Are Run Lines Profitable or Sucker Bets?

KingRevolver

Born Rambler
Maybe they're both depending on the situation?

I think there's some common mistakes when playing RLs. I've made them myself.

Gamblers play RLs when there's a good pitcher facing a bad team but they often forget that the team with the good pitcher is struggling offensively. So even though they are shutting down the other team they aren't exactly doing any scoring themselves.

They also play RLs when there's two good pitchers (who've been playing well) facing each other.

Then there's the big chalk games. It might be something like the Yankees -200 and if you play the -1.5 line it's -110?

But then how often do baseball games end with one run being the difference?

I don't know. I'm a bit all over the place here but does anyone have any thoughts on this?
 
Re: Are Run Lines Profitable or Sucker Bets?

dumb because you are just justifying the runline to play the heavy chalk without laying so much juice

you have to deal with the bullpens too which give up leads like they are going out of style
 
Re: Are Run Lines Profitable or Sucker Bets?

KR Simplified version using your lines as no vig lines to determine if you want to play a RL or ML.

Yanks -200 no vig line means the line says the Yanks win 66.67% of the time.

Yanks -1.5 -110 means that the Yanks win by more than one run 52.38 % of the time.

So this tells you that the line maker is saying that the Yanks win by 1 run 66.67 - 52.38 = 14.29 % of the time.

But they really win by one run approximately 17% of the time.
 

Vivaldi

EOG Addicted
Re: Are Run Lines Profitable or Sucker Bets?

I'm mostly working on overnight totals at this very moment but I'm rather eclectic in baseball wagers. I find that one underrated element when considering run lines is the game total. The lower the total is, the more prone a game ends as a one-run game for the favorite. Obviously this is not guaranteed but it is a good gauge.

Additionally, home teams win more one-run games than visiting teams because the game ends entering the bottom of the 9th if the home team is ahead.

If the game goes into extra innings there's only about a 7% chance the home team wins by more than 1 run.

As Raiders said, home teams win one-run games about 17% of the time, while the visiting teams win one-run games around 11% of the time.

From some calculations and reading also on this subject, nothing concrete, you'll find road favorites cover the runline about 45% of the time. Home favorites? Close to 38% of the time.

There's more value on the road favorites, as far as the runline goes, because of the extra at bats.
 
Re: Are Run Lines Profitable or Sucker Bets?

I'm mostly working on overnight totals at this very moment but I'm rather eclectic in baseball wagers. I find that one underrated element when considering run lines is the game total. The lower the total is, the more prone a game ends as a one-run game for the favorite. Obviously this is not guaranteed but it is a good gauge.

Additionally, home teams win more one-run games than visiting teams because the game ends entering the bottom of the 9th if the home team is ahead.

If the game goes into extra innings there's only about a 7% chance the home team wins by more than 1 run.

As Raiders said, home teams win one-run games about 17% of the time, while the visiting teams win one-run games around 11% of the time.

From some calculations and reading also on this subject, nothing concrete, you'll find road favorites cover the runline about 45% of the time. Home favorites? Close to 38% of the time.

There's more value on the road favorites, as far as the runline goes, because of the extra at bats.
and if a game goes into extra innings it stops if the HT is up a run.
 
Re: Are Run Lines Profitable or Sucker Bets?

I generally just think about how most bettors approach this and go the other way. You know when its -1.5 and minus money lots of squares are going to be there to reduce what they have to lay. The squares also will almost always gravitate to plus money so laying odds with the +1.5 should have some built in value especially if you are playing at Matchbook to reduce the vig.
 
Re: Are Run Lines Profitable or Sucker Bets?

As far as runlines go, only play the rl on the road team or else you'll be laying 1.5 with one fewer at bat....
 

IrishTim

EOG Dedicated
Re: Are Run Lines Profitable or Sucker Bets?

KR, my db's numbers are very similar to raiders'. It's very easy to underestimate the value of the "1" in MLB, thinking "well if they win, chances are they'll win by more than 1". Raiders question for you - Fezzik posted a while back noting that away teams average margin of victory is greater than home teams'. I didn't really think about it because it's Fezzik and it intuitively makes sense, but a few weeks later I went and checked it out for myself while looking at something else and found a different result. To you happen to have your numbers handy?

In addition, to home/away, there are at least two other things to think about:

1) the total - the lower the total, the more valuable each run becomes. If you have a home favorite of -150 with a total of 9, the fair RL price around 138. If the total for the game was 7, the price would be closer to 150.

2) the moneyline - the higher the ML (i.e. more likely to win straight up) the more likely it is to win by exactly one run. Intuitively, you may have thought the opposite, but as far as absolute probabilities go, a -250 home team is more likely to win than a -105 home team.

dumb because you are just justifying the runline to play the heavy chalk without laying so much juice

That's a very narrow definition of how to use the RL. You can use it in many other ways.

As far as runlines go, only play the rl on the road team or else you'll be laying 1.5 with one fewer at bat....

But you have to remember this sort of thing is already factored into the line. There isn't any more value, in what I've seen, from blindly playing the away team RLs vs. the market price than playing the home team.
 
Re: Are Run Lines Profitable or Sucker Bets?

I'm mostly working on overnight totals at this very moment but I'm rather eclectic in baseball wagers. I find that one underrated element when considering run lines is the game total. The lower the total is, the more prone a game ends as a one-run game for the favorite. Obviously this is not guaranteed but it is a good gauge.

Additionally, home teams win more one-run games than visiting teams because the game ends entering the bottom of the 9th if the home team is ahead.

If the game goes into extra innings there's only about a 7% chance the home team wins by more than 1 run.

As Raiders said, home teams win one-run games about 17% of the time, while the visiting teams win one-run games around 11% of the time.

From some calculations and reading also on this subject, nothing concrete, you'll find road favorites cover the runline about 45% of the time. Home favorites? Close to 38% of the time.

There's more value on the road favorites, as far as the runline goes, because of the extra at bats.

Exactly. Just as in the NFL with totals under 34 teasers are much more valuable.
 

KingRevolver

Born Rambler
Re: Are Run Lines Profitable or Sucker Bets?

KR, my db's numbers are very similar to raiders'. It's very easy to underestimate the value of the "1" in MLB, thinking "well if they win, chances are they'll win by more than 1". Raiders question for you - Fezzik posted a while back noting that away teams average margin of victory is greater than home teams'. I didn't really think about it because it's Fezzik and it intuitively makes sense, but a few weeks later I went and checked it out for myself while looking at something else and found a different result. To you happen to have your numbers handy?

In addition, to home/away, there are at least two other things to think about:

1) the total - the lower the total, the more valuable each run becomes. If you have a home favorite of -150 with a total of 9, the fair RL price around 138. If the total for the game was 7, the price would be closer to 150.

2) the moneyline - the higher the ML (i.e. more likely to win straight up) the more likely it is to win by exactly one run. Intuitively, you may have thought the opposite, but as far as absolute probabilities go, a -250 home team is more likely to win than a -105 home team.



That's a very narrow definition of how to use the RL. You can use it in many other ways.



But you have to remember this sort of thing is already factored into the line. There isn't any more value, in what I've seen, from blindly playing the away team RLs vs. the market price than playing the home team.

Thanks, Timmy. Very valuable info. You explain it well.
 

Sam Odom

EOG Master
Re: Are Run Lines Profitable or Sucker Bets?

Sucker Bet

Unless the bookmaker hits the wrong key while calculating
 
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