Sports Betting 101: What is an over/under?

Overview: Our model gets approximately 60% of picks correct and each correct pick has an average ROI of 84%. So out of these 9 picks were aiming for 6 to be correct.
Link if you want to follow us for free picks: instagram.com/overundrsports
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Player: Jimmy Garapollo
Category: Passing yards
Target (DraftKings): 215.5 yards
Odds (DraftKings): -112
OveUnder: OVER
ROI if correct: 90%
Rationale: Jimmy G has thrown for more than 216 yards in 65% of his games this season and last season. He is without Kittle, but he still has plenty of weapons around him. Jimmy G is playing a mid tier defense in the Jets that allowed 236 pass yards per game before losing star safety Jamal Adams. Without Adams, the Jets allowed 312 pass yards last week.
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Player: Josh Allen
Category: Passing yards
Target (DraftKings): 227.5 yards
Odds (DraftKings): -110
OveUnder: OVER
ROI if correct: 91%
Rationale: Josh Allen is playing one of the worst pass defenses in the Dolphins. Last year the Dolphins allowed 262 yards through the air, a large cushion over Allen’s 228 yard target this week. Allen threw for 312 yards last week against the Jets, look for him to continue to have good games now that Diggs is in at WR.
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Player: Phillip Rivers
Category: Passing yards
Target (DraftKings): 264.5 yards
Odds (DraftKings): -112
OveUnder: OVER
ROI if correct: 90%
Rationale: Phillip Rivers has thrown for more than 265 passing yards in 76% of his games this season and last season. He is playing a mid-tier pass defense in the Vikings who allowed 364 passing yards last week to Aaron Rodgers. Look for rivers to throw to often to Hilton, Hines, and Taylor.
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Player: Kirk Cousins
Category: Passing yards
Target (DraftKings): 235.5 yards
Odds (DraftKings): -112
OveUnder: OVER
ROI if correct: 90%
Rationale: Kirk Cousins only exceeds 236 pass yards per game 50% of the time but he is playing a soft pass defense in the Colts that allowed 249 yards through the air last season. Cousins will be looking to Thielen and Jefferson a lot this game.
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Player: Drew Lock
Category: Passing yards
Target (DraftKings): 224.5 yards
Odds (DraftKings): -112
OveUnder: UNDER
ROI if correct: 90%
Rationale: Drew Lock has only thrown for more than 225 yards in 17% of his starts. He’s playing the third best defense in the Steelers and Sutton might be out for the game. Lock averages 214 yards a game and the Steelers defense has only allowed an average of 195 yards per game. Hell be in for a tough day.
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Player: Lamar Jackson
Category: Rushing yards
Target (DraftKings): 59.5 yards
Odds (DraftKings): -112
OveUnder: OVER
ROI if correct: 90%
Rationale: Jackson has rushed for over 60 yards in 80% of his starts. He is playing one of the worst rush defenses in the Texans and he should be able to pull of long runs off the play action. In the last two seasons, Jackson has averaged 78 rush yards per game, a large cushion from the 60 he needs this week.
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Player: Sony Michel
Category: Rushing yards
Target (DraftKings): 34.5 yards
Odds (DraftKings): -106
OveUnder: OVER
ROI if correct: 95%
Rationale: Sony Michel has rushed for more than 35 yards in 75% of the games he has started. In the last two seasons he has averaged 56 yards a game, a large cushion over the 35 yards he needs this week. He is playing the 22nd rank rush defense in the Seahawks.
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Player: Kyler Murray
Category: Rushing yards
Target (DraftKings): 30.5 yards
Odds (DraftKings): -125
OveUnder: OVER
ROI if correct: 80%
Rationale: Kyler Murray has rushed for over 31 yards in 60% of his starts. He is playing one of the worst rush defenses in the Washington Football Team. The addition of Hopkins has made defenses respect the deep pass which has opened the running lane for Murray, as evident by his 91 rushing yards against the top ranked Niners rush defense last week.
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Player: James Conner
Category: Rushing yards
Target (DraftKings): 49.5 yards
Odds (DraftKings): -112
OveUnder: UNDER
ROI if correct: 90%
Rationale: James Conner has only rushed for more than 50 yards in 20% of his games. He is playing a mid-tier defense in the Broncos and running back Benny Snell had a monster game with 113 rush yards last week. James will get limited carries due to injury concerns and due to the game Snell had last week.

Any help is appreciated

Edit: Win Percentage Futures not Win Probability Futures
Although there have been recent talks about restarting the MLB season in May, there remains considerable uncertainty around what the MLB might look like. Shortened season? 7 inning games? Expanded rosters? Still more questions than answers, but one thing we know is that a standard 162-season is unlikely. As a result, most sportsbooks have pulled their season win total wagers for the MLB season.
To still give sports bettors something to wager on, DraftKings sportsbook replaced its MLB Win Totals with MLB Win Percentages. As long as a minimum of 60 games are played, these wagers will have action. We give DraftKings credit for getting creative and offering these wagers to their customers.
Assessing the Market
We decided to take a closer look at this offering from DraftKings and compare it to the win totals offered by sportsbooks in March. To make an apples-to-apples comparison, we converted the March consensus Win Totals to winning percentage and then compared them with the Win Percentage offerings from DraftKings. As you can see below, the Win Percentages are almost identical to the market consensus win totals offered in March.
Win Percentage Comparison
Not a single offering was more than a one percent difference from the implied win percentages offered by sportsbooks in March.
Vig Comparison
The next things we wanted to assess was the DraftKing’s theoretical hold (or vig) on these markets. As you can see below, the standard offering is -112 on each side of these wagers:
DraftKings Vig
The sportsbook hold (or vig) on a two-sided -112 market is around 5.4%. If you want to learn how to calculate the hold yourself, PM me.
For comparison, in March, the hold on the MLB Win Totals market ranged from 4.5% - 5.2% across legally operating U.S. sportsbooks. Although the 5.4% hold is slightly higher than the hold in the Win Totals markets, it’s still a far superior way to speculate on a team’s performance than the World Series futures, which routinely have holds north of 20% (currently 25.2% at one unnamed U.S. sportsbook).
Win Inflation
The next thing we want to assess is whether the lines or odds are shaded toward the over. This is a very common strategy by sportsbooks as they take advantage of sports bettors’ tendency to prefer betting “Over” win totals rather than under. We discussed this strategy previously in a previous Reddit post.
For the Win Percentage offering from DraftKings, we calculated the average Win Percentage and odds across all teams. If there was no shading in either direction, we would expect the average Win Percentage to be exactly 50.0% and the average odds to be the same on the over and under. This is what we found:
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DraftKings - MLB	Win Percentage	Over	Under
Average	50.2%	-111.8	-112.2

To the naked eye, it looks like nominal win inflation, at best. However, if we normalize a 50.2% win percentage across a normal 2,430 game season, this is the equivalent of 8.9 games of win inflation across the league. Still may not sound like a lot, but using push probabilities, we can reallocate the estimated vig between over and under bets as follows:
Vig Allocation Between Over and Under Bets
Ah – well these numbers start to be meaningful. Yes, the average vig for this market is 5.4%, but the over wagers carry the majority of the vig due to the shading. As a result, under bets are burdened with only 2.9% vig. This is similar to the Win Totals market, where we calculated that the average hold on Win Total unders to be 0.5 % - 2.9%.
Great - we’ve confirmed that the Win Percentage markets are very similar to the Win Totals markets. So how are we going to find an edge? Typically finding an edge requires some creative thinking. Well - here’s one idea we’ve come up with:
Interleague Play
Over the last two seasons, the National League has been superior in interleague play winning 52.7% of interleague games in 2018 and 55.3% of interleague games in 2019. What does the market expect to happen in 2020? Let’s turn to the Win Percentages offered by DraftKings.
The average win percentage offered by DraftKings for NL teams and AL teams is 50.7% and 49.7%, respectively. After removing win inflation and normalizing for a 2,430-game season, this equates to 1,227 wins for the NL and 1,203 wins for the AL. Since there are only 300 interleague games played each season, we can attribute the win differences between the two leagues to those interleague games (since the average win percentage in league games for each league will be 50.0%). This implies that the NL is expected to go 162-138 in interleague games, good for a 53.9% win percentage.
Interleague Win Percentage
If MLB cannot play a 162-game season, however, which games are you going to chop? My guess is the interleague games are the first games that will be removed from the schedule.
If we were to assume that all interleague games were removed (and everything else remained), we might estimate the vig allocation for the NL as follows:
Vig Estimation
At average odds of 50.7% would estimate the win inflation at almost half a win per team in the NL, bringing the vig on NL Win Percentages close to only one percent. If other books start offering lines on this, you can almost certainly get to positive expected value with a little line shopping. Even if this is the only book that has this offering, it would be a good place to focus your handicapping efforts as this is a pretty good market, all things considered.
Caveats and Extensions
Certainly, this analysis relies on a variety of assumptions. One of those assumptions is that interleague games are removed. If interleague games aren’t removed, betting the NL Unders is probably no better than betting the AL Unders.
Second, we make the assumption that only 20 games are removed from each schedule per team. Should fewer games be played, we would expect the push probability for win totals to increase, but we’d also expect more variance in final win probabilities. It’s hard to tell the net effect of fewer games.
Third, if this wager type is maintained once the total number of games is determined, it might behoove you to pay close attention to exact win percentages for a particular number of wins. For example, if the season is 110 games and a team wins 56 games, their win percentage is 50.9%. If you bet under 50.5%, you’re a loser. But if you bet under 51.0%, you’re a winner. That extra 0.5% between 50.5% and 51.0% is significant. On the other hand, if that team wins 57 games (one additional game), their win percentage is 51.8%. 51.0% and 51.5% are both losers. Thus, there is no difference between 51.0% and 51.5% if there are 110 games. Just something to keep in mind.
Last thought – this same thought process can be applied to the analysis of win percentages for particular divisions. The AL Central, for example, is particularly weak this season. Their average posted win percentage on DraftKings is 47.8%. If for some reason, the schedule is changed to have a much higher percentage of divisional games, there may be some value on the Win Percentage Over for AL Central teams.
If you disagree with my assumption that interleague games will be disproportionately removed from the schedule, please let me know what you think will happen. This analysis can be replicated across a broad set of assumptions.

I don't think he's nearly as much of an actual gambler as he tries to come across as, I think he did some bullshit betting among his dorm buddies in college but never went anywhere near an actual bookie 'cause he's too much of a chickenshit coward and is shit and piss his pants afraid level of the consequences if he didn't have what he owed.
While management at ESPN let him do whatever the fuck he wanted in regards to his writing, I'm pretty sure they drew some sort of line at gambling. Granted it wasn't like he was living in Bristol and appearing on ESPN a few times a week, but he was high profile enough that it would not have been good if it came out that he had put down $80,000 on a bunch of NFL games over the weekend or whatever.
Since he's moved to LA it's only a few hours to Vegas and I'm sure he goes there regularly and plays blackjack or whatever and places some really stupid prop bets at the beginning of every one of the Big 3 sports seasons, with most of that on football and basketball and he definitely hits Vegas for the Super Bowl.
I'd say in his entire life he hasn't bet more than $250,000 and is a little bit ahead.

It's the Rocky and Bullwinkle and Dudley Do-Right movies all over again.