Han Solo hated being told the chances. But that was a long time ago…. Today’s sports lovers are constantly bombarded with data and information, even in a very simple and straightforward sport like MMA. As any game develops, the metrics which measure it and the statistics that report it evolve and advance. But there’s 1 set of numbers which are omnipresent from the beginning of just about any game, from the back alley to the big leagues: the gambling odds.
In MMA, the Tale of the Tape outlines the basic physique of each fighter, even while their records summarize their performance history within the sport. But it’s the gambling line that is the most immediate and direct hint to what is going to occur when the cage door shuts on two fighters. So let’s take a closer look at exactly what the odds could tell us about MMA, matchmaking, and upsets. Hey Han Solo, “earmuffs.”
Putting to Extreme Sports In an academic sense, gambling lines are basically the market cost for a certain event or result. These prices can move according to gambling activity leading up to the function. When a UFC battle begins, that gambling line is the people closing figure at the probability of every fighter winning, with approximately half of bettors choosing each side of the line. Many experts make daring and confident predictions about struggles, and they’re all wrong a fantastic portion of the time. But what about the chances? How do we tell if they’re correct? And what do we learn from looking at them in aggregate?
The fact is that just a small section of fights are equally matched based on odds makers. So called”Pick’Em” fights composed only 12 percent of matchups from the UFC since 2007, with the remainder of fights having a clear favorite and”underdog.” UFC President Dana White mentions these betting lines to help build the story around matchups, frequently to point out why a specific fighter might be a”dog” White’s correct to perform up that chance, because upsets occur in approximately 30 percent of fights where there is a clear favorite and underdog. So next time you take a look at a fight card anticipating no surprises, then just don’t forget that on average there will be two or three upsets on any particular night.
What Do Odds Makers Know?
At a macro sense, cage fighting is inherently difficult to predict for a variety of reasons. The youthful sport is competed by people, and there are no teammates in the cage to pick up slack or assist cover for mistakes. Individual competitors only fight mere minutes per excursion, and, if they’re lucky, only a few times each year. And let’s not overlook the raw and primal forces at work in the cage, where one attack or error of position can finish the struggle in seconds.
The volatility of the factors means there’s absolutely no such thing as a guaranteed win once you are permitting one trained competitor unmitigated access to do violence on another. The game is totally dynamic, often intense, and with just a few round breaks to reset the action. These are the reasons we watch and love the game: it’s fast, furious, and anything can happen. It is the polar opposite of the true statistician’s game, baseball.

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