Intertops Offering ‘Juice Free’ Super Bowl Coin Toss Bet

Added on Jan 20, 2011 by Jack Thurman in

Super Bowl

Yesterday we talked about some of the math you really should know if you’re going to seriously bet on sports, and more specifically how this math relates to the ubiquitous Super Bowl proposition wager on the coin toss.

To recap, here’s what we said about the math behind the coin flip:

I use coin flip analogies extensively when explaining concepts like theoretical breakeven percentages and line value to neophytes since everyone knows in the longterm a coin flip is a 50/50 proposition. That makes the ‘true odds’ of heads or tails to be +100. The sportsbooks love props like this, since they’re getting the best of it coming and going.

As the Super Bowl approaches you’ll see all sorts of articles with facts like these:

–In 44 Super Bowls, heads has come up 23 times and tails 21 times
–The NFC has won the toss 30 times, the AFC 14 times
–The NFC has now won 12 straight Super Bowl coin tosses.
–The team that wins the coin toss has won 21 and lost 23 times in the Super Bowl

Now, that business about the NFC winning 12 straight coin tosses is interesting–from a purely statistical standpoint that’s pretty amazing since the odds of that happening are right around 1 in 8,192. Remember this, as you *may* see some lines on the coin toss reflecting this NFC ‘streak’ but the 12 in a row run doesn’t negate the fundamental reality that no matter how many heads you *have* tossed in a row the probability of your next toss being ‘heads’ remains 1 in 2.

You’re still not going to find an overlay situation on the Super Bowl coin toss, but one of our recommended sportsbooks is offering a ‘juice free’ coin toss wager. Intertops is offering +100 on both sides of the Super Bowl coin toss. Obviously, that equates to a 50% theoretical breakeven point which is actually the ‘true odds’ of a single coin flip coming up heads or tails.

This type of ‘no juice’ coin toss proposition has become fairly popular in recent years, so keep your eyes open for other sportsbooks offering a similar wager. You’re never going to get great value on it, but if you’re going to bet on Super Bowl coin toss outcomes you might as well get ‘true odds’ on the proposition.