Tiebreakers

King Yao is the author of Weighing the Odds in Hold‘em Poker, and Weighing the Odds in Sports Betting. He uses his experience from making millions in financial derivative markets and translates it into gambling. Since he left his trading position in 2000, he has been playing poker and betting on sports. He travels to Las Vegas frequently, especially during football season.

A sportsbook can overlook a tiebreaker situation and put up a beatable line.

College football

College football teams do not play many games within their conference. It is not unusual for teams to share the same record atop the conference at the end of the year. Tiebreaker rules come into play to decide the conference winner or, in the case of conferences that have divisions, the team that plays in the conference title game. Typically, the first tiebreaker is the head-to-head game. But sometimes the teams do not play each other that year or there are more than two teams tied. When betting on conference futures in college football in the middle of the season, you should understand the tiebreaker rules and know which team holds the advantage.

Here is a hypothetical. The conference winner would be determined by the outcome of the game between California and USC. This was the case despite the fact that both still had one more conference game left in their schedule, and USC had another non-conference game left, against Notre Dame.

Both teams were 6-1 going into this game. Whoever won the game would hold the tiebreaker advantage and for the purposes of the conference title, it would not have mattered what happened in their last conference game of the year. At worst, the winning team in this game would have gone 7-2 (if it lost the last game of the year). At best, the losing team would have gone 7-2 as well (if it won the last game of the year). But the winning team in the USC-California game would have the tiebreaker advantage. Given the tiebreaker situation, the conference odds should have been the same as the money line in this particular game. A sportsbook might make the mistake of thinking the last game of the year matters in the conference standings. With this incorrect thinking, they may put up juicy conference futures odds.

The point spread in the game was USC -6; in college football, that corresponds to a money line of -205. I was lucky to find a sportsbook offering California +230 to win the conference. That same sportsbook offered USC -220 to win the game. I bet California to win the conference at +230 and did not hedge. My wager lost as USC won the game and the conference.

NFL

NFL divisional futures have this dynamic as well, but are more complicated. Unlike college football where the teams play each other once a year during the regular season, NFL teams play the other teams in the division twice a year. Two teams can be tied for the division with each having won one game. They must go farther into a list of tiebreaker rules in order to decide the division winner. NFL.com has the tiebreaker procedures. This is important for division futures, conference futures, and Super Bowl futures. If two teams are tied atop a division, the team that wins the division may get a bye in the first round of the playoffs while the other team may be a wild-card team and have to play on the road in the first round. One team has to win two games, of which at least one will be at home, to make it to the Super Bowl. The other team has to win three games to make it to the Super Bowl, and probably all three games will be on the road.

Late in the season, NFL futures bettors need to examine the tiebreaker rules and carefully adjust their futures calculations to account for tiebreaker advantages or disadvantages. Not knowing the rules can result in incorrect calculations and negative-EV bets. Sometimes NFL tiebreaker scenarios are complex, with the result hinging on multiple games. With hard work, you may be able to take advantage of these situations.

This is part of an occasional series of articles.

Excerpted with permission from the e-book version of Weighing the Odds in Sports Betting by King Yao, edited for this format.