Pete Rose Admits to Betting on Baseball

[moonlapse]

Originally Posted by Spielman

I think Rose generally bet the amount that he would need to put down in order to win two grand if he was faced with short odds. In those cases, he lost more money than $2000, and only won $2000 when he was right. Thus, it looks like he only ever lost on the bigger money bets.

If he was getting short odds, I don't think his success rate could possibly be that low on odds-on favourites.

But I still can't believe that 5 wins in 69 attempts is accurate either. The article says "In that 1987 period for which Dowd found betting slips". Maybe Pete was hiding most of his winning slips for tax reasons, but keeping a few winners around to make it look good? Even random picks would do better than that. Something's missing there for sure.

If Pete did bet on the Reds every night, from a long-term gambling perspective he was making a mistake. According to baseball-reference.com, his career managerial win % was .525. Given the juice on bets, say 11-10 I guess, it was basically a break-even proposition at best.

And Pete, c'mon admit it - you didn't bet on the Reds because you loved your team. You bet because you loved gambling.

[Spielman]

Originally Posted by moonlapse

If he was getting short odds, I don't think his success rate could possibly be that low on odds-on favourites.

Hoooookay. Let me try to explain that again.

"I think Rose generally bet the amount that he would need to put down in order to win two grand if he was faced with short odds."

In other words, in an extremely simplistic form:
If the odds are even, Rose bets $2000 and gets about $2000 back if he wins.
If Rose backs a 2:1 favorite, he bets $4000, and gets about $2000 back if he wins.
If he backs a 3:1 favorite, he bets $6000, and gets back about $2000 if he wins.

Thus, the guy who was measuring Rose's success rate wasn't measuring what he thought he was measuring... Rose's success rate on larger bets. He was actually just measuring the number of times Rose backed a favorite and lost.

[The Playmaker]

For what it's worth, I heard John Dowd doing a radio interview Friday afternoon on Sirius Canada Channel 186 and to paraphrase Dowd, he said that had he had more time, he was aboslutely sure he would have turned up evidence that Pete bet against the Reds. Dowd basically said that since they already had all of the evidence they needed that Pete had bet on baseball period, and was offside of the rules, they did not need to spend additonal money to conclude if he had ever bet against the Reds.

[Spielman]

Originally Posted by The Playmaker

For what it's worth, I heard John Dowd doing a radio interview Friday afternoon on Sirius Canada Channel 186 and to paraphrase Dowd, he said that had he had more time, he was aboslutely sure he would have turned up evidence that Pete bet against the Reds. Dowd basically said that since they already had all of the evidence they needed that Pete had bet on baseball period, and was offside of the rules, they did not need to spend additonal money to conclude if he had ever bet against the Reds.

Maybe I'm wrong, then. Dowd certainly knows more about it than I do.

I wish they had actually shown it, though. I don't think very many of the people who support him still would if there were good evidence he'd bet against his own team.