How To Make the Best Sports Bets | David Beaudoin (aka Professor MJ)

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1:2520 years ago, I used to make a living by statistically analyzing the behavior of stocks. And then I would make a trade when my statistics would show I would have a certain advantage in different types of trades. And the system worked for a really long time. And eventually I created a career out of this. Well, imagine if you could do things like this with sports, which is a much more inefficient market, if you want to call it sports betting a market. And you want to know how I know you can do this is David Bedoin has been doing this for 20 years. using statistics to analyze sports bets. And he's never had a losing year.

2:08He recently, or several years ago, he quit his job and does this full-time now. And he also shares his picks. So here's how he does it. And here's how his life has changed by doing it.

2:24This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show.

2:41David, how do you say your name? Beaudoin? Yes, David Beaudoin. I know it's hard to pronounce in English. Beaudoin, yeah. You're from Quebec? Yes, exactly. So how did you get into sports betting? I got started in 1999 when my uncle told me about those brand new online sports books. And I was like, oh, let me check that. And then I realized something that really changed my life. And that is that the odds between the different sports books were so different that there were many arbitrage opportunities. An arbitrage opportunity means that if team A is playing team B, you could potentially bet both teams in two different sports books and lock yourself a guaranteed profit no matter which team wins the game.

3:38Right. So as an example, like if the Giants are playing the Jets and the Giants are expected to win on one book, on one sports book or in one casino, the Giants are expected to win by three points. And in another casino, the Giants are expected to win by six points. You could bet on the Giants on one of those and bet on the Jets on the other and you're guaranteed to make money. Yes, exactly. That's it. I don't think those arbitrages exist anymore, though, just because there's a lot more efficiency of information, do you think? It still exists, but it's much harder to find some good opportunities.

4:18So it's probably best to work at McDonald's to make a better earning now. Well, but I love like if you go to your – so just off in terms of track record, so you've been using statistics to model opportunities ever since. And in terms of track record, why don't you describe how you've been doing over the past 20 years? Well, over the past 20 years, there has not been a single losing year. But of course, sometimes things don't go well for maybe two, three, even four, five weeks. That's when some sports bettors struggle. They tend to panic or they start betting bigger because they want to make it up.

4:58But you need to stay disciplined. It's like day trading. If you, you know, when you day trade, if you bet too big or take too many risks, you could get blown out. But if you keep position sizes small and you manage your risk and you have a good strategy, you know, I'm speaking specifically of quantitative day trading where you statistics, you could do well over time potentially. Yeah, bankroll management is really important. You need to be very, very disciplined. But I think some of the strategies you use, and you've modeled all sorts of scenarios, I think they're almost like fundamental to sports and athletic performance.

5:36So I'll give an example from your website. ProfessorMJ.com. Yeah, ProfessorMJ.com. So for instance, this is fascinating. So the cold teams match up. So when two major league baseball teams facing each other are both undergoing a losing streak, should we bet on the road team or the home team, the team that's traveling or the home team? And I think questions like this are fascinating. So you have all this data going back decades about every sport and every team. And you could simply ask the data this question. And if the answer is statistically significant, like if two teams have just had like five losses in a row and now they're playing each other, should you bet on the home team or the road team?

6:20If the answer is statistically significant, now you have a good strategy. Yeah, if you look at data from the past five, 10 years, you get a big sample that you can really trust. Still, you need to be careful. It does not guarantee it's going to work in the future. So I always keep track of how each betting system is doing. But yeah, like you said, it's interesting how you can use past data to help you make your bets for today? Well, let's talk about that one specifically. And then I want to go through some of your other strategies. But like, what does happen? So if two teams are on a losing streak and they're playing each other, should you bet on the home team or the road team?

6:59So here, I'm looking at the page right now. Basically, the road team wins 44 % of the time and the home team, if two teams are on a cold streak, the home team wins 56 % of the time. So if those numbers are what's called statistically significant, yes, you're right, you're not going to win all the time, but 56 % of the time is better than 50-50. You could build a winning strategy off of that. Yeah, exactly. And if we're talking about the MLB, of course, it's not all about your winning percentage because it depends on the odds, the average odds that you're getting. So for example, if you're always betting favorites, then you need to win a large proportion of your bets to make money in the long run.

7:44Whereas if you're betting underdogs, maybe winning just 43 % could be enough to earn a profit. Interesting, because yeah, it could be the case also that even without a cold streak, the home team wins 53 % of the time instead of 56 % of the time. But usually what you're betting on is that the line is going to be set. The line is how many points a team has to win by, and sportsbooks like casinos and so on, and online sportsbooks set the line, but they might not be taking advantage of these extra statistical strategies that you're looking at. So if you find a better than average or a better than expected chance of a team winning, you can assume that the line maybe is not using that data.

8:30Yes, exactly. They cannot take into account everything. Well, sportsbooks, they really focus on trying to get equal action on both sides so that no matter which team wins, they're going to get a guaranteed profit. So you need to try to take advantage of that. So basically the home team, though, is always going to have probably too much bets on its side. So should you always bet against the home team? because chances are the line is too high because everybody from the hometown bets on the home team. Well, as a very, very general rule, you are right. Most people feel more comfortable betting home teams and also favorites.

9:13So it's best to go with underdogs on the road. But obviously, if you're betting all road underdogs, you're still going to lose money. So you need to pick your spots. So it's interesting, the different things you've tested statistically. Like if here's another one, if team a blows out team B and then they play again the next day, what are the odds team A is going to win again? And a lot of this has to do with like psychology, which is why I like it. Like it could be the case that in every sport after team A destroys team B, just team B is like just not motivated the next day. They're like, they were just destroyed.

9:54So they don't have the right psychology. so it might be the case that Team A is an above and beyond favorite even more than the sportsbook has it. Yeah, that's right. I really love to incorporate some psychological factors. It could be a team that was the victim of a big upset. Again, maybe they just lost their confidence, so in the next game it may be best to bet against them. And I usually prefer betting systems that are in accordance with my own intuition. Otherwise, I may not feel very confident betting that team. Right. So how many of these strategies have you programmed out? Like, do you have?

10:35Like, on your website, you list like 10 strategies. Yeah, in the NHL, I've got 10. In Major League Baseball, there are 19. In the NBA, I've got five. So in the NFL, I use more of it. I'm just doing some research and I consider many factors, but I don't have specific NFL betting systems right now. So altogether, how many bets per week do you place? Like how many signals trigger a bet and how many bets do you make per week? It's between 30 and 40 bets per week on like in the fall. In the summer, there are less leagues. For example, there's no football, there's no NHL, no NBA. So there are fewer bets in the summer.

11:23But like right now in November, it's between 30 and 40 bets per week. Wow. So that diversification overall, placing 30 bets a week, like what percentage of weeks do you think are up weeks? Because it's nice diversification. but like one game has nothing to do is mutually exclusive from another game like if you're using the the you know cold teams matchup strategy in one game and the big upset strategy in another game they're kind of mutually exclusive from each other like a win of one has nothing to do with the win or loss of the other yeah so you were asking what proportion of weeks are positive yeah Well, right now, during the past 14 weeks, we've had 11 winning weeks, but that may be better performance than usual.

12:14I would say maybe 60-65 % of the weeks are profitable. But one more thing we have not discussed yet is most of the good bets, though, come from what they call player proposition bets, where you bet on the performance of specific players. Those lines are much easier to beat because sportsbooks don't have time to set lines that are super accurate. Like there are so many players in every game. You know, they just set lines fairly quickly and sometimes you can find some good bargains.

13:01Look, as a manager of people, as an employer, as an entrepreneur, and as even an investor in startups, I can tell you the most important thing for your business is the quality of the people you hire. The best part is that great candidates are already on LinkedIn. Employees hired through LinkedIn are 30 % more likely to stick around for at least a year compared to those hired through the leading competitor. And I will tell you that the great thing about LinkedIn is that you're not just looking at random people. You're able to see the people who your friends and trusted peers and colleagues, who they trust and who they've hired in the past and who they recommend.

13:44And hiring doesn't have to be complicated. Realistically, when you have a business to run, you don't want to spend hours on hiring. You want to hire the right person as quickly as possible. That's why LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant suggests immediately 25 great fit candidates daily so you can invite them to apply and keep things moving. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash Altature. Then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs' new AI Assistant, making it easier and faster to find the top candidates. That's LinkedIn.com slash Altature. Post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

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15:22So what's an example? Like, so-and-so player is going to hit three home runs in this game? Or what's an example proposition bet? Yeah, so an example in the NFL, it could be will a certain wide receiver catch more or less than four and a half balls? Or will the quarterback get more or less than 283 passing yards? In Major League Baseball, it's mostly on the number of total bases. So where a single means one base, a double is equal to two bases, and so on. So will that player get over or under one and a half total bases in the game? That's another example. So, okay, when figuring out how to bet on those, what sort of data do you look at?

16:15You probably look at their average. Let's take the quarterback and passing yards per game. You probably look at data like the average number of yards they've passed in every game they've ever played in. And then you probably look at the average number of yards they've had against this particular team or maybe teams with the record of the particular team that they're playing? What other data do you look at and analyze to figure out the probabilities? Yeah, in this specific case, I look at how many passing yards this quarterback has had in recent years while giving more weight to the current year and then a bit less weight for the previous year and so on.

16:59And it's also important, obviously, to consider the strength of opposition. So how good has been the opposing defense so far this year? And I also account for maybe they have some key injuries on defense. So stuff like that. So you'll use all your data to come up with an idea of the probability they'll get a certain number of yards, but then you'll kind of adjust based on intuition when you learn what injuries the other team has and so on. Yes, yes, exactly. So if both starting cornerbacks are injured, that's going to help the quarterback rack up many passing yards, obviously. So I also try to account for that.

17:39Yeah, interesting. And why don't other, I mean, I would think, oh, you're saying basically the line is inefficient on these proposition bets because A, for any one proposition bet, there's not probably as many gamblers as for the team bets. and so you have an advantage there that the line might not be efficient and probably other people don't do all the data research that you do. Yes, and the biggest proof that those lines are more easy to beat is the betting limits with the sportsbooks. So if you want to bet$10 ,000 on the Kansas City Chiefs, that will not be a problem. But if you want to bet$10 ,000 on Patrick Mahomes to get over 283 passing yards, they're not going to accept that.

18:28The betting limit may be like$300 ,000 or$500 ,000 because they know they are more vulnerable on those lines. But can you spread it around to a bunch of different online sites? Yeah, sure. You can do that. And you can make a lot of bets too so that you can get up to that$10 ,000. Yeah, but again, you need to be careful because some sportsbooks, they don't like it if you're only betting prop bets. Again, they like people who bet on teams and totals so you can get limited more quickly. It depends on some sportsbooks, but of course, I've been limited with many of them where I cannot bet more than$1.15.

19:11So that's just ridiculous. So what have been some of the more successful strategies over time? Like maybe strategies that you no longer use, but what was like a money machine for you in terms of strategies? Well, of course, the arbitrage between 1999 and 2003 was very lucrative. Then I don't know if we only want to talk about sports betting, but I also found... No, we can talk about anything. Okay, okay. Well, then in 2008, that's when I found my biggest lucrative opportunity where I found some casinos that were offering live casinos. So you could play blackjack and they set up a camera on the dealer that you could see shuffling and dealing cards.

20:00But the problem was they were using some big sized cards. and I realized that the dealers had trouble shuffling them correctly because they were so big. So I figured, well, maybe they are not shuffled very efficiently. And, you know, I set up a big system. I was using several computers. And basically, I could tell in advance which cards were coming up. So sometimes there were 15 cards that were stuck together that remained in the same order. So I knew which cards were coming up. That obviously gave me a huge advantage, and I took advantage of it. And did they fix that, or did you throw it out of the casinos?

20:42Well, I did it for a year and a half, and trying not to play too often so that it won't be too obvious. But there were a couple of nights where the cards were really, really badly shuffled, and I just lost some hands on purpose. Like I would win seven in a row, and I was like, oh, that's going to be suspicious. Let me lose a hand on purpose. So I had one computer where the screen was on, another computer where I would track each card that was coming up. And then I had a program that would tell me quickly, okay, I just saw the seven of spades and the 10 of diamonds. What's the next card that may be coming up?

21:25So it would look up quickly because obviously it was not that easy to do because you have to be quick. You need to place your bet quickly. So I had to have a few different computers with some software to tell me quickly which cards were likely coming up. So those were really good times, but after a year and a half, they figured out what was going on. I see. So do you ever think about political betting? Are there any websites where you could do political bets? Yes, I've seen such bets, but honestly, I've never looked into it. But I know that there are some bets here on, for example, who will be the next US president.

22:06Yeah, there's like a site called Predict It. But probably the data is not good enough to really have a good strategy statistically. Yeah, there might be something to do, but I've never looked into it, to be honest with you. And let's talk about some of these other ones. Like you have one strategy called the pummeled pitchers. So when a major league baseball team goes through a streak of games where they allow many runs, should we bet or fade them in their following contest? Yeah. Most of the time you need to bet them. Well, most of my betting systems end up being contrarian, which means you're going to go against the grain.

22:46So when people see a team that has allowed nine runs in three games in a row, they're like, oh man, what a crappy team. We need to bet against them. And the line is artificially inflated, and that's when you can take advantage of it. So most of my systems end up being like this. They end up taking teams that are not very popular.

23:12Have you ever considered setting up a hedge fund where people invest with you, and then you're able to gamble a larger amount of money, and then you take a percentage of the profits? Yeah, some people have asked me about it. I don't know if I would really be interested in that. I really like the way things are going right now, but there has been some demand, but so far, no, I don't want to do that. And when you say you like the way things are going now, is that because you're making, do you make a lot of money from this? Like, how's it going? I mean, you're also a professor of statistics, right?

23:48So does this make more than your salary? Well, I did quit a year ago. My job just to focus exclusively on my sports betting activities and also on my sports betting YouTube channel or business, if we can call it like that. So I just became financially independent. I figured, okay, I don't need to work anymore. Let's just do this for fun. And I really just do it because I love it. Instead of just sitting on my couch for the rest of my life, I just decided that I prefer to keep doing this to help people try to beat online sportsbooks, which is really a passion to me. And do you also look at websites like DraftKings or PrizePix or, you know, what's it called, FanDuel or any of these other websites?

24:41Are you talking about their sportsbooks? Yes, I do. because many of my customers are from the U.S., so they do have an account with DraftKings or FanDuel. So I really look at the odds from Canada and the U.S., which probably correspond to 90-95 % of my customers.

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25:48when you first started out it was like in 1997 i think it was you proved that hockey teams would do better off if they pulled out their goalies earlier they would win more games if they pulled their starting goals earlier and hockey teams tended to hold on to their here keep their starting goalies into the game for too long which is like money ball type of analysis have you considered being a consultant to sports teams to use statistics to improve their play yeah well after writing this article, I did reach out to some teams, but two general managers called me to tell me, that was interesting, we liked it, but never got any job offers out of that.

26:28That was kind of my dream job at the time, but maybe not anymore. I just love what I do right now. And are there any other opportunities that you haven't looked at yet, like other sports or other types of gambling? Like, what are you playing around with right now? Yeah, well, most good opportunities come when you look at sports that are more obscure or that people don't look at. So maybe like e-sports or leagues that are not super popular. So I would really love to look into it and place more bets on such leagues. But the problem is it won't interest as many people. Like, if you want to make money, that's probably a good way to go.