BET: MAURICIO ‘SHOGUN’ RUA +320 OVER LYOTO MACHIDA
BET: BEN ROTHWELL +275 OVER CAIN VELASQUEZ
BET: GLEISON TIBAU -120 OVER JOSH NEER
BET: SPENCER FISHER +205 OVER JOE STEVENSON
BET: YOSHIYUKI YOSHIDA +265 OVER ANTHONY JOHNSON
BET: CHAEL SONNEN +215 OVER YUSHIN OKAMI

UFC 104 ODDS:

Lyoto Machida -400
Shogun Rua +340

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Cain Velasquez -285
Ben Rothwell +225

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Gleison Tibau no line
Josh Neer no line

No line currently posted due to Josh Neer’s replacement of Sean Sherk

Joe Stevenson -240
Spencer Fisher +190

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Anthony Johnson -300
Yoshiyuki Yoshida +240

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Antoni Hardonk -125
Pat Berry -105

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Yushin Okami -225
Chael Sonnen +185

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Ryan Bader -410
Eric Schafer +350

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And don’t forget that you can get the UFC 104 live play by play coverage and full UFC 104 results at THE SAVAGE SCIENCE

UFC 104 MACHIDA VS. SHOGUN LIVE @ THE SAVAGE SCIENCE

Rich Franklin -155
Vitor Belfort +125

Mirko Cro Cop +110
Junior Dos Santos -140

Martin Kampmann No line
Paul Daley No line

Paul ‘Semtex’ Daley is a late replacement for Mike Swick. Fight is currently off the board.

Frank Trigg +290
Josh Koshchek -360

Tyson Griffin -305
Hermes Franca +245

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UFC 103 live results from The Savage Science

The Savage Science should be your go to site for MMA news, UFC news and much much more:

THE LINE: It’s important to keep in mind how the lines are set and what they mean. A prevalent misconception is that they represent a prediction by bookmakers on who will win and in the case of pointspread bets by how much. There is some of that factored into the number, but more important to the bookmaker is setting a number that will divide the action evenly both ways. In some ways, it’s more accurate to consider the line or pointspread a ‘popularity contest’. Ultimately, the bookmaker is more interested in accurately predicting how the public’s betting opinion on a proposition will break down more than anything else.

So in theory, a bettor can always find value simply by going against public opinion. It’s not quite as simple as this, but there are definitely worse things to be in sports gambling than a contrarian. Some teams even come to be known as ‘public’ teams—you know who they are in team sports: the Yankees, Red Sox, Notre Dame, Duke, North Carolina. Bookmakers will typically ‘shade’ the line in games involving these teams to reflect the mainstream popularity they enjoy. In a hypothetical basketball game between Duke and a low profile program like, for example, Coastal Carolina the data could indicate the line should favor the Tar Heels by 10 points. A bookmaker might then open the Heels as a -14 point favorite based simply on the difference in name recognition alone.

This concept is particularly important in MMA—the reality of the sport is that once you get below the fighters at the very top of the food chain there’s a lot of parity. The nature of a sport full of shameless self promotion also presents opportunities where you’ll frequently find matchups between evenly matched fighters with one guy favored because he’s simply better known.

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Thanks to Savage Science managing editor Jim Murphy for this writeup and the one to follow:

Mixed martial arts is becoming a major betting sport, which is a very tidy convergence of my past and present vocations as a professional sports handicapper and fight sport journalism god. Not to toot my own horn, but I was one of the first handicappers to seriously work on MMA back when most people—bookmakers included—considered it more of a freak show than actual sport. For awhile, betting MMA was like a personal ATM machine—no one could set a sharp line on the sport, and my clients and I took advantage and made a lot of money. The bookmakers are getting sharper, but it’s still possible to bet MMA profitably.

Now, I’m not going to bore you with a sports betting theory lecture. I could prattle on for days talking about ‘true odds’, theoretical breakeven points, and other arcane concepts that have more to do with math than sports. I am going to preface this with a couple of important concepts of serious sports betting theory that you should keep in mind when betting MMA or, for that matter, any sport.

VALUE: To make money betting on sports over the long haul, you need to find positive line value situations or what we sports gambling types call ‘an overlay’. Simply stated, these are situations where the ‘true odds’ of an event occurring make the prices offered by a sportsbook favorable. The easiest way to explain this is to think of a coin flip which over the long term is a 50% proposition. Were a sports book offering +100 on one side of a coin flip, that would accurately reflect the ‘true odds’ of this proposition. Were a book offering ‘heads’ at +150 and ‘tails’ at -175, it would be a situation where ‘heads’ is a good wagering value and ‘tails’ a bad investment.

See what we’re doing here? We’re not so much trying to determine which side the coin lands on, but finding a price that puts the ‘true odds’ of a certain outcome in our favor. At +150, the theoretical breakeven point is 40%. At -175, it’s 63.6%. So keeping in mind that over the long term the coin flip is a 50/50 proposition, simply betting on ‘heads’ will make us money over the long haul. Conversely, laying the favorite price on ‘tails’ is, simply stated, a ‘sucker bet’.

Obviously, in the ‘real world’ there aren’t a lot of cut and dried instances where you know what the true odds of a proposition are like you do with a coin flip. That’s where all of the statistical and matchup analysis comes into play. Still, what we do when we handicapping MMA or any other sport is a more complex version of the ‘coin flip’ example above.

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UFC 102:

Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira +150 over Randy Couture WIN
Thiago Silva +120 over Keith Jardine WIN
Jake Rosholt +120 over Chris Leben WIN
Demian Maia +150 over Nate Marquardt loss
Mike Russo -275 over Justin McCully (half unit) WIN
Evan Dunham +120 over Marcus Arellio WIN
Chris Tuchscherer +305 over Gabriel Gonzaga loss

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UFC 102:

Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira +150 over Randy Couture
Thiago Silva +120 over Keith Jardine
Jake Rosholt +120 over Chris Leben
Demian Maia +150 over Nate Marquardt
Mike Russo -275 over Justin McCully (half unit)
Evan Dunham +120 over Marcus Arellio
Chris Tuchscherer +305 over Gabriel Gonzaga

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