Editor’s Note: Since November 2018, Joe has been publishing picks here and back at All Things NIT, our former site. Overall, the results have been mixed, with an average return on investment, per pick, of -1.8% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 4,395 published picks, not including pending futures, and an average return on investment, per pick, of +2.9% across 1,602 completed high and medium-confidence picks (low confidence picks, these days, are in experimental markets for us).
Use these picks at your own risk. Only you are responsible for any money you lose, and you should not bet more than you can afford to lose. If you have a gambling problem, get help.
Lines for these come from the Vegas consensus or the closest approximation available at the time picks are written, unless otherwise noted. For futures bets (in both sports and politics) and motorsports bets, odds are taken from the better option between Bovada and BetOnline as our best approximation of the Vegas consensus, which isn’t currently/accurately available online. KenPom is heavily used in making college basketball picks. FiveThirtyEight’s SPI is heavily used in making soccer futures picks. ESPN’s FPI is heavily used in making NFL futures picks.
It’s both World Cup futures and college basketball plays today. For unit context on the World Cup portfolio: We started with fifty units. We had nine units down entering today.
Maryland @ Louisville
Yes, we’re talking ourselves into Louisville again.
The thinking here is that KenPom has the line at ten, and KenPom has Louisville 171st in the country. Can they really be that bad? At some point, either Louisville has to stop getting worse or KenPom finds its level. …Right? …Please?
Pick: Louisville +12.5 (-105). Low confidence.
Brown @ Central Connecticut State
This is a little bit of a black box, because it’s hard to find injury information on either of these teams, but from what we can tell, each is mostly healthy, and CCSU’s home-court advantage pulls this closer to a tossup than one where Brown’s a clear favorite. We trust our system when it comes to nonconference men’s college basketball. We just don’t trust it enough to make these medium-confidence plays anymore.
Pick: Central Connecticut State +4.5 (-114). Low confidence.
2022 World Cup
We’re eschewing hedging today, allowing the breadth of our portfolio to do its thing rather than trying to tinker at this early stage. That leaves us with two units to lose between our plays on Iran to advance (+275) and Ecuador to reach the quarterfinals (+550), and while we obviously hope to lose the Iran play for reasons of morality and patriotism, we’d also like Ecuador to keep our quarterfinal possibility alive.
For these, we’re looking for value on teams we haven’t previously bet on, and we’re looking for it in that familiar +999-and-shorter range of odds, because in a portfolio this small, you can’t overload with longshots. Spain so far appears as good a bet as any of the other favorites to win it all. Costa Rica, meanwhile, has surprisingly put themselves in the position of only needing a stunning draw and a little bit of help to move on. That’s a lot, but so is 8-to-1 odds.
Pick: Spain to win +700. Low confidence.
Pick: Costa Rica to advance past group stage +800. Low confidence.
