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Yep, it's that time again, you irresponsible jerkoffs. Time to pull your credit card out from underneath the pile of White Castle boxes and dirty Kleenex tissues in the corner of your room and put that sucker to good use. Risking next week's grocery fund on unpredictable MMA fights isn't exactly a sound decision, but then again you're not exactly in the business of making sound decisions. And neither am I. Anyway, here are the lines for this weekend's Strikeforce card, courtesy of Betus.com, with 78% retarded analysis after the jump. Fedor Emelianenko -550 vs. Brett Rogers +375 Werdum vs.Silva Werdum has some of the best jits in the heavyweight division. Silva is really big, hits really hard, and has shown some ground skills against lesser competition. The fight breaks down pretty simply. On the feet, Silva takes it due to power and reach. On the ground, Werdum takes it due to jiu-jitsu wizardry. I like a play on Silva here as I would actually pick him for a first or second round KO, especially considering that he's the underdog. But make no mistake: this one is about as close as the line suggests. Mousasi vs. Sokoudjou Mousasi is better in every single area of fighting. Sokoudjou has dynamite in his hands. Expect this fight to look similar to Sokoudjou's Affliction fight with Babalu. Mousasi will look to get it to the ground early in order to not even give "The African Assassin" a chance. Sure, there's always the possibility of Sokoudjou landing a Hail Mary punch, but the chances of that actually happening are about the same as your mother receiving anything but a man-made protein shake and a slap on the ass from yours truly for Christmas. By the way, help a brother out and get that cow on a diet already. Shields vs. "Mayhem" This fight is definitely closer than the line suggests. Shields is the rightful favorite, but Miller definitely has more of a chance in this one than that +220 line suggests. The MTV personality has some legitimate skills on the ground and, considering the fact that he's only been stopped twice in 29 fights, he's tough-as-hell to put away. From a probability perspective, someone is bound to beat Shields pretty soon considering the win streak he's on. Miller may very well be the man to do it. Fedor vs. Rogers "The Last Emperor" is clearly the rightful heavy favorite over "The Grim." If you think otherwise then you're either ready for an intervention or a member of Rogers' immediate family, or possibly both. At this point, the deal with Fedor is clear: he can beat you badly from any position. Period. Rogers has shown heavy hands and a consistently improving takedown defense in his short career, but the chances of him actually landing one of those bombs on Fedor is slim. If you're feeling dangerous, throw some cash on Rogers for the off chance that Fedor slips on Sokoudjou's blood and Rogers catches him. For those of you who are more conservative with your wallet, with a record of 30-1, Fedor is about as safe a bet as you can find in the MMA world.  I imagine a Mousasi/Emelianenko/Shields parlay is going to be a hot bet. I don't have as much faith in Miller as most people do. He is an absolutely legitimate fighter, but Shields is going to be really tough to beat.  Shields=overrated. I expect the fight to be pretty close.Shawn-->I agree w/pretty much everything. Except the likelihood that any chick is going to swallow ur babies. Even my strung out crackhead of a mom.  I still really really like the line on Werdum. I think alot of people still have the JDS uppercut from hell lodged well into their head and think Werdum can't handle a legit striker. Silva is gonna get pounded out in the first. He hasn't gone up against anyone who can take him to the ground and keep him there. Werdum is gonna do just that.  I threw down 20 real dollars on Vai Cavalo, at -165. The line should be -300 Verdum. Verdum beat Vera, Gonzaga x 2, Overeem and A. Emelianenko.Bigfoot, on the other hand, beat Ricco when he weighed a metric ton and Jim York. He BARELY beat Ricco. "From a probability perspective, someone is bound to beat Shields pretty soon considering the win streak he's on."This is completely wrong. That's like saying that if a coin flip comes up heads 5 times in a row, it's bound to come up tails because tails is due. From a probability perspective, his chance of losing soon depends on his edge against his opponents, and he's only "bound" to lose soon if his edge against his upcoming opponents is not that large, or non-existent. You could argue that his win streak is largely due to him beating a bunch of opponents he had little to no edge against(not the case for the most part), and he's been extremely lucky. You could argue that his upcoming opponents have a very good chance at beating him, because their level of skill is similar to or greater than his. You could even argue that Shields will get overconfident and lazy, and slack on his training which will cause a GSP style loss(hasn't happened over the course of his 12 win streak). Saying that he's bound to lose soon just because he's on a win streak is retarded. It's especially bad that you said "from a probability perspective", because it implies that you have a flawed understanding of probability, and maybe you shouldn't be giving sports betting advice.  two major points of contention: (1) i'm pretty sure the post says "retarded analysis after the jump," so there's your little disclaimer, and (2) way to over analyze a GAMBLING blog post about CAGE FIGHTING. on top of that, i still stick with my point. ask any fighter: if you're consistently fighting top level guys, eventually you are going to lose. if shields was beating up bums off the street, i'd be the first one to say he'll be undefeated forever. he's not. his last four fights include pyle, lawler, daley, and thompson, who are all legit. the win streak also includes victorires over okami and condit.  Haha. For my money, I say Miller beats Shields by decision. And by "my money", I mean the none I have 'cause the kids spend it all.  i want a match with the winner of the fedor bret fight lol on the real i am hoping fedor knocks the tits off of rogers FUCK!!!!!!! Breen just said Bigfoot is a good bet. FUCK!!!!!!  I think Werdum's problem has always been confidence. He got into fighting because of ego and may be easily broken or confounded into a cruise-out-the-match mode.His striking's not gonna be enough for Silva either. I think it's a tough fight for Werdum, even though his Jits is so hot.  Werdum/Silva is the only vaguely competitive fight. I'm praying for Rogers, but it's going to be Fedor, Mousasi in a bullshit non title squash match against a guy that's 7-4 (amazing what back to back fights against Jan Nortje and Bob Sapp will do for one's record) and Shields by Bully Beatdown style tapout. "On top of that, i still stick with my point. ask any fighter: if you're consistently fighting top level guys, eventually you are going to lose."You could argue he'll lose from mental or physical fatigue because he's fought a series of top level guys. Or maybe he'll lose, like Heelhooked suggested, because he'll be overconfident from beating a bunch of top level guys. Or maybe he'll lose because he's lost his smile. But Heelhooked is right: saying that he's due to lose "from a probability perspective" doesn't make any more sense than saying that if a coin lands heads five times in a row, it's due to land tails. "(1) i'm pretty sure the post says "retarded analysis after the jump," so there's your little disclaimer, and (2) way to over analyze a GAMBLING blog post about CAGE FIGHTING."Sorry if I seem picky/offensive, but there were parts of your initial post that seemed pretty wrong to me. Some people probably read it and were misinformed because they didn't know any better. Furthermore, there's money involved here, and believe it or not some people actually bet substantial amounts on mma. "on top of that, i still stick with my point. ask any fighter: if you're consistently fighting top level guys, eventually you are going to lose. if shields was beating up bums off the street, i'd be the first one to say he'll be undefeated forever. he's not. his last four fights include pyle, lawler, daley, and thompson, who are all legit. the win streak also includes victorires over okami and condit." Your point was that "someone is bound to beat Shields pretty soon considering the win streak he's on". I suppose if we stretch the definition of "bound" and "pretty soon" then we can interpret your original post as saying that Shields is almost certain to lose eventually, especially since the level of competition he'll face will be consistently high so deep into a win streak, but that isn't a reason to bet on Mayhem. The fact that he's on a big win streak just doesn't increase his chance of losing in this fight, given that he didn't slack in his prior fights in the streak. The reason I'd say Shields isn't that lucky to be on his streak is that the only fighter who really challenged him was Okami. All of his other fights were pretty dominant or difficult to tell(Lawler). Thompson, Daley, Pyle, and Condit are all decent/good fighters, but Shields pretty much walked through all of them(Daley put up a bit of a fight, but still wasn't close). Basically, Shields had one really tough fight in Okami, but given how the other fights matched up it would have been a fluke for him to lose any of the others, except maybe Lawler(its conceivable if he doesn't get the guillotine Lawler keeps stopping the takedowns and decisions/kos him a decent %, but we'll never know). My point is that it doesn't matter if a fighter is consistently fighting high level competition, he only has a good chance of losing any individual fight if he matches up badly with his opponent and/or he undertrains/fights injured/has psych problems/etc. Incidentally, Mayhem might not be a bad bet(not that I'd take it), and I have no great love for Shields, but stylistically it's a bad matchup for Mayhem for the same reason Jacare was a bad matchup. Shields has good wrestling, Mayhem does not. Mayhem has a good ground game, but Shields' ground game is as good or better and he'll likely have top position. Shields is a big WW and Mayhem is not a large MW so while size might be a factor, the advantage probably isn't that big. Mayhem might have better striking, but his striking is sufficiently mediocre that he has very little chance of ko'ing Shields. I would say his best chance is the fact that the fight is 5 rounds and Shields has mediocre conditioning, so maybe he gets worn out enough by round 3 that Mayhem decisions/tkos/subs him. if a fighter consistently fights top level fighters, we can all agree that said fighter will eventually lose. if said fighter goes through a series of opponents without suffering a loss by fighting a flawless fight every time out, each consecutive fight will see an increase in the probability that said fighter does make a mistake and suffers a loss. an example could be predicting if anderson silva loses at least once in his next 5 fights. without knowing silva's prior record and only having knowledge that he is the top fighter in the world in his weight class, one might conceivably argue there is a high likelihood that silva wins all of his next 5 bouts, since he is the best there is. at the same time, a person with knowledge that silva has won his past 10 ufc fights in a row might find it slightly harder to believe that silva will win his next 5 as well, bringing his ufc win streak to 15. that example is based on the assertion that a top level fighter is much more likely to go on a 5 fight win streak than a 15 fight win streak when he is consistently fighting fellow tough fighters. if we can agree on that, then we can agree that probability at least has some bearing. obviously there are a host of other factors that go in to the pre-fight analysis of any one bout. most important is the stylistic match up, and things like weight issues or pre-existing injuries weigh heavily down the list. a guess at whether a loss is more or less probable based on prior winning or losing streaks is further down the list, but that doesn't mean the logic behind it is flawed. Heelhooked: my last comment ^^^^ was to "strike or submit."as for your post, agreed. the points that you mentioned -- a fight "only has a good chance of losing any individual fight if he matches up badly with his opponent and/or he undertrains/fights injured/has psych problems" -- are all obviously used in any fight analysis or prediction. at the same time, i still stand behind the probability logic explained above. clearly an injury or a bad stylistic match-up is a much better reason to make a pick on a certain fighter (or team, or athlete, depending on the sport) but that doesn't make the probability argument illogical. a better example would be baseball. let's say, for argument's sake, the yankees averaged losing 3 out of every 10 games during the regular season over the past few years. if you had knowledge of that statistic and were picking a game knowing that the yankees were on a 7 game win streak, you might be slightly more reluctant to pick them. obviously the weather, the quality of the team they were facing, injuries to their own team, and a limitless amount of factors would all come into play as well, but that doesn't make the probability statistic completely without merit. "that example is based on the assertion that a top level fighter is much more likely to go on a 5 fight win streak than a 15 fight win streak when he is consistently fighting fellow tough fighters. if we can agree on that, then we can agree that probability at least has some bearing."We agree. HOWEVER, here is the key point Heelhooked and I are making about statistics: everything being equal, once Silva has won 10 fights in a row, the odds of him winning his next 5 fights are just as good as the odds of him going on a 5 fight win streak if he had just lost. Think of it this way: the odds of being in two plane crashes in your life are astronomically low. But once you've been in one, your odds of being in another are just as good as anyone's odds of being in their first plane crash. No magical force of the universe intervenes and says, "This plane is less likely to crash than any other because one of the guys on it has already been in one plane crash." Appropriately enough, this very common misconception is known as the Gambler's fallacy: [Link] More explanation here [Link] in the first listing of the "Non-examples." Some people probably read it and were misinformed because they didn't know any better. Furthermore, there's money involved here, and believe it or not some people actually bet substantial amounts on mma.Holy shit buddy! You took one hell of a wrong turn on the internet. And you may need special help if you're taking FL posts as a gambling basis for anything but shots of booze. But I loved the points you made! alright i concede. probability might not be the best indicator. gambler's fallacy got me.
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