Public teams: "More common is that the public is irrationally betting on public teams. Public teams are usually teams from big cities, with exciting offenses, popular players, and/or winning traditions. Examples are the Yankees, Red Sox, Patriots, Steelers, Colts, Cowboys, Packers, Lakers, Celtics, etc. When lines move on these teams, there is a good chance it is not sharp money, but fan money. When these teams get hot, you see some really crazy stuff, like last year with the Patriots. The opposite of public teams are non-public teams, which are often small-market, defensive-minded, traditionless, and/or expansion teams."
February 1—Super Bowl Sunday—will be a big day for Noah. Last year he and his partners placed more than 100 bets on the game—for example, on the over-under for yards rushed by New York Giants running back Brandon Jacobs in particular quarters. They also bet that Patriots fullback Heath Evans would gain fewer than 2.5 yards rushing over the course of the entire game.
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Noah held his breath as Evans was handed the ball early in the game. The fullback earned two yards and didn't get another carry. "I'd spent a couple weeks researching these [bets]," he explains, adding that the opportunity to wager on such trivia isn't available with ordinary games. "They were relatively low-exposure: Each was around $500."
Meanwhile, loyal fans flooded the market with square money, making lines and odds go haywire. For example, rather than just betting that their team would win outright, Patriots fans kept betting up the line, to the point where the Patriots were favored by 14. Giants fans, rather than betting that the Giants would come within 14 points without necessarily winning, bet on their team to win outright. As a result, the odds for betting on the Patriots to win straight up were more favorable than they'd normally be with a 14-point favorite.
Noah and his partners bet on the Giants in nearly every category—for example, to win most quarters and to beat the spread—but bet on the Patriots to win the game. The Giants' game-winning drive in the fourth quarter cost Noah's team more than $100,000 on that last wager—yet they still made about $10,000 on the day.
Says Noah of the squares: "They were thinking like typical gamblers. They think it's a bad deal to risk a lot of money to get a small payoff, and a good deal to risk a little money to get a big payoff. It's the same mentality that drives slot machines." The professional gambler, by contrast, always looks for the favorable percentage without getting fixated on swinging for the fences.
While his descriptions sometimes make it sound easy, Noah insists that betting on sports is getting tougher. Not only has the passage of the UIGEA pushed out square money and made sports betting more susceptible to manipulation, he says, but the market—both other bettors and bookies—keeps getting smarter. "It's a constant struggle to stay ahead of the curve," he laments.
To wit, Noah is coming off a three-week losing streak in December that ate up around $300,000—almost 30 percent of his bankroll. But he says his ability to deal with losing is much of what's made him successful.
"He can take an absolute beating and talk about it like [it's] ho-hum, like he just had a not-so-good day at work," says Sobolow.
"I've seen really talented people go crazy over losing streaks," Noah says. "But shit happens."
Having spent the past six years honing his probability assessment skills and running innumerable statistical models on his strategies, Noah remains confident of his prospects going forward.
"People think I'm crazy with the winning and losing streaks, but I think my approach is more conservative," he explains. "Something like 80 to 90 percent of restaurants fail. You hear about the credit crisis—I'm not doing anything on credit. Sure, I win or lose a lot in a day, but my chance of success is greater than in a lot of businesses. At least that's what I hope."
dagnos@seattleweekly.com
