Comments on Vegas Watch: Futures Watch: Week 6

I literally explained this to my friend 10 minutes...

2008-05-10T20:35:00.000-04:00

I literally explained this to my friend 10 minutes ago; maybe I should have a tab on the site explaining this kind of stuff.

For favorites, you do odds/(1+odds). So, if a team is -400, you do 4/(1+4), which is 80%. In the relevant example, it's 6.5/(1+6.5), which is 86.7%. But that's for them to not win the WS, so we do 1 minus that, which is 13.3%

For underdogs it is 1/(1+odds). So, here, it's 1/(1+5.3), which is 15.9%. (I screwed it up in the original post, apparently. Way to go me.)

Love your site. A little confused though:"For exam...

2008-05-10T20:22:00.000-04:00

Love your site. A little confused though:

"For example, you can currently bet on the Red Sox at +530 to win the World Series, or at -650 to not win the World Series. With these, we can figure that Boston has between a 13.3% and 14.6% chance of winning it all. Averaging those, it's 14%; "true odds" of +580."

Is there a layman's way of explaining how you arrived at a) the 13.3% and 14.6% numbers and b) the true odds of +580 number?

I remember back in December when there were rumors...

2008-05-08T09:50:00.000-04:00

I remember back in December when there were rumors floating around involving Jason Bay and/or Anthony Reyes being traded to the Indians, with either involving Mr. 44 2/3 innings, 39 strikeouts, 25 hits, 5 runs, 2 walks being dealt.

That seems like a lonnnnnnnnnnnng time ago.