Giants' Magic Number: 1

G-men won yesterday and the Pods lost, so the Magic Number is down to 1!  "What does this mean to me, Katie?  I'm just a simple 16thP Peon with no ties to San Francisco!"  you might find yourself exclaiming.  Well, Peon, it's really very simple.  A single giants win or a single padres loss means that the San Francisco Giants are mathematically destined to win the NL West.

(Conversely and more commonly, that is normally phrased as "the Padres are mathematically eliminated from playoff contention".  My phrasing is special because it is

>implying that the giants will try to find a way to unclinch the NL West title

)

So, giants win or padres loss, and the Giants win the NL West outright.  And really, it's not a matter of "or" since the Padres are in town.

tl;dr giants beat padres either tonight, tomorrow, or sunday and they win the NL West

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OK, as we all like money (that's why they call it "money"), and may even have started up a quasi-blog for the express purpose of making some measly amount of money, I'll try to boil down the previous post in terms of practical application to sports betting.  Over a series of posts.

Here's what bodog.com has to say about the Giants-Padres tonight


table lovingly stolen from previous post

Giants vs. Padres
Team	Money Line	Total	Run Line
Padres	+143	6.5	+1.5 (-165)
Giants	-158		-1.5 (+145)

So the first type of bet is the Money Line Bet.  This is a simple "who's gonna win" bet.  Pick a team, put some money down, and if you're right you get your money back plus some more money.  It's awesome.

But first things fucking first:  "How much money exactly, Katie?  Does my ten bucks win me ten bucks?"  Well, unfortunately no.  That would make things (and by "things" i mean you winning money) too easy.  Not being sarcastic there.  Aww crap, i guess we need to explain basic statistics before jumping into odds.  If you were to bet a dollar on flipping a coin heads or tails Fuck it, that's gonna take fucking forever.  You see the +143 and the -158 under "Money Line"?  That means if you bet $100 on the Padres and they win, you will get your $100 back and an extra $143.  Conversely, if you bet $158 on the Giants and they win, you'll win your original $158 and an extra $100. 

The next type of bet is the Total.  You may have heard of this before, it's the "Over/Under".  In this case, the O/U is 6.5.  In this bet, you're betting on whether the total number of runs scored by the giants and the padres (yes, just add them together) is going to be either Over 6.5 or Under 6.5.  Final Score:  Giants 3, Padres 1?  The Under wins.  Final score: Giants 7, Padres 2?  The Over wins.

"How do you score 0.5 of a run, Katie?" You can't.  This is just to ensure that there are no pushes.  Yes, they could've said 6.25 or 6.90 or 6.1415926535897932384626433832795028841972 and the result would've been the same. 


"How much does $100 win me, Katie?"  Good question.  Glad to see that some of my mindless blather is actually important every once in a while.  The O/U bets are usually paid at -110.  Which means, You bet $110, You win $100.  (or $11 and $10, or $5.50 and $5).  Sometimes there are different payouts for the Over versus the Under, so be sure to check.  Without going back to bodog to confirm, i think tonight's giants/padres actually has different payouts.

The last type of bet is the Run Line.  It's similar to the "spread", in case you're familiar with that term.  "Well, I'm not, fucker.  Explain."  Well fuck you.  I'm trying to do you a favor here.  "I'm sorry, fucker Katie.  Please explain."  This deserves a special mention, so i'll do a little HTMLing right here...

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The "Spread" (also, the "line") on a game is designed to make both propositions of the bet equally attractive to bettors.  Would you bet on the 49ers versus a pee wee football team?  No?  Then you're fucking retarded for not reading the question.  Of course you would bet on that game-- taking the 49ers.

OK seriously, if you were gonna bet on football team A versus football team B and knew that football team A was awesome and would only give up a loss to football team B once every ten years or so, what would convince you to bet on B?  Would you bet on B if B was given an extra touchdown?  Two extra touchdowns?  Obviously this can't happen in the actual game itself, but for betting purposes, you can spot a poor team some points, or even handicap a good team by taking some of their points away.  This is the spread.

Practical example:  Let's take two teams I hate who are playing each other this weekend, Stanfurd University and the University of Oregon.  Go to bodog.com and it tells us Stanfurd +7, Oregon -7.  That means "give stanfurd an extra 7 points, or take 7 points away from oregon".

Final score:  Oregon 35, Stanfurd 21?  OK, add 7 points to the 'Furd and that becomes 35-28 oregon over stanfurd, and so a bet on Oregon wins.  Oregon "beats the spread".

Final Score:  Stanfurd 31, Oregon 10?  Not that you need to, but add 7 to stanfurd... 38-10 stanfurd beats oregon.  hope you bet on the cardinal.

Final Score:  Oregon 21, Stanfurd 20?  OK, here's where it gets interesting.  You can see that Oregon wins the game IRL.  but in terms of the spread, the effective score is now 27-21 Stanfurd.  Stanfurd has "beat the spread" and hopefully you had your money there.  You understand the concept?  Can you extrapolate reasons why the spread might move one way or another?  OK good, back to baseball...

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don't remember why i saved this.  but here it is anyway.

The Run Line which we were originally discussing is similar to a spread in that a team is spotted 1.5 runs.  Wagers are then paid off accordingly.  In our example, the Padres get 1.5 runs, betting $165 to win $100.  The Giants give up 1.5 runs, betting $100 to win $145. 

So with the information in hand thus far on the money line and the run line for tonight's game, can you see why Vegas thinks that the giants will win tonight, but probably not by more than one run?  And then given
the O/U of 6.5 runs, maybe a 4-3 final score or a 3-2 score? 

Shit, this is gonna take fucking forever to break down that post from the Wizard of Odds.  In any case, this might be enough for you to wet your beaks for now.