How to spot a good value Underdog?

At MMAPlay365 we love to bet and cash on underdogs. Underdogs have lots of value as underdogs – they’re usually over evens money. The key factor is all about finding the ones who win.

Why do underdogs have value?

Underdogs are very valuable in MMA for a number of reasons. When betting a winning underdog you will receive at least 100% ROI when betting the underdog at evens money or better, should the fighter win his/her fight. This creates exceptional value for money. It also allows a bettor to create a strategy where betting two underdogs in one night with the same amount of money on each one, leaves you with needing only one of the two bets to win in order to profit on the night. Plenty of underdogs win on each UFC event which means that the bookies do get their odds wrong very often. This is not always their own fault because MMA is a very volatile sport with variance and many different martial arts disciplines along with each fighter wearing 4oz gloves.

It’s impossible for bookies to get all the odds correct and this also keeps the betting lines very short when you compare them to the odds of Boxing fights for example. This is where, as experts, we can really exploit the bookies because we study, analyse and read fights and fighters to a high level so we know when an underdog shouldn’t be an underdog.

How often do underdogs win their fights in the UFC?

This is a question that a lot of people ask because each event does vary. Some events you might only see one or two underdogs win but I’ve also seen events where 5+ underdogs have won. So I decided to reach out to MMA Parlay (www.mmaparlay.com) as these guys have all the MMA and UFC statistics that you could ever ask for.

They told me from UFC Fight Night 101 (November 27, 2016) to UFC 235 (March 2, 2019) which is based on 90 UFC events that there were 344 underdog victories. So this calculates as 344/90=3.8. So on average nearly 4 underdogs per UFC event win their fights. Most events have 12 fights which means nearly a third of every event on average will be won by underdogs.

How do we pick our underdogs?

At MMAPlay365 it all starts with a background knowledge of each fighter that fights in the UFC. When we see odds for a fight card of an upcoming event we can get initial thoughts to whether or not a fighter warrants being a favourite or an underdog in that particular fight. This is what we call an ‘initial lean’.

After getting an initial lean we then do a bit of theoretical research based on styles. So if the fight is a striker fighting a wrestler for example, we will then go and take a quick look at the stats; How many takedowns does the wrestler score on average per fight? How many strikers has the wrestler taken down and won against? How many wrestlers has the striker fought previously? What is the takedown defence percentage rate of the striker?

We could go on with what exactly we look for in the stats but the stats never paint the full picture of a fight and if you bet your money on fighters solely based on stats, you will lose more often than you’ll win. So the next phase of this process is to get a list of relevant previous fights from each fighter and start what we call ‘tape study’. Tape study is where we re-watch these previous fights and note different elements of each fighters’ style in their fights. We take into consideration the style vs. style match-up, the strengths each fighter will have against their upcoming opponent, the weaknesses they will have in this fight too along with obvious developments, declines in form and other mitigating factors. We could write an entire article on exactly what we look at for each fight, it really goes that in-depth.

It’s then time to do a little outside research such as finding out where they have been training, who they’ve been training with and even watching interviews to try and grab any small nuggets of information. Once this has been completed we can then make a solid judgement of whether that favourite should be a favourite and whether that underdog should be an underdog.

If a fighter is evens money (UK: 1/1 – US: +100) this creates an implied probability that the fighter wins this fight 50% of the time. So instantly if we think that this fighter wins the fight more than 5 times out of 10 we are starting to see some value in the fighter and their odds. A perfect edge to get is a 10% edge. So if you think that this underdog actually wins 60% of the time (6 out of 10 times) then from your own calculations you will believe that your fighter should be a slight favourite to win (UK: 4/6 – US: -150) as this is the exact betting line that would reflect a fighter with a 60% probability of winning. So if you believe that this fighter wins this fight 6 times out of 10 and they are sitting at a evens money odds you have gained a 10% edge in your read. That creates exceptional value.

You might not win in every single one of these underdogs that have given you a 10%+ edge over the bookie but you will win more money than you will lose over a long period of time, which the long term game is where you can really take serious money from the bookies.