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 -1.6% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 4,377 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.
Our World Cup future of the night, before tomorrow’s matches (with a bonus thrown in):
2022 World Cup
For unit context on these, we started the World Cup with 50 units in our portfolio, and we have three units down so far, all on medium-sized longshots, such as Saudi Arabia advancing past the group stage (which we got at 6-to-1 odds last night).
For the bonus one in here, we’re taking Saudi Arabia because we’re seeing them at 14-to-1 in one place and 100-to-1 in another, and the 100-to-1 is flashing positive value through SPI. That’s just two games of hedging, max, if Saudi Arabia does reach the knockout round, and Saudi Arabia’s more than fifty percent likely to make the knockout round after today’s upset.
For the core one, we like Morocco for the same reasons we’ve liked Ecuador and Saudi Arabia (and Iran, which isn’t going as well, but has time and is part of a portfolio for a reason). They’re plausible, appear undervalued, and aren’t so big a longshot as to be too high of risk in a very small-sample portfolio.
Pick: Morocco to win Group F +900. Low confidence.
Pick: Saudi Arabia to reach semifinals +10000. Low confidence.
