Under the Tournament


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When March Madness rolls around most of the general public race to fill out their brackets. Who will be the Cinderella team? What #1 seed will be the favorite? Who is my big upset special to go deep? These are the questions that make filling out a bracket one of the most fun, and universally enjoyable practices in all of American sports. It's also a time that people that never bet a dollar all season will enter bracket pools to try to make some money.

The idea of winning a bracket is fun, but not really a profitable gameplan. Moving on from the casual bettors, we also can talk about the mid level bettors. The people who love to take the underdogs and hope their dart throws pay off. Princeton and FDU certainly paid handsomely this year if that was your philosophy, but overall the public loses, even if they take underdogs.

This season though there was a cheat code to making money. The first round unders were an outlier like we have never seen before. The public loves to bet overs, because they like to see scoring and entertainment. Unders are usually a good bet, but this year unders in the first round were mind boggling. Entering Sunday unders were hitting in over 75% of the games! If you got favorable lines that number went close to an 80% win rate for 3 days.

So, the question is will the unders keep hitting? No one can tell for sure, but the books will adjust for this weekend's Sweet 16 and Elite 8 games. There is no way the unders can keep cashing ... is there?

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Is There a New Ace in Town?

The New York Mets have a new ace, and fantasy owners have been accustomed to viewing Freddy Peralta as a near-ace for some time. The move to a more pitcher-friendly park should help, but do not overreach, because the reality is that the lineup around him is roughly the same and the bullpen is likely worse at protecting his leads. Peralta has been a standout for years, and slotting him in as a high-value fantasy arm is easy. The question is just how high he should go.