In January of 2023, wagering on sports was legalized in my home state of Ohio. While I’ve never been one to obsess over sports bets, I had a tendency to buy a moonshot ticket on my favorite Cleveland teams when I’d find myself in Las Vegas. I could look at the 700:1 odds on the Browns winning the Super Bowl for months before my dreams were crushed.

I’m primarily a baseball fan, however, and this year, I decided to run a fun experiment:

What would happen if I bet $1 on every baseball game?

Yesterday was Major League Baseball’s Opening Day, and there were 15 games on the schedule. That seems like a perfectly exciting way to get this experiment started. I will be wagering $1 on every MLB game, all season. That’s 2,430 games over 6 months. I’ll post the outcomes every morning, and a running tally of my overall profit (or loss.)

The image below shows the kind of chart I will share each day. This is March 30, 2023’s results, but I will make a separate post for that day.

I’ll post a chart like this each day. Here’s an explanation of the columns:

Bet Win? – Did my pick win the game? This means that I won.

Home Bet? – I’m interested to see if certain teams play better at home or on the road. Just for tracking purposes.

Moneyline – If you aren’t familiar with sports betting (and I wasn’t three months ago), the moneyline odds are a reflection of what you would expect to win if you made a $100 bet. So if the moneyline is +210, and I bet $1, that means my profit would be $2.10 if my team wins. (I’d actually get $3.10, but that’s because they also return your $1 bet.)

Decimal – This is a conversion chart for me, since the moneyline can be confusing to read sometimes, especially when the value is something like -105. This is the actual mathematical odds on my wager. So if the decimal is 3.10, and I wager $1, I would expect to win $3.10. (Keep in mind that this includes my original bet, so my “profit” is actually only $2.10.)

If the moneyline is > 0, the formula for the decimal is: (MONEYLINE/100) + 1

If the moneyline is < 0, the formula for the decimal is: 1 – (100/MONEYLINE)

You see why I say this can get confusing?

Wager – This is going to be $1 for every single game.

Winnings – This is the final outcome of the game. If my pick wins, this will be Decimal * Wager. If I get it wrong, it will be $0.

Profit – This is the money I made in the winnings, minus the wager. The new money I have acquired.

How do you think I will end up after 2,430 games?

Monthly Summary:

March: +$3.80

April: -$11.72

Raw Data

https://airtable.com/shrOOK0RLByFzGWmm

Draft Kings

If you want to follow along with my bets each day, create an account on Draft Kings. I’m @jeffblankenburg.