What Time Do You Place Your Bets - And Is That the Worst Hour for Your Decision-Making?

[SharpEddie47]

Added a timestamp column to the spreadsheet three seasons ago. Not something I'd thought to track before. Assumed the hour was irrelevant to the analytical quality of the decision.

The data disagreed.

My bets placed between 6am and 2pm: CLV positive at the expected rate. P&L consistent with the edge the model produces.

My bets placed between 9pm and midnight: CLV slightly positive but noticeably lower. P&L positive but below the daytime rate.

My bets placed after midnight: I have eleven of these across three seasons. I didn't know that number until I added the timestamp column. The CLV on those eleven: negative. Every single one.

The decisions felt defensible at the time. I had reasoning for each. The reasoning was apparently worse than it felt.

The pattern I didn't notice from the inside: I was doing my primary analysis in the mornings, identifying qualifying selections, and then sometimes revisiting the markets in the evenings. The evening revisits occasionally produced additional bets that weren't in the morning's output. Those bets were performing below the morning selections.

The late-night eleven were the worst version of this. Analysis done during a period when analysis is genuinely worse, feeling like the same quality as morning analysis.

The question: does anyone else have timestamp data. And for those who don't, what hour do you think your bets concentrate in and do you think that's the right hour.

 

[Klaus]

Have tracked timestamp data since building the current model.

The pattern is structured by design rather than discovered by analysis.

Evening window: 20:30 to 22:00 German time. Children are in bed. The house is quiet. This is the only period I place bets.

This wasn't a decision based on circadian research. It was a practical constraint that turned out to have beneficial side effects.

No bets placed under time pressure during the working day. No bets placed after 22:00 when fatigue is accumulating. No bets placed before the evening review of the day's model outputs.

The structured window: functions as a cooling mechanism between analysis and execution. The bet that seemed urgent at 14:00 has four hours to be reconsidered before the window opens.

The bets that survive the four-hour gap tend to be the better ones.

The bets that felt urgent at 14:00 and still feel urgent at 20:30: those I've noticed tend to be the ones with genuine model support.

The bets that felt urgent at 14:00 and no longer feel urgent at 20:30: I've stopped asking why they passed.

 

[FadeThePublic]

The market timing angle is worth separating from the personal decision-quality angle because they're different problems.

Opening lines: typically released the morning before the game for American sports. These lines are set by the book's model before sharp action has shaped them. Early movers have the most opportunity to find mispriced numbers.

Line settlement: by game time, sharp action has driven prices toward efficiency. The retail bettor placing bets an hour before kickoff is getting a more efficient price than the bettor who moved at line release.

The optimal time to bet from a pure market-efficiency standpoint: early, when the line is freshest. Which coincidentally is morning, at least for daytime games.

The worst time from a market perspective: immediately before the event, when the line has absorbed all available sharpening.

The problem: most casual bettors place bets in the evening because that's when they have time to think about it, and often right before or during the game because that's when the game feels real.

Those are the hours when the market is most efficient and when personal decision-making is most fatigued.

The double disadvantage of the 9pm bet: worse prices and worse decisions simultaneously.

 

[TaffyTipster]

Saturday afternoon is my peak betting hour.

Which is also, frequently, my second or third pint hour.

The correlation between betting and drinking isn't planned.

It just happens that Wales are usually on in the afternoon and the afternoon is when people are in the pub and the pub is when people have a drink or three.

The bets I place at 3pm Saturday in the pub while the match is on.

The bets I place at 11pm Saturday when I'm home and there's still a late match available.

Those are different activities dressed as the same activity.

The 3pm bets: I care about the sport. There's a specific reason for the bet beyond needing something to happen.

The 11pm bets: the Saturday has wound down. The results are in. But the markets are still open and something about that feels like an invitation.

Bronwyn goes to bed at half ten usually.

The correlation between Bronwyn going to bed and the quality of my late betting is something I've noticed without tracking.

 

[ParlayPrincess_88]

Sunday afternoons for me. NFL window, Chiefs game, the whole day has a shape around it.

Those bets are the ones I feel best about. I've been thinking about the games since Thursday, I know the matchups, I have actual reasons for the parlay legs.

The bets I'm least proud of are the ones placed Sunday night after the early games have finished and the late game doesn't involve the Chiefs.

Something about having watched seven hours of football makes me feel like I understand things I don't understand.

The expert feeling that comes from watching a lot of something isn't the same as actually having an edge on it.

But at 10pm Sunday it feels the same from the inside.

 

[DublinDegen]

the late-night hours were the most destructive ones for me...

not because the analysis was worse, there was no analysis...

but because the specific quality of the late night changed what was available in terms of reasons not to bet...

during the day there are interruptions... other things to do... the phone rings... a colleague messages... you have somewhere to be...

at 1am in a dublin flat: none of those things exist...

just the open market and the specific silence that needed filling...

the 1am bet wasn't placed because something looked good...

it was placed because nothing else was happening and the market was still there and i was still awake and those three things together were apparently sufficient...

the hour didn't change the quality of the decision...

it changed the availability of reasons to not make it...

which is a different problem from what eddie's describing but it produces the same entry in the record...

just a bet placed after midnight...