Welcome! Let me start with just a little about me. I’m Connor, and I’m a normal dude. And I really like data. In fact my friends and family give me shit because my username for pretty much everything is some variation of dataguy. At this point I embrace it.
I’ve always been a bit of a nerd. I studied math in college and got a master’s in data science about six years ago. These days I live in Connecticut and work out of NYC as a data scientist in big tech.
And pretty much every night and weekend, I’m hacking on some sports betting data project. Some might say to an unhealthy degree. I just enjoy the combination of data, sports, and frankly trying to make some money. Sue me.
I started out as a normal recreational bettor about ten years ago. Gave my PPH bookie a good chunk of my paychecks coming out of college.
Over time that changed.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still always down for a long-term-losing four-leg parlay with my buddies. But the vast majority of what I do now falls into what folks these days would probably call +EV (positive expected value) betting. At this point I don’t place many bets unless I feel like I have a quantitative reason to.
There are a lot of tools out there. I’ve tried many of them. Some are solid. And some are…less solid. And over the years I’ve definitely had moments where I thought I was making smart bets, to later realize I was just a fish swimming in the ocean.
That’s a big part of why this blog exists.
I’m a programmer, and I tend to go pretty deep once I get interested in something. Over time I started digging into datasets and markets that either:
other people haven’t explored publicly, or
people have explored but haven’t been shared about publicly (for understanding reasons)
I still actively bet, so I’ll have to be mindful about what edges I do or don’t post about here. However, what you can expect is stuff that helps you stay in tune with how modern betting and prediction markets actually work, think more clearly about what you’re doing when you place bets, and hopefully make better decisions (and maybe some money) along the way.
I don’t really have some grand plan for this blog right now — I’m not monetizing anything at the start. Mostly this is a place where I can:
keep track of projects and analyses I’m already doing
share ideas with people who like thinking about this stuff the same way I do
connect with other quantitative bettors working on interesting things
That’s it (for now).
If you’re working on something similar, have a dataset you want to brainstorm around, have a topic suggestion for a future one of my posts, or just want to collaborate on something — feel free to reach out. Always happy to talk shop.
Until my first “real” post
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