Your Efficient Market Data Point of the Day

According to Sportsbook.com, the odds for both heads and tails for Sunday’s big coin toss is -101. That means that you have to put up $101 to win $100.

Since something has to go to the house, you can’t even get 50-50 odds on a coin toss. However, the house’s take on this bet is extremely small so I’m guessing they’re just using it to entice customers to wager on bets with wider spreads.

Still, that’s better than betting on which team will win the coin toss which is -105 for both teams.

For the winner of the game, Sportsbook.com has the Steelers at +120 and the Packers at -140.

That’s like saying the Packers have a 58.3% chance of winning and the Steelers have a 45.5% chance of winning. You may have noticed that those add up to more than 100%, and that excess is the house’s cut.

I think it’s interesting that on the biggest bet of the year, the vig is still—in my eyes—pretty sizeable.

According to Brian Burke, one of the top football number crunchers around, the Steelers and Packers are almost perfectly matched. He has the Steelers at 50.07% and the Packers at 49.93%.

Burke thinks the public’s turn toward the Packers is due to their strong playoff run which he places under the cognitive bias known as the recency effect.

Posted by on February 3rd, 2011 at 1:52 pm


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