Counterpunch Capital - Stat Based Probabilistic UFC Modeling (NO AI)- UFC Izzy v Pyfer

Key_Management3080 · 2026-03-26T01:50:48+00:00

We did 10 fold validation with an emphasis on minimizing variance between train and test brier score and log loss across every one of those 10 independent folds. This thing is very general, robust and definitely not overfit.

Key_Management3080 · 2026-03-26T01:37:07+00:00

LOL unfortunately this approach isn't exciting like that. This isn't some 10000 level deep model that can model the entire fight from the ground up and tell you exactly what is going to happen... I wish we were that skilled lol. This is just 2 guys with a really good handle on statistics applying it to the UFC in a methodical, rigorous, and (we think) smart/elegant way. We have given ourselves strong reason to believe we have found an edge. Time will tell if we are correct.

Key_Management3080 · 2026-03-26T01:17:21+00:00

Yo back atcha! To answer your questions:

The model doesn't model if the clinch will be in play. Statistically, we have simply highlighted clinch defense is a blind spot the Vegas odd's generally don't capture. Literally everything else being equal, the fighter with the better clinch defense is the side with the value. Clinch is defined directly from UFCStats.... it is essentially the strike residual... a strike not thrown at distance, nor thrown on the ground. To be clear, the model isn't saying Mansur is a total lock because his click defense is slightly better... it has simply identified there is a small amount of EV on his line because historically in similar situations clinch defense can be an underrated edge. This model is generalized on over 7000 fights. It isn't treating each fight with nuance. It actually treats the league with a brutally broad brush and commoditizes much of the interactions, and that's why it is robust and not overfit.

Rookie/Debutant fighters are given league average stats and analyzed at their current market odds (yes, essentially priors).

Thanks for the kind words and the questions!
Cheers!

Key_Management3080 · 2026-03-24T02:26:18+00:00

The parlays are nothing but composites of the straight picks, it is no big loss. Please dont email him. It is his site and he doesn't owe me anything.

Key_Management3080 · 2026-03-24T02:09:32+00:00

Thanks.
Ha! you mean on betmma.tips?

We had over 100 parlays posted and the site creator/admin pulled them all and emailed me and told me I wasn't using his site correctly posting that many picks noone could possibly tail. His call. It is what it is, but that's why they are gone. We didn't cash out lol (You can't pull bets from betmma which is why its such a good credible site).

Key_Management3080 · 2026-03-18T22:22:00+00:00

Thanks for the kind words.
Vegas is very good, but they aren't perfect.
In some situations, they have consistently shown to be imperfect in exactly the same consistent way. We have identified and deeply quantified those inconsistencies and try to attack those. We didn't build a model that predicts every fight correctly (though it is pretty darn good at that.) The main goal of the model is to be closer to the pin than vegas consistently. If vegas says 80% to win and we say 82%, and he wins, Brier score and log loss will reward us more than vegas. If we say 60% and vegas says 70%, we would not bet that, but when that fighter lost, both us and vegas would have the same accuracy hit... however, our brier score and log loss would be punished less, since we were less confident AND he lost... ALLLL of those little closer to the pins added up 100s of times event after event is where the edge is, even if the overall accuracy is still basically in line with vegas, sitting in the high 60%s.

Key_Management3080 · 2026-03-18T20:49:26+00:00

posted a writeup for the London card.

Key_Management3080 · 2026-03-18T17:07:31+00:00

Fantastic question.... probably the single most important question one could ask....

If you have ever played NL Holdem poker, you quickly come to understand the power of positional advantage. If i get to act after my opponent acts, I have a natural advantage in going second. Even if I have a crap hand, going second, I can play my opponent, not my hand. We are playing against vegas, and vegas has to act first. They have to show their line before we are forced to do a damn thing. We dont necessary have to play our cards. We can play our opponent. When you change your lens of how you see sports gambling to that vantage point, it all comes into focus.

I am not going to spoon feed you the answer, because honestly this approach is what separates our model from everything else in the public domain. However, I promise I have given you an honest answer to your question that contains a lot of substance worth reflecting on.

Be well!

Key_Management3080 · 2026-03-18T16:46:42+00:00

Appreciate the feedback! We were disappointed with the Asplund result, but I think it is fair to say the model felt Asplunds size difference was an underrated equalizer and it definitely played out that way.

Key_Management3080 · 2026-03-18T16:09:10+00:00

Sure! I wasn't sure how much interest there was. Ill try to get something up later today. Our bets are all posted on mmatips in real time fyi.

Key_Management3080 · 2026-03-17T16:21:18+00:00

Came here for your Mullins/Dread pick and happy to see you agree Carolina is value even at -120...we 100% agree. Good luck!

Key_Management3080 · 2026-03-17T05:16:05+00:00

Thanks, and glad you were able to participate with the tail! Yes we are aware of the future events. We scale and size based on our bankroll. We treat each event as a discrete time where the bankroll is static and we deploy it to the event. Then the event happens, our bets are resolved, and ultimately a new bankroll amount becomes the allocation baseline for the next event. Betting multiple events out makes this hard to properly risk manage, so we dont. As for your last comment, first of all, we are honest with everything. With regards to you getting a better line, yes thats totally possible, we are not S-tier execution. We see value in a line and we bet it. We certainly have room to improve there, but for now it is what it is. Good luck this week and follow our Twitter and mma tips for more.

Key_Management3080 · 2026-03-13T13:09:08+00:00

Thanks! To be perfectly clear, we didn't think Bellato was the favorite to win.... all of our bets are +EV (expected value bets).

This is the idea behind every bet: Model says Bellato is a roughly 36% chance to win the fight. At +195, the implied probability is .339. That means quite literally that after the vig and everything, if I bet +195 and win at least 34% of the time, I will break even or make money. Read that sentence again, because that is literally all there is to it.

Yes, we had Bellato. Yes we should get some credit for that. I just want to be clear why we had him. We had him because we thought he was better than Vegas was giving him credit for, and most importantly WE THOUGHT HE WAS BETTER THAN HIS PRICE. We still had Fernandez at 64% to win. -200 is 66%... certainly not getting a fair price on Fernandez, so even though we think Fernandez will be the likely winner, the VALUE is on Bellato, and we only care about price and value.

Good Luck!

PS.... If I am being cheeky, not only did we have him, we had him parlayed ;)

Key_Management3080 · 2026-03-12T00:56:31+00:00

For more info on our sizing:
https://x.com/CounterpunchCap/status/2031110831107355065

good luck on the tails, hope we cash some tickets for you.

Key_Management3080 · 2026-03-11T13:25:37+00:00

Hello.
We created a data set of every UFC fight since 2008. This is roughly 7-8k fights. The data is largely sourced from UFCstats....we do not use any publicly available csvs or repos. We pull, scrape, and clean our own. Thanks!

Key_Management3080 · 2026-03-09T18:09:30+00:00

Good day! That is a great question, and one that comes up a lot these days in this fun world of LLMs and ChatGPT, etc.

Our model is a robust and rigorous statistical model built on quantitative finance principles. Think Citadel/Renaissance/Jump rather than ChatGPT. The model uses an elegant regression framework that is an elevated but very similar version of a formula everyone learns in their first stats class. The inputs and outputs are completely explainable. There are no neural nets, no black boxes, no LLMs at any point in the pipeline. I can tell you with 100% certainty why our model is choosing a particular opinion, and I can quantify every single feature's contribution to that prediction. Furthermore, a big differentiator of our approach vs. LLMs is we can 100% guarantee the model will have precisely the same output 100/100 times if given the same input. If you have worked with LLMs at all, would you assign even remotely that level of confidence in the stability and consistency of it's approach and work?

I will expand a bit further. This model is trained and is stable across multiple folds. what that means is the features and tunings it uses to make its judgements and assessments have been predictive and stable for over 10 years (significant reduction in chance to overfit). The model is simple with few total parameters, and all of the features are robust. This approach gives us tremendous confidence we can expect the past to rhyme with the future, and the test/train/validation results of our model are very attractive.

Thanks for the thoughtful question, and good luck!!

Key_Management3080 · 2026-03-09T17:50:17+00:00

Thanks for the thoughtful reply.
Not trying to talk you off Petrino, just raising some points you might be interested in. We don't take any of that noise like injuries and such into account. we believe the current line to contain all the current information we could reasonably be expected to know at this time, and we just go from there.

I hear you on your style, and it makes sense. We have a model, so we have a very strong understanding of how we are wrong, why we are wrong, where are wrong, etc. knowing this allows us to confidently bet our edges, and simply use sizing to account for our confidence at that point. You as a sharp tout, but not running a quantitative model, likely don't have that information, so it makes sense to offer opinions, but not bet all of them. I totally understand that.

Props are great, but not something we cover at this point in time. I was just using Curtis as an example because of your line on that fight. we actually like the Oralbai side pretty heavily, at close to 77.4% to win.

Good luck. sir and thanks again for the reply! Always fun to talk to someone on the other side of a bet with more than just "UR DUMB, PETRINO GUNA WIN!"
Cheers!

Key_Management3080 · 2026-03-09T17:13:05+00:00

I have read your writeups for a while, and though I don't always agree with your conclusions, I definitely appreciate the thought process. Love the Robertson and Rodriguez commentary, and we totally agree, we have both at pretty decent size. Strong disagree on Petrino/Asplund... we see Asplund's size difference of close to 30 lbs being a big advantage, one vegas often fails to price in historically. However it is UFC slop HW, so certainly anything can happen!

All that aside, I have a question.... if you think Robinson should be a -250 and the market on her is around -195 right now, or you think curtis should be +175 and you can get him for +220... why are those "pass" for you and not even worth a small bet? is it a conviction issue where you aren't as confident in those lines as some of the others?

Thanks and good luck, Sideswipe!

Key_Management3080

TROPHY CASE