of it like “oh, I bet $5 and I can cash out at $2.50, at least I’m getting half my money back.” No you’re not. If you bet $5 at 2.00 / +100, you’re effectively betting $10 to win $2.50, if this is an either / or outcome, because you’re losing out on the potential winnings too. Would you bet 1.25 or -400 to take the other side of the bet? If the answer’s yes, cool, cash out.

Remember, you can’t win em all, however much you try. Every so often you’ll get screwed by a bad judges call (I bet Marion Reneau in play pretty big against Ashlee Evans-Smith). Also, don’t try and force it. Some events just aren’t great for in play, e.g. if all the favourites end up winning. I am of the opinion that in general, you’re better off not betting at all than betting a fight at worse odds than you think it should be, so when that’s the case, forget about betting and just enjoy the damned fight! Or if you can’t help yourself, just play those little 5-10% bankers 🙂

N.B. Time permitting, I send out a mailer about possible in play opportunities for each event to my followers on the main site. Visit my profile to follow me.

MMA Handicapper Interview: UFC Moneymaker

Happy New Year everyone! As we had a couple of weeks between UFC events, I decided to do an interview with one of our handicappers. If you are interested in being featured as the next MMA handicapper interview, let me know.

First up, we have UFC Moneymaker. Based in the UK, like myself (hence us talking about MMA in the UK later in the interview). Since signing up on Bet MMA, he has a record of:

Overall Stats		Straight Fight Picks		Props		Parlays
Right	46 (55%)	Right	23 (79%)	Right	20 (43%)	Right	3 (38%)
Wrong	38 (45%)	Wrong	6 (21%)	Wrong	27 (57%)	Wrong	5 (63%)
Ave Odds	1.97	Ave Odds	1.76	Ave Odds	2.01	Ave Odds	3.03
Units Bet	162.0	Units Bet	73.0	Units Bet	76.0	Units Bet	13.0
Units Profit	23.03	Units Profit	27.55	Units Profit	-7.62	Units Profit	3.10
ROI %	14%	ROI %	38%	ROI %	-10%	ROI %	24%

Winning Events: 14 (67%)
Losing Events: 7 (33%)

You can find UFCMoneymaker’s profile here and his personal website at ufcmoneymaker.co.uk where you can find his long term record.

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Bet MMA: What’s your real name and how long have you been handicapping MMA?

ufcmoneymaker: Matt White, and it’s been around 3 years now.

Bet MMA: What do you do in real life as a job?

ufcmoneymaker: I work in Sports betting for a large Sportsbook.

Bet MMA: How would you describe your handicapping style in general?

ufcmoneymaker: I’d say I approach from a fan perspective, I don’t charge for tips so I look for things I like not just quick profits. I’ve always been a prop man but went through a poor run and needed to change something, so I moved to Straight, Prop and Parlay; also ramped up the units.

Bet MMA: So, presumably as a fan, you have a good base knowledge but how much tape watching do you do specifically for picks? And would you say that tape watching often changes your initial gut instinct pick?

ufcmoneymaker: I watch every event and have a vast library of Pride and UFC to pick from.
I tend to go with my gut for most picks, referring to tape if I am in any doubt. I also work out what I fancy before looking at any odds, that way I don’t get swayed by the oddsmakers; given that they are so frequently wrong.

Bet MMA: When the odds are heavily one way and you think the other way, is your prediminant emotion excitement or self-doubt? 😀

ufcmoneymaker: Doubt, briefly. You always think whether you have missed something obvious. But sometimes the bookies are caught up in the sort of hype that a handicapper can’t possess. Just look at recent dog bets on Karolina Kowalkievicz (sic) Rose Namajunas and Ryan Bader. All decent dogs but should have been favs.

Bet MMA: So, it’s 23 fights since you got a straight pick wrong, including 7 underdogs. That’s pretty sweet. Have you done anything differently recently to hit that run?

ufcmoneymaker: Nothing, my mates always say Blind Squirrels and Broken Clocks. Toss a coin often enough and you’ll go on a decent run. I always get concerned about streaks as regression to the mean is a bitch.

Bet MMA: I think that runs a bit more than luck, so let’s hope the graph keeps pointing in the right direction 🙂
Anyway, going back to the underdogs thing. Do you look at specific types of fighter that might offer value? By that specifically, I mean that I personally seem to have started picking unbeaten fighters to lose their first fight. Is there a certain category of fighter that you think offers potential value?

ufcmoneymaker: I tend to fade the fighter who has been on lengthy layoff. Im also keen to look a first timers facing more established fighters. KK was a standout v Markos. Also, previous winners with a poor performance is an auto fade; mikael Lebout for example.

Bet MMA: So, you say you do this mostly on instinct. How much had you seen of Karolina Kowalkievicz previously and how much non-UFC MMA do you watch? And what ultimately made you go for that pick?

ufcmoneymaker: I’d seen precious little, but when she was signed a mate was raving about her as the best European female fighter outside the UFC. I trust his opinion on that. I do watch some non-UFC, bellator is a decent watch but mostly squash matches, as with Rizin. I’ve always looked to attend BAMMA and Cage Warriors when they are nearby, as well as judging regional fights in Stoke on Trent for Ross Pointon.
I picked KK because I felt the UFC would be desperate for JJ v KK in Poland at some stage in 2016 and their current style is to build fighters we style rather than put them up against the best in the division.

Bet MMA: Ross Pointon: He of the most grizzly head cuts, for those reading this who haven’t seen it! Have you been to any UFCs live? I’m presuming so… If so, what’s the best fight you’ve seen live?

ufcmoneymaker: That’s the one, he runs Night of the Gladiators locally. I’ve been to a few: ufc138 in Birmingham, 146 in Vegas as well as the Fight Night cards at Wembley, O2, Glasgow, Manchester and Nottingham.
Best fight though? You’ll have to give me a couple of minutes on that one 🙂

I don’t think I have a best fight, I’ve got a most uncomfortable (Sexton v Andrade) and UFC 146 was by far the best event.

Bet MMA: I can empathise with the uncomfortable thing. The first fight I saw live was a one sided beatdown in a near empty O2 arena. When it finished me and my friends turned to each other and said “urgh…. I’m not sure I enjoyed watching that.”
Thankfully when it filled out, it didn’t feel as weird.

ufcmoneymaker: The Sexton fight should have been stopped, it was a beat down.

Bet MMA: So, you mention your wife; what’s she make of MMA in general? You also mentioned your friends – it sounds like you’re lucky enough to have mates who are also into MMA.

ufcmoneymaker: She tolerates it. Absolutely despises football and knows I love sport so she picks the lesser evil. I’ve got a couple of mates into MMA, only one that’s as into it as I am, that’s my event buddy 🙂
To be honest just being able to shoot the shit with someone about MMA in general is a nice bonus.

Bet MMA: So, back to handicapping, what would you say was your best pick to date?

ufcmoneymaker: That’s easy, starting out I got Ross Pearson over George Sotiropoulis in the 3rd round at 22/1

Bet MMA: What made you go for that?

ufcmoneymaker: I don’t know, I fancied inside the distance but uk books were not offering it so I rolled the dice on a gut feeling.

But, I’ll always remember Condit v Kampmann II – I went through the main card, props, straights, cumulative odds of just over 1000/1

Bet MMA: Do you remember what you went for in that 1000/1?

ufcmoneymaker:
Yeah I do, actually:
Brad Tavares by decision at 5/4
Court McGee by decision (over Robert Whittaker) 7/4
Tavares over McDaniel
Mizugaki over Erik Perez
Gastelum over melancon by sub 7/1
RDA over Cerrone by decision 11/5
Condit over Kampmann by ko 13/8

My finest hour. Nearly repeated it the following week but the main event broke me.

Bet MMA: Yup, that’ll do nicely! Wanna share how much you had on that and what you did with the winnings?

ufcmoneymaker: You know what sucks? I didn’t have a penny on it. It was part of an article I wrote for Fighters Only. Nobody has ever let me forget it.

Bet MMA: argh…. ballbags!

ufcmoneymaker: I said…..similar. I don’t bet all my tips. Some I do, but mainly only when the line is really wrong.

Bet MMA: How did you get that gig with Fighters Only?

ufcmoneymaker: At UFC Nottingham.
There was a UFC fight club party, I invited them along as a promo piece, got talking to the online editor and put a proposal up to him, he went for it and I’ve been doing it since.

They did a video story, interviewed a few of the members, gave away some tickets and hosted a hand wrapping competition with Stitch. I won with a friend of mine, I had to wrap her hands in toilet paper like Stitch showed us with the proper stuff. We had Leon Roberts, Mark Goddard, Alex Gustafson there.

Bet MMA: Have you met many fighters in real life? If so, who’s been the nicest?

ufcmoneymaker: Yeah a fair few. Met Cain Velasquez while walking down the Las Vegas Strip, Johny Hendricks at UFC 146, Edson Barboza in the mgm ice cream parlour, he posed for a pic after Jamie Varner had ko’d him. Gustafson a few times, Ross Pearson a few times,Luke Rockhold was pretty cool too as was Brittany Palmer. Nicest was Randy Couture though, met him at a BAMMA event and took the time to say hi despite security trying to push us all away
Oh I forgot about Stefan Struve ( he towered over me and I’m 6’2″) but Pat Barry was pretty cool too, despite the fact he should have finished over an hour earlier.

Bet MMA: Yeah. that’s really cool of him.

ufcmoneymaker: Most of the fighters are top guys. They recognise the fan involvement in the sport.

Bet MMA: I’d like to give a shout out to the late Shawn Tompkins at this point actually. He climbed up the side of the bleachers to take a pic with me after a weighins once.

Bet MMA: Looking forward, what do you reckon to the general landscape of MMA at the moment? Any fighters you particularly look forward to watching? Do you think we’re at a stage where the sport itself is fully developed or do you think we’ve still got a way to go before it reaches its potential?

ufcmoneymaker: Long way to go yet. People are conditioned to boxing, MMA by comparison is viewed as barbaric due to violence, even though the skillset is far higher.
I am very keen on Aljamain Sterling, he’s got a huge future ahead of him.

The sport needs more mainstream icons. McGregor and Rousey have been great for the public profile of the sport. Those who don’t get MMA know who they are, that’s a great thing as it legitimises the sport.

Bet MMA: It’s funny isn’t it. Some people don’t like MMA cos they think it’s boring, then some don’t like it cos they think it’s too violent.

ufcmoneymaker: Yeah people I know confuse it with wwe which irritates me. Others refer to it as oiled up men cuddling on the floor. We need to get some mainstream celebs at the events, people that can be identified with. Whatshisface from One Direction and Noel Clarke don’t quite cut it yet.

Bet MMA: I think we need a regular set of events, every couple of months in europe. When all the events are late at night, i dont think there’s any reason for media to cover it.

ufcmoneymaker: Yeah, although Anderson Silva is going to bring huge attention next month. Terrestrial tv in the uk will also help.

Bet MMA: For sure… it’s just that there won’t be another event in the UK for probably 6 months, so there’s never any momentum. It probably needs Sky to buy the rights and put it on Sky Sports News.

ufcmoneymaker: Tell me about it. Best year was when we had two, London and Manchester. Downside is that ticket prices will rocket and events will be harder to attend; guess we can’t win.

Bet MMA: Yeah, im not sure im too bothered about going live anymore. first UFC we went to was £25 for the front row of the top bowl at hte O2, just behind the exec boxes. Would probably be £150 now. That was only 7 years ago.

ufcmoneymaker: I just paid £166 for l1, square on the octagon for Feb.

Bet MMA: Yeah, I’m not sure I can justify that sort of price, even if I can write it off. Might make the trip to Stockholm for one or something like that and make a holiday of it with some mates.

ufcmoneymaker: I’m aiming for Berlin or Poland.

Bet MMA: So… Proper questions…. In terms of your own website, how long have you had that set up? I know you give away your picks for free, so have any of your followers ever sent you any pennies as a thanks for winning them some money?

ufcmoneymaker: I set it up when I started with Fighters Only; it was more for recording all my picks. Nobody ever sent me a single penny, I should put up a tip jar. When I get around to my new site maybe I’ll put one up.

Bet MMA: Any aspirations of making any money out of it all?

ufcmoneymaker: Long term maybe, I don’t have the userbase yet.

Bet MMA: Do you have any fighters that you keep going back to bet on again and again? And conversely, anyone who’s burned you mutiple times?

ufcmoneymaker: Repeat bets are Lawler & Rockhold, the burner is Overeem. He’s done me too many times. I’ll bet Rockhold against pretty much anyone, huge fan. I’d bet Mighty Mouse over Overeem, he’s done me that many times.

Bet MMA: Yeah, heavyweights are a tricky pospect. I tend to steer clear. Looking at your stats though, you seem to spread your picks across all weight classes. Mostly lower main card guys. Is that deliberate or just happenstance?

ufcmoneymaker: Coincidence I’d say. For FO I cover all on the main card, so I’ll always get a decent mix. Occasionally I’ll not get a chance to do a write up so I’ll end up putting my instinct picks out; eg TUF cards.

Bet MMA: Do you tend to look at stats much? Have the BetMMA stats pages provided any helpful insight?

ufcmoneymaker: I rarely look at stats unless it’s for an individual fighter, the past doesn’t predict the future. Or, at least I try not too.

Bet MMA: Well I’ll have to see if the Bet Bot can prove you wrong on that one 😀

ufcmoneymaker: Ha ha, bring it on.

Bet MMA: Does it bug you that you use a 1-5 unit scale and others use at 1-11 scale, which if you used, you’d be higher up the leaderboard? *N.B. I will be trying to do an adjusted table at some point to help with that.

ufcmoneymaker: It used to. Before April this year I was a strictly 1 unit man, if I’d been more proactive my lifetime stats would probably be double what they are at least.

Bet MMA: What have we got left to talk about?

ufcmoneymaker: I don’t know, least favourite event live? Wembley, worst event I’ve ever seen, either on TV or in person.

Bet MMA: What was that event?

ufcmoneymaker: It was Barao v McDonald, it stunk.

Bet MMA: Moving on then. What do you think of MMA judging at the moment and does it impact your picks in any way?

ufcmoneymaker: As a judge myself I feel for some judges, but many don’t help themselves. Judging has no impact on my picks, unless it’s Benson Henderson 🙂

Bet MMA: Why him in particular?

ufcmoneymaker: He’s a point fighter, he seems to know what they are scoring on. Others are not so lucky.

Bet MMA: What did you reckon to the scoring this weekend at UFC 195?

ufcmoneymaker: I’ve not seen the whole thing yet due to work. I had some contentious views on the title fight though, not everyone agrees with me.

Bet MMA: Oh yeah?

ufcmoneymaker:
I gave Condit, round 1
Lawler Round 2
Narrowly went with Lawler in the 3rd
Condit in the 4th
The fifth, while universally scored for Lawler I gave to Condit by virtue of winning 4/5 mins of the round. The flurry from Lawler was impressive but it was a final roll of the dice, based on scoring criteria it had to go to Condit.

Bet MMA: Well, whilst I think you’re off your rocker for scoring R3 for Lawler and think you’d probably change your mind if you watched it again, I don’t disagree on R5. Lawler lost 4 minutes of R5. I think people only think it’s clearly Lawler because they thought the epic comeback win might have been on. If that was R1, they might have had a different view.

ufcmoneymaker: Didn’t help that I knew the result before watching the fight, but I thought I’d score it anyway. Maybe I’ll rewatch the 3rd, but Twitter was completely against me for the 5th.

Bet MMA: I stayed up to watch it live. First time I’ve done that in about 5 years.

ufcmoneymaker: See, I did that for 194; it was the bigger event.

Bet MMA: One point I’ve tried making on the Condit fight. This magical sixth sense that some people think they have for deciding how damaging a shot is…. Lawler throws massive punches with his teeth showing. That doesn’t mean they hurt more. If Conor hadn’t knocked out Aldo with that punch, people would have thought that was a sort of 4/10 power punch.
Condit caught Lawler plenty of times with good solid shots; they’re just more efficient and less obviously aggressive.

ufcmoneymaker: Agree, completely. The big question was do you score for a guy who throws less and lands more or a guy who throws more and lands less.

Bet MMA: Or in this instance, a guy who throws more and lands more 🙂

ufcmoneymaker: Percentage wise Lawler landed more didn’t he?

Bet MMA: Not sure. I think condit landed more shots than Lawler threw. From recollection, I think Condit’s land % was probably about 35%. I personally thought Condit, Ansaroff, Noke and Soto all won. I picked them all in a pickem contest, so I was pissed off 🙂

ufcmoneymaker: According to http://UFC.com Lawler landed 53% total strikes and 52% significant strikes. Condit was 35% on both.

Bet MMA: Oooh, good guess. Right, let’s wrap things up with a couple of quick general questions.

Bet MMA: What would be your general advice to anyone who wanted to bet on MMA, in terms of making good picks? Both straight fight picks and what to look for in a prop. And as a nice finishing post, how about putting together a semi realistic fantasy card with like 5 fights, which would suit a main / co-main / rest of the card.

ufcmoneymaker: For general advice, I’d say don’t rush into it. People look at betting as easy; it isn’t. Making money at MMA is a slog and it’s getting harder. Bookmakers are smartening up and it won’t be too long till the odds are unbettable, like most boxing matches. Start with props, get to know how they work and use them for fun, particularly in the big favourites. It’s the only time you’ll get value from someone like Rousey.

For a fantasy card? I’d opt for a 5 fight main card.
To get the show underway I’d pick
Carlos Condit v Matt Brown
McGregor v Cerrone
Fedor v Randy Couture
co-main is GSP v Anderson Silva
and headlined by Jon Jones v Cain Velasquez.

Call it UFC: Awesome Violence

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Thanks to Matt for his time and insight. Please follow Matt and anyone else who’s doing a good job in our MMA Handicapper Directory of the best MMA Handicappers on the net!

UFC 194 Betting Offers – McGregor vs Aldo

Just a quick blog post to let people know that several of the UK bookmakers are putting up big special offers for new customers wanting to bet on the UFC 194 Aldo vs McGregor card.

If you sign up with NetBet, they will give you 7/1 on either fighter. Any odds over the standard odds at the time will be paid out as a free bet.

The other big bookmaker offer on UFC 194 is courtesy of BetFair. They will give you 5/1 on Conor McGregor and 8/1 on Jose Aldo. Given that Aldo is now the favourite, that’s a pretty sweet deal!

This isn’t something they’ll do very often – it’s only cos the rest of the casual fan base is jumping on the MMA bandwagon for the weekend, so make the most of the freebies!

MMA Betting Apps

If you want keep up to date with our mma handicappers more easily on your mobile, we’ve now got three apps relating to the MMA stats and MMA betting aspects of the site.

The main one for UFC betting is our MMA Free Betting Tips app. It also includes the paid betting tips but it’s just called free betting tips cos that sounds more appealing to new users 🙂 From there you can keep up to date with everyone’s picks and follow handicappers to get emails alerts when they make new picks.

The second app is our MMA / UFC Statistics App. This basically covers all the stats bits of the sites. As with the rest of the site, it weaves together UFC betting stats with general stats such as height, reach, weight, age etc to provide plenty of very useful MMA Betting info.

The final app is our odds conversion tool. Created for us by Mark O’Sullivan, on of our top users for MMA Tycoon. This app allows you to convert from American, Decimal and % Probability odds formats.

Please download and rate the apps to help push us up the rankings on Google Play!

Guide to successful MMA betting

We’ll start with some fundamentals and work down to some more…. unusual suggestions 🙂

Tip #1: This very first point might be a deal breaker for a lot of you. You can make SOME money betting on instinct but really, if you want to make any decent money, you 100% have to be either watching fight tape specifically for the fight or taking really good notes as you watch fights generally and using those notes on future predictions. I bought UFC fight pass specifically for this purpose. If you’re gunna end up making money from your picks, it’s definitely worth the investment. Of course, there are “other resources” you can use, if you don’t have the money for fight pass.

Tip #2: Break down each fighter forensically. I have a list of attributes and effectively turn the fighters into computer game characters. I’m sure a lot of people do this but my tip here is that you can’t just do it for a few attributes like power, chin etc… You have to go nuts. I have about 40 attributes. I don’t literally fill in all these attributes, however, I have them there mentally as a sort of check point.

I also think it’s important to note which of the attributes are going to be key in the bout you are trying to break down. The obvious one is chin. I would suggest very rarely betting on someone with a poor chin. Plus, you can flag them up as a massive potential opportunity if they face someone who’s a bad stylistic matchup. Which brings me to…

Tip #3. Transitions. This, I believe, is pretty much the most underrated part of breaking down a fight. A fighter may have an advantage in certain area but if they can’t get it there, it really doesn’t matter. The most obvious part of this analysis is takedowns. You can’t just look at takedown defense or offense stats, you need to make notes on what type of takedowns people go for. Perfect example would be breaking down Daniel Cormier vs Anthony Johnson. Johnson stuffed 8 of 8 takedown attempts vs Phil Davis, who is a national wrestling champion. So, you might therefore think he’d be hard for Cormier to take down. However, Cormier goes for clinch takedowns and trip takedowns during transitions and Phil Davis was shooting double legs. Totally, totally different.

If you have limited time to research a fight between two guys who are stylistically very different, I would recommend your first bit of analysis was on transitions.

The second most important thing I like to assess is whether a fighter accepts being in bad positions (i.e. pressed up against the cage, or in guard on the bottom). We’ll look at that more in point #9.

We have a notes feature at Bet MMA, which lets you keep as many notes on fighters as you like, all for free, so you are more than welcome to sign up and make the most of that feature. In the near future we’ll also be adding feature for you to rate each fighter for a number of attributes and potentially we’ll even have an automated system to flag up good bets based on your ratings.

Tip #4. Set your own line. I like to pretend I’m the bookmaker and set my own line, first starting with a percentage chance of each fighter winning, then converting that into odds. Once you’ve done that, assume you’re 5% off at least, then assess whether there’s really any value in betting the fight. You can use our odds conversion tool to do that.

Tip #5. Don’t assume people will fight with a good gameplan. Sometimes you’ll think “man, this guy could totally win if he fights like xyz”. I thought that for Mark Eddiva’s fight against Levan Makashvili, in Levan’s UFC debut. Fighters in there debut lose more often than not, because of the UFC jitters. It was also in the Phillipenes and Levan was a last minute replacement. All big red flags. Eddiva was something like +450 and I thought honestly it should have been around +150, because Eddiva was a superior striker.

I ultimately left the pick (correctly), because after re-watching Eddiva’s fights I decided he just couldn’t be trusted to fight a sensible gameplan. I didn’t trust him to fight his way out of bad positions and keep the fight where he had an advantage. In the end he did spend too much time with his back against the cage, drifting his way to a split decision loss. So that brings me to:

Tip #6. Know when to fold on a bet. I used to play poker. If you do 5 hours research on a fight and you think “yeah, this COULD happen”, that’s kinda like putting a load of chips into a hand on the flop… maybe you get suckered into calling all the way to the river because you’re heavily invested and lose even more chips. Basically you don’t have to bet every time you think there’s some value and if there’s a a nagging doubt in the back of your mind, maybe you’re best off just leaving it. Certainly it’s a good idea to leave it for 24 hours and revisit it the day after.

Tip #7. Not every event is the same, so don’t try and make the same number of picks on every card. What’s the point in that? Sometimes you should be making 5 picks per card, sometimes you should make none. This is one of the massive problems with subscription based services who charge e.g. $20 per month to view picks. If you’re charging people a subscription, you have an obligation to make picks and sometimes there’s absolutely no value in doing that.

Tip #8. Bear in mind the stats. There are very signifincantly different patterns in different weight classes. Check out our MMA Stats pages and make the most of them. We’ve got filters for a vast number of different variables such as fighters making their debut, all weight classes, genders, octagon size etc. Generally familiarise yourself with the patterns. Knowledge is power! 🙂

Tip #9. Remember that a hell of a lot of fights (with the exception of heavyweight) end up going to decision. With that in mind, volume of output and accepting being in bad positions are two very important factors. Lots of fighters sit in guard on the bottom or allow themselves to be pressed against the cage. Someone like Charles Oliveira for example, sits in guard for ages. He’s an extremely dangerous fighter but if he doesn’t get a sub, there’s a chance he’ll lose a decision. Clinch control is probably less obvious but more important. Lots of fighters will defend a takedown well but ultimately will not circle away from the cage, so they spend a lot of time in defensive mode, which is a great way to lose a decision. It doesn’t matter how you think a fight should be scored, base your picks on how MMA actually IS scored.

Of course, that above point is assuming you’re going to pick a winner. Why pick a winner? I’ve said this to several people but I believe picking winners is an ego thing whereas picking the over / under (particularly the over), as a less active betting market, is often where the good money is at! You can’t call any betting “sensible” but this is as close to sensible money as I think there is in MMA betting.

Often you’ll get an over 1.5 rounds rather than the usual 2.5 rounds if the odds are a little wider. If you think those adds are picking the correct winner but are way too wide, well then the over is probably a good bet.

Tip #10. Make notes after you get things wrong. What was it that you didn’t see coming? Note it down and don’t do it again.Maybe you fell for….

Tip #11. Commentator coolaid! Some commentators are really bad when it comes to over-hyping things. In my opinion Kenny Florian is the worst but they all do it to an extent. So don’t believe everything a color commentator says – it’s their job to make people sound better than they are. HOWEVER, with that said, do listen to the commentary. I know some people like to watch fights with the sound off… I think that’s a bad idea. You hear a lot of different little bits of info in commentary from fighter belt levels to explanations of mitigating circumstances for previous losses (x fighter had a cold when cutting weight etc). Most bettors and presumably the odds makers too, base most of their odds and betting patterns on hard facts. If you can find mitigating reasons why those hard “facts” are a bit off, like a fighter coming in with an injury or personal problems, that’s probably going to mean the line undervalues that fighter.

Tip #12. Similarly, check the records of a fighter’s opponents, especially if they are new to you / the UFC. Sometimes a fighter has a pretty sweet looking record but the people they’ve beaten have a combined record of 17 wins and 142 losses. You can’t then bet based on this information but this should be a good basis for starting out your research. Have a look at what sort of fighter the person you’re scouting has fought in the past and as an example, if someone’s coming in with a sweet striking record, have they faced and beaten a really good wrestler yet? The early UFC principles still apply so a flashy striker will still get a lot of hype but when they run up against a wrestler, they’re still probably gunna lose.

Tip #13. This is a really random weird one. 🙂 If you have DVRd the fights and want to see if someone has good head movement, watch a bit of the fight in x2 speed. It makes it a lot easier to see if a fighter isn’t moving his head at all, because everything else is moving loads and their head’s staying still.

Tip #14. Dont fall in / out of love with one guy… Just cos a fighter’s won you money in the past, don’t feel some sort of affinity towards them because you’ll tend to over-value him (or her of course). I think that’s probably why a lot of people picked Neil Magny over Demian Maia. He’d made people decent money in the past and that can cloud your judgement. The very opposite applied in his next fight as people then massively underrated him vs Erik Silva. Some people will tell you a fighter’s only as good as their last fight. Complete garbage but be grateful that some people are that into stupid hyperbole, because that sort of nonsense logic means there’s always going to be value in the betting lines! 🙂

Tip #15. And finally…. Bet the dog. Just as a general basis for betting, if you bet the dog, you’re gunna tend to make money. At the time of writing this article, according to our MMA underdogs vs favorites page, blindly betting the underdog (at the best available odds), will net you 9% ROI, which is better than the ROI you get from a lot of professional MMA handicappers! Ignore the really big underdogs, who do tend to lose, and that ROI is increased significantly. The real sweet spot appears to be in the +186 to +150. Fighters in this odds range out perform their odds by 15%, meaning a massive ROI if you just bet on fighters in that odds range.

Hopefully those mma betting tips will help you but remember, don’t go nuts. If you lose money, pack it in and don’t chase your losses. Don’t kid yourself and keep a note of how much you are actually winning and losing.

Cappertek Update

I’ve posted this on mmagame.net already but adding it here too…

So, as I expected, the admin at Cappertek, dodgy geezers that they are, have edited my pick history to make me look way less profitable and have marked me as a “Scam”, in response to me calling them out in these blogs. They have changed several of my 11 unit winning picks to 1 unit picks.

If you’re gunna act like I’m dodgy when you’re dodgy, you should expect some comeback, so I can assure Cappertek, that every time they prod at me, I’ll make sure they come out of it looking way worse than I do… You can’t make someone who isn’t a fraud look like a fraud, when they have independent proof they’re not a fraud. However, when someone is a editing profiles and allowing dodgy picks, like CapperTek, it’s pretty easy to prove that.

Specifically because I knew they’d do this, here’s a video I made of my betting results LOGGED INDEPENDENTLY ON CAPPERTEK. I made sure to navigate to my profile so you can see it’s not a copy of the website.

Proof of CapperTek profit history before site admin edited it.

This video was made mid-July. Search for MMAGame.net on CapperTek now and you’ll see they’ve changed my unit profit from 105.74 units down to 13.27 units by editing my pick history.

I’ve made another video of the current stats, in case they change it again… Please do change it or delete it CapperTek, as I say, you just keep making yourself look worse and worse!

Here’s a screengrab of the current state of play on my old Cappertek account.

CapperTek Profile

Additionally, site admin have also posted this “review” on my Cappertek profile, https://www.cappertek.com/reviews.asp?shs=MMAGame.net

Cappertek’s “Review” of our site

Again, CapperTek‘s apparent attempt at intimidation. I don’t care if people know who I am. Thousands of people know who I am. Here – this is a link to my house. Anyone who’s nearby, feel free to come say hi and we’ll talk about MMA…. That’s the thing when you aren’t a scam, you don’t have anything to hide.

This picture is from my Linked In profile. I also made no mention of my personal twitter account, which they’ve linked my Cappertek profile to, so Cappertek have basically internet stalked me, linked to my personal twitter which I never use, copied my picture from my personal linked in page that was nothing to do with CapperTek. They then blocked me on twitter on my BetMMA and my personal twitter accounts. Creepy behaviour, huh.

As for that actual Cappertek review…

“All sites claim profitable MMA picks / history / records however none of his services are documented anywhere on the web (except his own sites) or by any reputable 3rd party documentation sites like CapperTek.”

Oh… you mean apart from where I videoed my picks, when they were verified on your site. Nice try, Cappertek. Keep digging that hole deeper and deeper.

Update 14th Jan 2016. Cappertek contacted me in late 2015 to tell me that Marc, the admin responsible for deleting me, editing my picks and marking me as a Scam, had left his position with Cappertek and the new admin wanted to make things right and apologise. They offered to open up my account on the site again and said I could continue using them. Ultimately I decided that wasn’t something I wanted to do, but they have removed the scam label, the fake review and have restored my picks. I can’t say how Cappertek will act in the future or what this means for anyone else but hopefully that’s a step in the right direction.

Why there’s nothing wrong with the treatment of Women’s MMA by the UFC

UFC treatment of Women’s MMA

As someone who’s spent a lot of time watching WMMA lately, I think the UFC do a perfectly good job. I’m no UFC apologist by any means… I think they are distastefully and unnecessarly ruthless on a lot of issues and I think that brutal attitude to business is what causes a lot of people to write unjustly critical blogs, like Jonathan’s.

This is the general gist of the article by Jonathan.

“The sad truth is that despite a lack of interest in a Tate-versus-Rousey trilogy, it’s the best women’s bantamweight fight the UFC has to offer—and a problem they’ve created for themselves by all but ignoring women’s MMA. UFC, for all the progress made and the courage shown bringing women into the fold, still doesn’t seem fully committed to the experiment.

The promotion, quite obviously, is fully invested in the Ronda Rousey business. Women’s MMA, generally, hasn’t gotten the same love. According to Bleacher Report’s research, fewer than 10 percent of all UFC fights so far in 2015 have featured women, making both women’s bantamweight and the new strawweight division the least active divisions in the sport.

The UFC has a once-in-a-lifetime talent in Rousey….. UFC is failing her by letting the bantamweight division fall to pieces around her. Want to find the next Rousey? She won’t be the woman flailing away on Fight Pass or sitting at home waiting for a call.”

My response:

Yep, Tate vs Rousey 3 is the best we have to offer. Yep, that kinda sucks. That isn’t REMOTELY to do with where on the card women fight and to suggest that is nonsense. Jonathan states himself that Rousey is a once in a lifetime talent. THAT’s why the UFC are, quite understandably, having problems finding her competitive matchups!

If a fighter isn’t good enough to beat (or even compete with) Rousey, fighting higher up the card isn’t going to change that.

The UFC are already fast tracking talent to their main card faster than they would in other, more established divisions. Holly Holm was a co-main event in her first UFC fight. She looked fairly laclustre. In her second bout, again on the main card, she looked much better. I have no doubt she would have benefitted from a less high profile introduction to the UFC.

Paige VanZant looked very sloppy in her UFC debut (on the undercard) but was fast tracked to the main card in her next fight and looked a fair bit better. Still, in terms of actual talent, I’d argue she is being pushed well ahead of where she deserves to be in terms of card position, based on the UFCs desire to fast track the womens’ divisions into a more mature and developed state (i.e. exactly what Jonathan claims they’re not doing).

Looking at things from the other side; are there many women who deserve to be on the main card who aren’t? Surely that’s the obvious question to ask, rather than blindly looking at stats and trying to draw inaccurate cause and effect assumptions.

I can only think of MAYBE one and that’s Valerie Letourneau. She’s only had 2 UFC fights and I think she’s a solid talent. She’ll be main (or maybe co-main) eventing the undercard on Aug 23rd. Holloway vs Oliveira. She’s a good fighter but even then, she should be perfectly content with a solid position on the undercard.

Don’t underestimate the quality of fighters down there. Aljamain Sterling has only fought on the undercard so far (3 times). He’s vastly superior as a prospect to anything WMMA has to offer… It’s really not an insult to be out of the spotlight – rather it’s exactly what an up and coming MMA fighter should want and expect, as they build up their skillset. Throwing people in above their head (exposure wise or in terms of competition) is a great way to get them to under-perform and consequently have people write them off. Once a fighter’s been written off, it’s a lot harder to build that hype back up again!

A good example of that would see us going back to Holly Holm. I think she’s probably going to be the best short-medium term threat to Rousey. If she’d been given a bit of an easier entrance into the UFC, I think she could have been further along the line to justifying a title fight and certainly, with a couple of finishes on her record as opposed to a couple of decisions, the UFC would have less of a problem hyping that fight. As it is now, nobody’s going to want to see that fight either and it’s because they’ve had to fast track her to relatively tough opposition.

So anyway, let’s have a quick look at what I believe to be irrelevant stats, quoted by Jonathan… How many fights have there been in each weight class, on the main event of cards?

*NOTE…. I’m programming this as I write the blog. All the blog above was just my opinion, so let’s see what the facts say.

Fights on main UFC card by weight class since Nov ’14. Table from our MMA fight stats page (filter UFC fights only).

Since we started logging fights in Nov 14, there have been more Women’s Strawweight fights than male Bantamweight and Flyweight fights. By Jonathan’s logic, you can say the UFC are “all but ignoring” those weight classes. There’s also basically the same amount of fights in the light heavyweight division, which has historically been the UFCs marquee division!

As I said in my tweets to him, really, the actual reason is just the amount of talent. You can’t force these things… If there aren’t enough fighters in a weight class, male or female, you can’t make the fights!

Demetrious Johnson will be fighting John Dodson in his next title fight. Dodson’s last fight was absolutely horrible but there just aren’t enough human beings (and consequently fighters) at 125lbs, to find any other title contenders. It’s nothing to do with the UFC neglecting the division.

I could post a bell curve of the size of human beings and it would basically be exactly the same as the above graph… Men are generally 155-170lbs (when they aren’t stuffing their faces with McDonalds), so unsurprisingly, those divisions have the most fights. Likewise, there are more women who, when in shape, weight around 115-125lbs than 135-145lbs, so there are more 115lb women’s fights… It’s no conspiracy or negligence from the UFC, it’s just human biology.

So in response to this article, I decided to program a new page, to work out the average fight card position for each weight class and how many fights were main card vs undercard. As you can see from the table below, the UFC (since Nov 2014) has somewhat over-sold the heavyweight and light-heavyweight divisions but other than that, it’s much of a muchness. Women’s strawweight actually has the third most fights on the main card, as a percentage of overall fights in the division. If you wanna pick divisions that have been neglected, it’s clearly the mens 135 and 125lbers, as evidenced by the UFC being forced to use Dodson again (as mentioned earlier).

Fighters’ card position by weight class since 2014. From new page created at MMA Fight Card Position by Weight Class

One other thing I wanted to do was to look at how many fighters are making their debut in each of these divisions. Obviously fighters making their debut don’t get put on main cards (very often) and given that the women’s divisions (particularly the 115lb division) are new, you’re going to get a lot more debuts!

Below is a table of fights where one or more of the fighters were making their UFC debuts.

Average card position for fights where one or both fighters is making their UFC debut

As you can see, the women’s fights get a much higher number of fights put straight onto the main card. Their average card position is the 2nd and 3rd highest of any weight class in the entire UFC (only welterweight is higher). Completely contrary to the criticism in the original Bleacher Report article.

One thing that is definitely apparent; there aren’t a massive amount of fighters making their debuts in quite a lot of the divisions. Light heavyweight only has one!

The thing is, all this sort of stuff is cyclical. Our stats are only since November. The original Bleacher Report article was only taking stats from 2015. That’s far too short of a sample size. We had a women’s 135lb division TUF which finished in November 2013, so if we’d done this table last year, it would look a lot more like the UFC “cared” a lot more about 135lb women’s fights.

That’s the problem with stats; if you don’t look at them in an appropriate context, you can make them say whatever you want.

My suggestion as someone who’s basically made a living from stats for the last 6 years, first by running MMA Tycoon and now with Bet MMA; look for interesting stats, then ask yourself first and foremost, why are these stats probably misleading? If you can’t think of any reason they’re misleading, well then you may just have found an interesting trend!

So going back to the original point of the article? Are the UFC neglecting and ignoring women’s MMA?

No, of course not. Fundamentally that would make zero sense and you don’t need stats to back that up. Rousey is probably (I have no idea, I’m just guessing), the UFC’s second highest PPV draw? Their PPV ratings have been dropping pretty steadily over the last few years so they need Rousey and whether you like them or not, the UFC aren’t dumb. They know they need contenders for her.

As I said in one tweet, the UFC REALLY don’t want Meisha Tate to be top contender but the division is just threadbare, throughout the entire MMA world, not just in the UFC. The UFC already signed pretty much all of the top fighters and they’re trying to build up more in Invicta. This isn’t the old Pride era, with fragmented talent… What you see in the UFC rankings is basically it.

On a more positive note, in a division with more talent (female 115lbs), they’re bringing in a lot more new fighters (more than any other division) and pushing those new fighters beyond what they’ve done in all but 1 of the male divisions in terms of general card position and number of fights on the main card.

You can’t illustrate that fact much clearler than the table below. Does that look like they’re “all but ignoring” women’s MMA to you?

Debutant fights in each UFC weight class as a % of total fights

Summary

Jonathan, I hope whatever problem you’re dealing with sorts itself out and I’m sorry to hear you’ve got some problems to deal with at all, however it’s not cool to tell people not to deal with me just because I disagreed with you. I have no idea if you’re a nice guy or not. If you are I’m sure you’ll accept you massively over-reacted and were out of order and will retract that comment. If you wanna leave it up, no worries, shit happens… but that would be a complete douchebag move.

In terms of the stats. There are a hell of a lot of interesting statistical trends to look at in MMA. I’m developing more and more all the time. You can view all that via our MMA Stats page.

A few interesting ones related to Women’s MMA
– There are significantly more finishes at 135lbs than 115lbs. (Currently 56%, despite a recent run of decisions).
– Joanne Calderwood beating Cortney Casey was the first women’s fight opening a UFC main card not to have finished as a decision.
– The 115lbs division has 57% decisions overall (2nd most, only behind the men’s 125lb division).
– And finally, a quick comparison graph of finishes / decisions for men vs women’s MMA fights. As you can see, there are a lot more subs in WMMA and also a more even spread of round finishes (i.e. not so heavily skewed towards R1 finishes). I have my theories about why but you’re welcome to play around with the stats yourself here. Start by removing heavyweight from the stats and you’ll see a massive drop in R1 finishes! Compare that to the women’s fights and you can see the TKOs are more from an accumulation of damage in the later rounds.

Men vs Women MMA stats

Thanks for your time and happy MMAing… or something like that! Oh and be nice to each other… We’re all fans of the same sport, whether we agree with each other or not!

MMA betting subscription services

CapperTek Review.

2 Replies

You’re the owner of CapperTek, the self proclaimed “largest and most trustworthy sports handicapping service directory on the web”. Someone reports a pick that’s not actually allowed and another that’s at best, dubious. What do you do? DELETE THE PERSON WHO REPORTED THE PICKS, OBVIOUSLY!

That’s what happened to me… I reported a couple of picks to CapperTek admin, one was placed at odds I don’t believe ever existed (online at least), the other was a parlay that you aren’t allowed to do because the bets are interlinked. I tried explaining this to CapperTek but was ignored and fobbed off and told they were accepting the pick. I pressed the matter, said I was not happy for them to accept the pick and that if (at the very least) the fake parlay wasn’t voided, I would make the rest of the MMA handicapper community aware of what was going on because it’s not fair to those of us who work hard to put in legitimate picks. When I woke up the next day, my two CapperTek accounts (one for my personal tips and one for the wisdom of crowds tips), were both gone.

I was delighted when I found CapperTek because the concept is fatanstic. Everyone tracks their picks, nobody can make shit up (or so I thought) and the best tipsters will rightfully be promoted as such (or so I thought). When I started writing this blog, I thought I was just deleted because the owner didn’t like having his authority questioned but the more digging you do on CapperTek and the more the situation has unfolded, the more murky it becomes.

Had the shady picks been voided, I would have gone on with my life, quite happy and none the wiser. However, when I got deleted, I decided to go digging.

This blog will detail the investigative process. We’ll start by looking at the picks I reported and end with video proof of accounts on CapperTek removing losing picks from their MMA record to inflate profits.

Analysing the bets

So, the bets in question, which I was deleted for reporting, made by Betlock.cappertek.com

To view betlock’s picks before an event, you need to pay $5. So these picks were only visible to me after the event. ALL “winning” picks were for the maximum allowed 11 units.

Betlock picks
Or a link here to a copy of the page, which I made in case CapperTek try and hide it.

+110 for Cormier I didn’t report this pick. Whether you think this bet is a problem or not depends on your stance on updating odds. Odds were around -110 or -105 on Cormier at the time pick was first made yet the odds were updated to +110. That’s a 15.5 to 21% increase in ROI %. It’s a discussion I would genuinely like to have another day but I don’t want to get off topic. Personally I think it’s OK as long as you update ALL your picks to the latest odds, not pick and choose which odds you want to update, so your unit profit / loss is displaying a snapshot in time. Anyway, back to the proper shadiness.

-110 for over 2.5 rounds is a problem for a couple of reasons. The line opened at -117 and went out to an average of -162, with an absolute best odds of -145 when the lines closed. I’ve annotated the graph with the approx odds at certain stages.
CapperTek Graph
Graph is from here.

The graph displays average odds. However, when lines open in MMA it’s basically 5 Dimes/SportBet (same company) that does all the prop stuff ahead of everyone else. The other bookmakers come in several days later. So you can state with a high degree of certainty that the odds were never better than -117 online, at least at any of the bookmakers displayed on best fight odds. Check out any of the future events on best fight odds to see that prop process in action.

BetLock’s pick states “CRIS 24101 A. Johnson @ 24102 D. Cormier 05/23/15 09:05pm Totals 05/17/15 06:45:32am”.

If I’m reading that right, they’re saying -110 was available OFFLINE in Vegas on the 17th May, yet was logged ONLINE on the 22nd May, when the odds had changed massively. Anyone paying to tail those bets ($5 daily pass) would be getting SIGNIFICANTLY worse odds than the unit profit suggested.

As we’ve already noted, they must have updated fight odds just before the fight, to get the best odds possible on Cormier. The best odds on over 2.5 rounds at that time was -145. The difference between -145 and -110, is a very significant 31.8% increase in ROI.

Betlock have a HUGE unit profit of (at the time of writing) 1162.55 units. However, they have a very marginal ROI of 3.04% over the last year (over a massive 5825 bets). At very best, offering odds not available online is extremely misleading to anyone buying tips from what is, an online service. Claiming a massively inflated unit profit on a bet, based on a line that hasn’t been available on or offline for nearly a week is totally and utterly against the CapperTek terms of service.

Now, they’re not always going to get away with putting on massively inflated (31.8%) odds, so let’s just have a look what happens if they’d inflated their odds, on average, 10% AKA the difference between -110 and -121, between +200 and +220 or -400 and -440… Stuff that doesn’t really get noticed.

For Betlock, that would be the difference between +1162 units profit and -2419 units loss. A difference of 3582 units.

Again though, this is small potatoes compared to the main problem.

Parlaying the two together. You aren’t allowed to parlay those two bets together. Anywhere. Go to any bookmakers now, online or in the real world and ask to parlay the winner of a fight (at the standard win odds), with that fight going over 2.5 rounds. You won’t get it because it’s essentially parlaying the same value twice, as both parts of it are interlinked.

You can't parlay this stuff!

Betting on Cormier at +110 ALREADY INCLUDES a percentage of the value for over 2.5 rounds, within that +110. Likewise, over 2.5 rounds includes a % of that Cormier overall win value. This is the case for every fight. It’s more pronounced in this fight than most, because if the fight went over 2.5 rounds, chances are, Cormier would win. So of the -110 or -145 or whatever odds you got on “fight goes over 2.5 rounds”, the majority of that odds calculation is based on Cormier winning late on or by decision, not on Johnson winning late on or by decision.

When you think of it in terms “odds” it’s a bit abstract and possibly a little harder to understand. When you realise that odds are essentially just a conversion of the probability of something happening, it becomes a lot easier to understand. We’ll do that in a minute.

Just a quick general point first… To make a parlay, you OBVIOUSLY have to get both parts of the parlay from the same bookmaker at the same time. +110 on Cormier was only available right before the fight. -110 on over 2.5 rounds, if it ever was available at all, was only available when the lines very first opened.

From betlock’s own pick notes, you can see the two bets were nearly a week apart and using different lines (LVH and CRIS respectively).

The response from CapperTek to a detailed message explaining all this? “We are allowing the pick.”

Online, the best parlay odds you could get around the time of the fight, when they last updated their odds to get Cormier at +110 as an individual pick (with the bookies listed on best fight odds), was +105 Cormier and -145 on over 2.5 rounds, with SBG Global.

If you were actually allowed to parlay the two things together, the difference between those two sets of odds is +246 and +301, AKA 22.13% extra ROI.

SO, back to working out the proper probability of this happening and consequently the approximate odds.

There are 13 possible outcomes in an MMA title fight, in terms of time / winner.
Fighter A wins in R1,R2,R3,R4,R5 or by decision, then the same for Fighter B and the final option being a draw/NC. The following image shows the best odds you could get online for those outcomes, when the lines closed. You could get as good as +108 on Cormier but not from a bookies that breaks down odds by round, so this is the closest match we have to illustrate the logic.

Cormier vs Johnson odds by round

If you want to work out any probabilities yourself, this is a good site.

In terms of parlaying Cormier SU and over 2.5 rounds, you are giving yourself +301 (a 24.9% chance of happening) for Cormier winning either by decision or in round 5 or round 4 or in round 3 after the half way mark.
You get Cormier wins by decision for +251 (28% chance of happening). It’s therefore pretty obvious to anyone reading this blog that “Cormier wins by decision or in R5, or in R4, or in half of R3″ isn’t going to be +301.

So, what should the odds have been for that pick?
Cormier wins by decision: +251 (28.5% chance of happening).
Cormier wins R5: +2825 (3.4% chance of happening).
Cormier wins R4: +2025 (4.7% chance of happening).
Cormier wins R3: +1425 (6.6% chance of happening).

So to find closest approximation, you have to do 28.5% + 3.4% + 4.7% + (6.6% / 2) = 39.9%.

A 39.9% chance of this happening, equal to odds of +151, not a 24.9% chance of it happening at +301. AKA a 99.3% increase in ROI.

There’s a quick caveat to add here. Bookies add their bookmaker stake to every bet, so really you would get slightly better odds than this, because adding all these odds together, you’re adding up several bookmaker stakes. You would have to ring up and ask them to give you the bet properly but my estimate would be around +175 for this bet. Fundamentally though, it’s not a bet that any bookmaker offers, certainly not online, so even if you did use the right odds, you can’t include it in your picks.

A quick look at Betlock’s account

Betlock had only placed a couple of straight up MMA bets before this event, so my initial assumption was that this was an oversight and a lack of understanding about what you can parlay in MMA. Either that or maybe they were trying to pull a fast one but once they’d been flagged, they’d fall back into line.

All I wanted was for them to go “oh yeah, my bad”, CapperTek void the parlay and we all move on happily with our lives.

However, I point it out, CapperTek refuse to void the pick, then when I say I’m not going to let it slide, they delete my account. Anyone with half a brain can see this account was being dodgy as hell, so why would CapperTek do that?

The more I thought about it, the more suspicious it became. Betlock, with that many picks, would be a seasoned gambler. Whether they know MMA or not, they know full well you cannot parlay odds from different bookmakers at different times. That’s not the action of a reputable tipster.

Additionally, after I gave betlock the right of reply and allowed “him” to read the initial draft of this blog before posting it, instead of replying, they followed then blocked me on twitter. Then unfollowed and followed me for several days afterwards. Not exactly the behaviour of someone making an innocent mistake.

Buying betlock’s picks.

Not long after I reported their picks, In an astonishing display of arrogance, despite knowing they’re being watched closely, betlock apparently placed 3x 11 unit last minute bets on MMA winners! Woooooow!!! Amaaaaazing!!!

Not that anyone should need any more proof to see exactly what they are up to but I decided to get some hard and fast proof. I asked a couple of users from MMA Tycoon to help me sign up to CapperTek as a customer (on a different IP, in case they had mine logged). We then bought betlock’s picks for UFC Fight Night – Boetsch vs. Henderson.

They placed 3 bets, all for 1.1 units, on the day of the event.
Tim Boetsch straight up
Matt Mitrione straight up
Parlay of Boetsch and Mitrione

You can view video proof of that below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kaTAqbLnVY

1.1 units look a lot like 11 units if you’re not paying attention, so my expectation was that those 1.1 units would miraculously change to 11 units, if those two fighters won. Unfortunately both fighters lost, which was irritating.

Still, they deleted two of those three losing picks, as you can see from their profile now. Hardly surprising. Their only losing bets on MMA are listed as 1 and 1.1 units, whereas wow, amazing, all their winning bets are 11 unit bets.

Oh and not that it really matters but buying a 24 hour pass didn’t get us anywhere near 24 hours. We were locked out of betlock’s picks before I woke up the next day, despite us buying picks about 4pm the day before.

Summary & a note to my fellow MMA handicappers.

Apparently 95% of major sport handicapping is a sham; I didn’t know that until I started researching this issue.

By contrast, nearly all MMA handicappers are legit, so I’m hoping that as a sector of the industry we can try and stand out as a group that can be trusted!

It is really important for handicappers to be tracked independently, to stop fraudsters and to stop everyone claiming they’re #1 when really they just shout the loudest. However, that has to be done on a site everyone can trust.

This sucks. So, what now?

If nobody else is gunna do it, I will. It won’t help me independently verify my own picks BUT, I am in the process of adding a handicappers directory to this site, just for MMA. It’s all automated, including prop bets, so it will be minimum work for you guys. I’ll be doing basically what CapperTek should have done and promoting those of you who do well and we’ll set up a facility for people to buy your picks etc.

Anyone reading this blog is more than welcome to sign up to our site as a handicapper.

I want this to be as clearly legit as possible. If it doesn’t make any money, too bad…. It’s only taken a month or so to program. I just wanna give it a go and see if this can be run as a legitimate concept.

Either way, whatever comes of this, I’m just glad everyone gets to hear the truth. I want to push for integrity in the industry because if we don’t have that, how can we possibly complain when people assume our picks are bullshit? The more people hold that assumption, the fewer will be willing to pay for ANYONE’s predictions.

Many thanks again for reading and good luck with your picks!

Mike.

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