Pearls of Wisdom: MMA Betting Advice from BadVibes

Don’t throw away your money making bets that have little chance of hitting or offer little return. Betting heavy favorites or heavy underdogs is almost always a bad play. A lot of bettors have learned this the hard way… Myself included. Ever since Matt Serra shocked the world and upset Georges St. Pierre I’ve seen a trend of MMA bettors looking to hit on the next big dog. Take for example Anderson Silva’s most recent fight with James Irvin. Most Sports books had Silva around -500 and Irvin anywhere between +325 to +400. A lot of experts were impressed by Irvin’s comments in the media leading up to the fight and thought that a bigger, pure muay thai fighter could give the pound for pound champ a run for his money. Hell, if you watched Irvin’s highlight reel enough times you could have probably convinced anyone he had at least a punchers chance. The truth is either way you could have bet this fight it had no value. A winning bet on Anderson Silva only had a %20 return. To make a bet on Irvin one would have to assume that he wins that fight more than %25 of the time. When in actuality Irvin probably only wins that fight 1 out of 10 times… and that’s being kind of generous. The underlying point here is that the bet has no value either way in a strait wager. The only way for a bettor to make any value here was to take Silva in some sort of parlay.

Remember: Dogs are dogs for a reason! They have little to no shot of winning. So stop looking for the next Matt Serra and make reasonable bets. Personally, I don’t like to bet fighters that are any more than a 3 to 1 underdog or a 3 to 1 favorite. These are sucker bets, and you’ll do yourself and your pocketbook a favor by staying away from them.