MLB 2-team underdog parlay system

Grettings everyone,

Apologies for the delay in getting this thread off the ground. I had mentioned in another thread how I'm interested in running a 2-team MLB parlay system that would involve betting on the two best underdogs each day. We will use a combination of Tony Stoffos' system for determining the two best underdogs and his 2-team parlay progression money management system.

1. Eliminate any games in which the moneyline odds are greater than +150

2. Eliminate any games in which the underdog has lost 3 or more games in a row or the favorite has won 3 or more games in a row.

3. Eliminate any games in which the favored team's pitcher is among the top 20 of the AL or NL in FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching). Fangraphs is good at updating those pitching leaders. I think I'll use the 2018 league leaders in FIP for the first month of the season, and then switch to 2019 leaders starting on May 1. The original system calls for using NPERA numbers from Jeff Sagarin, but I'm going with FIP since that's what I'm most familiar with. I think the general concept of both stats is very similar.

After filtering out potential dogs using these criteria, we'll parlay the two teams with the strongest odds. I'd like to stick to teams that are at or north of +100 but not too far north. There will certainly be days where there is no play and I'd like to avoid including teams with too long of odds to both win.

The Stoffos system also calls for taking the under in games where both pitchers are in the top 20 of their respective leagues. I thought about tying this into our system as well but am going to omit it for the time being, for simplicity's sake. If things seem to be off to a rocky start I might include it later on.

We will run our progression chase by betting the following units. A win at any point restarts the chase and a system loss would also restart it:

1u, 2u, 3u, 5u, 8u, 12u, 18u, 25u   (total 74 unit risk for each chase)

Since we are betting slight underdogs our parlays will typically pay out in the neighborhood of 3-to-1. There will obviously be a lot more losses than wins, but we don't need to win a majority to be profitable, as DanRules' NHL road parlay system has shown over the years.

I welcome any feedback. This is a completely untested system, but I wanted to give something a try this season. We'll look to get started with Thursday's slate of Opening Day games.

the only feedback i'd have, would be to consider a slower, more gradual and longer chase since the lowest a 2-team dog payout could be is on two teams that are +105 each. 

a $20 bet would yield $64.05

a $25 bet on the b game would yield, again w/ both at +105, would pay $80.06, net of the 'a' game loss of $20, that's $60.06 which is still a 3 unit win. 

$30 on the 'c' game would yield $96.07, minus $45 for a & b losses, is a $51.07 win on the chase.  or roughly 2.5units

$40 on the 'd' game would yield $128.10, minus $75 for prior 3 losses is still a $53.10 win on the chase.  still, roughly 2.5 units

point is, i played 4 games to get to "2x" whereas your progression jumped there fast, and still yielded over 2.5 units.

*all above assume +105 on both teams.  payouts could be hire depending on odds.

i'll try to quickly run it to pay approx 2.5 on the chase:

$55 would pay $176.14 minus $115 = $61.14 (over 3 units)

$70 would pay $224.18 minus $170 = $54.18 (roughly 2.5 units)

$95 would pay $304.24 minus $240 = $64.24 (over 3 units)

so continuing my above point, i've gotten to play 7 games and i'm not even at "5x" where you are with your progression on game 4, all while still yielding between 2.5 and 3 units.  and again, that's using the lowest possible "dog" number of +105 on both teams

yep.

It all comes down to Risk vs. Reward.  As Dan says it will be interesting to compare.  As this is the inaugural season I would tend to lean on the conservative side with Dan and Dutch. 

Looking forward to making some money with everyone, good luck all!

My thinking was similar to your NHL road system where we are not only trying to make up previous losses, but also pick up each play's units of profit that we missed out on along the way. Or do you think this is going to be too aggressive for this particular system? I'm definitely open to adjusting the progression. The one I posted is just copy and pasted from the Stoffos money management model.

Just spitballing: Here's a slightly more conservative progression model that would still reward us for wins late in the chase:

1u, 2u, 3u, 5u, 7u, 10u, 14u, 20u

That's an 8-game chase with a 62-unit total risk, which is down from the 74 units I initially posted. In the later portion of the chase the profit would still be around 2 units multiplied by the number of losses up to that point of the chase.

Alright, here we go. For this thread, we are going to bet $10 units and have a starting bankroll of $1,250. That's enough to cover two system losses right out of the gate, although we certainly hope that doesn't happen.

Starting bankroll: $1,250

Current bankroll: $1,250

Thursday's play: Los Angeles Angels (+105) and Chicago White Sox (-101); $10 to win $30.80

I think there's going to be a lot of instances where we come across teams that are -101 or -102. For this system I am going to consider those qualifying underdogs, albeit just barely. We'll stop at -102, though.

Good luck! i will definitly follow!

is this the site you are using to check the top 20 pitchers?

kay the link did not appear... i will pm you instead.

Great work Jaker!

Very good man!

Thanks everyone! That's our first win of the season.

Current bankroll: $1,337.10

Starting bankroll: $1,250

Monday Game 1: Cincinnati (+100) and Seattle (+100); $10 to win $30