- Wager definition, something risked or staked on an uncertain event; bet: to place a wager on a soccer match.
- Address: 570 Montroyal Rd. Rural Hall, NC 27045. Phone: 336.969.6909. Toll Free USA: 800.562.7024. Fax: 336.969.6375.
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) offers a pragmatic reason for believing in God: even under the assumption that God’s existence is unlikely, the potential benefits of believing are so vast as to make betting on theism rational. The super-dominance form of the argument conveys the basic Pascalian idea, the expectations argument refines it, and the dominating expectations argument gives a more sophisticated version still.
Sign up and bet £10 and if your first bet loses you will get a £5 free bet! New customers only. A qualifying bet is the first single or multiple cash bet of £10 or more placed at evens (2.0) or greater. Should this bet go on to lose you will be awarded with a £5 free bet within 24 hours of settlement. Tom Campbell, former U.S. Representative, nominee for the U.S. Senate in 2000 and candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1992 and 2010 Carl DeMaio, former San Diego City Council member, candidate for Mayor of San Diego in 2012 and candidate for California's 52nd congressional district in 2014 64.
Critics in turn have raised a number of now-classic challenges. (i) According to intellectualism, deliberately choosing which beliefs to hold is practically impossible. Intellectualism, however, appears to be not only questionable but irrelevant. (ii) According to the many-gods objection, Pascal’s wager begs the question and hence is irrational. It assumes that if God exists then God must take a rather specific form, which few open-minded agnostics would accept. Pascalians reply by invoking the notion of a genuine option (which is not defined), by devising run-off decision theory (which is not justified), by claiming that Pascal was understandably unaware of other cultures (which is not true), and by appealing to generic theism (which does not solve the problem).
(iii) According to evidentialism, Pascalian reasoning is epistemically irresponsible and hence immoral. One development of this argument, suggesting that God is an evidentialist, amounts to a variant of the many-gods objection. Another development, suggesting that we should be evidentialists, hinges on the outcome of larger moral theory. (iv) According to various paradoxes, reference to infinite values is decision-theoretic non-sense.
Table of Contents
- A Reason for Believing in God
- The Many-Gods Objection: Do Rival Religious Options Undermine Each Other?
- The Paradox Objection: Is Decision Theory Coherent?
1. A Reason for Believing in God
There are two kinds of argument for theism. Traditional, epistemic arguments hold that God exists; examples include arguments from cosmology, design, ontology, and experience. Modern, pragmatic arguments hold that, regardless of whether God exists, believing in God is good for us, or is the right thing to do; examples include William James’s will to believe and Blaise Pascal’s wager.
Pascal — French philosopher, scientist, mathematician and probability theorist (1623-1662) — argues that if we do not know whether God exists then we should play it safe rather than risk being sorry. The argument comes in three versions (Hacking 1972), all of them employing decision theory.
For those who are unfamiliar with decision theory, the idea can be illustrated by considering a lottery. Suppose there are 100 tickets at $1 each and a jackpot of $1000. Is it rational to play? If you total the earnings and the expenses for all the tickets ($1000 – $100), then divide by the number of tickets, you find that on average each ticket nets $9. In comparison, not playing involves zero expense and zero payoff. Since $9 is preferable to $0, it is rational to play. Alternately, suppose there are 1000 tickets costing $2 each, a grand prize of $1000, and a consolation prize of $500. Then the total earnings and expenses ($1500 – $2000), divided by the number of tickets, yields a net loss of fifty cents for the average ticket. In this case, unless you have some reason to believe that a given ticket is not average, playing the game is irrational.
To put the matter more generally: a given action (say, buying a ticket) is associated with a set of possible outcomes (say, winning the grand prize, winning the consolation prize, or losing); each outcome has a certain value or “utility” (the utility of winning might be the value of the prize minus the cost of the ticket); the “expectation” for each outcome is equal to its utility multiplied by the probability of its happening; the expectation for a given action is the sum of the expectations for each possible associated outcome. The course of action having the maximum expectation is the rational one to follow.
a. The Super-Dominance Argument
Pascal begins with a two-by-two matrix: either God exists or does not, and either you believe or do not.
–Table I– | God exists | God does not exist |
You believe in God | (a) infinite reward | (c) 250 utiles |
You do not believe in God | (b) infinite punishment | (d) 200 utiles |
If God exists then theists will enjoy eternal bliss (cell a), while atheists will suffer eternal damnation (cell b). If God does not exist then theists will enjoy finite happiness before they die (say 250 units worth), and atheists will enjoy finite happiness too, though not so much because they will experience angst rather than the comforts of religion. Regardless of whether God exists, then, theists have it better than atheists; hence belief in God is the most rational belief to have.
b. The Expectations Argument
What if the atheist is a happy hedonist, or if the theist is a miserable puritan? In that case the value of cell (d) is greater than that of (c), and the dominance argument no longer works. However, if there is a 50-50 chance that God exists then we can calculate the expectations as follows:
–Table II– | God exists | God does not exist |
You believe in God | +infinity | something finite |
You do not believe in God | -infinity | something finite |
Using the table, the expectation for believing in God = (positive infinity x ½) + (a finite value x ½) = positive infinity; and the expectation for not believing = (negative infinity x ½) + (a finite value x ½) = negative infinity. Hence it is rational to believe in God.
c. The Dominating Expectations Argument
It’s unlikely that the probability of God’s existing is exactly one-half, but this does not matter. Due to the infinite value in cell (a), if God’s existence has any finite probability then the expectation for believing in God will be infinite. Furthermore, this infinity will swamp the values in cells (b), (c), and (d), so long as (c) is not infinitely negative and neither (b) nor (d) is infinitely positive.
2. The Intellectualist Objection: Is Belief a Matter of Choice?
According to doxastic voluntarism, believing and disbelieving are choices that are up to us to make. Intellectualists deny this; they say it is impossible to adopt a belief simply because we decide to. If I offered to pay you $1000 for believing the sky is green, for instance, could you sincerely adopt this belief simply by wishing to? Evidently not. Therefore, some say, Pascal’s wager does not give legitimate grounds for believing in God.
But although we cannot adopt a belief simply by deciding to, the same is true for other actions. For instance, we cannot go to school simply by deciding to; rather, we have to wake up by a certain time (which may mean first developing a certain kind of habit), we must get dressed, we must put one foot in front of another, and so forth. Then if we are lucky we will end up at our destination, though this is far from guaranteed. So it goes for any other endeavor in life: one chooses to become a doctor, or to marry by age 30, or to live in the tropics — the attainment of such goals can be facilitated, though not purely willed, by appropriate micro-steps that are more nearly under voluntary control. Indeed, even twitching your little finger is not entirely a matter of volition, as its success depends on a functioning neural system running from your brain, through your spine, and down your arm. Your minutest action is a joint product of internal volition and external contingencies. The same applies to theistic belief: although you cannot simply decide to be a theist, you can choose to read one-sided literature, you can choose to join a highly religious community, you can try to induce mystical experiences by ingesting psychedelic drugs like LSD, and you can choose to chant and pray. No mere exercise of will can guarantee that you will end up believing in God, but neither can any exercise of will guarantee that you succeed in doing anything else you decide to do. If there is a difference between our ability to voluntarily believe something and our ability to voluntarily wiggle our toe, it is a difference in degree of likely success, and not a difference in logical kind.
Yet a difference in degree may be significant, and it is worth noting that theists and atheists may disagree on the power of prayer to change one’s beliefs. Theists generally think that prayer tends to bring one into contact with God, in which case one is likely to notice, recognize, and believe in God’s existence. Atheists, on the other hand, have no particular reason to think that mere praying should notably effect conversion. An agnostic would do well then to try; for it would be precisely in the case where success matters that trying is likely to be most efficacious.
Indeed, it might not matter whether we can choose to have the beliefs we have. If Tables I or II be right then the fact would remain that it is pragmatically better to believe in God than not, insofar as theists, taken across all possible worlds, are on average better off than atheists. It does not matter whether theism results from personal will-power, God’s grace, or cosmic luck — regardless, being better off is being better off. Thus, Pascal’s wager need not succeed as a tool of persuasion for it to serve as a tool of assessment (Mougin & Sober 1994).
3. The Many-Gods Objection: Do Rival Religious Options Undermine Each Other?
Pascal’s compatriot Denis Diderot replied to the wager that an ayatollah or “imam could just as well reason the same way.” His point is that decision theory cannot decide among the various religions practiced in the world; it gives no warrant for believing in Pascal’s Catholicism, or even in a generic Judeo-Christianity. The reason is that Tables I and II beg the question in favor of a certain kind of theism; a more complete matrix must consider at least the following possibilities.
–Table III– | Yahweh exists | Allah exists |
You worship Yahweh | infinite reward | infinite punishment |
You worship Allah | infinite punishment | infinite reward |
In reply, Pascalians offer a number of defenses.
a. Genuine Options
Some Pascalians insist that only certain theological possibilities count as “genuine options” (James 1897, Jordan 1994b), although this notion is never clearly defined. Perhaps a proposition P is a genuine option for some subject S only if S is likely to succeed in believing P, should S choose to. However, the relevance of volition is questionable, as discussed in the previous section. Alternatively, perhaps P is a genuine option for S unless P strikes S as “bizarre” or untraditional (Jordan 1994b). The difficulty here lies in distinguishing this position from emotional prejudice (Saka 2001). Finally, it may be that a genuine option is one that possesses sufficient evidential support, in which case it can then participate in a run-off decision procedure.
b. Run-off Decision Theory
Some Pascalians propose combining pragmatic and epistemic factors in a two-stage process. First, one uses epistemic considerations in selecting a limited set of belief options, then one uses prudential considerations in choosing among them (Jordan 1994b). Alternatively, one first uses prudential considerations to choose religion over non-religion, and then uses epistemic considerations to choose a particular religion (Schlesinger 1994, Jordan 1993).
In order to be at all plausible, this approach must answer two questions. First, what is the justification for deliberately excluding some possibilities, no matter how improbable, from prudential reasoning? It seems irrational to dismiss some options that are acknowledged to be possible, even be they unlikely, so long as the stakes are sufficiently high (Sorensen 1994). Second, can epistemic considerations work without begging the question? Schlesinger argues that the Principle of Sufficient Reason gives some support for believing in God, but in a Pascalian context this is questionable. If you subscribe to a suitable form of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (one that leads to a given kind of theism), you are likely to be a theist already and hence Pascal’s wager does not apply to you; on the other hand, if you do not believe in the right kind of Principle of Sufficient Reason, then you will not think that it makes theism more probable than atheistic Buddhism, or anthropomorphic theism more probable than deism. Other epistemic considerations, such as Schlesinger’s appeal to testimony, simplicity, and sublimity, meet with analogous challenges (Amico 1994, Saka 2001).
c. Relativism
Some Pascalians, while acknowledging that the Wager might be unsound for today’s multi-culturally sophisticated audience, maintain that the Wager is sound relative to Pascal and his peers in the 1600s, when Catholicism and agnosticism were the only possibilities (Rescher 1985, Franklin 1998). But the Crusades in the 1100s taught the French of Islam, the Renaissance in the 1400s taught the French of Greco-Roman paganism, the discoveries of the 1500s taught the French of new-world paganism, and several wars of religion taught the French of Protestantism. To claim that the educated French of the 1600s rightfully rejected alien beliefs without consideration appears to endorse rank prejudice.
d. Generic Theism
Some acknowledge that Pascal’s wager cannot decide among religions, yet maintain that “it at least gets us to theism” (Jordan 1994b, Armour-Garb 1999). The idea is that Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Moslems, and devil-worshippers can all legitimately use decision theory to conclude that it is best to believe in some supreme being. Against this there are two objections. First, it disregards theological possibilities such as the Professor’s God. The Professor’s God rewards those who humbly remain skeptical in the absence of evidence, and punishes those who adopt theism on the basis of self-interest (Martin 1975, 1990; Mackie 1982). Second, the claim that Pascal’s wager yields generic theism assumes that all religions are theistic. But consider the following sort of atheistic Buddhism: if you clear your mind then you will attain nirvana and otherwise you will not — that is, if you fill your mind with thoughts and desires, such as believing that God exists or living God, then you will not attain salvation (Saka 2001).
4. The Evidentialist Objection: Is Prudential Reasoning Ethical
There are two versions of this objection that need to be kept distinct. The first one suggests that Pascalian reasoners are manipulative egoists whom God might take exception to, and they won’t be rewarded after all (Nicholl 1978). Schlesinger 1994 responds by saying that any reasoning that gets us to believe in God, if God exists, cannot be bad. But this argument seems to depend on the nature of God. If God holds that results are all that matter, that the ends justify the means, then Schlesinger is right. But maybe God holds that true beliefs count as meritorious only if they are based on good evidence; maybe God rewards only evidentialists. In short, this form of the objection is just another version of the many-gods objection.
Another form of evidentialism refers not to God’s character but to our own. Regardless of how God might or might not reward our decisions, it may be categorically, epistemically or otherwise wrong — “absolutely wicked”, in the words of G.E. Moore — for us to base any belief on decision-theoretic self-interest (Clifford 1879, Nicholls 1978).
Since utilitarians would tend to favor Pascalian reasoning while Kantians and virtue ethicists would not, the issue at stake belongs to a much larger debate in moral philosophy.
5. The Paradox Objection: Is Decision Theory Coherent?
a. The Equi-utility Paradox
If you regularly brush your teeth, there is some chance you will go to heaven and enjoy infinite bliss. On the other hand, there is some chance you will enjoy infinite heavenly bliss even if you do not brush your teeth. Therefore the expectation of brushing your teeth (infinity plus a little extra due to oral health = infinity) is the same as that of not brushing your teeth (infinity minus a bit due to cavities and gingivitis = infinity), from which it follows that dental hygiene is not a particularly prudent course of action. In fact, as soon as we allow infinite utilities, decision theory tells us that any course of action is as good as any other (Duff 1986). Hence we have a reductio ad absurdum against decision theory, at least when it’s extended to infinite cases. In reply to such difficulties, Jordan 1993 proposes a run-off decision theory as described above.
b. The St. Petersburg Paradox
Imagine tossing a coin until it lands heads-up, and suppose that the payoff grows exponentially according to the number of tosses you make. If the coin lands heads-up on the first toss then the payoff is $2; if it takes two tosses then the payoff is $4; if it takes three tosses then the payoff is $8; and so forth, ad infinitum. Now the odds of the game ending on the first toss is 1/2; of ending on the second toss, 1/4; on the third, 1/8; and so forth. Since there is a one-half chance of winning $2, plus a quarter chance of winning $4, plus a one-eighth chance of winning $8, and so forth, your expectation for playing the game is (1/2 x $2) + (1/4 x $4) + (1/8 x $8) +…, that is, $1 + $1 + $1… = infinity! It follows you should be willing to pay any finite amount for the privilege of playing this game. Yet it clearly seems irrational to pay very much at all. The conclusion is that decision theory is a bad guide when infinite values are involved (for discussion of this very old paradox, see Sorensen 1994). Byl (1994) points out that instead of referring to infinite payoffs we can speak of arbitrarily high ones. No matter how improbable be the existence of God, it is still decision-theoretically rational to believe in God if the reward for doing so is sufficiently, yet only finitely, high. However, this does not address the heart of the problem, for the St. Petersburg paradox too may be cast in terms of an arbitrarily high limit. Intuitively, one would not be willing to pay a million dollars, say, for the privilege of playing a game capped at one-million-and-one coin tosses, and it is not just because of the diminishing value of money. There is something unsettling about decision theory, at least as applied to extreme cases, and so we might be skeptical about using it as a basis for religious commitment.
6. References and Further Reading
The best known defense of Pascal is Lycan & Schlesinger 1989; for responses see Amico 1994 and Saka 2001. A good sourcebook is Jordan 1994a.
- Amico, Robert (1994) “Pascal’s wager revisited”, International Studies in Philosophy 26:1-11.
- Armour-Garb, Bradley (1999) “Betting on God”, Religious Studies 35:119-38.
- Byl, John (1994) “On Pascal’s wager and infinite utilities”, Faith & Philosophy 11:467-73.
- Clifford, William (1879) “The ethics of belief”, Lectures & Essays, Macmillan.
- Duff, Anthony (1986) “Pascal’s wager and infinite utilities”, Analysis 46:107-09.
- Franklin, James (1998) “Two caricatures, I: Pascal’s wager”, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 44:115-19.
- Hacking, Ian (1972) “The logic of Pascal’s wager”, reprinted in Jordan 1994a.
- James, William (1897) “The will to believe”, reprinted in The Will to Believe and Other Essays, Dover.
- Jordan, Jeff (1991) “The many-gods objection and Pascal’s wager”, International Philosophical Quarterly 31:309-17.
- Jordan, Jeff (1993) “Pascal’s wager and the problem of infinite utilities”, Faith & Philosophy 10:49-59.
- Jordan, Jeff, editor (1994a) Gambling on God, Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
- Jordan, Jeff (1994b) “The many-gods objection”, in Jordan 1994a; a restatement of Jordan 1991.
- Lycan, William & George Schlesinger (1989) “You bet your life”, in Reason & Responsibility, 7th edition (ed. Joel Feinberg, Belmont CA: Wadsworth). Also in the 8th, 9th, 10th editions; in Philosophy and the Human Condition, 2d edition (ed. Tom Beauchamp et al., Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice Hall, 1989); and in Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology (ed. Douglas Geivet & Brendan Sweetmar, Oxford, 1993). See also Schlesinger 1994.
- Mackie, J.L. (1982) The Miracle of Theism, Oxford, pp. 200-03.
- Martin, Michael (1975) “On four critiques of Pascal’s wager”, Sophia 14:1-11.
- Martin, Michael (1990) Atheism, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, pp. 229-38.
- Mougin, Gregory & Elliott Sober (1994) “Betting on Pascal’s wager”, Nous 28:382-95.
- Nicholl, Larimore (1978) “Pascal’s Wager: The bet is off”, Philosophy & Phenomenological Research 39:274-80.
- Pascal, Blaise (composed in 1600s, first published in 1800s) Pensees, section 343; translated & reprinted by Penguin and many others.
- Rescher, Nicholas (1985) Pascal’s Wager, University of Notre Dame Press.
- Saka, Paul (2001) “Pascal’s wager and the many gods objection”, Religious Studies 37:321-41.
- Schlesinger, George (1994) “A central theistic argument”, in Jordan 1994a; a restatement of Lycan & Schlesinger 1989.
- Sorensen, Roy (1994) “Infinite decision theory”, in Jordan 1994a.
See also: Faith and Reason
Author Information
The Super Bowl, America's favorite game to bet, is here.
Billions of dollars will be on the lines when the Chiefs and underdog Buccaneers kick off Sunday in Tampa Bay. From the biggest bets to the wackiest wagers, ESPN Chalk will chronical it all right here in our Super Bowl betting notebook.
How to find winning scratch offs. Good luck!
Current Super Bowl odds (at Caesars Sportsbook by William Hill):
Chiefs -3 (-120)
Total: 56
Total: 56
Largest reported Super Bowl bets
• $3.46 million on Buccaneers +3.5 (-127). One of the largest reported bets ever on the Super Bowl was placed from the Colorado Springs airport. Jim 'Mattress Mack' McIngvale, a beloved Houston furniture store owner, flew into Colorado Springs on Wednesday, logged on the DraftKings sports betting app and bet $3.46 million on the Bucs. He paid a little extra juice to get Tampa Bay at +3.5, but is in position to win a net $2.47 million.
• $2.5 million money line bet on Chiefs (-165): Bet was placed Sunday with BetMGM at Nevada and would pay a net $1,515,151.45.
• $2.3 million: A bettor with BetMGM in Nevada placed a $2.3 million bet on the Buccaneers +3.5 (-115) on Thursday night. The bet would pay net $2 million, if Tampa Bay covers the spread. It's the biggest bet on the Super Bowl reported so far and helped offset a lot of early action on the favored Chiefs, Jason Scott, vice president of trading for MGM, said.
'This was a bet we were very happy to receive,' Scott said. 'We had previously written several other six-figure bets, all on Kansas City, and the public is certainly behind Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes.'
• $1.16 million money-line bet on the Chiefs (-155) placed Sunday with William Hill U.S. in Nevada. The bet would pay a net $748,387.10.
• $1 million on the Bucs money line (+135). Bet was placed late Saturday night with BetMGM in Nevada and would win a net $1.35 million. It is the third reported seven-figure bet on the Super Bowl, entering game day. All three have been on Tampa Bay.
• $1 million two-leg teaser on Bucs +9 and over 50 (-130): Bet was placed Sunday with BetMGM in Nevada and would pay a net $769,230.77.
• $520,000 on Chiefs -3 (-120), placed Monday at the William Hill sportsbook at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The bet would pay at net $433,333.
• $500,000 on the Chiefs money line. Derek Stevens, owner of sportsbook operator Circa Sports, told the Vegas Sports and Information Network on Saturday that his shop took a $500,000 money-line bet on Kansas City.
• $345,000 on the Buccaneers +3.5 (-115) via BetMGM. The bet would pay a net $300,000.
• $333,333 on Chiefs -3 (-120). Bet was placed Sunday with FanDuel in Pennsylvania.
• $330,000 on Bucs +3.5 (-120). Bet was placed Saturday with William Hill U.S. in Nevada. The bet would pay a net $275,000.
• $325,000 on the Chiefs -3 (even). Bet was placed Sunday morning at the SuperBook at Westgate Las Vegas.
• $281,000 on Chiefs -3: Bet was placed Saturday night at The Borgata in Atlantic City, New Jersey and was the largest wager the book had taken on the Super Bowl entering game day.
• $250,000 on Bucs +3 (-120). Bet was placed Saturday with William Hill U.S. in Nevada. The bet would pay a net $208,333.
• $220,000 on Bucs +3. Bet was placed Sunday with BetMGM.
• $205,000 on under 56.5. The largest reported bet on the total was placed this week in Nevada with BetMGM. It would pay a net $186,363.65.
• $200,000 on Chiefs -3 (-110). Bet was placed Sunday at The Borgata in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
• $200,000 on Chiefs -3 (-116), placed Monday with DraftKings. The bet would pay a net $172,000. As of Monday night, it was the largest bet on the Super Bowl at DraftKings.
Super Bowl notable bets
Friday
• The action on the point spread, which had been lopsided in favor of the Chiefs, was evening out Friday afternoon, with more money coming on the underdog Buccaneers. BetRivers sportsbook reported that 72% of the money was on the favored Chiefs, down from 79% last week.
• The Buccaneers have attracted more money-line bets than the Chiefs in nine of the 12 states in which FanDuel operates. Overall, 54% of the money-line bets are on Tampa Bay.
• BetMGM is projecting betting handle on the Super Bowl to be eclipse $10 million at its sportsbook.
• The mayors of Tampa and Kansas City have placed their bet against one another. If the Chiefs win, Tampa mayor Jane Castor will send a Gates BBQ meal to healthcare workers in the Kansas City region. If the Buccaneers win, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas will send food to local Tampa healthcare workers from a restaurant of Castor's choice.
'We look forward to Sunday's Super Bowl game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and to keeping the Vince Lombardi Trophy where it belongs-in Kansas City,' Lucas said in a statement to ESPN. 'The Super Bowl can be a great escape from thinking about so many other things going on in the world, and Mayor Castor and I look forward to an exciting game Sunday where Mahomes will once again show the world he's the greatest player in the league. Still, despite rooting for different teams, we share a commitment to prioritizing the health and safety our communities, and encourage Chiefs and Buccaneers fans alike to keep our masks on, practice good hygiene, and celebrate the Super Bowl responsibly. We appreciate our healthcare workers in Tampa and in Kansas City working to keep fans safe, and encourage everyone to do their part in preventing the spread of COVID-19. Let's go, Chiefs!'
• Two $12,500 bets on the coin flip were placed Wednesday with William Hill U.S. in Iowa: one on heads, the other on tails. William Hill reported Friday that 50.2% of the bets were on heads, while 50.1% of the money is on tails.
Super Bowl Week
• For the most part, the Super Bowl point spread has not budged off Kansas -3 (-120) as of Wednesday - despite lopsided action on the favored Chiefs. At sportsbook PointsBet, 92% of the point-spread money that had been wagered was on Kansas City.
The action at FanDuel was running around 80% on the Chiefs, but sportsbook director John Sheeran said he has no intention of moving the line off of the key number of three.
'We're definitely not going to move the number just to get money on the other side,' Sheeran told ESPN on Tuesday. 'We disagree with that as a bookmaking strategy. We believe the right number is three, and we'll live with that from here to kickoff.'
• William Hill U.S. reported taking two interesting prop bets this week:
$3,000 on Patrick Mahomes to throw zero touchdowns at 15-1. The bet, which was placed in New Jersey, would pay a net $45,000.
$1,000 on Tom Brady to throw six or more touchdowns at 40-1. The bet, which was placed in Nevada, would pay a net $40,000.
• The over/under on Chiefs receiver Tyreek Hill's receiving yards has grown from 86.5 to 92.5 at FanDuel, and money continues to pour in on the over. 'At 92.5 [yards], we've taken $23,265,' Sheeran told ESPN on Tuesday. 'Of that $23,265, $23,101 is all on the over.'
• As of Tuesday, 'orange' was attracting the most action with 31.1% of the money in BetMGM's odds on what color of Gatorade will be dumped on the winning coach. 'Red/pink' is next with 18.8% of the money, followed by 'yellow/green/lime' at 16.6%.
• Interesting strategy: A bettor with FanDuel in New Jersey placed bets on the exact score of the Super Bowl: 1) $500 on Bucs 34, Chiefs 17 at 130-1, and 2) $500 on Chiefs 34, Bucs 17 at 170-1.
• Nevada Gaming Control began tracing the betting on the Super Bowl in 1991. Since then, the state's sportsbooks have suffered a net loss on the Super Bowl only twice: 1995 Chargers-49ers and 2008 Giants-Patriots.
• It's known as the bookmaker's dream: The favorite wins the game, eliminating all the money-line bets on the underdog, but doesn't cover the spread for the betting public, which almost always gravitates to the chalk. It has happened five times in Super Bowls, most recently in 2009 when the favored Pittsburgh Steelers (-7) defeated the Arizona Cardinals 27-23.
U Wager
Bookmakers expect to be rooting for it again. 'That's always the Super Bowl dream,' Murray of the SuperBook said.
• Johnny Avello, sportsbook director for DraftKings, said his shop was facing a $1 million liability on the Buccaneers in his odds to win the Super Bowl.
• The largest bets on the Super Bowl are normally in the million-dollar range and are typically placed by casino VIPs, not professional sports bettors. Bookmakers do not make a habit of taking their largest bets from their sharpest customers.
• The tradition of dumping Gatorade on the Super Bowl-winning coach dates back 35 years, and people love to bet on it. Orange has been the most common color, used 33% of the time since Super Bowl XL, including with the Chiefs last year.
• Super Bowl favorites are 35-19 straight up and 27-25-2 against the spread.
• There have been 26 overs, 26 unders and one push in the Super Bowl (no over/under on Super Bowl I).
• The coin flip has landed on tails 29 times and heads 25 times.
• The largest bet on the Super Bowl coin flip as of Monday morning at FanDuel was $5,000 on heads (-103).
• There's big believer in Chiefs receiver Sammy Watkins in New Jersey. Last week, a bettor with William Hill in New Jersey placed three bets on Watkins, totaling $11,666 with a chance to win $399,990.
1) $6,666 on Watkins to score the first touchdown for Kansas City at 15-1. The bet would pay a net $99,990.
2) $4,000 on Watkins to score first touchdown of the game at 25-1. The bet would pay a net $100,000.
3) $1,000 on Watkins to be named Super Bowl MVP at 200-1. The bet would pay a net $200,000.
The early action
• There was a slight difference of opinion on the opening line at sportsbooks. The consensus opening number was Kansas City -3, but several sportsbooks, including the SuperBook at Westgate Las Vegas, went a little higher, opening at Chiefs -3.5.
'Three weeks in a row now, where we opened up one of these Buccaneers games, the sharp guys just flooded us with Buccaneers bets,' said John Murray, executive director of the SuperBook.
By the Monday after the matchup was set, the line had settled at Kansas City -3, with added vig to bet the favored Chiefs.
Uwaterloo Learn
• In the first 24 hours at DraftKings, 77% of the point-spread bets and 78% of the money bet on the point spread was on the Chiefs.
• The over/under, which opened as high as 57.5, had been trimmed down to 56.5 on early action.
U Wager Login
The key number: 3
• Three is the most common margin of victory and hence considered the most key number when betting on the NFL. Including the playoffs, 14.3% of games this season had a margin of victory of three. Three was the most common margin of victory in the 2020-21 season.
U Water Cooler Bottle Rack
• Forty-one games had closing lines of -3 this season, including the playoffs. Teams favored by three went 25-16 straight-up and 20-21 against the spread this season.
• According to ESPN Stats & Information's database, 1,569 games have featured a point spread of -3 in the Super Bowl era. The winning percentage for the favorites in those games: 58.4%. The favorites' winning percentage against the spread in those games: 48.9%.
• Seven Super Bowls have had a closing point spread of -3. The favorites in those games are 4-3 straight-up and against the spread.
• Five Super Bowls have been decided by exactly three points.
Uwaterloo Library
• 'I can't imagine it going to 2.5,' Murray of the SuperBook said. 'I could be wrong about that, but seems crazy to me. Kansas City was considered the best team in the league the whole way. I can't believe it would go under 3. To go to back to 3.5, it would just take bets from the right people, the most respected people. And they could move it right back up, if certain groups that we really respect came in and laid 3, we would say, 'OK, let's go back to 3.5, because that's what we thought it should be to begin with.'
*ESPN Stats and Information researcher Kevin Haswell contributed to this article.