1st Inning Wagers: Profitable Or Degenerate Special?

Depends on the 1-2-3 and most importantly the 4, worst case the 5 hitter. You have an ideal set up to get 1 run in the first. Lead off guy has a high OBP and is quick. 2 hitter needs to be able to place the ball and move the runner if he doesn't get a stolen base. 3 hitter needs to hit the ball in the gap or drive it to the fence. The 4 and 5 hitter needs to be able to hit with RISP and with 2 outs. If you find yourself with an RBI machine hitting 4 or 5 you should be able to feel fine with a run in the 1st. Some pitchers struggle in the first so you need to see how many pitches they threw last game, their first inning tendencies (control, how long to get settled in a game).
Wait for the starting line up, check top hitters against the pitcher. If you have 3 straight guys who have .400 or more success against the starter with a min of 10 ABs, a run in the first is almost guaranteed ( this is when the over is a great play also).  Would only play "yes" considering its always +. Would only play yes if both teams have a good top 4. No is just laying too much IMO

Always shyed away from the 1st inning score bets, always saw them as a coin flip..even if the top pitchers make their mistakes on the mound i feel probably would come in the first innings so could go either way.....love playing the first 5 innings totals as most runs are scored in the first 5

not sure why my reply was deleted. i thought i was answering the question.

 

why not 5 inning.?

the juice is less then 1st inning. but you still get the purity of the starting pitcher.

i also corrected you . you saying more runs are scored in . 1st 5th.

its the 6th. where most runs are scored, when the pitch count goes up, and the pitchers tire.

i told you that the yanks u4.5 today was good. and look 0-0 through the 6th. but 9 runs were scored in 7th and 8th.

with 5 inning you get the starter pitching range and era better. then a 1st inning high juuice wager.

so the books call 5th inning and irst inning wagers exotics.

 

but whatever. 5th innng wagers are the truest story of all. as a starting pitchers era usually does not contain innings past the 6th.

and if it does look at what happen to aj tonite. coach kept him in to long.  but i could of told u that.

that is why i told you bet the 5 inning.  past that its cloudy.

 

Takes a guy from the UK to tell em how to work out the % of a book!!

 

I have played No on occasion. But as previously stated u need to pick ur spots and do a LOT of research.

Pay close attn. to these key ballparks....Safeco,Alameda,Tropicana,Petco, AT&T and Nationals. Here is a sample of pitchers to represent these parks and their record of the prop no score in the first inning pitching stricly in these stadiums home or away reguardless of the opposing starter...

S.D. Stauffer 9-3

SEA Hernandez 8-2

T.B.Shields 7-3

OAK Cahill 8-3

S.F. Cain 9-1 sole loss came tuesday

NATS Gorzelanny 5-1

For a combined 46-13 so far this year!!! You would have been 2-2 on tuesday...No score in Hernandez/Cahill. Loss on Stauffer/Cain...Of course you would have lost heavy juice today, but it still seems like a sound bet to me. Look at each game as they come and you can probably reduce the loses...take some wins away too, but the key is to minimize your loses with juice that high. And what's left you hammer with whatever you can get down on your books prop bets...GL all

 

If you play Pinny you can often get in game betting on the # hits/runs in 2nd, 3rd, 4th innings etc as the game progresses.

This is an example of a logical "No," but they did score in the 1st.

I can't believe I didn't see this thread until now.  Many of you know that no one plays as many of these plays a day as I do.  I could write a thesis on what I've learned about this prop but will try and keep to the reader's digest version.

First of all, it IS a coin flip.  But a very profitable coin flip if you're on the right side.

My methodology is simple.  I don't bet the game, I bet the line.  I've taken the 1926 games played so far this year and stratified the outcome of the 1st inning by the full game O/U.  After running all kinds of regressions and correlations on 1st inning outcome with different kinds of individual, team and game data, only the full game O/U turns out to be highly correlated to the 1st inning outcome.  So each value of full game O/U has a true YES "hit" rate.  And this deep into the season, that "hit" rate is based on hundreds of observations at each value of O/U between 6.5 and 9.5.  Hundreds, not last 3 games or last 10 games that others like to base their bets on.

As others have said, this prop is a sort of a degenerate or impulse prop.  The books know this and shade their lines accordingly.  They know that the square bettors love to bet the high juice "NO" lines because they appear to be "safe" and they shade their lines that way.  But what this does is expose them to the rare "YES" bettors that know the data and the true money lines for those games.  But the square "NO" bettors so far outweigh the "YES" bettors that they are rarely punished for leaving themselves exposed on the "YES" side.

Back to the coin flip.  Yes, this prop is a coin flip.  Let's take the coin flip before an NFL game.  Before the game, you get to take that coin and flip it 300+ times.  It proves to be a fair coin, landing 150 times heads and 150 times tails.  You would then expect that every book would offer -115/-115 on the outcome of the coin flip at the start of the game.  Suppose that instead, some books offered you +105/-135.  Would you take the +105?  Yes, every time.  Would it lose 50% of the time? Yes, but in the long-run, you'd come out ahead.

Well, books are offering just that scenario every day with the YES option on this prop and I've been finding an average of 10 games a day with this scenario.  On my 1 unit plays, the YES or the "Heads" is in the range of +101 to +108.  On my 2 unit plays, it's between +109 and +117 and my 3 unit plays it's +118 or greater.  That's +118/-148 on a prop that should be -115/-115 or a 4% overlay!!  And this happens day after day after day but there aren't enough YES bettors that know the data and the math to make the books pay for exposing themselves this way as they clean up on all the square NO bettors.

GL

nice write up total guy

Quote Originally Posted by lovethedough:

Playing the 1st innings can be fun and profitable.  What I always do is always play the biggest dog for the group of games starting at a certain time.  The first bet I make is always very small, just for fun...if i lose the first, i start to chase, and i will double up on the biggest dog of the second group of games.  Usually, you win on the second or third game, i have lost 5 straight.  But, because you are playing dogs, and most of the public is betting huge on the favorites, you will eventually win one.  As long as you have a big bankroll, and start out very small...you will always grind out a small profit, and have fun doing it.

Thanks depbmoc.  I could have written 10 times more but thought this would suffice.