Question for The Statistical Wizard Guys

Question for The Statistical Wizard Guys I got into a conversation last night with a guy that swears that splitting a Large MLB Fav of say -160 into a 1/2 Moneyline and 1/2 Runline Bet is the Best Way to Bet vs just playing -160. I think not but but not absolutely sure.. I personally never bet runlines of -1.5 so maybe my thoughts are skewed...Is there any statistical info on this anywhere? Any help would be appreciated...

I do this a lot, and I would love to hear others opinions. I have found that it takes roughly the added premium from THREE runline winners to offset the loss from a win-by-one runline loser. However that is not a tough ratio to beat, especially in the AL where there are fewer one-run finals. Laying one (essentially what you are doing by splitting the bets) works better when taking the home team. I will always lay the full run plus on the road backing good pitchers. Even Big Roy got +125 at Wash this week. In the long run I do think it pays, however getting backdoored does suck, especially in baseball where one usually thinks they are safe from such misery. Again, would love to hear what smarter folks than I have to say on the matter. I typed this all on my blackberry, that's how important a subject thus is.

Quick correction, halladay was -125 on the runline earlier this week, but the point is the same. That 80 cent swing is roughly what one gets foe the extra run.

Not sure this helps but I know the site wizardofodds.com under sports betting somewhere had some correspondence of runlines to totals and perhaps moneylines as well. The total plays a big factor in what the runline should be assuming the moneylines are similar between two games. If the market adjusted for everything perfectly and your results were some long term expectation of how many 1 run games there were, etc. I would assume that although your results would be different if you were splitting your bets that your risk adjusted returns would be similar. If you bet every one of your favourites -1.5+ and they won by one run and someone else bet them on the moneyline well you'll lose all of your bets and your money and the other bettor will win all their bets and all of the money. Conversely, if the favourites won by more than one run all the time well the plus money bets are going to earn a lot more cash. The only thing I would recommend you could do is obtain a feel for what the runlines should be based on the moneylines you're looking at and the totals of the game based on data. And you could vary how you bet a play depending if you saw value. I will give you an interesting move I saw this week: Florida vs. Atlanta with Josh Johnson playing. Atlanta was favoured around -125 and the runline which I played on Florida was +1.5-190. This runline did go higher to -200 or so. The game total was only 7. St. Louis vs. Arizona. Westbrook against Kennedy. There was a huge move on the St. Louis runline just before the game to +1.5-196 at Pinnacle from +1.5-180. The moneyline on Arizona was about -120. I saw no movement in that number. The total on this game was 10 leaned over and didn't see that change. Something is off IMO. St. Louis should have moved way up on the moneyline is my guess to PK maybe even a favourite. So if you liked Arizona and were faced with -120 or -1.5+180 I think I would have taken the -1.5+180. This is all theoretical of course because you would have to be betting it 5 minutes before the game but it is worth examining the lines and getting a feel for what the relation should be depending on the moneyline and total.

I ran a query for the 2010 season and this is the results I got: Favourite of -160 or better (season=2010 and line

In 2010, there were 2,372 games of which the favourite went 1,380-992 (58.2% avg line -153). Of the 1,380 wins, 393 (28.5%) of them were by 1 run and the remaining 961 games (69.6%) were won by 2 or more runs. So of 2,372 games, if you bet the RL for the favourite, you would have won 961 of them (40.5%) and would have lost 1,411 (59.5%) either SU or won game but only by one run.