The Skill of Not Betting: Does Your Pass Rate Matter More Than Your Win Rate?

[CoachTony_Bets]

I coach football, and every week I look at stat sheets: plays run, yards per play, third down conversions. Nobody has ever handed me a sheet of the plays we didn't call. That's most of what a head coach does on a Saturday. The throw you don't force into coverage. The handoff you take on second and eight because nothing is wrong with the handoff.
Then I looked at my betting log and realized it's the same thing. I record every bet I place. Win rate, ROI, closing line. I have never once written down a game I looked at, wanted, and passed on.
So here's the question. What's your pass rate? Games you assess, divided into bets you actually place. And have you ever found out what your passes would have done?
I'm asking because I think the win rate might be the less interesting number.

 

[oli_sussex]

Ninety-four per cent. Every game assessed is logged with a reason. The passes are the work.

 

[ParlayPrincess_88]

Okay so I went back through last Sunday and I think my pass rate is like... zero?? I looked at 11 games and bet on 11 games lol. If I've looked at something long enough to have an opinion it feels weird NOT to bet it.
Is that bad?? I don't even know what a pass would look like. I don't think I've ever filled in a slip and closed the app

 

[Klaus]

For the Bundesliga: 306 fixtures a season. My model selects approximately 38. The pass rate is 87.6%.
I would caution against reading that as a measure of skill. It is a property of the threshold. A model that demands a 6% edge will pass on 97% of fixtures and feel very comfortable, and will also miss most of the genuine value.
The informative number is not how often you pass. It is what the passes would have done.
I keep a record for this reason. Selections with an edge between 1.5% and 2.0% are logged but not placed. Last season: 52 of them, hypothetical return +0.4%. That is approximately zero, which suggests the threshold sits close to where the edge disappears.

 

[Aionora]

Knowing when to pass is just as important as knowing when to bet.

A winning bet isn't always a good decision, and a losing one isn't necessarily a bad one. What matters is the reasoning behind it.

I think tracking rejected opportunities could reveal just as much as tracking results.

Do you guys review the bets you passed on, or only the ones you placed?

 

[FadeThePublic]

Pass rate. Great, a number I'm going to hate.
Here's what I can't stop thinking about from the ROI thread. By my own criteria, 261 of those 340 bets should have been passes. I didn't pass a single one of them. (Two businesses, one of them has no discipline.)
The other thing nobody wants to hear: a pass that wins is worse than a bet that loses. A loss, I can file. A pass that cashed just sits there. I had a line I'd have fought for, talked myself out of it, and it covered by six. I've thought about that more than any loss this year.

 

[TaffyTipster]

Passing is easy at two in the afternoon.
Kitchen table. Laptop. Cup of tea.
Look at a Premier League match, see nothing, close it. No bother.
Nine at night in the pub, third pint, rugby on the telly?
I don't pass butt.
Don't think I know what a pass looks like at nine at night.

 

[SharpEddie47]

I will define terms, since this thread will otherwise use the phrase loosely. Pass rate is opportunities assessed, minus bets placed, divided by opportunities assessed. I review approximately 40 fixtures per week and place about 9 bets. My pass rate is 77.5%.
Now the problem. Win rate is a statistic about the bets I chose. Pass rate is a statistic about the choices I rejected. The first can be measured against outcomes. The second cannot, because I have never recorded what the rejected bets did. I have fifteen years of data on every bet I made and none on the ones I did not. That is survivorship bias in my own records, and I am embarrassed not to have seen it.
I am starting a shadow log. Every pass is recorded at the price available at the moment of decision and graded at close, as if placed. In eight weeks I will report what my passes would have returned. If they would have lost money, the passing was skill. If they would have made money, my threshold is costing me.
Trust the process, not your gut.

 

[ThePuntingProf]

One must consider that the pass rate is a property of the evening as much as of the method, and I say this with the ledger open in front of me, in the last year that Margaret and I kept it together I placed punts on fifty-one of the three hundred and eighty Premier League fixtures, which is a pass rate of eighty-six point six per cent, and in the year after she died I placed ninety-four, a pass rate of seventy-five point three, I had not noticed the difference at the time and I do not believe I would have noticed now had this thread not suggested the arithmetic, the ledger has a column for the rationale written before the match, and of those ninety-four punts forty-three have nothing in it whatever, I went through the forty-three one by one, most were placed after nine o'clock in the evening and a good many on matches I could not have named the managers of, they returned minus nine point four per cent, which on the stakes involved was a little under one hundred and seventy pounds, which is not a ruinous sum, but I am less concerned with the sum than with what the forty-three were for, they were not analysis, they were company, and what struck me most was that the fifty-one in the earlier year had each been defended aloud across the study at some point in the afternoon, Margaret would say why that one, and I would be obliged to have an answer, and a punt for which one has no answer to give does not survive being said, which is perhaps the whole of the matter, the pass was never something I did alone.

 

[DublinDegen]

lads ive got one for this and its going to sound stupid...
last week i passed on a bet on purpose... wrote the reason... couldnt fill in the y... closed the app...
and it didnt feel like winning... thats what i wasnt ready for... i thought a pass would feel like a small victory... it felt like nothing... like leaving the house without your phone and not knowing why your pocket is wrong...
and nothing is what i cant stand... the bet is what stops the nothing...
eleven passes in three weeks... thats the limit working i suppose... eleven... it doesnt feel like anything and thats the problem...

 

[oli_sussex]

A correct pass feels like nothing. That is what no price paid feels like.

 

[ParlayPrincess_88]

Wait so nobody ever gets any credit for a pass?? Like I post my slips and everyone goes banger. There's no slip for the game you didn't bet lol. There's nothing to screenshot
Is that why I never pass? Because nobody would see it?

 

[FadeThePublic]

Nobody screenshots a pass. (I would 100% screenshot a pass. "Looked at it. Wanted it. Didn't." Peak content.)

 

[CoachTony_Bets]

What I tell my quarterbacks is that the best play is usually the boring one. Hand it off. Take the three yards. Live to see third down. Nobody puts a three-yard gain on a highlight reel, and a quarterback who can't live without highlights is the one who throws the interception that loses the game.
It's the same wiring. A bettor who needs the bet in order to feel something is the quarterback forcing the throw. You can teach a kid a read. It's a lot harder to teach him to be okay with nothing happening.

 

[TaffyTipster]

In rugby you can't pass it forward at all mun.
Sideways or back.
Only ever been honest about it.

 

[ParlayPrincess_88]

WAIT you can't throw it forward?? how do you even move the ball

 

[CoachTony_Bets]

You carry it, you kick it, or you pass it laterally or backward. That's the whole game, Princess. Taffy can explain the rest and it'll take him forty minutes.

 

[TaffyTipster]

Forty-five.
There's a lot of rules butt.

 

[ParlayPrincess_88]

Back!! Did my week. I looked at 41 games and filled in 14 slips, and I typed a reason in the box first like Oli said. The box was empty on 6 of them. I didn't submit those 6.
One of them hit lol. A parlay. The last leg, of course. I'm saying I'm fine but I'm not fine
It was my first time ever closing a slip. It felt so weird.

 

[FadeThePublic]

Ran the shadow log for two weeks. Eleven of my passes would have won. (ELEVEN. I could cry.) I'm not looking at how many lost.