UFC Fight Night Portland: Results in for Disappointing Loss
This was my first night of genuinely bad results since starting the blog. While a big part of it was just dumb luck, specifically on Louis Smolka’s part, I can’t deny I made a few poorly thought out decisions. A lot of the consensus with other more experienced bettors was that this was a bad card for betting, with lots of unknowns, new fighters, unreliable fighters, and question marks. I let my confidence from past results override the logic and I placed a few bets that didn’t really have any justification.
First bad bet was Kelly Faszholz. She only had one fight before this, a loss, which I was actually rating her positively because of her toughness and the fact she won 2 rounds in my opinion. However, there was no way to really know how she would hold up against the newcomer, who was able to use takedowns to win a split. Betting on either girl would be a rather dumb bet, and the fact that it went to split decision is a sign of that.
The next bad bet was Louis Smolka. Now, I don’t actually believe he was a bad bet. Rather, it was the amount of units I placed on him, 4 units. He is still relatively untested and hasn’t had enough consistency to justify that much of a bet. Normally I only like to place 1-2 units on fighters unless they are of the highest consistency. I overestimated Smolka here and gave his opponent no chance to win. So I would have kept that bet, but it would have been -2 units instead of -4.
In my defense of betting Smolka, he was clearly the betting choice on this card as I got him at relatively low odds of -378. A ton of bettors jumped on him all the way to the start of the fight day and he ended at -500 all the way up to -550. So if I can say anything to console myself, its that a ton of other people lost money on him, and probably in parlays.
The last 2 bets I placed were both bad decisions. Based on Dodson’s history, there was a good chance he would be taking an evasive strategy and draw the fight out past 2.5 rounds. I was hoping for the best, for a quick action-packed brawl based on Dodson’s most recent performance of a 1st round KO. However I should have taken into consideration the style matchup and his adaptation to Lineker. If anything, the over 2.5 rounds would have been better money since Dodson’s evasion was a likely strategy.
Lastly, betting on Dodson was not necessarily a BAD choice, since it was a close fight and he won on one judges card. But since it was so close, it just didn’t make sense from a betting perspective. I put too much into luck’s hand there and can’t argue with that end result. I have to say I am very glad that I hedged out of my original 4 unit bet, as that would have been an even bigger blow.
So, with all this being said, you can expect me to return to a more conservative betting strategy this weekend, with better informed bets and within a more reasonable unit size, not exposing myself too much to flaky performances. Overall I still have a nice profit here and I can’t let 2 events carry so much weight that I completely change my practice. Really I am mostly down because of two epic bed-shittings by Thiago Santos and Louis Smolka, both are big upsets and should be considered outliers for those guys overall careers.
See you at UFC 204
Results
John Dodson
1u at -110 (pinnacle.com)
-1u loss
Dodson/Lineker NOT go the Distance
2u at -225 (bookmaker.eu)
-2u loss
Louis Smolka
4u at -378 (pinnacle.com)
-4u loss
Curtis Blaydes
2u at -230 (sportsinteraction.com)
+.8u profit
Kelly Faszholz
2u at -110 (bookmaker.eu)
-2u loss
TOTAL: -8.2u loss
