Michael Pryde is a full-time professional sports punter operating a data-driven model that finds value in the massive market that is US sports.

He joins us on the podcast this week to discuss how it all works for the Sports Predictor Model.

Punting Insights:

How a quant model can beat the market

Why baseball is such a good sport to bet on

Key team and player stats

The two best betting options

Today’s Guest:

Michael Pryde

Get the Transcript:

David Duffield: Good to chat again Michael. Just for the people that may have missed it last year can you run through the summary of how you go about it with the Sports Predictor Model.

Michael Pryde: Basically the Sports Predictor Model is a statistic driven analysis of each sport. Basically we just crunch the numbers into an algorithm and that spits out whether some bets are good bets. Or whether some bets have value or not, compared to the Vegas bookmakers. We've developed the system over 3 ½ - 4 years now which has proven to be quite profitable. It's going well.

David Duffield: So you do this full time and also with the help of some of your brothers?

Michael Pryde: Yes so I do it myself, and Matt. We do it full time now. I started full time about 2 ½ years ago. And he started full time about 12 months ago. So yeah, we're both full time.

David Duffield: Who's the boss?

Michael Pryde: Of course, me. I'm the one who's talking, so me.

David Duffield: So I wanted to get you on this time of year to talk baseball because pretty much anyone who's had a bet by now has probably heard of Moneyball and that whole approach that revolutionised things almost a decade ago now, I'd say. Things have really evolved since then but from what you do, why is baseball such a good sport to bet on?

Michael Pryde: I mean the baseball is quintessentially what our system is about. It's such a high volume of fixtures every year. And pretty much any stat is easily available. I mean, this year there's over 2400 fixtures. If you can imagine that's like 12 or 13 AFL seasons in six months. It's such a high volume of games and within those fixtures there's 3 markets we can bet on. Head to head, line and totals.

We've found over the last 2 seasons that on average we probably have a significant enough value to bet 1 in 10 markets and that's proved to be really profitable. That's also why baseball is so good, because of the profit.

The last 2 seasons we've had remarkably similar results. In 2013 we had 106 units profit at a strike-rate of 56% and last year we made 107 and a half units profit at a strike-rate just short of 55%. We've had about 1400 bets over those 2 years.

But in terms of developing statistical trends and an algorithm that's successfully sustained profitability in sports gambling, baseball is the ideal platform really. And the ideal sport.

David Duffield: So you mentioned the high volume of fixtures and the availability of stats. That's some of the positives, then one of the challenges can be in such a big market it tends to be more efficient. How have you gone about finding profitable angles and putting that together into the algorithm to find value bets?

Michael Pryde: Well, I almost look at it the other way and think there are so many markets and so many markets everyday that there's bound to be, not flawed markets because there's never a flawed market, but markets where you can get value in. I mean we only find about 1 in 10 markets but that's enough for us to have a bet.

They're putting out up to 45 markets a day, everyday for 6 months. Not every market is going to be as tight as it potentially could be. We believe anyway.

David Duffield: Are you looking mainly at team stats or is it player stats because I know that with baseball, one of the benefits is, as you mentioned before, the availability of stats but also the fact that although it's a team game but it's really a 1 on 1 battle, pitcher and batter.

Michael Pryde: Yeah,