Nearly half the Major League Soccer season is over, and the league is taking shape as the summer heat prepares to descend on North America. While each team will play 34 regular season MLS games, the 12 best from each conference will battle it out for the MLS Cup once the postseason begins in October.

The Pacesetters

Thus far in 2017, Toronto FC has set the pace for all teams in the regular season. The Reds from the Great White North have secured 29 points from 42 possible, the most of any team. Toronto is unbeaten in its  ... 

Predictions for MLB games June 2 – June 4

Since starting pitching is many times the key in a win or loss, the predictions are based mainly on this matchup. If this matchup is neraly even, then I use overall team offense to influence the final decision.

St. Louis Cardianals vs. Chicago Cubs

First game features Lance Lynn for the Cardinals against Jonn Lackey for the Cubs. Lynn is 4-3 with a 2.93 ERA. He’s been up and down over the past four starts, going 0-2 in that stretch. Lackeyis 4-5 with a 5.18 ERA and has allowed 11 runs  ... 

While fading the public on MLB money line wagers has proven to be a profitable strategy, the same cannot be said for fading the public on MLB totals. The main reason for this is books usually have lower betting limits on totals, so while the ticket count might be similar to the money line wagers, the amount of money isn’t even close. Public money won’t have the same impact on the line moves with totals and most books allow their sharp bettors to shape the number.

They key to being profitable investing in totals is getting your investment in  ... 

Champions League Preview: Real Madrid go for its 12th European Cup

The UEFA Champions League began nearly a year ago with 78 teams competing to reach the final on June 3rd. That final will see Europe’s most storied club team, Real Madrid, competing for its record 12th European Cup. In Real Madrid’s way is Italian champions Juventus, who last won the Champions League in 1995-96. The final will pit, arguably, the two best sides in the world, and two teams that tasted domestic success in 2016-17. Now there is only the European Cup, the proverbial cherry on top of the  ... 

In the financial world, Contrarian Investing is an investment strategy characterized by buying and selling in contrast to the prevailing sentiment at the time. This is also a basic investment strategy for sports betting. Fading the public, or betting against the majority, is a proven strategy to be profitable long term in every sport.

Knowing the public side of every game is important but that by itself will not tell the entire story. Monitoring line movement throughout the day and recognizing the books reaction to the market can offer great opportunities for profit.

We can look at  ... 

For the third straight year, Cleveland and Golden State will meet in the Finals after the Warriors cruised through the playoffs undefeated and the Cavs lost just once. After splitting the previous Finals matchups, we should see two teams looking to make a statement. Each team won on their home court to split the regular season series but both games were before the All Star break.

Obviously, LeBron James is the focal point for Cleveland. For the Cavs to have a shot at the upset, he will need to dominate on both ends. As good as Kyrie  ... 

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Fantastic play Nabil(101152***)! Amazing! It was close in the stage 2 between Nabil(101152***) and Vincent(olanrewajuv), but in the end current leader outscored Vincent(olanrewajuv) by $111 and won second stage and already has guaranteed prize in the contest. Well played guys! Keep it going!

Very good contest pace in last 3 rounds found finally also Gergely(geri.rulett) who extended his winning streak to 7 wins and currently has longest live winning streak. He needs one more win to beat  ... 

One of the many great tools on ZCode is the Odds Converter. Using this tool is a fantastic way to find value in a money line and be able to exploit lines that shade to a public-heavy side.

For example, the San Francisco Giants are playing at the Chicago Cubs. Most books have the Cubs a -191 favorite while the Giants are +171 underdogs. The first step we want to do is to convert those odds to break-even percentages:

Using the odds converter, you can see:

 ... 

The Boston Celtics finally closed out Washington in 7 games to set up this Conference Finals match-up. Meanwhile, the Cavaliers haven’t played in 9 days. Cleveland won the regular season series 3-1 although Boston has home court advantage in this series, having the better overall regular season record.

For Cleveland, these playoffs have been the LeBron James show. He has averaged 34 points, 9 rebounds and 7.1 assists while shooting 55.7% from the floor and 46.8% from three. He has been dominant and the Celtics will struggle to find an answer for him defensively.

The Cavs will  ... 

It has been a long time coming for this match-up in the playoffs. Over the last four seasons, Golden State and San Antonio have the two best records in the league and won 2 out of the 3 NBA championships. But they never met in the playoffs during that span until now.

The big question is whether or not Kawhi Leonard is 100%. He most likely will play Game 1 but it is unknown how healthy he is. Obviously, with Tony Parker already out for the season, losing Kawhi for any amount of time in this series would  ... 

Bottom fishing in the financial markets is defined as investing in stocks that are cheap because of a problem with the company or the economy. A bottom-fishing investor speculates that the stock’s depressed price is temporary, will recover and make for a profitable investment.

Obviously, sports investing can incorporate the same principle. A great way to invest in MLB is to look at teams who made the playoffs the previous year and/or had high hopes for this season but have started poorly and are currently under .500. While they might not recover to compete for a playoff  ... 

A dramatic contrast in styles highlights the 2nd round matchup between Utah and Golden State. Utah has a quick turnaround after closing out the Clippers on the road in a game 7 while Golden State dominated Portland in a sweep.

Golden State has won 19 of their last 20 games – the lone loss being to Utah at the Oracle. But it’s hard to look at the regular season in this case. The Warriors won the season series 2-1 but key players were missing for one or both teams in every game.

The biggest and most obvious  ... 

Two teams with a history of bad blood will go at it in the 2nd round. Led by John Wall, the Wizards defeated Atlanta in the 1st round while Boston and Isaiah Thomas overcame major off-court adversity to cruise past Chicago. Wall and Thomas will be the focus as both dynamic guards run the show for their respective teams.

These two teams split in the regular season, each winning two games on their home court. The key to Boston’s success will be their ability to limit the Wizards fast break points. In their two regular season wins against  ... 

After meeting in the conference finals last season, these two teams get the rematch in the 2nd round this year. Toronto is coming off a tough series win over Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Bucks while the Cavs breezed past Indiana.

Cleveland won the regular season series 3-1 although not much can be taken from that. The first three games were all before Christmas and in the lone Toronto win, Cleveland’s Big Three didn’t play.

It will be interesting to see if the Raptors continue their newfound small-ball movement in this series. After the 3rd game of the Milwaukee  ... 

An all Texas matchup in what should be a very competitive second round series begins on Monday. The Spurs won the regular season series 3-1 – winning twice at Houston – but no game was decided by more than 6 points and the average margin of victory was 3 points.

James Harden and Kawhi Leonard each headlined the offense for their respective teams and it should be more of the same. The one glaringly obvious takeaway from the regular season meetings was the Spurs ability to limit Houston’s three-point shooting. This will be the key to this  ... 

The MLB season is a long grind because of the sheer number of games but that also creates opportunity for value if you have patience and understand line movements. One profitable way to find value is to follow steam moves on MLB money line plays. A steam move is defined as a sudden, drastic and uniform line movement across the entire sports betting marketplace. For the most part, a steam move originates from respected sharp money.

Basically, steam chasing is a way to be on the side with sharp money and get that number at the cheapest/most  ...